Methodism in Australia

Methodism in Australia
Author: Glen O'Brien
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2016-03-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317097092

Methodism has played a major role in all areas of public life in Australia but has been particularly significant for its influence on education, social welfare, missions to Aboriginal people and the Pacific Islands and the role of women. Drawing together a team of historical experts, Methodism in Australia presents a critical introduction to one of the most important religious movements in Australia's settlement history and beyond. Offering ground-breaking regional studies of the development of Methodism, this book considers a broad range of issues including Australian Methodist religious experience, worship and music, Methodist intellectuals, and missions to Australia and the Pacific.

The Church Lads' Brigade in the great War

The Church Lads' Brigade in the great War
Author: Jean Morris
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2015-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1783463589

It is estimated that around 50,000 Brigade Lads served in the First World War, during which many honours and distinctions were awarded. The Brigade contributed two Service Battalions of the King's Royal Rifle Corps whose members were comprised entirely of past and present members of the Church Lads' Brigade. These were known as 'Pals' Battalions. The story of the battalion centres around the experiences of eight men who served and some who died in the Battles of The Somme, Arras and The Lys. In the latter half of the nineteenth century influential Christians were worried about the poor spiritual and physical development of young people. It was at that time that 'Brigade' groups began to spring up all over the UK. Walter Mallock Gee, who was Secretary of the Junior Branch of the Church of England Temperance Society and a 'Volunteer' Army Officer, founded the Church Lads' Brigade in 1891. By 1908 the membership of the brigade stood at about 70,000 in 1,300 companies. When the 'Call to Arms' came from Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener in 1914, thousands of Britain's youth flocked to join the armed forces. Members of the Church Lads' Brigade joined up in their droves at recruiting stations all over Great Britain. Two Battalions were formed entirely from serving and ex-members of the Church Lad's Brigade. The 16th (Service) Battalion and later the 19th (Service) Battalion, both sponsored by the Church Lads' Brigade, became known as 'The Churchmen's Battalion'. In 1914 no one could have imagined the horrendous stories that would unfold from the bloody massacre at so many notorious battles across Belgium and the fields of Flanders. Ypres, Passchendale, Somme, Arras, Lys, and the brutal decimation of the battalion during the hell of the fighting at High Wood. No one could have imagined the discomfort and disease brought on by living in a trench full of water for days on end, or 'over the top' through acres of knee-high mud. More than 24 of the Church Lads' Brigade were awarded a Victoria Cross for their bravery, but by 1918 many of those gallant young Lads would not return home. This is their story.

A War of Loves

A War of Loves
Author: David Bennett
Publisher: Zondervan
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2018-11-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0310538122

At 14, David Bennett came out to his parents. At 19, he encountered Jesus Christ. At that moment, his life changed forever. As a young gay man, David Bennett saw Christianity as an enemy to freedom for LGBTQI people, and his early experiences with prejudice and homophobia led him to become a gay activist. But when Jesus came into his life in a highly unexpected way, he was led down a path he never would have predicted or imagined. In A War of Loves, David recounts his dramatic story, from his early years exploring new age religions and French existentialism to his university experiences as an activist. Following supernatural encounters with God, he embarked on a journey not only of seeking to reconcile his faith and sexuality but also of discovering the higher call of Jesus Christ. A War of Loves investigates what the Bible teaches about sexuality and demonstrates the profligate, unqualified grace of God for all people. David describes the joy and intimacy he found in following Jesus Christ and how love has taken on a radically new and far richer meaning for him.

The Great and Holy War

The Great and Holy War
Author: Philip Jenkins
Publisher: Lion Books
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2014-06-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0745956742

The Great and Holy War offers the first look at how religion created and prolonged the First World War, and the lasting impact it had on Christianity and world religions more extensively in the century that followed. The war was fought by the world's leading Christian nations, who presented the conflict as a holy war. A steady stream of patriotic and militaristic rhetoric was served to an unprecedented audience, using language that spoke of holy war and crusade, of apocalypse and Armageddon. But this rhetoric was not mere state propaganda. Philip Jenkins reveals how the widespread belief in angels, apparitions, and the supernatural, was a driving force throughout the war and shaped all three of the Abrahamic religions - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam - paving the way for modern views of religion and violence. The disappointed hopes and moral compromises that followed the war also shaped the political climate of the rest of the century, giving rise to such phenomena as Nazism, totalitarianism, and communism. Connecting remarkable incidents and characters - from Karl Barth to Carl Jung, the Christmas Truce to the Armenian Genocide - Jenkins creates a powerful and persuasive narrative that brings together global politics, history, and spiritual crisis. We cannot understand our present religious, political, and cultural climate without understanding the dramatic changes initiated by the First World War. The war created the world's religious map as we know it today.

I Glanced Out the Window and Saw the Edge of the World

I Glanced Out the Window and Saw the Edge of the World
Author: Catherine Halsall
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2020-07-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 172525901X

This book is about WAR--not the causes and results, not the planning and the campaigns, not the artillery and the bombs. It is about the heinous crimes committed by the combatants, the horrifying experiences of civilians, the devastation of cities and villages, the killing and the dying, the glory leading to revulsion and guilt, and the assimilation of suffering that either ends in death or in the triumph of the soul. It looks at the struggle of the church to remain faithful and the servants of the church who seek to bring sense and solace to the victims. It discusses antisemitism, racism, and war itself from biblical perspectives. It reveals the unjustifiable reasons for engaging in war and how this brings catastrophic results for all peoples--the mental instability of the survivors and the loss and grief of those on the home front. In war, how can men and women carry out the actions that they do? As Viktor Frankl writes: "After all, man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

For God's Sake

For God's Sake
Author: Antony Loewenstein
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers Aus.
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2013-07-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1743289138

Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? and Where do we find hope? We are introduced to the detail of different belief systems - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position. Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Brontë sisters. Antony Lowenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam. Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake encourages us to accept religious differences but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.

Religion on the Battlefield

Religion on the Battlefield
Author: Ron E. Hassner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2016-05-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1501703684

How does religion shape the modern battlefield? Ron E. Hassner proposes that religion acts as a force multiplier, both enabling and constraining military operations. This is true not only for religiously radicalized fighters but also for professional soldiers. In the last century, religion has influenced modern militaries in the timing of attacks, the selection of targets for assault, the zeal with which units execute their mission, and the ability of individual soldiers to face the challenge of war. Religious ideas have not provided the reasons why conventional militaries fight, but religious practices have influenced their ability to do so effectively.In Religion on the Battlefield, Hassner focuses on the everyday practice of religion in a military context: the prayers, rituals, fasts, and feasts of the religious practitioners who make up the bulk of the adversaries in, bystanders to, and observers of armed conflicts. To show that religious practices have influenced battlefield decision making, Hassner draws most of his examples from major wars involving Western militaries. They include British soldiers in the trenches of World War I, U.S. pilots in World War II, and U.S. Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hassner shows that even modern, rational, and bureaucratized military organizations have taken—and must take—religious practice into account in the conduct of war.

Neither Power Nor Glory

Neither Power Nor Glory
Author: Paul Strangio
Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2012-06-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0522862128

When Frank Hardy published Power Without Glory, his notorious novel about corruption and venality in the Victorian Labor Party, it quickly came to be seen as a true account of the party. Until now, there has been no authoritative chronicle of the struggles of political Labor in Victoria, from its origins in the mid-nineteenth century through to the calamitous split of the 1950s. By conventional measures these were fallow years. Ensnared by the colony's powerful liberal protectionist tradition in the late nineteenth century, Victorian Labor then found itself hindered by a grossly unfair electoral system and the lack of a constituency outside Melbourne's industrial suburbs. But exile from government also meant that the party developed its own distinctive traditions and culture. It was a unique and intriguing species among the state Labor parties. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Neither Power Nor Glory fills an important gap in Australian political history and our understanding of the Labor Party. It is also a timely antidote to nostalgia about Labor’s past. In Victoria at least, that past was anything but golden. WINNER OF THE 2013 HENRY MAYER PRIZE

A Church at War

A Church at War
Author: Alan Bowker
Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2024-03-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0776642162

One hundred and forty-one people from MacKay Presbyterian Church, in Ottawa, served in the First World War. This is an astonishing record, but one that was by no means uncommon in Canada. Why did these men, their families, and their church enlist in this great war for “justice, truth, and righteousness, and for the Glory of God”? What was the impact of war on the surviving soldiers as they and their families adjusted to a changed world, to permanent injuries and to painful memories? This study of the experience of one church at war weaves together the stories of soldiers on the battlefields of Europe with those of the families who waited and prayed, enduring privation, fear, loneliness, and grief. It centres on the 19 men who fell in the war — some as heroes in desperate battles, others with tragic randomness or from illness, several with no known graves — and the widows they left to cope as best they could, the children who grew up without fathers, and the families who mourned their loss even as they took pride in their sacrifice. Using new methods including online research and the tools of genealogical study to bring to life people who did not leave a rich legacy of information on their lives and families, this study of a church at war deepens our understanding of the social history of Canada’s participation in the First World War, and provides a model for research on churches, communities, and institutions.