The Eucharist and Christian Community

1987 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-171
Author(s):  
Cor TRAETS
Keyword(s):  
Christian Community

“Proclaiming Together”? Convergence and Divergence in Mainline and Evangelical Evangelism, 1945-1967

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-76
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Berg
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Relative Priority ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Mainline Denominations ◽  
Convergence And Divergence ◽  
Protestant Christians ◽  
Dividing Line

By now, it is a commonplace of the American religious scene that the majority of the nation's white Protestant Christians are split into “two parties.” The ideological dividing line runs between “mainline” denominations—Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians—and a bevy of conservative denominations and groups, but it also cuts through the mainline itself, which contains a substantial contingent of conservatives.Among the two parties' numerous disagreements, theological and political, few have run deeper and longer than their difference over the meaning and importance of evangelism, the activity of “proclaiming the gospel” to those outside the Christian community. Is the church's prime call in this regard to seek conversions to the Christian faith, or is it to show the love of Christ by working for charitable goals and social justice? A well-known 1973 study of Presbyterian clergy found that the greatest polarization between self-described “conservatives” and “liberals” came over the relative priority of evangelism and social action. Indeed, the fight over these goals was an important (though by no means the only) factor precipitating the “split” early in this century.

Sexual Defilement in Early Christian Texts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Blidstein
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Sexual Ethics ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Family ◽  
Main Target ◽  
Christian Society

Chapter 7 demonstrates that sexual sin became the main target for purity discourse in early Christian texts, and attempts to explain why. Christian imagery of sexual defilement drew from a number of traditions—Greco-Roman sexual ethics, imagery of sexual sin from the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple texts, and both Jewish and pagan purity laws, all seen through the lens of Paul’s imagery of sexuality and sexual sin. Two broad currents characterized Christian sexual ethics in the second century: one upheld marriage and the family as the basis for a holy Christian society and church, while the second rejected all sexuality, including in marriage. Writers of both currents made heavy use of defilement imagery. For the first, sexual sin was a dangerous defilement, contaminating the Christian community and severing it from God. For the second, more radical current, sexuality itself was the defilement; virginity or continence alone were pure.

Inscribed in the Book of Life

2020 ◽  
pp. 1011-1030
Author(s):  
Els Rose
Keyword(s):  
Great Change ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Complex Time ◽  
The Public

The present chapter discusses the ritual of reciting names in the public performance of the Merovingian mass and studies the prayers accompanying this ritual based on sources dating to the late seventh and early eighth centuries. This study focuses on how membership of the Christian community was defined and, more specifically, on the composition of the liturgical assembly that gathered on Sundays and feasts for the public celebration of mass. The effort to create and strengthen the idea of membership in and belonging to the Christian community in this complex time of great change was not marked by the development and consequent use of an entirely new vocabulary, but rather by the reuse of existing terminology, derived from ancient and biblical discourse concerned with citizenship and belonging. The public celebration of the cult is one of the loci in which this vocabulary was filled with new, sometimes radically changed, meanings.

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