Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: P524
ISBN: 9780881465631
Price: $24.00
THE MOST SACRED FREEDOM includes eight essays that were first presented at the 2014 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, the seventh annual conference sponsored by Mercer University’s Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for America’s Founding Principles. Together, these essays explore the great principle of religious liberty by charting its development in the Western tradition and reconsidering its place at America’s founding.
The major themes addressed include the theological and epistemological preconditions of religious liberty, the chief challenges to securing this liberty, the problematic but necessary role of religion in a free society, and the constitutional framework that has been handed down to us to help preserve this most sacred freedom.
Contributors to the volume are Steven Grosby, Jeremiah H. Russell, Maura Jane Farrelly, Daniel Cullen, John Witte, Jr., Scott Yenor, David Ramsey, and Michael Novak.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: P532
ISBN: 9780881465761
Price: $20.00
In a world composed of almost seven billion people, about 2.2 billion of them claim to be Christian. And while Christianity is continuing to grow at a modest rate, other religions are growing at a faster pace. Some scholars predict that Islam will overtake Christianity as the world’s largest religion by the middle of the twenty-first century. Predictions aside, religions are competing for the world stage, and in the competition, Christians seem certain that God is on their side. Christians often think and behave as though God is a Christian.
This book is written to ask if that assumption is true and to foster a more open conversation about other world religions. The world has grown too small and the stakes for mankind have grown too high for any of us to engage our faith as if our understanding of God represents the only way God’s presence may be known in the world.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H919
ISBN: 9780881465853
Price: $20.00
The expansion of human knowledge that springs from the inquiries of science can become a profound resource for our faith traditions. We need not choose between faith and reason as the rejection of reason often leads to a failure of faith. The high calling of the scientific community is to bring the realities of our universe into sharper focus. Our faith traditions enable us to discern meaning and understanding in our lives that cannot be realized by examining facts alone. Both the knowledge we are gaining from science along with the deep insights that we gain from our faith stories provide light and encouragement for navigating our human journeys.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: P536
ISBN: 9780881465921
Price: $30.00
Amidst a proliferation of scholarly literature about Islam in the United States, very little attention has been given to sports among Muslim Americans. While books about professional Muslim athletes can be found, this is the first book to investigate Muslim American sports at the local level, looking at Muslim basketball leagues, sports programs at mosques and Islamic schools, and sports events hosted by Muslim organizations.
Drawing upon personal interviews and observations as well as scholarly sources, this book demonstrates that participation in sports activities plays a vital role in strengthening Islamic piety and fellowship, and in connecting Muslims with non-Muslims in post-9/11 America.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H922
ISBN: 9780881465884
Price: $60.00
Baptists in Early North America—Newport, Rhode Island, Seventh Day Baptists , Volume III covers the period 1664 to 1808, from the date some members of Newport’s first Baptist church began meeting for worship on the seventh-day Sabbath (Saturday) through the first 137 years of their life as the Newport Seventh Day Baptist Church.
Transcriptions of the church’s first three record books (1692–1808) are preceded by extensive excerpts from the manuscripts and letters of Samuel Hubbard, one of the founding members; these document the origins in John Clarke’s Newport Baptist church and the influences from Sabbathkeeping Baptists in mid-seventeenth century England.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H925
ISBN: 9780881465914
Price: $35.00
The First Presbyterian Church of Raleigh, North Carolina has an important presence as a leading community of faith in North Carolina’s capital city. This book examines the history of the church from its birth in 1816 to present. It is comprehensive and contextualized within the broader national, state, city, and denominational history over the last 200 years.
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Product Code: H930
ISBN: 9780881466072
Price: $29.00
Jesse Bushyhead was a detachment leader during the forced Indian removal on what has become known as the Trail of Tears. In this capacity, he was responsible for the safe conduct of more than 900 emigrants from Tennessee to Indian Territory in eastern Oklahoma. After the journey, Bushyhead was a principal participant in the formation of the new Cherokee government, providing stability in the turbulent and often internecine struggle between factions. And although without legal training, he served the new government as a chief justice of the Cherokee Supreme Court. Yet during these challenges, Bushyhead, also a Baptist minister, assisted missionary Evan Jones in establishing a vibrant Baptist presence among Cherokees.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H933
ISBN: 9780881466102
Price: $45.00
Hanserd Knollys was one of the most influential Baptists of the seventeenth century. University educated, he provided guidance for Baptists on many key issues that formed their identity. In debate with other religious leaders he defended conscious commitment to Christ by each individual, the congregational character of the church, and the necessity of religious liberty. In addition to these three foundational beliefs, Knollys provided guidance for early Baptists on debated issues of practice. He endorsed the value of learning from the writings of inspired women, he endorsed congregational singing, and he supported raising funds for the support of ministers. In all of these matters he provided precedents and strong arguments for Baptist practice. Knollys served as pastor of a local London congregation, extended Baptist influence through preaching tours and provided a high standard of education in the schools he organized and led.
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Publisher: with BH&H
Product Code: H937
ISBN: 9780881466133
Price: $35.00
Established amid adversity in 1817, the First Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia, ranks among the most important congregations in Southern history for having birthed the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. A JOURNEY OF FAITH AND COMMUNITY offers new insight into the surprising role First Baptist Church of Augusta played in the formation of the South’s now-largest denomination. Yet in a manner unusual for Baptist churches of the Deep South and in part reflective of the ethos of Augusta, the First Baptist congregation maintained significant relationships with Northern (American) Baptists into the twentieth century. Exemplifying the progressively conservative nature and rapid growth of early to mid-twentieth century urban Southern Baptist life, the church in the decades following dissented from a theologically-calcifying SBC by ordaining women to ministry, welcoming holistic ministry and missions, and transitioning into primarily a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship congregation.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H943
ISBN: 9780881466324
Price: $35.00
Using a corpus of family letters, his FBI file, and a series of interviews, Frederick L. Downing portrays Clarence Jordan as a pioneer (on the frontier of the New South), a prophet, and a moral exemplar. As a New Testament Greek scholar and founder of Koinonia Farm, there were two distinctive poles to the prophetic nature of Jordan’s life and work: one which sought to critique and dismantle the status quo, and the other which attempted to evoke a new way of being.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: P552
ISBN: 9780881466331
Price: $40.00
GOD, NIMROD, AND THE WORLD presents the perspectives of more than two-dozen authors on the controversial sport of hunting, surveying the relationship between the blood sport and the salvation religion of Christianity. The first half of the book provides sketches of the diverse interpretations of hunting in Hebrew and Christian cultures of the last two millennia, finally giving voice to those in the field who are both practitioners and persons of faith. The second half offers prescriptions for the place of hunting in the life of contemporary Christians, with perspectives arguing for prohibition to those contending that hunting has a practical, even perfecting, place in the life of faith.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H944
ISBN: 9780881466348
Price: $35.00
PROPHETIC INTERRUPTIONS initially draws numerous, yet previously unknown, connections between Paul Tillich, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer during their shared years in Frankfurt and New York, focusing particularly on the years 1929–1944. While Critical Theory was being formulated, Tillich, the teacher and colleague of Adorno and Horkheimer, respectively, was working on his own religious social(ist) theory. Moving beyond this historical background, Wagoner shows how these personal connections evolved and were mutually engaging. Instead of pursuing discernible mutual influence among Tillich, Adorno, and Horkheimer, the book instead demonstrates that their ideas were forged in the crucible of friendship and common purpose, toward the common end of emancipation.
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