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The biblical themes of creation and new creation are inextricably bound to each other. For the God who created the world is the same God who recreates humanity in Jesus Christ and the same God who promises a new heaven and a new earth. How might the relationship between creation and new creation be informed by and reflected in the arts? This volume, based on the DITA10 conference at Duke Divinity School, brings together reflections from theologians, biblical scholars, and artists to offer insigh...

This volume brings together new approaches to music history to reveal the interdependence of music and religion in nineteenth-century culture. As composers and performers drew inspiration from the Bible and new historical sciences called into question the historicity of Scripture, controversies raged over the performance, publication and censorship of old and new musical forms. From oratorio to opera, from parlour song to pantomime, and from hymn to broadside, nineteenth-century Britons continua...

This book sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible the religious belief of the writer. That belief is not orthodox Christianity; it is not, indeed, Christianity at all; its core nevertheless is a profound belief in a personal and intimate God. There is nothing in its statements that need shock or offend anyone who is prepared for the expression of a faith different from and perhaps in several particulars opposed to his own. The writer will be found to be sympathetic with all sincere religiou...

The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky is the authoritative reference on the people, places, history, and rich heritage of the Northern Kentucky region. The encyclopedia defines an overlooked region of more than 450,000 residents and celebrates its contributions to agriculture, art, architecture, commerce, education, entertainment, literature, medicine, military, science, and sports. Often referred to as one of the points of the "Golden Triangle" because of its proximity to Lexington and Louisvil...

The enduring search for female salvation in American literature is first expressed through typology, an interpretive framework that pairs type with antitype, historical scriptural promise with future spiritual fulfillment. When Cotton Mather invokes the typos of Esther in Ornaments of the Daughters of Zion, a Puritan conduct book, he offers a female type of divine wisdom, authority and force. In the biblical Book of Esther, Esther acts as a female type of wisdom and redemption, but her story a...

Saints are currently undergoing a resurrection in middle grade and young adult fiction, as recent prominent novels by Socorro Acioli, Julie Berry, Adam Gidwitz, Rachel Hartman, Merrie Haskell, Gene Luen Yang, and others demonstrate. Cyborg Saints: Religion and Posthumanism in Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction makes the radical claim that these holy medieval figures are actually the new cyborgs in that they dethrone the autonomous subject of humanist modernity. While young people navigate poli...

This book examines the constructions and representations of male and female Sikhs in Indian and diasporic literature and culture through the consideration of the role of violence as constitutive of Sikh identity. How do Sikh men and women construct empowering identities within the Indian nation-state and in the diaspora? The book explores Indian literature and culture to understand the role of violence and the feminization of baptized and turbaned Sikh men, as well as identity formation of Sikh...

First published in 1909, this book presents an English translation of chapters 25-42 of the Bhishma Parva from the epic Sanskrit poem Mahabharata — better known as the Bhagavad-Gita, reckoned as one of the "Five Jewels" of Devanagari literature. The plot consists of a dialogue between Prince Arjuna and Krishna, the Supreme Deity, in a war-chariot prior to a great battle. The conversation that takes place unfolds a philosophical system which remains the prevailing Brahmanic belief, blending the d...

An analysis of Johnson's relationship with the ethics and theology of the eighteenth century, examining the background to his views on a wide range of issues debated by the philosophers and divines of his age. The author emphasizes the ambivalence and contradiction inherent in the orthodoxy which Johnson espoused and challenges the assumption that Johnson's religious beliefs were unstable and filled with anxiety. He gained strength from the belief that he upheld an eminent tradition in Christian...

Despite the persistence and popularity of addressing the theme of eating in Paradise Lost, the tradition of Adam and Eve's sin as one of gluttony-and the evidence for Milton's adaptation of this tradition-has been either unnoticed or suppressed. Emily Stelzer provides the first book-length work on the philosophical significance of gluttony in this poem, arguing that a complex understanding of gluttony and of ideal, grateful, and gracious eating informs the content of Milton's writing. Working wi...

John Wesley (1703–1791), leader of British Methodism, was one of the most prolific literary figures of the eighteenth century, responsible for creating and disseminating a massive corpus of religious literature and for instigating a sophisticated programme of reading, writing and publishing within his Methodist Societies. John Wesley, Practical Divinity and the Defence of Literature takes the influential genre of practical divinity as a framework for understanding Wesley’s role as an author, edi...

This international and interdisciplinary volume investigates Protestant devotional identities in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Divided into two sections, the book examines the 'sites' where these identities were forged - the academy, printing house, household, theatre and prison - and the 'types' of texts that expressed them - spiritual autobiographies, religious poetry and writings tied to the ars moriendi - providing a broad analysis of social, material and literary forms of devo...

This book explores representations of Obeah - a name used in the English/Creole-speaking Caribbean to describe various African-derived, syncretic Caribbean religious practices - across a range of prose fictions published in the twentieth century by West Indian authors. In the Caribbean and its diasporas, Obeah often manifests in the casting of spells, the administration of baths and potions of various oils, herbs, roots and powders, and sometimes spirit possession, for the purposes of protect...

The great Victorian Christian author George MacDonald is the well-spring of the modern fantasy genre. In this book Colin Manlove offers explorations of MacDonald's eight shorter fairy tales and his longer stories At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, The Wise Woman, and The Princess and Curdie. MacDonald saw the imagination as the source of fairy tales and of divine truth together. For he believed that God lives in the depths of the human mind and "sends up from thence wo...

The soul, which dominated many intellectual debates at the beginning of the twentieth century, has virtually disappeared from the sciences and the humanities. Yet it is everywhere in popular culture—from holistic therapies and new spiritual practices to literature and film to ecological and political ideologies. Ignored by scholars, it is hiding in plain sight in a plethora of religious, psychological, environmental, and scientific movements. This book uncovers the history of the concept of the...

First published in 1998, this book presents an overview of some recent debates on the history of religion in England from the accession of James I to the outbreak of the Civil War. Darren Oldridge rejects the polarisation of discussion on the meaning and impact of Laudianism’s innovations and the effects of the zealous Puritans. Instead, the author draws them together to emphasise how each directly influenced the other within a wider heightening of religious tension. Two of its central themes ar...