A highly regarded historian and professor presents a sustained reflection on the meaning of the Church's life in time. Divided into five parts, each section takes up a period of Church history and considers how the developments in church history relate to the Church today. From doctrines to customs, Olsen examines both the theological and historical impact of each new development. Beginning with ancient Christianity, the author illustrates how both secularization and sacralization take place in history and how it corresponds to our own age. Taking the reader from late ancient and early medieval Christianity, to the full bloom of medieval scholasticism and scholarship, to the dawn of the Renaissance and the aggressively anti-religious time of the "Enlightenment", Olsen considers all aspects of every age. The final section is a discussion of the Church in our own time, confronting such problems as modernization and the relation of the Church to culture. Appendices expand on The Catechism of the Catholic Church's teaching on the relation between prayer and history.
This book covers forest mensuration--the process of counting, measuring, and estimating the economic value of a stand of trees. This process also involves measuring non-timber, landscape values such as soils, wildlife habitat, and hydrology.
In distinctive voice and tone, cultural commentator Glenn W. Olsen presents his latest work on the place of Catholicism in American history. Here he clarifies the meaning of American modernity for Catholics and shows the conflicts and tensions confronting the religious person today.
“Phenomenal . . . A must read for us who desire to topple the dictatorship of relativism and culture of death and replace it with the only alternative” (The Imaginative Conservative). Especially concerned with the public nature of religion, historian Glenn W. Olsen—author of Christian Marriage: A Historical Study and On the Road to Emmaus: The Catholic Dialogue with American and Modernity—sets forth an exhaustively researched and persuasive account of how religion has been reshaped in the modern period. The Turn to Transcendence traces both the loss of transcendence and attempts to recover it while making its own proposals. Neither reactionary nor modernist, it questions how—under conditions of modern life—some form of the sacred and some form of the secular might both flourish at the same time. But it also provides a warning that a religion unable to maintain itself with its own overt architecture, language, and calendars against an enveloping secular culture is destined for oblivion. “Glenn Olsen’s book could hardly be more pivotal or insightful. Confronting the growing amnesia regarding culture’s religious origin and transcendent purpose, Olsen proves both a masterful cartographer of modernity and a visionary of a culture that encourages and enables us to seek beyond ourselves.” —Carl A. Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus “A brilliant book. It rests on an amazing amount of scholarship that is wide-ranging in history, literature, art, science, music, theology, and philosophy.” —James Hitchcock, professor of history, St. Louis University
Science and the Bible do not contradict one another. The author shows that the plain and literal text of the Bible is in perfect harmony with even the latest findings of mainstream science. You need not compromise either your faith or your intellect.
We Wanted to be Writers is a rollicking and insightful blend of original interviews, commentary, advice, gossip, anecdotes, analyses, history, and asides with nearly thirty graduates and teachers at the now legendary Iowa Writers' Workshop between 1974 and 1978. Among the talents that emerged in those years-writing, criticizing, drinking, and debating in the classrooms and barrooms of Iowa City-were the younger versions of writers who became John Irving, Jane Smiley, T. C. Boyle, Michelle Huneven, Allan Gurganus, Sandra Cisneros, Jayne Anne Phillips, Jennie Fields, Joy Harjo, Joe Haldeman, and many others. It is chock full of insights and a treasure trove of inspiration for all writers, readers, history lovers, and anyone who ever "wanted to be a writer." Jane Smiley on the Iowa writers' workshop: "In that period, the teachers tended to be men of a certain age, with the idea that competition was somehow the key-the Norman Mailer period. The story was that if you disagreed with Norman, or gave him a bad review, he'd punch you in the nose. You were supposed to get in fights in restaurants." T.C. Boyle on his short story "Drowning": "I got $25 for it, which was wonderful . . . You know, getting $25 for the product of your own brain? You could buy a lot of beer in Iowa City back then for that.
Supper at Emmaus traces various important intellectual topics from the ancient world to the modern period. Generally, as in its treatment of the question of whether the long-standing contrast between cyclical and linear views of history is helpful, it introduces important thinkers who have considered the question. A preoccupation of the book is the appearance and reappearance across the centuries of patterns used to organize temporal and cultural experience. After an opening essay on transcendental truth and cultural relativism, the second chapter traces a distinction, common in historical writings during the past two centuries, between an alleged ancient classical "cyclic" view of time and history, used to describe the claimed repetitiveness of and similarities between historical events ("nothing is new under the sun"), and a contrasting Jewish-Christian linear view, sometimes described as providential in that it moves through a series of unique events to some end intended by God. In the latter, history is "about something," the education of the human race or the redemption of humankind. As in each of the remaining essays, the book then attempts to draw out the limitations of what the current consensus on this topic has become. It does this for such things as our current understanding of religious toleration, humanism, natural law, and teleology. Some of the essays, such as those on debate about Augustine's understanding of marriage or the concluding illustrated essay on the baroque city of Lecce, are published for the first time. Others are based on previously published contributions to the scholarly literature, though generally each of these chapters concludes with a postscript that engages with current scholarly debate on the subject.
Why have multiple mega-church leaders—Ted Haggard and Bishop Eddie Long, for example—committed acts of sexual misconduct? This book discusses the reasons in depth and examines how these acts are impacting the future of megachurches. Mega-churches—churches with congregations that number in the thousands of worshippers—are growing in popularity in America and around the world. Shockingly, a growing number of megachurch leaders have committed acts of sexual misconduct. While these scandalous crimes have received much attention through the media, literature that examines the topic in detail has been lacking. This book examines the various aspects of sexual misconduct by megachurch leaders, providing a comprehensive review of the topic that discusses the direct and indirect reasons for these crimes. The book provides unbiased, factual coverage of megachurch sexual abuse cases, covering issues surrounding the victims in specific cases, the role of the church, and notable ministers, such as Ted Haggard of New Life Church, Colorado Springs, CO; Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, Lithonia, GA; and Joe Barron of Prestonwood Baptist Church, Dallas, TX. The author also discusses how these incidences have impacted societal perceptions of religion, and large churches, and religious organizations, and provides recommendations to curb future cases of sexual abuse within megachurches.
Recently, environmental scientists have been required to perform a new type of assessment-ecological risk assessment. This is the first book that explains how to perform ecological risk assessments and gives assessors access to the full range of useful data, models, and conceptual approaches they need to perform an accurate assessment. It explains how ecological risk assessment relates to more familiar types of assessments. It also shows how to organize and conduct an ecological risk assessment, including defining the source, selecting endpoints, describing the relevant features of the receiving environment, estimating exposure, estimating effects, characterizing the risks, and interacting with the risk manager. Specific technical topics include finding and selecting toxicity data; statistical and mathematical models of effects on organisms, populations, and ecosystems; estimation of chemical fate parameters; modeling of chemical transport and fate; estimation of chemical uptake by organisms; and estimation, propagation, and presentation of uncertainty. Ecological Risk Assessment also covers conventional risk assessments, risk assessments for existing contamination, large scale problems, exotic organisms, and risk assessments based on environmental monitoring. Environmental assessors at regulatory agencies, consulting firms, industry, and government labs need this book for its approaches and methods for ecological risk assessment. Professors in ecology and other environmental sciences will find the book's practical preparation useful for classroom instruction. Environmental toxicologists and chemists will appreciate the discussion of the utility for risk assessment of particular toxicity tests and chemical determinations.
A companion to the exhibition Crafting America curated at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, this publication explores the interdisciplinary contexts of the assembled works, featuring contributions from scholars with expertise in art history, American studies, folklore, and museum studies. Essay topics include the significance of craft within Native American histories and explorations of craft's relationship to ritual and memory, personal independence, and abstraction"--
Published in two parts, the General Index of all Washington descendants and their spouses completes a ten-volume history that traces the “Presidential Line” of the Washington family in America. Volume one began with the immigrant John Washington who settled in Westmoreland County, Va., in 1657, married Anne Pope, and became the great-grandfather of President George Washington. It contained the record of their descendants for a total of seven generations. Subsequent volumes two through eight continued this family history for an additional eight generations, also highlighting most notable members (volume two) and tracing lines of descent from the royalty and nobility of England and continental Europe (volume three). Volume nine treated in detail the recently discovered line of William Wright (died in Franklin County, Va., ca. 1809). It also provided briefer accounts of five other Southern Wright families that have often been mentioned by researchers as close kinsmen of George Washington. ADVANCE PRAISE “At long last the Washingtons have a published history worthy of their place in history. Glenn has done a masterful job. . . . I am convinced that his work will be of wide interest to historians and academics as well as members of the Washington family itself. Although the surname Washington is perhaps the best known in American history and much has been written about the Washington family for well over a century, it is surprising that no comprehensive family history has been published. Justin M. Glenn’s The Washingtons: A Family History finally fills this void for the branch to which General and President George Washington belonged, identifying some 63,000 descendants. This is truly a family history, not a mere tabulation of names and dates, providing biographical accounts of many of the descendants of John Washington who settled in Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1657.” — John Frederick Dorman, editor of The Virginia Genealogist (1957-2006) and author of Adventurers of Purse and Person “Decades of reviewing Civil War books have left me surprised and delighted when someone applies exhaustive diligence to a topic not readily accessible. Dr. Glenn surely meets that standard with the meticulous research that unveils the Washington family in gratifying detail—many of them Confederates of interest and importance.” — Robert K. Krick, author of The Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy and Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain
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