REL3505 The Christian Tradition

Write a 2500 words review of one of the books in this list for 15 March. All books are available as electronic resources through the Strozier library : Hammerling Roy. The Lord’s Prayer in the Early Church : The Pearl of Great Price. New York : Palgrave Macmillan US : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan 2010 The Lord s Prayer is arguably the most important prayer in Christianity. Still exactly how the prayer developed in the life of the early church has remained hidden in ancient manuscripts. Hammerling s thorough and ground-breaking examination of these works reveals that early authors enthusiastically expounded upon its power and mystery claiming that the prayer uttered by Christ belonged at the core of Christian ritual and beliefs. Many early church writers labeled it a “perfect summary of the gospel” and joyously referred to it as a pearl of great price and worth. ROY HAMMERLING is an Associate Professor of Religion at Concordia College in Moorhead USA. Teubner Jonathan D. Prayer after Augustine… Oxford : Oxford University Press 2017 The influence of the theology and philosophy of Augustine of Hippo on subsequent Western thought and culture is undisputed. Prayer after Augustine: A Study in the Development of the Latin Tradition argues that the notion of the Augustinian tradition needs to be re-thought; and that already in the generation after Augustine in the West such a re-thinking is already and richly manifest in more than one influential form. In this work Jonathan D. Teubner encourages philosophical moral and historical theologians to think about what it might mean that the Augustinian tradition formed in a distinctively Augustinian fashion and considers how this affects how they use discuss and evaluate Augustine in their work. This is exemplified by Augustines reflections on prayer and how they were taken up modified and handed on by Boethius and Benedict two critically influential figures for the development of Latin medieval philosophical and theological cultures. Teubner analyses and exemplifies the particular theme of prayer and the other topics it constellates in Augustine and to show how it already forms a distinctively Augustinian concept of tradition that was to prove to have fascinatingly diverse manifestations. Part I traces the development of Augustines understanding of prayer. Patience and hope as articulated in prayer sit at the centre of Augustines understanding of Christian existence. In Part II Teubner turns to suggest how this is picked up by Boethius and Benedict. Jonathan D. Teubner Fernand Braudel Postdoctoral Fellow Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Renie S. Choy. Intercessory prayer and the monastic ideal in the time of the Carolingian reforms. Oxford : Oxford University Press 2016. In early medieval Europe monasticism constituted a significant force in society because the prayers of the religious on behalf of others featured as powerful currency. The study of this phenomenon is at once full of potential and peril rightly drawing attention to the wider social involvement of an otherwise exclusive group but also describing a religious community in terms of its service provision. Previous scholarship has focused on the supply and demand of prayer within the medieval economy of power patronage and gift exchange. Intercessory Prayer and the Monastic Ideal in the Time of the Carolingian Reforms is the first volume to explain how this transactional dimension of prayer factored into monastic spirituality. Renie S. Choy uncovers the relationship between the intercessory function of monasteries and the ascetic concern for moral conversion in the minds of prominent religious leaders active between c. 750-820. Through sustained analysis of the devotional thought of Benedict of Aniane and contemporaneous religious reformers during the reigns of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious Choy examines key topics in the study of Carolingian monasticism: liturgical organization and the intercessory performances of the Mass and the Divine Office monastic theology and relationships of prayer within monastic communities and with the world outside. Arguing that monastic leaders showed new interest on the intersection between the interiority of prayer and the functional world of social relationships this study reveals the ascetic ideal undergirding the provision of intercessory prayer by monasteries. Renie S. Choy Lecturer in Church History St Mellitus College London Fulton Brown Rachel. Mary & the Art of Prayer  : The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought. Columbia University Press 2018. In Mary and the Art of Prayer Rachel Fulton Brown traces the history of the medieval practice of praising Mary through the complex of prayers known as the Hours of the Virgin. More than just a work of comprehensive historical scholarship the book asks readers to immerse themselves in the experience of believing in and praying to Mary. Mary and the Art of Prayer crosses the boundaries that modern scholars typically place between observation and experience between the world of provable facts and the world of imagination suggesting what it would have been like for medieval Christians to encounter Mary in prayer. Mary and the Art of Prayer opens with a history of the devotion of the Hours or “Little Office” of the Virgin. It then guides readers in the practice of saying this Office including its invitatory (Ave Maria) antiphons psalms lessons and prayers. The book works on several levels at once. It provides a new methodology for thinking about devotion and prayer; a new appreciation of the scope of and audience for the Hours of the Virgin; a new understanding of how Mary functions theologically and devotionally; and a new reading of sources not previously taken into account. Rachel Fulton Brown is associate professor of history at the University of Chicago. She is the author of From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary 800–1200 (2002) and coeditor of History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person (2007) both from Columbia University Press. Marno D. Death be not proud : the art of holy attention. [s. l.]: The University of Chicago Press 2016. The seventeenth-century French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche thought that philosophy could learn a valuable lesson from prayer which teaches us how to attend wait and be open for what might happen next. Death Be Not Proud explores the precedents of Malebranche’s advice by reading John Donne’s poetic prayers in the context of what David Marno calls the “art of holy attention.”If in Malebranche’s view attention is a hidden bond between religion and philosophy devotional poetry is the area where this bond becomes visible. Marno shows that in works like “Death be not proud” Donne’s most triumphant poem about the resurrection the goal is to allow the poem’s speaker to experience a given doctrine as his own thought as an idea occurring to him. But while the thought must feel like an unexpected event for the speaker the poem itself is a careful preparation for it. And the key to this preparation is attention the only state in which the speaker can perceive the doctrine as a cognitive gift. Along the way Marno illuminates why attention is required in Christian devotion in the first place and uncovers a tradition of battling distraction that spans from ascetic thinkers and Church Fathers to Catholic spiritual exercises and Protestant prayer manuals. David Marno is assistant professor of English at the University of California Berkeley. Dubois M. Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Poetry of Religious Experience. Cambridge University Press; 2017 This nuanced yet accessible study is the first to examine the range of religious experience imagined in Hopkinss writing. By exploring the shifting way in which Hopkins imagines religious belief in individual history Martin Dubois contests established views of his poetry as a unified project. Combining detailed close readings with extensive historical research Dubois argues that the spiritual awareness manifest in Hopkinss poetry is varied and fluctuating and that this is less a failure of his intellectual system than a sign of the experiential character of much of his poetrys thought. Individual chapters focus on biblical language and prayer as well as on the spiritual ideal seen in the figures of the soldier and the martyr and on Hopkinss ideas of death judgement heaven and hell. Offering fresh interpretations of the major poems this volume reveals a more diverse and exploratory poet than has been recognised. Martin Dubois lecturer University of Newcastle-on-Tyme. Maiden John G. National Religion and the Prayer Book Controversy 1927-1928. Boydell & Brewer 2009 This is the first full length examination of a defining moment in the history of the Church of England in the twentieth century: the Prayer Book controversy of 1927-28. It argues that conceptions of national religion were influential in the debates surrounding liturgical revision showing in particular how ideas of Protestant national identity clashed with both liberal Anglican and moderate Anglo-Catholic conceptions of Church and nation. It shows how the Church of England retained a significant position in national life in the interwar period; however it also argues that the resilience of the anti-Catholic mindset amongst many Anglicans and Free Churchmen meant that the exact nature of the relationship between religion and nation was hotly contested.This study sets the Prayer Book controversy in the context of early twentieth century British religious history providing important insights into the history of Anglicanism Nonconformity and ideas of English and British identity during the period.JOHN G. MAIDEN is a Research Assistant at the Department of Religious Studies The Open University. Griffith RM. God’s Daughters : Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission. University of California Press; 1997 In recent decades religious conservatives and secular liberals have battled over the “appropriate” role of women in society. In this absorbing exploration of Womens Aglow Fellowship the largest womens evangelical organization in the world R. Marie Griffith challenges the simple generalizations often made about charismatic or “spirit-filled” Christian women and uncovers important connections between Aglow members and the feminists to whom they so often seem opposed. Womens Aglow is an international interdenominational group of “spirit-filled” women who meet outside the formal church structure for healing prayer worship and testimony. Aglow represents a wider evangelical culture that has gained recent media attention as women inspired by the Christian mens group Promise Keepers have initiated parallel groups such as Praise Keepers and Promise Reapers. These groups are generally newcomers to an institutional landscape that Aglow has occupied for thirty years but their beliefs and commitments are very similar to Aglows. While historians have examined earlier womens prayer groups theyve tended to ignore these modern-day evangelical groups because of their assumed connection to the “religious right.”Gods Daughters reveals a devotional world in which oral and written testimonies recount the afflictions of human life and the means for seeking relief and divine assistance. A relationship with God envisioned as father husband or lover and friend is a way to come to terms with pain dysfunctional family relationships and a desire for intimacy. Griffiths book is also valuable in showing the complex role that women play within Pentecostalism a movement that has become one of the most important in twentieth-century world religions. Marie Griffithi s Lecturer in the Department of Religion and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton University. Marie Griffithi s Lecturer in the Department of Religion and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton University. ‘