English Church History

Many Christians today long to become reacquainted with their ancient ancestors in the faith. They see a deeper worship and devotion in the prayers and hymns of the early church. And they believe that the writings of the early church can shed new light on their understanding of Scripture. But where and how do we begin? Our first encounter with the writings of the church fathers may seem like visiting a far country where the language, assumptions, concerns, and conclusions are completely unfamiliar to us. Author Christopher Hall helps us through this cultural confusion.

The struggle for human rights, emancipation, civil rights, social justice, voting rights, and freedom from discrimination and tyranny is captured here in this volume of speeches by some of the most influential and brilliant Black orators in history.

It is June 1936. Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) has finally been granted a visa for asylum in Norway, having been banned first from living in Paris, and then the whole of France. With him comes the draft of The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?, which is completed and sent to the publishers on the 4th of August. The book, published by Faber in 1937, is considered to be Trotsky’s major work on Stalinism.

The prophets of old were not easy to listen to because they did not flatter. They did not cajole. They spoke hard words that often chafed and unsettled their listeners. Like the Old Testament prophets, and more recent prophetic voices like Frederick Douglass, Dr. Eric Mason calls the evangelical church to a much-needed reckoning.

The Knights Templar existed officially for less than 200 years. Founded to protect pilgrims who were travelling through the Holy Lands, their rise to power was sudden. They became some of the most feared warriors in the region, they had a mandate from God, they controlled perhaps the world's first real banking system, and they waged war against anyone who tried to wrestle Christianity and seize holy grounds from the control of the Catholic Church.

Compared to the Puritans, Mormons have rarely gotten their due, often treated as fringe cultists or marginalized polygamists unworthy of serious examination. In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park excavates the brief, tragic life of a lost Mormon city, demonstrating that the Mormons are essential to understanding American history writ large. Using newly accessible sources, Park re-creates the Mormons' 1839 flight from Missouri to Illinois.

There is a church...not the one that man is building...but the one that Jesus himself has been constructing in the hearts and lives of believers throughout the ages.

No nation, institution, empire, or dynasty has helped shape the world more than the Catholic Church. Armies have marched upon one another. Kings have risen and fallen. Ideological and political movements have taken hold of entire continents. Diseases and plagues have ravished millions. And through it all, Holy Mother Church has endured, standing as the one source of light in a world so often covered by shadows. In this thrilling narrative, Phillip Campbell takes children on a journey through Church history.

The wisdom acquired during C. T. Vivian's lifetime is generously shared in It's In the Action, the civil rights legend's memoir of his early life and time in the civil rights movement. Vivian worked hand in hand with the movement's most famous figures, including Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, and his contributions were no less vital to the successes of nonviolent resistance. Bearing a foreword from Andrew Young, It's in the Action is an important addition to civil rights history from Vivian and coauthor Steve Fiffer.

A number of efforts were made in the US during the 19th century to create a single textbook of Roman Catholic Christian doctrine that might be used by all American Catholics. In 1885, a catechism was put together by the Order of the Third Council of Baltimore.

Cultural Christians in the Early Church, which aims to be both historical and practical, argues that cultural Christians were the rule, rather than the exception, in the early church. Using different categories of sins as its organizing principle, the book considers the challenge of culture to the earliest converts to Christianity, as they struggled to live on mission in the Greco-Roman cultural milieu of the Roman Empire.

Peter Marshall was born in Orkney. His ancestors were farmers and farm labourers on the northern island of Sanday – where, in 1624, one of them was murdered by a witch. In an expansive and enthralling historical account, Marshall looks afresh at a small group of islands that has been treated as a mere footnote, remote and peripheral, and in doing so invites us to think differently about key events of British history.

Scientology is one of the wealthiest and most powerful new religions to emerge in the past century. To its detractors, L. Ron Hubbard's space-age mysticism is a moneymaking scam and sinister brainwashing cult. But to its adherents, it is humanity's brightest hope. Few religious movements have been subject to public scrutiny like Scientology, yet much of what is written about the church is sensationalist and inaccurate.

After decades of opposition, the Latter-day Saints have dedicated the Salt Lake Temple, a mighty symbol of their industry and faith. Now, with a new century on the horizon, the Saints are optimistic about the future and ready to spread the Savior's message of peace across the globe. Boldly, Nobly, and Independent is the third book in Saints, a new, four-volume narrative history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Fast-paced and meticulously researched, Saints recounts true stories of Latter-day Saints across the globe.

The “modern Jesus” of progressives—supposedly friendlier and more accepting than the Savior we know from the Gospels—is gaining popularity and acceptance among self-identified Christians. But they don’t realize that progressive Christianity rejects the biblical revelation of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. Hijacking Jesus addresses perennial questions about the nature of Christ and his teaching, testing the historical and theological accuracy of progressive Christians.

In which the author gives a concise account of, together with sundry caustic animadversions on, the very fantastic theology of the sect. This treatise is professedly taken from the writings of Justin, Miltiades, Irenæus, and Proculus.

Christians have proclaimed the good news about Jesus for centuries. But the good news isn't sounding so good these days, at least to some. More and more surveys show that people view Christians as bearers of bad news, judgment, and intolerance. In Vanishing Grace, best-selling author Philip Yancey acknowledges the problem and then explores how we can respond with both grace and truth. He offers a discerning look at what contributes to a hostility toward Christians, and identifies three groups - pilgrims, artists, and activists - who can show us a different way.

In a tiny, dilapidated trailer in northeastern Oregon, a young woman saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in an ordinary landscape painting hanging on her bedroom wall. After being met with skepticism from the local parish, the matter was officially placed "under investigation" by the Catholic diocese. Investigative journalist Randall Sullivan wanted to know how, exactly, one might conduct the official inquiry into such an incident, so he set off to interview theologians, historians, and postulators.

In an alternate 1880s London, angels inhabit every public building, and vampires and werewolves walk the streets with human beings in a well-regulated truce. A fantastic utopia, except for a few things: Angels can Fall, and that Fall is like a nuclear bomb in both the physical and metaphysical worlds. And human beings remain human, with all their kindness and greed and passions and murderous intent. Jack the Ripper stalks the streets of this London too. But this London has an Angel. The Angel of the Crows.

In the valley of the Upper Nile, on the bank of the river, is the town of Akhmim, once called Panopolis. In ancient times, Panoplis was the capital of the district. In the town stood remnants of a monastery. The ruins of the temple marked the intellectual life of ancient days. On the lands of the monastery was a graveyard wherein were interred the monks and priests who served there long ago.