Edited by Ludger K'orntgen and Dominik Wassenhoven.

Patterns of Parish Leadership is a call to leadership on the part of all those who care for the future of ministry and missions.

This authoritative collection brings together the latest thinking on women's leadership in early Christianity. Patterns of Women's Leadership in Early Christianity considers the evidence for ways in which women exercised leadership in churches from the 1st to the 9th centuries CE. This rich and diverse volume breaks new ground in the study of women in early Christianity. This is not about working with one method, based on one type of feminist theory, but overall there is nevertheless a feminist or egalitarian agenda in considering the full equality of women with men in religious spheres a positive goal, with the assumption that this full equality has yet to be attained. The chapters revisit both older studies and offers new and unpublished research, exploring the many ways in which ancient Christian women's leadership could function.

The 1994 report of the Archbishops' Group on the Episcopate looking at the nature of the episcopate, the role of the suffragan and the theological issues underlying the ordination of women as bishops.

This volume closely examines patterns of rhetoric in surviving correspondence by the Roman emperor Constantine on conflicts among Christians that occurred during his reign, primarily the ‘Donatist schism’ and ‘Arian controversy’. Commonly remembered as the ‘first Christian emperor’ of the Roman Empire, Constantine’s rule sealed a momentous alliance between church and state for more than a millennium. His well-known involvement with Christianity led him to engage with two major disputes that divided his Christian subjects: the ‘Donatist schism’ centred from the emperor's perspective on determining the rightful bishop of Carthage, and the so-called ‘Arian controversy’, a theological conflict about the proper understanding of the Son's divine nature in relation to that of the Father. This book examines a number of letters associated with Constantine that directly address both of these disagreements, exploring his point of view and motivations to better understand how and why this emperor applied his power to internal church divisions. Based on close analysis of prominent themes and their functions in the rhetoric of his correspondence, Pottenger argues that three ‘doctrines of power’ served to inform and direct Constantine’s use of power as he engaged with these problems of schism and heresy. Power and Rhetoric in the Ecclesiastical Correspondence of Constantine the Great is of interest to students and scholars of early Christianity and the history of the later Roman Empire.

Although an ascetic ideal of leadership had both classical and biblical roots, it found particularly fertile soil in the monastic fervor of the fourth through sixth centuries. Church officials were increasingly recruited from monastic communities, and the monk-bishop became the dominant model of ecclesiastical leadership in the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium. In an interesting paradox, Andrea Sterk explains that "from the world-rejecting monasteries and desert hermitages of the east came many of the most powerful leaders in the church and civil society as a whole." Sterk explores the social, political, intellectual, and theological grounding for this development. Focusing on four foundational figures--Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom--she traces the emergence of a new ideal of ecclesiastical leadership: the merging of ascetic and episcopal authority embodied in the monk-bishop. She also studies church histories, legislation, and popular ascetic and hagiographical literature to show how the ideal spread and why it eventually triumphed. The image of a monastic bishop became the convention in the Christian east. Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church brings new understanding of asceticism, leadership, and the church in late antiquity. Table of Contents: Introduction I. Basil of Caesarea and the Emergence of an Ideal 1. Monks and Bishops in the Christian East from 325 to 375 2. Asceticism and Leadership in the Thought of Basil of Caesarea 3. Reframing and Reforming the Episcopate: Basil's Direct Influence II The Development of an Ideal 4. Gregory of Nyssa: On Basil, Moses, and Episcopal Office 5. Gregory of Nazianzus: Ascetic Life and Episcopal Office in Tension 6. John Chrysostom: The Model Monk-Bishop in Spite of Himself III The Triumph of an Ideal 7. From Nuisances to Episcopal Ideals: Civil and Ecclesiastical Legislation 8. Normalizing the Model: The Fifth-Century Church Histories 9. The Broadening Appeal: Monastic and Hagiographical Literature Epilogue: The Legacy of the Monk-Bishop in the Byzantine World Abbreviations Notes Frequently Cited Works Index

An excellent primer on the spectrum of ways in which Christians organize their institutional life, Long's study of polity—that is, methods of religious organization—intends to enlighten the reader about the ways in which belief shapes personal and communal function. "Patterns of Polity" is a comparative examination of church governance by bishops, governance by elders, and governance by congregations across contemporary branches of Christianity. "Patterns of Polity" does not defend the validity of any particular polity, but instead raises questions that are essential to all polities and to all communities: How is power created and used? In what ways are polities most likely to function well? In what ways are polities susceptible to corruption and dysfunction? How are conflicts adjudicated and finances handled?

Walter Bauer's 'Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity' created a stir with its argument that the teachings later condemned as heresy, in the later second century onward, were, in fact, dominant in the earliest decades of the church. This full-scale response by H. E. W. Turner has not enjoyed the attention it deserves. Turner's volume represents a learned and sophisticated restatement of the traditional view: what became official orthodoxy was taught early on by the majority of church teachers, albeit not in fully developed form.