Discourse on the 'Judeo-Christian tradition' has been around in the United States since the middle of the 20th century. This volume returns to the original coinage of the signifier 'Judeo-Christian' by F.C. Baur in 1831. From this European perspective and context, the volume engages the religious, philosophical and political dimensions of the term's development. Scholars of European intellectual history will find this volume timely and relevant.

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“Judeo-Christian” is a remarkably easy term to look right through. Judaism and Christianity obviously share tenets, texts, and beliefs that have strongly influenced American democracy. In this ambitious book, however, K. Healan Gaston challenges the myth of a monolithic Judeo-Christian America. She demonstrates that the idea is not only a recent and deliberate construct, but also a potentially dangerous one. From the time of its widespread adoption in the 1930s, the ostensible inclusiveness of Judeo-Christian terminology concealed efforts to promote particular conceptions of religion, secularism, and politics. Gaston also shows that this new language, originally rooted in arguments over the nature of democracy that intensified in the early Cold War years, later became a marker in the culture wars that continue today. She argues that the debate on what constituted Judeo-Christian—and American—identity has shaped the country’s religious and political culture much more extensively than previously recognized.

Faith is the greatest resource one can have when facing adversity. Unfortunately, faith is often confused with belief in a specific doctrines whose effect is to separate people. Parson's Porch Books is proud to introduce Charles "Carlos" Gourgey, who has written a beautiful and timely book that asks the questions, "What is faith?" and "How do we find it?" and in Judeochristianity he reminds us that understanding Jesus within the context of Hebrew prophecy can lead us to a more profound meaning of faith, a faith based on love rather tan fear, which can become for us "a very present help in trouble."

Religious faith is under assault. In books and movies and on television, militant secular critics attack religion with a renewed vigor. These “new atheists” repeat a two-part mantra: that religious faith is hopelessly irrational and that those possessed of such faith are responsible for the hatred and bloodshed that has plagued humanity. Abandon religion, they urge us, and the world will at last live in peace. In Defense of Faith examines this proposition in the context of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition and asserts that, far from encouraging hatred and violence, the Judeo-Christian tradition has easily been the most effective curb upon the dark defects of human nature and our best tool in the struggle for humanity. From the Christian activists who fought to stop the genocide of Indians in South America and their ethnic cleansing in North America, to the abolition of African slavery on both sides of the Atlantic, and on to modern human rights activists from Martin Luther King Jr. to the rock star Bono—In Defense of Faith rebuts the fashionable arguments against religion and presents the strong and lasting record of the Judeo-Christian idea. History has not been as kind to the atheist model: every time it is put to the test, we have reverted to the most base, violent instincts of our selfish genes.

The term ‘Judeo-Christian’ in reference to a tradition, heritage, ethic, civilization, faith etc. has been used in a wide variety of contexts with widely diverging meanings. Contrary to popular belief, the term was not coined in the United States in the middle of the 20th century but in 1831 in Germany by Ferdinand Christian Baur. By acknowledging and returning to this European perspective and context, the volume engages the historical, theological, philosophical and political dimensions of the term’s development. Scholars of European intellectual history will find this volume timely and relevant.

Shedding new light on a controversial and intriguing issue, this book will reshape the debate on how the Judeo-Christian tradition views the morality of personal and national self-defense. Are self-defense, national warfare, and revolts against tyranny holy duties—or violations of God's will? Pacifists insist these actions are the latter, forbidden by Judeo-Christian morality. This book maintains that the pacifists are wrong. To make his case, the author analyzes the full sweep of Judeo-Christian history from earliest times to the present, combining history, scriptural analysis, and philosophy to describe the changes and continuity of Jewish and Christian doctrine about the use of lethal force. He reveals the shifting patterns of thought in both religions and presents the strongest arguments on both sides of the issue. The book begins with the ancient Hebrews and Genesis and covers Jewish history through the Holocaust and beyond. The analysis then shifts to the story of Christianity from its origins, through the Middle Ages and the Reformation, up the present day. Based on this scrutiny, the author concludes that—contrary to popular belief—the legitimacy of self-defense is strongly supported by Judeo-Christian scripture and commentary, by philosophical analysis, and by the respect for human dignity and human rights on which both Judaism and Christianity are based.

What, if anything remains of religion after the demise of traditional theism and the theologies based upon it? What are the consequences of so-called Post-theism for the modern scholarly study of religion (in Religionswissenschaft and philosophical theology or church dogmatics, in the philosophy of religion as well as in the more recent phenomenon of comparitive religious studies)? This volume collects some thirty articles written in honor of Professor Hendrik Johan Adriaanse whose intellectual trajectory, recounted here in extensive personal reflections, has lead to an incisive inquiry into the possibilities of thinking and experiencing "After Theism" (the title of a fundamental article reprinted here). Post-theism : Refraiming the Judeo-Christian Tradition raises this question from three different perspectives : first, by spelling out the historical and intellectual backgrounds that have led to the supposed end of theism as it had been known through the ages; secondly, by discussing the systematic relationship between the disciplines of theology and competing concepts of rationality; and, thirdly, by sketching out the contours of a philosophical thought that ventures beyond the most tenacious classical and modern presuppositions of theism. Along the way, the contributors explore a variety of ways in which the concepts and arguments, imagery and rhetoric of the Judeo-Christian traditions are in need and in the process of being constantly displaced. Henri Krop, Arie L. Molendijk and Hent de Vries teach Philosophy, the history of Christianity, and Metaphysics, respectively, at the Erasmus University, The University of Groningen, and the University of Amsterdam.

Provides a dozen studies of language, discourse, debate, and reasoning with a focus on theological and philosophical issues central to the three traditions that commonly call Abraham their human and/or spiritual father. Collectively these essays represent a dialogue among those who work at crossroads of theology, philosophy, history, language, and religion.

This volume asks to which extent ancient practices and traditions of human sacrifice are reflected in medieval and modern Judeo-Christian times. The first part of the volume, on antiquity, focuses on rituals of human sacrifice and polemics against it, as well as on transformations of human sacrifice in the Israelite-Jewish and Christian cultures, while the Ancient Near East and ancient Greece are not excluded. The second part of the volume, on medieval and modern times, discusses human sacrifice in Jewish and Christian traditions as well as the debates about euthanasia and death penalty in the Western world.