Quaker Theology #33 Winter - 2019 20th Anniversary Issue
by Chuck Fager Editor
Political and Legal Status of Apostles in Islam
by Maryam Namazie, Nuala Mahmoud, and Atoosa Khatiri
In early modern England, the practice of ritual or ceremonial magic - the attempted communication with angels and demons - both reinforced and subverted existing concepts of gender. The majority of male magicians acted from a position of control and command commensurate with their social position in a patriarchal society; other men, however, used the notion of magic to subvert gender ideals while still aiming to attain hegemony. Whilst women who claimed to perform magic were usually more submiss...
Valentinus was a popular, influential, and controversial early Christian teacher. His school flourished in the second and third centuries C.E. Yet because his followers ascribed the creation of the visible world not to a supreme God but to an inferior and ignorant Creator-God, they were from early on accused of heresy, and rumors were spread of their immorality and sorcery. Beyond Gnosticism suggests that scholars approach Valentinians as an early Christian group rather than as a representative...
Massacre At Montsegur: A History Of The Albigensian Crusade
by Zoe Oldenbourg
A best-selling history of the Third Crusade, when the Catholic Church waged war against heretics in its own ranksIn 1208 Pope Innocent III called for a Crusade against a country of fellow-Christians. The new enemy was Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, one of the greatest princes in Western Christendom, premier baron of all the territories in southern France where the langue d'oc was spoken. So began the Albigensian Crusade (named after the French town of Albi), which was to culminate in 1244 with t...
Path to Orion * Yes We Can! Yes We Can
by Emily Elizabeth Windsor-Cragg
Within contemporary Western European academic, media, and socio-political spheres, Muslims are predominantly seen through the lens of increased religiosity. This religiosity is often seen as problematic, especially in the context of securitised discourses of Islamist terrorism. Yet, there are clear indications that a growing number of people who grew up in Muslim families no longer subscribe to Islam or call themselves religious at all. Drawing on fieldwork in the UK and the Netherlands, this...
From Jesus Christ to Salman Rushdie, from Moses to Freud, blasphemy has been a force in producing many forms of Western cultural identity. Blasphemy continues to influence our relations with other cultures, yet it is not so much an idea as a shifting rhetorical figure. It stands for whatever we deplore: we define the truths we uphold in terms of the blasphemies we attack. "Blasphemy is an orthodoxy's way of demonizing difference," writes Lawton. In this provocative book, the author tracks the hi...
The Error of Inerrancy and the Apostasy of Christendom
by John Michael Wine
A scientist and former evangelical argues that holding onto a belief in a literal, historical Adam has forced many Christians to reject science and become intellectually isolated from the modern world. The Bible’s first man stands at the center of a crisis that is shaking much of Christianity. In the evangelical world, scholars have been ostracized and banished from their academic communities for endorsing a modern scientific understanding of the world, even as they remained strong Christian...
When It Was Dark: The Story of a Great Conspiracy (1902) is a best selling novel by English author Guy Thorne about how a plot to destroy Christianity by falsely disproving the Resurrection of Christ leads to moral disorder and chaos in the world until it is exposed. Although commercially successful, it has been criticized as being anti-Semitic.