How did a community that was largely invisible in the first two centuries of its existence go on to remake the civilizations it inhabited, culturally, politically, and intellectually? Beginning with the life of Jesus, Robert Louis Wilken narrates the...

In "A Common Faith", eminent American philosopher John Dewey calls for the "emancipation of the true religious quality" from the heritage of dogmatism and supernaturalism that he believes characterizes historical religions. He describes how a depth o...

In this engaging and at times heartbreaking book, David Hempton looks at evangelicalism through the lens of well-known individuals who once embraced the evangelical tradition, but later repudiated it. The author recounts the faith journeys of nine cr...

The Garden of Eden story, one of the most famous narratives in Western history, is typically read as an ancient account of original sin and humanity's fall from divine grace. In this highly innovative study, Ziony Zevit argues that this is not how an...

In this towering work, Andre Vauchez draws on the vast body of scholarship on Francis of Assisi, emphasizing in particular the important research of the last 30 years. He creates a complete and engaging portrait of the saint, then explores how the me...

The noted German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel wrote a number of essays that deal directly with religion as a fundamental process in human life. These essays set forth Simmel's mature reflections on religion and its relation to modernity,...

During the early eighteenth century, colonial New England witnessed the end of Puritanism and the emergence of a revivalist religious movement that culminated in the evangelical awakenings of the 1740s. This engrossing book explores the religious his...

The liturgical psalter is one of the most important medieval Christian books and the most frequently and richly illuminated of medieval liturgical manuscripts. In its simplest form the psalter included 150 psalms, preceded by a calendar and followed...

For centuries readers have comfortably adopted Julian of Norwich as simply a mystic. In this astute book, Denys Turner remedies this misapprehension, offering a sensitive new interpretation of Julian and the significance of her work. Turner argues th...

This compelling book retells and revises the story of the German Renaissance and Reformation through the lives of two controversial men of the sixteenth century: the Saxon court painter Lucas Cranach (the Serpent) and the Wittenberg monk-turned-refor...