Books by "James W. Mayer"
8 books found
The Story of the Commercial Bank of Scotland, Limited, During Its Hundred Years, from 1810-1910
by James Lawson Anderson
1910
The vast homiletic corpus of John Chrysostom has received renewed attention in recent years as a source for the wider cultural and historical context within which his sermons were preached. Scholars have demonstrated the exciting potential his sermons have to shed light on aspects of daily life, popular attitudes, and practices of lay piety. In short, Chrysostom's sermons have been recognised as a valuable source for the study of 'popular Christianity' at the end of the fourth century. This study, however, questions the validity of some recent conclusions. James Daniel Cook illustrates that Chrysostom is often seen as at odds with the congregations to whom he preached. On this view, the Christianity of élites such as Chrysostom had made little inroads into popular thought beyond the fairly superficial, and congregations were still living with older, more culturally traditional views about religious beliefs which preachers were doing their utmost to overcome. Cook argues that such a portrayal is based on a misreading of Chrysostom's sermons and fails to explain satisfactorily the apparent popularity that Chrysostom enjoyed as a preacher. Preaching and Popular Christianity: Reading the Sermons of John Chrysostom reassesses how we read Chrysostom's sermons, with a particular focus on the stern language which permeated his preaching, and on which the image of the contrary congregation is largely based. In doing this, Cook recovers a neglected portrayal of Chrysostom as a pastor and of preaching as a pastoral and liturgical activity, and it becomes clear that his use of critical language says more about how he understood his role as preacher than about the nature of popular Christianity in late-antique society. Thus, a very different picture of late-antique Christianity emerges, in which Chrysostom's congregations are more willing to listen and learn from their preacher than is often assumed.
Christian Meyer, a Mennonite, was probably born in Switzerland. He immigrated, via Amsterdam, about 1700 or later to Philadelphia, and settled on Indian Creek, Montogmery County, Pennsylvania. Descendants and relatives lived in Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Michigan, Oregon, Virginia, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Nebraska, Canada and elsewhere.
There has been heightened interest and prolific publication by missiologists about contextualization since the term was first coined in 1972. There has been ongoing debate, particularly amongst evangelicals themselves regarding which of these meanings, methods, and models of contextualization are acceptable to use. Much of the debate has been carried out by academics and practitioners whose observations and conclusions have been largely shaped by the social sciences and practical theology. In contrast, the disciplines of biblical studies and Christian thought have not featured significantly in the debate. The purpose of this research is to establish that biblical studies and Christian thought in general (and Scripture and the church fathers in particular) have an essential contribution to make in the contextualization debate and should form part of an evangelical approach to contextualization of the gospel alongside the social sciences and practical theology. Following a review of the literature on contextualization over the past forty years, the research examines the book of Acts as representative of Scripture, and the work of John Chrysostom as a representative church father. Contextual principles that are consistent with an evangelical approach to contextualization of the gospel are drawn from each work, establishing the value of biblical studies and Christian thought in contextualization.