David Chidester, one of the world's foremost scholars of religion, traces Christianity's growth and development from the time of Jesus to the dawn of the third millennium, revealing its rich diversity through the deeds and beliefs of heretics and saints, witches and healers, preachers and inquisitors. Chidester explores the emergence of the major streams of Christian thought and practice, distilling the cultural history of the Church and its impact on the world into this superbly readable book. Alongside this broad panorama is a richly human story that the author brilliantly encapsulates in incisive character sketches and historical vignettes.
Christianity, in all its many facets, has been and continues to be one of the most influential forces in history. Chidester shows that this religion, with its roots deep in the ancient world, has always been in a constant state of evolution, affecting and affected by the religions and societies around it. At times Christianity has coexisted peacefully with other forms of belief, exchanging ideas and practices with them. At other times profound, even violent, conflict has arisen. In this book David Chidester intelligently and objectively portrays Christians in different times and places, as a minority and as the majority group, a religion both absorbing and resisting the world around it. Christianity reveals the religion as it was and is lived in the life of everyday people rather than focusing on the dry dogmas and beliefs that fill most histories. Chidester's accomplishment is to capture the complexity and grand sweep of this story in one remarkable volume that is destined to take its place as a classic of religious history.

Christianity: A Global History

History

Chidester, David

Americas

HarperOne

World

Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include companion materials, may have some shelf wear, may contain highlighting/notes, may not include CDs or access codes. 100% money back guarantee.

Patterns of power: Religion and politics in American culture

PRENTICE/HALL

A monumental new history of Christianity from its beginnings as a persecuted cult, up to its present day international diversity. 'A model of condensation without simplification' - J.M Coetzee 'Clear and balanced. A triumph of compression...invaluable as a work of reference for students' - Karen Armstrong, "Times". 'A new and ambitious concept in presenting Christian history...a triumph. Never before, I suspect, has this cavalcade of thinkers been presented in a manner which so successfully combines depth, breadth, and succinctness' - Gerard Noel, "Catholic Herald".

Christianity : A Global History

Religion & Spirituality

Penguin Books, Limited (UK)

How is knowledge about religion and religions produced, and how is that knowledge authenticated and circulated? David Chidester seeks to answer these questions in Empire of Religion, documenting and analyzing the emergence of a science of comparative religion in Great Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century and its complex relations to the colonial situation in southern Africa. In the process, Chidester provides a counterhistory of the academic study of religion, an alternative to standard accounts that have failed to link the field of comparative religion with either the power relations or the historical contingencies of the imperial project.   In developing a material history of the study of religion, Chidester documents the importance of African religion, the persistence of the divide between savagery and civilization, and the salience of mediations―imperial, colonial, and indigenous―in which knowledge about religions was produced. He then identifies the recurrence of these mediations in a number of case studies, including Friedrich Max Müller’s dependence on colonial experts, H. Rider Haggard and John Buchan’s fictional accounts of African religion, and W. E. B. Du Bois’s studies of African religion. By reclaiming these theorists for this history, Chidester shows that race, rather than theology, was formative in the emerging study of religion in Europe and North America. Sure to be controversial, Empire of Religion is a major contribution to the field of comparative religious studies.

Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion

Africa

University of Chicago Press

How is knowledge about religion and religions produced, and how is that knowledge authenticated and circulated? David Chidester seeks to answer these questions in Empire of Religion, documenting and analyzing the emergence of a science of comparative religion in Great Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century and its complex relations to the colonial situation in southern Africa. In the process, Chidester provides a counterhistory of the academic study of religion, an alternative to standard accounts that have failed to link the field of comparative religion with either the power relations or the historical contingencies of the imperial project. In developing a material history of the study of religion, Chidester documents the importance of African religion, the persistence of the divide between savagery and civilization, and the salience of mediations—imperial, colonial, and indigenous—in which knowledge about religions was produced. He then identifies the recurrence of these mediations in a number of case studies, including Friedrich Max Müller’s dependence on colonial experts, H. Rider Haggard and John Buchan’s fictional accounts of African religion, and W. E. B. Du Bois’s studies of African religion. By reclaiming these theorists for this history, Chidester shows that race, rather than theology, was formative in the emerging study of religion in Europe and North America. Sure to be controversial, Empire of Religion is a major contribution to the field of comparative religious studies.

Word and Light brings religious discourse back to its senses in this provocative examination of the importance of sight and sound to religious symbols, myths, rituals, and traditions. The book examines the unexpected implications of three theses. First, religious symbols, particularly the perceptual symbols of "word" and "light," are grounded in the senses of hearing and seeing. Second, the senses of sight and hearing generate different ranges of symbolic association important to religious discourse. Finally, differing ranges of symbolic association often are fused in the combinations, mergers, and transfers of the senses known as synesthesia. Using a series of case studies in western religious discourse, David Chidester analyzes the importance of sight and hearing especially in the work of Augustine but also in that of Philo, Arius, Athanasius, Bonaventure, and Melanchthon. He examines the dynamics of seeing, hearing, and synesthetic mergers of the senses to suggest new ways of understanding religion.

Word and Light: Seeing, Hearing, and Religious Discourse

University of Illinois Press

"This will be the definitive biography of Yasser Arafat for many years." ―Rashid Khalidi
"Alan Hart has written the best informed, most detailed account of Arafat that I have seen." ―Michael C. Hudson
"I have written the book as a good and true friend of the Palestinians and the Jews. Together in peace and partnership the two peoples, who come from the same melting pot, could change and develop the region for the better and, by doing so, give hope and inspiration to the whole world." ―Alan Hart, from the Introduction
"There is much important material here on the Palestinians, the PLO, political machinations, strong beliefs... Very informed... Hart has done a service in creating this vivid picture." ―The Book Reader
"This is, however, more than a sympathetic, semi-authorized biography. It constitutes a detailed running history of the PLO and the course of inter-Arab relations and the Arab-Israeli conflict from the mid-1960s to the present.... it has inestimable value in telling how Arafat and his colleagues saw [these events]... " ―Foreign Affairs

Salvation and Suicide: An Interpretation of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown (Religion in North America)

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Indiana University Press

Discusses Jim Jones' techniques, describes the world view of his followers, and offers a religious perspective on the mass suicide incident.

Salvation and Suicide: An Interpretation of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown

Praise for the first edition: "[This] ambitious and courageous book [is a] benchmark of theology by which questions about the meaningful history of the Peoples Temple may be measured." ―Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Re-issued in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the mass suicides at Jonestown, this revised edition of David Chidester’s pathbreaking book features a new prologue that considers the meaning of the tragedy for a post-Waco, post-9/11 world. For Chidester, Jonestown recalls the American religious commitment to redemptive sacrifice, which for Jim Jones meant saving his followers from the evils of capitalist society. "Jonestown is ancient history," writes Chidester, but it does provide us with an opportunity "to reflect upon the strangeness of familiar... promises of redemption through sacrifice."

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Chidester, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Chidester, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Chidester, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Christianity: A Global History

Christianity: A Global History

Patterns of power: Religion and politics in American culture

Christianity : A Global History

Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion

Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion

Word and Light: Seeing, Hearing, and Religious Discourse

Salvation and Suicide: An Interpretation of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown (Religion in North America)

Salvation and Suicide: An Interpretation of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown

Salvation and Suicide: An Interpretation of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown (Religion in North America)