Sin. Many Christians today have lost the ability to talk about it in personal terms. For the last quarter century the theological establishment, like society, has consigned the human predicament to structures of political and economic oppression or to systemic evil such as race and gender discrimination. In the process, people have lost interest in the internal workings of the human soul, attributing the evils of our world to social forces beyond the scope of personal responsibility.

This study, first published in 1989, examines the social relationships and moral standards within the diocese of Chester throughout the seventeenth century. Using Church Court records as his main body of evidence, John Addy examines over 10 000 cases of moral offences, including fornication, brawling in church, drunkenness, adultery and concubinage, to form a picture of the moral conduct of the Stuart laity and clergy. One of the main methods by which the Church attempted to enforce strict moral standards, the records arising from the ecclesiastical courts reveal that those codes of conduct once applied to a medieval Catholic society were increasingly being shunned by a society with expanding capitalist attitudes. An important contribution to the historiography of early modern English society, this title will be of great value to undergraduate and postgraduate students with an interest in seventeenth-century attitudes towards morality and conduct.

Penetrating behind the seal of medieval confession is among the most formidable historiographical challenges. One route is through confessors' manuals. This is the first full-scale scholarly study of a fourteenth-century confessor's English example. It contributes significantly to the European-wide research on pre-Reformation confessional practice and clerical training. On another level, the Memoriale Presbiterorum's peculiarly intense concern with social morality affords pungent commentary on contemporary English society. Michael Haren analyses a remarkable treatise both as a vehicle of social doctrine and as a mirror of the milieu to which it is directed. While presenting it against its general intellectual background, continental and English, he also argues for its setting within a vigorous and largely neglected episcopal regime, that of Bishop Grandisson of Exeter. His wide-ranging exposition will interest students of moralizing literature - including Chaucer and Piers Plowman - as well as historians.

Ferriter covers such subjects as abortion, pregnancy, celibacy, contraception, censorship, infanticide, homosexuality, prostitution, marriage, popular culture, social life and the various hidden Irelands associated with sexual abuse - all in the context of a conservative official morality backed by the Catholic Church and by legislation. The book energetically and originally engages with subjects omitted from the mainstream historical narrative. The breadth of this book and the richness of the source material uncovered make it definitive in its field and a most remarkable work of social history.

My husband hates me. But he’s also the only man who can save me. Taken by a stranger, Santiago is my only hope. Except that I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. And for as cruel as he can be, the thought he might be gone is unbearable. But he has nine lives, my monster. He’s not finished with me yet. And soon I’m back at The Manor. Locked in my room. At his mercy. I know I am despised. I know I have become the face of his vengeance. But there’s something else too. Something between us. It’s a dark and gnarled thing. And it has its claws around my heart.

"Plantinga's treatment of sin is comprehensive, articulate, and well written. It confirms the orthodox and neo-orthodox doctrine of sin, lavishly illustrates it from contemporary events, and plumbs depths in understanding sin's complexities and banalities...

An important examination of the colorful histories of urbanization and social reform in Imperial Germany

During the 1830s the United States experienced a wave of movements for social change over temperance, the abolition of slavery, anti-vice activism, and a host of other moral reforms. Michael Young argues for the first time in Bearing Witness against Sin that together they represented a distinctive new style of mobilization—one that prefigured contemporary forms of social protest by underscoring the role of national religious structures and cultural schemas. In this book, Young identifies a new strain of protest that challenged antebellum Americans to take personal responsibility for reforming social problems.In this period activists demanded that social problems like drinking and slaveholding be recognized as national sins unsurpassed in their evil and immorality. This newly awakened consciousness undergirded by a confessional style of protest, seized the American imagination and galvanized thousands of people. Such a phenomenon, Young argues, helps explain the lives of charismatic reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and the Grimké sisters, among others. Marshalling lively historical materials, including letters and life histories of reformers, Bearing Witness against Sin is a revelatory account of how religion lay at the heart of social reform.

An examination of the moral sickness of our time.