Righteous Persecution

Righteous Persecution
Author: Christine Caldwell Ames
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2013-05-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812201094

Righteous Persecution examines the long-controversial involvement of the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, with inquisitions into heresy in medieval Europe. From their origin in the thirteenth century, the Dominicans were devoted to a ministry of preaching, teaching, and pastoral care, to "save souls" particularly tempted by the Christian heresies popular in western Europe. Many persons then, and scholars in our own time, have asked how members of a pastoral order modeled on Christ and the apostles could engage themselves so enthusiastically in the repressive persecution that constituted heresy inquisitions: the arrest, interrogation, torture, punishment, and sometimes execution of those who deviated in belief from Roman Christianity. Drawing on an extraordinarily wide base of ecclesiastical documents, Christine Caldwell Ames recounts how Dominican inquisitors and their supporters crafted and promoted explicitly Christian meanings for their inquisitorial persecution. Inquisitors' conviction that the sin of heresy constituted the graver danger to the Christian soul and to the church at large led to the belief that bringing the individual to repentance—even through the harshest means—was indeed a pious way to carry out their pastoral task. However, the resistance and criticism that inquisition generated in medieval communities also prompted Dominicans to consider further how this new marriage of persecution and holiness was compatible with authoritative Christian texts, exemplars, and traditions. Dominican inquisitors persecuted not despite their faith but rather because of it, as they formed a medieval Christianity that permitted—or demanded—persecution. Righteous Persecution deviates from recent scholarship that has deemphasized religious belief as a motive for inquisition and illuminates a powerful instance of the way Christianity was itself vulnerable in a context of persecution, violence, and intolerance.

The Persecution of the Righteous

The Persecution of the Righteous
Author: Yvonne Chambers
Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2022-05-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 168570333X

This unbelievable action-packed true story of persecution at the hands of witches and demonic forces and powers is full of suspense and thrilling details of how one woman, led by the Holy Spirit, destroyed the powers and operations of an entire coven of witches. This overcomer gives a day-by-day seven-month unfiltered journal account of the demise of the witches and a glimpse into the spiritual realm as she shares her experience, the things she saw and heard. There are numerous visions that describe the presence of demons and angels that cannot be shaken. Details of how witches operate and even what a witch looks like in the spirit body is shared. The manifestation of the glory of Jesus Christ is powerfully seen throughout this ordeal. An end-time prophetic word, a warning of the persecution to come to the body of Christ, is brought by an angel of God and given in great detail. This book gives encouragement, an example for others that may experience witchcraft attacks and instructions on how to persevere and achieve victory through Christ Jesus. Listed are prayers and scripture references to help guide on how to pray and what to pray in order to defeat the works of the enemy.

Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young

Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young
Author: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Publisher: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Total Pages: 470
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 1465103074

The prophet Brigham Young taught the restored gospel of Jesus Christ in a basic, practical way that gave inspiration and hope to the Saints struggling to build a home in the wilderness. Though more than a century has now passed, his words are still fresh and appropriate for us today as we continue the work of building the kingdom of God. President Young declared that as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we possess the “doctrine of life and salvation for all the honest-in-heart” (DBY, 7). He promised that those who receive the gospel in their hearts will have awakened “within them a desire to know and understand the things of God more than they ever did before in their lives” and will begin to “inquire, read and search and when they go to their Father in the name of Jesus he will not leave them without a witness” (DBY, 450). This book reflects the desire of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to deepen the doctrinal understanding of Church members and to awaken within them a greater desire to know the things of God. It will inspire and motivate individuals, priesthood quorums, and Relief Society classes to inquire, read, search, and then go to their Father in Heaven for a witness of the truth of these teachings. Each chapter contains two sections—“Teachings of Brigham Young” and “Suggestions for Study.” The first section consists of extracts from Brigham Young’s sermons to the early Saints. Each statement has been referenced, and the original spelling and punctuation have been preserved; however, the sources cited will not be readily available to most members. These original sources are not necessary to have in order to effectively study or teach from this book. Members need not purchase additional references and commentaries to study or teach these chapters. The text provided in this book, accompanied by the scriptures, is sufficient for instruction. Members should prayerfully read and study President Young’s teachings in order to gain new insights into gospel principles and discover how those principles apply to their everyday lives. By faithfully and prayerfully studying these selections, Latter-day Saints will have a greater understanding of gospel principles and will more fully appreciate the profound and inspired teachings of this great prophet. The second section of each chapter offers a series of questions that will encourage thoughtful contemplation, personal application, and discussion of President Young’s teachings. Members should refer to and carefully reread his words on the principle being discussed. Deep and prayerful study of these teachings will inspire members to greater personal commitment and will help them resolve to follow the teachings of the Savior, Jesus Christ. If individuals and families prayerfully follow the principles in this book, they will be blessed and inspired to greater dedication and spirituality, as were the early Saints who heard these words directly from the lips of the “Lion of the Lord” (HC, 7:434)—the prophet, seer, and revelator, President Brigham Young.

Persecution and Genocide

Persecution and Genocide
Author: Gervase Phillips
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2024-08-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1040101925

This volume offers an unparalleled range of comparative studies considering both persecution and genocide across two thousand years of history from Rome to Nazi Germany, and spanning Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Topics covered include the persecution of religious minorities in the ancient world and late antiquity, the medieval roots of modern antisemitism, the early modern witch-hunts, the emergence of racial ideologies and their relationship to slavery, colonialism, Russian and Soviet mass deportations, the Armenian genocide, and the Holocaust. It also introduces students to significant, but less well known, episodes, such as the Albigensian Crusade and the massacres and forced expulsions suffered by the Circassians at the hands of imperial Russia in the 1860s, as the world entered an 'age of genocide'. By exploring the ideological motivations of the perpetrators, the book invites students to engage with the moral complexities of the past and to reflect upon our own situation today as the 'legatees of two thousand years of persecution'. Gervase Phillips's book is the ideal introduction to the subject for anyone interested in the long and complex history of human persecution.

The Myth of Persecution

The Myth of Persecution
Author: Candida Moss
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0062104543

In The Myth of Persecution, Candida Moss, a leading expert on early Christianity, reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs and how the dangerous legacy of a martyrdom complex is employed today to silence dissent and galvanize a new generation of culture warriors. According to cherished church tradition and popular belief, before the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the fourth century, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. These saints, Christianity's inspirational heroes, are still venerated today. Moss, however, exposes that the "Age of Martyrs" is a fiction—there was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The traditional story of persecution is still taught in Sunday school classes, celebrated in sermons, and employed by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get Christians and, rather, embrace the consolation, moral instruction, and spiritual guidance that these martyrdom stories provide.

Persecution and Morality

Persecution and Morality
Author: Valerie Oved Giovanini
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2021-04-22
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3030646645

This book shows how persecution is a condition that binds each in an ethical obligation to the other. Persecution is functionally defined here as an impinging, affective relation that is not mediated by reason. It focuses on the works and personal lives of Emmanuel Lévinas—a phenomenological ethicist who understood persecution as an ontological condition for human existence—and Sigmund Freud, the inventor of psychoanalysis who proposed that a demanding superego is a persecuting psychological mechanism that enables one to sadistically enjoy moral injunctions. Scholarship on the work of Freud and Lévinas remains critical about their objectivity, but this book uses the phenomenological method to bracket this concern with objective truth and instead reconstruct their historical biographies to evaluate their hyperbolically opposing claims. By doing so, it is suggested that moral actions and relations of persecution in their personal lives illuminate the epistemic limits that they argued contribute to the psychological and ontological necessity of persecuting behaviors. Object relations and intersubjective approaches in psychoanalysis successfully incorporate meaningful elements from both of their theoretical works, which is used to develop an intentionality of search that is sensitive to an unknowable, relational, and existentially vulnerable ethical subjectivity. Details from Freud’s and Lévinas’ works and lives, on the proclivity to use persecution to achieve moral ends, provide significant ethical warnings, and the author uses them as a strategy for developing the reader’s intentionality of search, to reflect on when they may use persecuting means for moral ends. The interdisciplinary nature of this research monograph is intended for academics, scholars, and researchers who are interested in psychoanalysis, moral philosophy, and phenomenology. Comparisons between various psychoanalytic frameworks and Lévinas’ ethic will also interest scholars who work on the relation between psychoanalysis and The Other. Lévinas scholars will value the convergences between his ethics and Freud’s moral skepticism; likewise, readers will be interested in the extension of Lévinas’ intentionality of search. The book is useful for undergraduate or graduate courses on literary criticism and critical theories worldwide.

Lenten Reflections

Lenten Reflections
Author: Milton E. Lopes
Publisher: WestBow Press
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2014-10-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1490851526

This book is written for those among us who have weathered life’s storms, yet sense a nagging emptiness in their spiritual well-being. Lenten Reflections: From the Desert to the Resurrection is written for those of us who want to be more spiritual. It is divided into four parts. Part One sets the framework for a treatment of the study of our salvation. It is devoted to the historical roots of Lent, its purpose, and its theology. To that end, this section also provides the reader with an overview of the creation story, a discussion of evil and sin, and a summary of the Trinity and the incarnation. Part Two sets the stage for an initial reflection on Lent, while Part Three introduces the disciplines needed to successfully pass through the desert to spiritual wholeness. Four seminal questions are posed: Where are we? What are we? Who are we? Why are we? Answers to these questions set the stage for what many spiritual masters call the purgative way, in which the Twelve-Step Program of Alcoholic Anonymous is suggested as a framework to one’s first steps into spiritual wholeness. At some point in their spiritual journey, the reader moves into what these same spiritual masters call the illuminative and unitive ways. Part Four is entitled “The Agony and Exultation.” Here, we join Jesus on the road to Calvary, where he is crucified. We know a mysterious joy as he rises from the tomb. We end our reflections with his departure from his disciples, the coming of the Paraclete, and a new understanding of the meaning behind Jesus’ sacrifice and life on earth.