Among pivotal historical moments in the United States, the civil rights movement stands out. In Where the Sacred and Secular Harmonize: Birmingham Mass Meeting Rhetoric and the Prophetic Legacy of ...the Civil Rights Movement, David G. Holmes offers an original rhetorical analysis of six speeches delivered during the 1963 civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama. Holmes frames his analysis within the biblical concept of prophecy. However, he stresses the idea of prophecy as sociopolitical forth-telling, rather than mystical foretelling. Based on his own transcriptions from rare recordings, Holmes examines how these orations, which clergy and laypeople delivered, address enduring themes such as the role of religion and politics, black leadership and black activism, and the political and popular legacies of the civil rights movement. Drawing upon American history, politics, hermeneutics, homiletics, and rhetoric, Holmes's discussion ranges from civil rights prophets to contemporary politicians, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama. Where the Sacred and Secular Harmonize illustrates how the Birmingham mass meeting oratory of 1963 represented a quality of democratic discourse desperately needed today.
Martin Luther (1483–1546) famously began the Reformation, a movement that shook Europe with religious schism and social upheaval. While his Ninety-Five Theses and other theological works have ...received centuries of scrutiny and recognition, his political writings have traditionally been dismissed as inconsistent or incoherent. God and Government focuses on Luther's interpretations of theology and the Bible, the historical context of the Reformation, and a wide range of writings that have been misread or misappropriated. Re-contextualizing and clarifying Luther's political ideas, Jarrett Carty contends that the political writings are best understood through Luther's "two kingdoms" teaching, in which human beings are at once subjects of a spiritual inner kingdom, and another temporal outer kingdom. Focusing on Luther's interpretations of theology and the Bible, the historical context of the Reformation, and a wide range of writings that have been misread or ignored, Carty traces how Luther applied political theories to the most difficult challenges of the Reformation, such as the Peasants' War of 1525 and the Protestant resistance against the Holy Roman Empire, as well as social changes and educational reforms. The book further compares Luther's political thought to that of Protestant and Catholic political reformers of the sixteenth century. Intersecting scholarship from political theory, religious studies, history, and theology, God and Government offers a comprehensive look at Martin Luther's political thought across his career and writings.
In this last collection of his vital, controversial, and accessible writings, Heiko A. Oberman seeks to liberate and broaden our understanding of the European Reformation, from its origins in ...medieval philosophy and theology through the Puritan settlers who brought Calvin's vision to the New World. Ranging over many topics, Oberman finds fascinating connections between aspects of the Reformation and twentieth-century history and thought-most notably the connection to Nazism and the Holocaust. He revisits his earlier work on the history of anti-Semitism, rejects the notion of an unbroken line from Luther to Hitler to the Holocaust, and offers a new perspective on the Christian legacy of anti-Semitism and its murderous result in the twentieth century.Oberman demonstrates how the simplifications and rigidities of modern historiography have obscured the existential spirits of such great figures as Luther and Calvin. He explores the debt of both Luther and Calvin to medieval religious thought and the impact of diverse features of "the long fifteenth century"-including the Black Death, nominalism, humanism, and the Conciliar Movement-on the Reformation.
Martin Luther and John Wesley stand as towering reformers and transformers whose influence still defines ecclesiastical theology in the twenty-first century. Luther and Wesley survived 200 years ...apart in two different countries, and circumstances, and yet their responses to the challenges of their milieus present the lived legacies of Lutheranism and Methodism respectively. Factors contributing to the shaping of their backgrounds and theology force one to argue that: “without Luther’s theology, the development of Methodism was a chance”. The purpose of this paper was to reread the convergencies in the backgrounds and theology of Luther and Wesley and analyse how their life settings and writings influenced the twenty-first-century church. The paper reminds the twenty-first-century church that much as Luther and Wesley’s biographies were influenced by the role of their parents, their conversion through nature, the impact of university life, unplanned marriages, and the fight against orthodoxy. Unfortunately, similar converging life experiences have not been taken seriously to “saltify” the rotting world as individualism and self-gain characterise the modern church. The paper also argues that Apostle Paul’s theology of justification by faith, sola fide, sola scriptura, and sola gratia is central to both Luther and Wesley, and they are the anchors of the twenty-first-century church. This paper does not aim to bring superiority and inferiority intricacies between Luther and Wesley but to use Luther as the role model of Wesley with the two being the beacons of the twenty-first-century ecclesia and ecclesiology.
This article examines what can be learned from teaching Luther to American college students. It reviews several ways in which college students benefit from studying Luther. The article suggests that ...identifying the “operating principles” in Luther's thought can help students more carefully discern the contemporary significance of his thought. After discussing some challenges encountered when teaching Luther to college students, the article ends with reflections on the theological significance of the college context. While Luther's discovery of a gracious God remains central, the college setting promotes a retrieval of several broader themes in Luther's thinking that have often been neglected by Lutherans: ongoing creation, wisdom, the Bible as “torah,” the suffering of God, and societal reform.
The Psalms forced Martin Luther to change how he read the Bible.In Psalms of the Faithful Brian German shows us Luther's reappraisal of the plain sense of Scripture. By following the canonical ...shaping of the Psalter, Luther refined his interpretive principles into a more finely grained hermeneutic. Luther inspires us to read the Psalms empathetically with ancient Israelites and early church fathers. He stirs us up to join the "faithful synagogue" in praying to and praising the Lord our God.According to many scholars, Luther established his approach to biblical exegesis on the claim that Jesus Christ is Scripture's content and speaker. While Luther used this formulation in prefaces, how did he really read the Bible?German applies pressure not only to how Luther scholars understand Luther's interpretive method, but also to how modern biblical exegetes approach their task-and even to how we read the Bible.
This article traces convergences and differences within the classical philosophical tradition of musica and its later Christianisation, exploring Martin Luther's engagement with such metaphysical ...accounts of music's significance. Recent scholarship on Luther's agreement with a reformulated Boethian account of music is critiqued, distancing Luther from the main currents of this tradition. The article goes on to explore the way Luther subverts Platonic emphases in his theological understanding of music, drawing on a longer tradition of criticism for musical cosmologies. The article concludes with an extended reading of Luther's most substantial hymnal preface, to articulate his alternative, dynamic account of music in creation, which grounds musical realities in the gifted contingencies of human musicianship.
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