Sojourners And Strangers

What is a church? This can be a difficult question to answer and Christians have offered a variety of perspectives. Gregg Allison thus explores and synthesizes all that Scripture affirms about the new covenant people of God, capturing a full picture of the biblical church. He covers the topics of the church’s identity and characteristics; its growth through purity, unity, and discipline; its offices and leadership structures; its ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and its ministries. Here is a rich approach to ecclesiology consisting of sustained doctrinal reflection and wise, practical application. Part of the Foundations of Evangelical Theology series.

An epic novel set in the rugged interior of British Columbia, the first volume of a trilogy which traces the lives of four generations of a family of exiles. Beginning in 1900, and concluding with the climactic events leading up to the Millennium, the series follows Anne and Stephen Delaney and their descendants as they live through the tumultuous events of this century. Anne is a highly educated Englishwoman who arrives in British Columbia at the end of the First World War. Raised in a family of spiritualists and Fabian socialists, she has fled civilization in search of adventure. She meets and eventually marries a trapper-homesteader, an Irish immigrant who is fleeing the "troubles" in his own violent past. This is a story about the gradual movement of souls from despair and unbelief to faith, hope, and love, about the psychology of perception, and about the ultimate questions of life, death and the mystery of being. Interwoven with scenes from Ireland, England, Poland, Russia, and Belgium during the War, Strangers and Sojourners is a tale of the extraordinary hidden within the ordinary. It is about courage and fear, and the triumph of the human spirit.

Arthur Thurner tells of the enormous struggle of the diverse immigrants who built and sustained energetic towns and communities, creating a lively civilization in what was essentially a forest wilderness. Their story is one of incredible economic success and grim tragedy in which mine workers daily risked their lives. By highlighting the roles women, African Americans, and Native Americans played in the growth of the Keweenaw community, Thurner details a neglected and ignored past. The history of Keweenaw Peninsula for the past one hundred and fifty years reflects contemporary American culture--a multicultural, pluralistic, democratic welfare state still undergoing evolution. Strangers and Sojourners, with its integration of social and economic history, for the first time tells the complete story of the people from the Keweenaw Peninsula's Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon counties.

"Controversies in politics and religion, customs of family life and society, obligations of labor and chances to play, questions of free will, democracy, the separation of church and state, religious toleration, treatment of Indians---these form the matter of this book." -- Publisher's description.

Most historical theology texts follow Christian beliefs chronologically, discussing notable doctrinal developments for all areas of theology according to their historical appearance. And while this may be good history, it can make for confusing theology, with the classic theological loci scattered throughout various time periods, movements, and controversies. In Historical Theology, Gregg Allison offers students the opportunity to study the historical development of theology according to a topical-chronological arrangement, setting out the history of Christian doctrine one theological element at a time. Such an approach allows readers to concentrate on one tenet of Christianity and its formulation in the early church, through the Middle Ages, Reformation, and post-Reformation era, and into the modern period. The text includes a generous mix of primary source material as well, citing the words of Cyprian, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Barth, and others. Allison references the most accessible editions of these notable theologians’ work so that readers can continue their study of historical theology through Christian history’s most important contributors. Historical Theology is a superb resource for those familiar with Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology or interested in understanding the development of Christian theology.

The modern world is full of diasporas. African Americans, and Muslims and Hindus in Europe, are some of the best known among them. The concept of 'diaspora' has spread rapidly in academic writing and the popular press. But what is a diaspora ? Derived from Jewish tradition, the word is now often applied to any minority which has migrated from its place of origin. Increasingly, the criterion used by journalists and academics for identifying such minorities is ethnic identity rather than religious allegiance. The present volume explores the ways in which the term 'diaspora' has been applied in past and present to various religious communities in different contexts. It considers under what circumstances people may be classified as living in a diaspora, and the consequences this has for their position in society. Specific chapters study Africans in modern Europe, Jews in ancient Egypt, Syrians throughout the Roman empire, Hindus in Britain and Muslims in the Netherlands today, and other so-called diaspora communities.

In this balanced volume, Gregg Allison—an evangelical theologian and church historian—helps readers understand the nuances of Roman Catholic teaching. Walking through the official Catechism of the Catholic Church, Allison summarizes and assesses Catholic doctrine from the perspective of both Scripture and evangelical theology. Noting prominent similarities without glossing over key differences, this book will equip Christians on both sides of the ecclesiastical divide to fruitfully engage in honest dialogue with one another.

Early Christians spoke about themselves as resident aliens, strangers, and sojourners, asserting that otherness is a fundamental part of being Christian. But why did they do so and to what ends? How did Christians' claims to foreign status situate them with respect to each other and to the larger Roman world as the new movement grew and struggled to make sense of its own boundaries? Aliens and Sojourners argues that the claim to alien status is not a transparent one. Instead, Benjamin Dunning contends, it shaped a rich, pervasive, variegated discourse of identity in early Christianity. Resident aliens and foreigners had long occupied a conflicted space of both repulsion and desire in ancient thinking. Dunning demonstrates how Christians and others in antiquity capitalized on this tension, refiguring the resident alien as being of a compelling doubleness, simultaneously marginal and potent. Early Christians, he argues, used this refiguration to render Christian identity legible, distinct, and even desirable among the vast range of social and religious identities and practices that proliferated in the ancient Mediterranean. Through close readings of ancient Christian texts such as Hebrews, 1 Peter, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Epistle to Diognetus, Dunning examines the markedly different ways that Christians used the language of their own marginality, articulating a range of options for what it means to be Christian in relation to the Roman social order. His conclusions have implications not only for the study of late antiquity but also for understanding the rhetorics of religious alienation more broadly, both in the ancient world and today.