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While Baptists through the years have been certain that "war is hell," they have not always been able to agree on how to respond to it. This book traces much of this troubled relationship from the days of Baptist origins with close ties to pacifist Anabaptists to the responses of Baptists in America to the war in Vietnam. Essays also include discussions of the English Baptist Andrew Fuller's response to the threat of Napoleon, how Baptists in America dealt with the War of 1812, the support of Canadian Baptists for Britain's war in Sudan and Abyssinia in the 1880s, the decisive effect of the First World War on Canada's T. T. Shields, the response of Australian Baptists to the Second World War, and how Russian Baptists dealt with the Cold War. These chapters provide important analyses of Baptist reactions to one of society's most intractable problems.
This original examination of the spiritual narratives of conversion in the history of American Protestant evangelical religion reveals an interesting paradox. Fervent believers who devoted themselves completely to the challenges of making a Christian life, who longed to know God's rapturous love, all too often languished in despair, feeling forsaken by God. Ironically, those most devoted to fostering the soul's maturation neglected the well-being of the psyche. Drawing upon many sources, including unpublished diaries and case studies of patients treated in nineteenth-century asylums, Julius Rubin's fascinating study thoroughly explores religious melancholy--as a distinctive stance toward life, a grieving over the loss of God's love, and an obsession and psychopathology associated with the spiritual itinerary of conversion. The varieties of this spiritual sickness include sinners who would fast unto death ("evangelical anorexia nervosa"), religious suicides, and those obsessed with unpardonable sin. From colonial Puritans like Michael Wigglesworth to contemporary evangelicals like Billy Graham, among those who directed the course of evangelical religion and of their followers, Rubin shows that religious melancholy has shaped the experience of self and identity for those who sought rebirth as children of God.
Reshaping the Boundaries: The Christian Intersection of China and the West in the Modern Era brings new material and new insight to deepen our understanding of the multilayered, two-way flow of words, beliefs, and experiences between the West and China from 1600 to 1900. The seven essays taken together illustrate the complex reality of boundary-crossing interactions between these cultures and document how hybrid ideas, images, and identities emerged in both China and the West. By focusing on “in-betweenness,” these essays challenge the existing Eurocentric assumption of a simple one-way cultural flow, with Western missionaries transmitting and the Chinese receiving. Led by Song Gang, the contributors to this volume cover many specific aspects of this cultural encounter that have received little or no scholarly attention: official decrees, memoirs, personal correspondences, news, rumors, musical instruments, and miracle stories. Grounded in multiple intellectual disciplines, including religious studies, history, arts, music, and Sinology, Reshaping the Boundaries explores how each of the major Christian traditions—Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox—bridged the West and the East in unique ways. “These fascinating essays offer new insightful perspectives on the artistic and cultural relations between China and Europe. Each contribution convincingly illustrates the distinctive feature of ‘in-betweenness’ in the specific two-way ‘boundary-crossing’ exchange of knowledge. This remarkable, richly documented collection fundamentally challenges traditional interpretations of the Sino-Western cultural encounter.” —R. G. Tiedemann, School of History and Culture, Shandong University, China “Reshaping the Boundaries brings together new and helpful research on the interactions in religion, printing, art, literature, and music. It interweaves both Chinese and Western perspectives to capture the productive nature of these cross-cultural exchanges during the late imperial era. This exciting volume successfully illustrates how the process of boundary-crossing included mutual influence and, consequently, reciprocal reshaping.” —Christopher A. Daily, SOAS, University of London; author of Robert Morrison and the Protestant Plan for China
Throughout most of the eighteenth century and particularly during the religious revivals of the Great Awakening, evangelical women in colonial New England participated vigorously in major church decisions, from electing pastors to disciplining backsliding members. After the Revolutionary War, however, women were excluded from political life, not only in their churches but in the new republic as well. Reconstructing the history of this change, Susan Juster shows how a common view of masculinity and femininity shaped both radical religion and revolutionary politics in America. Juster compares contemporary accounts of Baptist women and men who voice their conversion experiences, theological opinions, and proccupation with personal conflicts and pastoral controversies. At times, the ardent revivalist message of spiritual individualism appeared to sanction sexual anarchy. According to one contemporary, revival attempted "to make all things common, wives as well as goods." The place of women at the center of evangelical life in the mid-eighteenth century, Juster finds, reflected the extent to which evangelical religion itself was perceived as "feminine"—emotional, sensional, and ultimately marginal. In the 1760s, the Baptist order began to refashion its mission, and what had once been a community of saints—often indifferent to conventional moral or legal constraints—was transformed into a society of churchgoers with a concern for legitimacy. As the church was reconceptualized as a "household" ruled by "father" figures, "feminine" qualities came to define the very essence of sin. Juster observes that an image of benevolent patriarchy threatened by the specter of female power was a central motif of the wider political culture during the age of democratic revolutions.