Classifying Christians

Classifying Christians
Author: Todd S. Berzon
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520383176

Classifying Christians investigates late antique Christian heresiologies as ethnographies that catalogued and detailed the origins, rituals, doctrines, and customs of the heretics in explicitly polemical and theological terms. Oscillating between ancient ethnographic evidence and contemporary ethnographic writing, Todd S. Berzon argues that late antique heresiology shares an underlying logic with classical ethnography in the ancient Mediterranean world. By providing an account of heresiological writing from the second to fifth century, Classifying Christians embeds heresiology within the historical development of imperial forms of knowledge that have shaped western culture from antiquity to the present.

Classifying Christians

Classifying Christians
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2013
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation analyzes the paradigms Christian writers (150-500 C.E.) used to array, historicize, and polemicize ethnographic data. A study of late antique heresiological literature (orthodox treatises about heretics) demonstrates how the religious practices, doctrinal beliefs, and historical origins of heretics served to define Christian schematizations of the world. In studying heretics, Christian authors defined and ordered the bounds of Christian knowledge and the process by which that knowledge was transmitted.

The Christians as the Romans Saw Them

The Christians as the Romans Saw Them
Author: Robert Louis Wilken
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780300098396

This book offers an engrossing portrayal of the early years of the Christian movement from the perspective of the Romans.

A Follower of Christ

A Follower of Christ
Author: Robert Ball
Publisher: WestBow Press
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2019-12-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1973681994

Over the last 20 years it has become chic to use the term “follower of Christ.” I have heard pastors stand in the pulpit and ask people to raise their hands if they want to be a follower of Christ. All across the room hands go up. Those hands are then summarily counted as converts to the Christian faith.

Identifying as Christian in an Alien Public Arena

Identifying as Christian in an Alien Public Arena
Author: Maureen Miner
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2021-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1648022901

Although Christianity is the world’s largest religion, there is confusion over what it means to be Christian within contemporary society. For individuals it is difficult to find, form, or receive a Christian identity, let alone maintain one within a secular world. Within organizations such as the church and professions there is often a disconnection between public and private identities and the reality of being Christian in our culture. For society there is the problem of disparate portrayals of Christianity, the marginalized status of Christianity with an associated lack of influence of Christians on our society, and the ongoing shaping of Christian identity by the public arena itself. Associated questions are: should Christians try to engage in, and even shape, the public arena and if so, how? This volume examines the problem of confused and misunderstood Christian identity in a post-Christian age. It suggests ways of shaping Christian identity for the benefit of individuals and for the common good. The importance of well-formed Christian identities is illustrated by research and analysis of selected professions so that the public life of Christians can be more fulfilling and effective. This book will be valuable for all those who are interested in religious identity within a secular society. People of faith and religious organizations will benefit from a penetrating analysis of what it means to be Christian today. Similarly, those whose work involves the church, counseling, education and the performing arts will find specific applications that address concerns about faith in the workplace.