The Holy War in Modern English


Book Description

This is another great allegorical story by this gifted writer. Every Christian should thrill again as he or she reads this allegory of their experience. For in the days of our unbelief did we not yield allegiance to the Devil, and did we not seek to avoid looking into the face of Emmanuel? Were we not all children of wrath with the rest of them, by our self-love being held captive by the prince of the power of the air. Eph. 2:1. This book is no classic by accident. It speaks to the soul of every honest saint of God. Despite the fact that its theme is not a popular one, it is so true to Christian experience that it has been printed and reprinted for three centuries. Anyone who has not read it is the poorer for it. For it is a picture of the struggle of the saints against temptation and doubt, against pride and false security, against sloth, etc. We are sinners saved by grace, but the body of death remains (Rom. 7:24). Bunyan (1628-1688) is without doubt the most famous of the Baptists. He is known to have preached to thousands from a hilltop. On one of these occasions John Owen went to hear him, coming away with unstinted praise for the humble, yet powerful, preacher of righteousness.




Holy War


Book Description

The Crusades and their impact on today's world.







Holy War and Human Bondage


Book Description

Holy War and Human Bondage: Tales of Christian-Muslim Slavery in the Early-Modern Mediterranean tells a story unfamiliar to most modern readers—how this pervasive servitude involved, connected, and divided those on both sides of the Mediterranean. The work explores how men and women, Christians and Muslims, Jews and sub-Saharan Africans experienced their capture and bondage, while comparing what they went through with what black Africans endured in the Americas. Drawing heavily on archival sources not previously available in English, Holy War and Human Bondage teems with personal and highly felt stories of Muslims and Christians who personally fell into captivity and slavery, or who struggled to free relatives and co-religionists in bondage. In these pages, readers will discover how much race slavery and faith slavery once resembled one other and how much they overlapped in the Early-Modern mind. Each produced its share of personal suffering and social devastation—yet the whims of history have made the one virtually synonymous with human bondage while confining the other to almost complete oblivion.




Holy War in Judaism


Book Description

Holy war, sanctioned or even commanded by God, is a common and recurring theme in the Hebrew Bible. Rabbinic Judaism, however, largely avoided discussion of holy war in the Talmud and related literatures for the simple reason that it became dangerous and self-destructive. Reuven Firestone's Holy War in Judaism is the first book to consider how the concept of ''holy war'' disappeared from Jewish thought for almost 2000 years, only to reemerge with renewed vigor in modern times. The revival of the holy war idea occurred with the rise of Zionism. As the necessity of organized Jewish engagement in military actions developed, Orthodox Jews faced a dilemma. There was great need for all to engage in combat for the survival of the infant state of Israel, but the Talmudic rabbis had virtually eliminated divine authorization for Jews to fight in Jewish armies. Once the notion of divinely sanctioned warring was revived, it became available to Jews who considered that the historical context justified more aggressive forms of warring. Among some Jews, divinely authorized war became associated not only with defense but also with a renewed kibbush or conquest, a term that became central to the discourse regarding war and peace and the lands conquered by the state of Israel in 1967. By the early 1980's, the rhetoric of holy war had entered the general political discourse of modern Israel. In Holy War in Judaism, Firestone identifies, analyzes, and explains the historical, conceptual, and intellectual processes that revived holy war ideas in modern Judaism.




The Holy War


Book Description

Limited Time Promotional Offer The Holy War The righteous and honorable ruler Shaddai and his son Emmanuel rule Mansoul with justice and equity. But the ruler of darkness - Prince Diabolus - has other plans. With his evil captains and their battalions Diabolus plots the fall and destruction of the once happy city. The first to fall is Captain Resistance as Diabolus knows that there is only one route into the city and that it can only be breached through the permission of the people of Mansoul itself. With Captain Resistance gone, the city is laid open to Diabolic lies and the next to fall is Lord Innocency and then the city is lost. Bunyan's plan for his readers was for them to experience the struggles of the city of Mansoul as a fierce battle rages to take control of it. However, alongside this knife-edge drama Bunyan wished his readers to understand how the struggles of their souls ran in parallel to the struggles of the wretched inhabitants of that place. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the lords of this age, rulers of this darkness, against spiritual wickedness in the heavens. (Ephesians 6:12) What if you were able to see your life from a spiritual perspective and see the actual reality of the verse above? How does our enemy, Diabolus, plan and carry out his attacks? How do his demons help, and what are their objectives? Why and how must we petition Emmanuel to get His attention and help in this great, holy war? Written four years after The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan followed up with this second allegorical classic, which has touched hearts and minds of readers for generations. The epicenter of this book is the town of Mansoul, its people (such as Conscience, Self-Denial, and Do-Right), and its gates (Eye-gate, Ear-gate, Mouth-gate, Nose-gate, and Feel-gate). The attack by Diabolus and his demons, all of whom have appropriate names, is carefully planned and executed. As still happens to men today, Mansoul fell hard. Emmanuel is of course willing to help, but can only do so on special, seemingly strict terms. As you watch this intense battle unfold, you'll be emboldened to fight with new vigilance, to guard the gates with tenacity, and to rely on Emmanuel's sovereignty like never before. The entire story is a masterpiece of Christian literature, describing vividly the process of the fall, conversion, fellowship with Emmanuel, and many more intricate doctrines. About John Bunyan: John Bunyan was born in November 1628, in Elstow, England. A celebrated English minister and preacher, he wrote The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), the book that was the most characteristic expression of the Puritan religious outlook. His other works include doctrinal writings; a spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding (1666); and the allegory The Holy War (1682).




Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads


Book Description

Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads explores the development of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish thinking on just war, holy war, and jihad over the past fourteen centuries.




The Great and Holy War


Book Description

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.




Romania's Holy War


Book Description

Romania's Holy War rights the widespread myth that Romania was a reluctant member of the Axis during World War II. In correcting this fallacy, Grant T. Harward shows that, of an estimated 300,000 Jews who perished in Romania and Romanian-occupied Ukraine, more than 64,000 were, in fact, killed by Romanian soldiers. Moreover, the Romanian Army conducted a brutal campaign in German-occupied Ukraine, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, and civilians. Investigating why Romanian soldiers fought and committed such atrocities, Harward argues that strong ideology—a cocktail of nationalism, religion, antisemitism, and anticommunism—undergirded their motivation. Romania's Holy War draws on official military records, wartime periodicals, soldiers' diaries and memoirs, subsequent war crimes investigations, and recent interviews with veterans to tell the full story. Harward integrates the Holocaust into the narrative of military operations to show that most soldiers fully supported the wartime dictator, General Ion Antonescu, and his regime's holy war against "Judeo-Bolshevism." The army perpetrated mass reprisals, targeting Jews in liberated Romanian territory; supported the deportation and concentration of Jews in camps or ghettos in Romanian-occupied Soviet territory; and played a key supporting role in SS efforts to exterminate Jews in German-occupied Soviet territory. Harward proves that Romania became Nazi Germany's most important ally in the war against the USSR because its soldiers were highly motivated, thus overturning much of what we thought we knew about this theater of war. Romania's Holy War provides the first complete history of why Romanian soldiers fought on the Eastern Front.




Ireland's Holy Wars


Book Description

For much of the twentieth century, Ireland has been synonymous with conflict, the painful struggle for its national soul part of the regular fabric of life. And because the Irish have emigrated to all parts of the world--while always remaining Irish--"the troubles" have become part of a common heritage, well beyond their own borders. In most accounts of Irish history, the focus is on the political rivalry between Unionism and Republicanism. But the roots of the Irish conflict are profoundly and inescapably religious. As Marcus Tanner shows in this vivid, warm, and perceptive book, only by understanding the consequences over five centuries of the failed attempt by the English to make Ireland into a Protestant state can the pervasive tribal hatreds of today be seen in context. Tanner traces the creation of a modern Irish national identity through the popular resistance to imposed Protestantism and the common defense of Catholicism by the Gaelic Irish and the Old English of the Pale, who settled in Ireland after its twelfth-century conquest. The book is based on detailed research into the Irish past and a personal encounter with today's Ireland, from Belfast to Cork. Tanner has walked with the Apprentice Boys of Derry and explored the so-called Bandit Country of South Armagh. He has visited churches and religious organizations across the thirty-two counties of Ireland, spoken with priests, pastors, and their congregations, and crossed and re-crossed the lines that for centuries have isolated the faiths of Ireland and their history.