A Magnificent Faith

The first comprehensive history of the Reformation origins and flourishing of Lutheran baroque; while the Protestant reform movements are generally associated with iconoclasm, this book studies art, religion, and politics to show that in Lutheran Germany a rich visual culture developed, despite theologians' ambivalent attitude towards images.

A Magnificent Faith explains how and why Lutheranism - a confession that derived its significance from the promulgation of God's Word - became a visually magnificent faith, a faith whose adherents sought to captivate Christians' hearts and minds through seeing as well as through hearing. Although Protestantism is no longer understood as an exclusively word-based religion, the paradigm of evangelical ambivalence towards images retains its power. This is the first study to offer an account of the Reformation origins and subsequent flourishing of the Lutheran baroque, of the rich visual culture that developed in parts of the Holy Roman Empire during the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The volume opens with a discussion of the legacy of the Wittenberg Reformation. Three sections then focus on the confessional, devotional, and magnificent image, exploring turning points in Lutherans' attitudes towards religious art. Drawing on a wide variety of archival, printed, and visual sources from two of the Empire's most important Protestant territories - Saxony, the heartland of the Reformation, and Brandenburg - A Magnificent Faith shows the extent to which Lutheran culture was shaped by territorial divisions. It traces the development of a theologically-grounded aesthetic, and argues that images became prominent vehicles for the articulation of Lutheran identity not only amongst theologians but also amongst laymen and women. By examining the role of images in the Lutheran tradition as it developed over the course of two centuries, A Magnificent Faith offers a new understanding of the relationship between Protestantism and the visual arts.

In a world that often stresses perfection, God's grace gives us the strength to face our imperfections and faults knowing that God's provision is greater than our lack. Through this study, you will uncover the many facets of God's grace, and discover that He can empower you with the ability to extend kindness when others would choose to pull back. Magnificent Grace explores important Bible passages that describe the abundance and sufficiency of God's grace, and illuminates Bible characters who received and displayed God's grace. You will find an open invitation to a deeper relationship with God, no matter what your past decisions or present circumstances may look like. And you will be challenged to not only receive God's grace, but to take it and pour it out on others. Women of Faith Study Guides sold to date: More than 2 million

When Anne Graham Lotz studied the life of Abraham in depth it changed her view of her own life forever. This book is the result of that life-transforming study, which drew her into a deeper friendship with God and set her on a journey of being a blessing to others. Combining a reflective study of the biblical account of Abraham, the founder of the Jewish and Christian faiths, with challenging meditations on the reality of being a disciple, this book is an invitation to all who long to live the God-filled life.

Every person follows a script for living, a life guide that directs our behavior and shapes our choices. As believers, we find the original script for living woven throughout the Bible. Yet while the Christian message is simple, it can become complicated by our environment, our culture, and our religious ideas and traditions. For this reason, we are all in constant need of revising the scripts by which we live. Author Frank Viola believes we need to revisit and revise what it means to live the Christian life. Drawing from his rich background in ministry, Viola examines ten key areas that impact every believer and explores fresh ways to revise them. Conversational, insightful, and practical, Revise Us Again encourages us to examine those religious habits that we unconsciously pick up from others and rescript them with new habits that line up with our new nature in Christ.

Have you ever sensed that you’ve seen just the foothills of what prayer is about? Do you long for more? Magnificent Prayer points you toward the heights of communion with God. Drawing insights from classic and contemporary pioneers of prayer, Nick Harrison guides you on a year-long devotional course of discovery, application, and growth. Corrie ten Boom, John Bunyan, Amy Carmichael, Oswald Chambers, Charles Colson, Eric Liddell, D. L. Moody, Andrew Murray, Leonard Ravenhill, Charles Spurgeon, Hannah Whitall Smith, Charles Stanley . . . find out their secrets to prayer. Profit from their wisdom. Harrison harvests some of their choicest words about prayer, sets them with Scripture, and invites you to reflect on your own prayer life in their light. But this is just the prelude to the true objective: a deepening personal experience of prayer. With daily exercises designed to help focus your prayers, Magnificent Prayer equips you to experience firsthand the many dimensions of prayer and the incredible possibilities prayer holds.Magnificent Prayer is a vibrant resource for your spiritual walk. Day by day, your prayers will be enhanced as you live in close communication with your true and faithful Guide.

First published in 1976, Paul Johnson’s exceptional study of Christianity has been loved and widely hailed for its intensive research, writing, and magnitude—“a tour de force, one of the most ambitious surveys of the history of Christianity ever attempted and perhaps the most radical” (New York Review of Books). In a highly readable companion to books on faith and history, the scholar and author Johnson has illuminated the Christian world and its fascinating history in a way that no other has. Johnson takes off in the year AD 49 with his namesake the apostle Paul. Thus beginning an ambitious quest to paint the centuries since the founding of a little-known ‘Jesus Sect’, A History of Christianity explores to a great degree the evolution of the Western world. With an unbiased and overall optimistic tone, Johnson traces the fantastic scope of the consequent sects of Christianity and the people who followed them. Information drawn from extensive and varied sources from around the world makes this history as credible as it is reliable. Invaluable understanding of the framework of modern Christianity—and its trials and tribulations throughout history—has never before been contained in such a captivating work.

The Faith Explained is an all-in-one handbook to help you understand, explain, and defend the great truths of the Catholic Faith. In brief and readable chapters, it explains the purpose of human existence, God and His perfections, the creation and fall of man, the Incarnation, the redemption, the sacraments, sacramentals, prayer, the importance of the Bible, and much more. Perfect for RCIA classes, this book is also a magnificent refresher course on the Faith for Catholics and an illuminating resource for non-Catholics with questions about the Church.