A Study of Theological Naming of Evangelical Identity of Christian Worship and Doing of Human Worshippers With Reference to the Augsburg Confession (1530)

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 329-354
Author(s):  
Jin-Bong CHOI
Keyword(s):  
Christian Worship ◽  
Evangelical Identity

Limits and Possibilities of Sharing Christian Worship in an Interreligious Educational Setting

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-223
Author(s):  
Jennifer Peace
Keyword(s):  
Planning Process ◽  
Leadership Education ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
Unitarian Universalist ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Religious Ritual ◽  
Worship Service ◽  
Theological School ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
Interreligious Education

This paper discusses a worship service I designed and led in November of 2014 at Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS). As a member of the faculty, a practicing Christian and a religious educator and interfaith organizer, I am invited to lead a service each year in the Chapel at ANTS. In particular, as the ANTS’ co-director of the Center for Interreligious and Communal Leadership Education (CIRCLE), a joint program between ANTS and Hebrew College, I was charged with making the service an “interfaith” gathering, open and inviting for Unitarian Universalist, Muslim, and Jewish guests, while still providing an authentic expression of Christian worship. This article offers a first-person narrative and thick description of the service, the planning process, the broader context of interreligious education at our schools, and reflections on both the possibilities and limits of sharing particular religious rituals across diverse religious traditions for educational purposes. Drawing on the work of interreligious educators I identify a set of goals for interreligious education and explore the potential for religious ritual to both contribute to and complicate these goals. I describe the worship service as a ritual event in the life of a Christian seminary as well as its meaning and role in the process of interreligious coformation that is part of CIRCLE’s work.

The Politics of Evangelical Identity

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia Bean
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Evangelical Christianity ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
Evangelical Churches ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
Evangelical Identity ◽  
Moral Attitudes ◽  
The U.S

It is now a common refrain among liberals that Christian Right pastors and television pundits have hijacked evangelical Christianity for partisan gain. This book challenges this notion, arguing that the hijacking metaphor paints a fundamentally distorted picture of how evangelical churches have become politicized. The book reveals how the powerful coalition between evangelicals and the Republican Party is not merely a creation of political elites who have framed conservative issues in religious language, but is anchored in the lives of local congregations. Drawing on research at evangelical churches near the U.S. border with Canada, this book compares how American and Canadian evangelicals talk about politics in congregational settings. While Canadian evangelicals share the same theology and conservative moral attitudes as their American counterparts, their politics are quite different. On the U.S. side of the border, political conservatism is woven into the very fabric of everyday religious practice. The book shows how subtle partisan cues emerge in small group interactions as members define how “we Christians” should relate to others in the broader civic arena, while liberals are cast in the role of adversaries. It explains how the most explicit partisan cues come not from clergy but rather from lay opinion leaders who help their less politically engaged peers to link evangelical identity to conservative politics. This book demonstrates how deep the ties remain between political conservatism and evangelical Christianity in America.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Great Emphasis ◽  
Ministerial Education ◽  
Evangelical Identity

A distinctive Irish experience of ministerial education and the commitment of Presbyterians in Ireland to the Union with Great Britain shaped a conservative response to modern criticism. There were a small number of ‘believing critics’ who sought accommodation with aspects of modern criticism, though they maintained their evangelical identity and there was no sustained opposition to them before 1914. Conservatism was also a product of transatlantic evangelicalism, and the significance of this tradition contributed to the exoneration of the ‘modernist’ Davey in 1927. All involved in the trial placed great emphasis on personal religious experience, though they understood experience in different ways. It is suggested that by the end of the century the confessional element in Irish Presbyterianism had been subsumed by non-denominational evangelical religion, the religious equivalent of the submergence of a distinctive Presbyterian politics into a general unionism.

Influence on Early Christian Worship

2020 ◽  
pp. 377-391
Author(s):  
Paul F. Bradshaw
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Ritual Practices

This chapter traces the various ways in which the cultic language and imagery of the Hebrew Scriptures influenced and shaped the liturgical thought and ritual practices of early Christianity, from the first to the fourth century ce. At first, this was primarily through the metaphorical or spiritual application of such concepts as priesthood and sacrifice, but eventually there are indications of the beginnings of the adoption of a more literal correspondence between some elements of the Temple cult and aspects of Christian worship. Both corporate and individual practices of prayer are covered, including the use of the canonical psalms, as well as the appropriation of traditional ritual gestures and the emergence of Christian holy days out of biblical festivals.

Ritualizing Iconic Jewish Texts

2020 ◽  
pp. 239-255
Author(s):  
James W. Watts
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Oral Performance ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Bibles and parts of bibles are themselves used as ritual objects in Jewish and Christian worship. Their display and manipulation, oral performance, and semantic interpretation have been ritualized by synagogues and churches since antiquity. The origins of these practices are rooted in the Bible itself. Their influence has shaped every Jewish and Christian tradition and reaches beyond them to Muslims, Manicheans, and other religious communities. This chapter and its companions in this volume on Christianity and Islam focus mostly on how the iconic dimension of scriptures gets ritualized, because the iconic dimension has received less scholarly attention than the ritualization of scripture’s oral performance, artistic illustration, and semantic interpretation.

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