Freedom is crucial to genuine Christianity. How the erosion of Christian freedom began in the early centuries, how it can and does occur today, and the means for resisting the invasion of personal conscience and thought; a sequel to Crisis of Conscience. Discusses teachings of organizational loyalty, door-to-door activity, disfellowshiping, blood, and many others.

Religious freedom is so often presented as a timeless American ideal and an inalienable right, appearing fully formed at the founding of the United States. That is simply not so, Tisa Wenger contends in this sweeping and brilliantly argued book. Instead, American ideas about religious freedom were continually reinvented through a vibrant national discourse--Wenger calls it "religious freedom talk--that cannot possibly be separated from the evolving politics of race and empire. More often than not, Wenger demonstrates, religious freedom talk worked to privilege the dominant white Christian population. At the same time, a diverse array of minority groups at home and colonized people abroad invoked and reinterpreted this ideal to defend themselves and their ways of life. In so doing they posed sharp challenges to the racial and religious exclusions of American life. People of almost every religious stripe have argued, debated, negotiated, and brought into being an ideal called American religious freedom, subtly transforming their own identities and traditions in the process. In a post-9/11 world, Wenger reflects, public attention to religious freedom and its implications is as consequential as it has ever been.

From one of the leading historians of Christianity comes this sweeping reassessment of religious freedom, from the church fathers to John Locke In the ancient world Christian apologists wrote in defense of their right to practice their faith in the cities of the Roman Empire. They argued that religious faith is an inward disposition of the mind and heart and cannot be coerced by external force, laying a foundation on which later generations would build. Chronicling the history of the struggle for religious freedom from the early Christian movement through the seventeenth century, Robert Louis Wilken shows that the origins of religious freedom and liberty of conscience are religious, not political, in origin. They took form before the Enlightenment through the labors of men and women of faith who believed there could be no justice in society without liberty in the things of God. This provocative book, drawing on writings from the early Church as well as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reminds us of how "the meditations of the past were fitted to affairs of a later day."

In Volume 1 of Christianity and Freedom, leading historians uncover the unappreciated role of Christianity in the development of basic human rights and freedoms from antiquity through today. These include radical notions of dignity and equality, religious freedom, liberty of conscience, limited government, consent of the governed, economic liberty, autonomous civil society, and church-state separation, as well as more recent advances in democracy, human rights, and human development. Acknowledging that the record is mixed, scholars document how the seeds of freedom in Christianity antedate and ultimately undermine later Christian justifications and practices of persecution. Drawing from history, political science, and sociology, this volume will become a standard reference work for historians, political scientists, theologians, students, journalists, business leaders, opinion shapers, and policymakers.

M. James Penton offers a comprehensive overview of a remarkable religious movement, from the Witnesses' inauspicious creation by a Pennsylvania preacher in the 1870s to its position as a religious sect with millions of followers world-wide. This second edition features an afterword by the author and an expanded bibliography.

This is the story of Martin Stephan, a religious leader whose life was filled with both personal and spiritual crises. He was orphaned as a teenager, and was forced to flee his homeland when the family was discovered to be underground Lutherans. He eventually settled in Germany, where he was educated and ordained, and developed a successful ministry in Dresden--From publisher description.

In Divine Truth or Human Tradition? the author examines the viewpoints and Scripture expositions of prominent evangelical scholars and apologists; including popular author and debater Dr. James R. White (author of The Forgotten Trinity), John MacArthur (President of The Master's Seminary), Wayne Grudem (author of the widely-read Systematic Theology), Robert Bowman Jr. (author of Why You Should Believe in the Trinity), Robert Morey (Founder of California Biblical University and Seminary and author of The Trinity, Evidence and Issues), R. C. Sproul (President of Ligonier Ministries), Robert L. Reymond (author of Jesus, Divine Messiah and A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith), and others. According to what has long been considered mainstream Christian "orthodoxy," the doctrine of the Trinity (the idea that the one true God is-in the ultimate sense-a divine being made up of three co-equal and co-eternal persons) is not only central to the Christian faith, but absolutely necessary for one to accept in order to be counted as a true Christian and be saved. Such a demand on a Christian's faith has come across as strange and perplexing to many, especially so in light of the fact pointed out by one respected Trinitarian: "[The Trinity] is not clearly or explicitly taught anywhere in Scripture, yet it is widely regarded as a central doctrine, indispensable to the Christian faith. In this regard, it goes contrary to what is virtually an axiom [that is, a given, a self-evident truth] of biblical doctrine, namely, that there is a direct correlation between the scriptural clarity of a doctrine and its cruciality to the faith and life of the church." (Millard J. Erickson, God in ThreePersons, p. 11. Emphasis added) Understandably, this fact has raised questions in the minds of Christians and truth-seekers alike ever since the doctrine was first decreed as mandatory to confess in the late 4th century. Many Christians have wondered: How can a doctrine that is no

Each year, the Jehovah's Witnesses spend about 2 billion hours evangelizing their communities around the world in 357 languages. Many think that they know the Jehovah's Witnesses, but the sources are usually twofold: (1) They are misinformed Bible scholars who have read books and websites by disgruntled ex-Jehovah's Witnesses. (2) They have read books or comments by disgruntled ex-Jehovah's Witnesses. Herein you will learn a lot that you may have not known and learn some things about how to better evangelize them, or if you are even up to evangelize them. Moreover, we will use some arguments often raised about Jehovah's Witnesses as our text case from such persons as J. Warner Wallace is a leading Evangelical Christian apologist today. Here is what you will need to know in order to effectively share your faith with JWs when they come knocking.