This study’s main contribution is its aim to reorient the common perception surrounding M’Cheyne’s pursuit of holiness. It argues that rightly understanding M’Cheyne’s spirituality must begin with the fundamental issue of why he pursued the means of grace as he did, before reckoning with how he used those means. Such a reorientation reveals that loving communion with Christ was the driving force for M’Cheyne’s vision of the Christian life. Chapters 1 through 5 lay the foundation for understanding M’Cheyne’s spirituality. Chapters 6 through 10 expand on that foundation by demonstrating how M’Cheyne’s piety manifested itself in various spheres of his life and ministry. Chapter 1 states the project’s thesis and surveys the history of studies on M’Cheyne. Chapter 2 offers an overview of M’Cheyne’s life and ministry. Chapter 3 places M’Cheyne in the various contextual streams of his day. Understanding the ecclesiastical, philosophical, cultural, and pastoral contexts in which M’Cheyne lived aids an understanding of M’Cheyne’s spirituality and its subsequent appeal. Chapter 4 analyzes the essential contours of M’Cheyne’s theology. Importantly, his theology was that of the Westminster Standards. Chapter 5 systematizes M’Cheyne’s key thoughts on devotion to Christ. The Song of Songs provided the grammar that marked his conception of pursuing holiness. To grow in Christ is to know the Rose of Sharon, and to commune with the Beloved. Chapter 6 considers M’Cheyne’s practice of communion with Christ through the means of grace, specifically God’s Word, the sacraments, and prayer. Chapter 7 examines M’Cheyne’s preaching of Christ. His sermons exalted Christ, focusing on Christ as our Surety, Savior, and Judge. Chapter 8 shows M’Cheyne’s dedication to evangelism through his work with children, method of visitation, longing for revival, and strategies for church extension. Chapter 9 highlights an oft-neglected pillar of M’Cheyne’s pursuit of holiness: his Sabbatarian zeal. Chapter 10 assesses M’Cheyne’s eschatology and its effect on his spirituality.

M.A. (Bible Studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Submitted to the Faculty of Theology and Religion Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Theology In the Department of Practical Theology and Religion Studies at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2003. / The purpose of Christ's death on the cross is to bring peace between God and man (Ephesians 2:14 paraphrased). The cross forms the basis of reconciliation between God and man. As a result, God desires his children live in harmony with each other irrespective of race, colour or gender. The difficulty in churches is that unity is often limited to local ethnic groups. In Scripture, the wider definition of unity is extended to include other ethnic peoples (Matthew 28:19). Cultural, political, sociological and theological barriers often hinder this move for extended unity. These help foster an environment for segregation, ethnocentrism and racism. By virtue of these elements presenting themselves in extended relationships there needs to be transparency on the part of those initiating a move for cultural tolerance. This requires dealing with negative views either individually or corporately and thereafter adopting biblical principles for establishing solid relationships. The integration of diverse ethnic groups in ecclesiological circles will entail certain adjustments being made. The purpose for such adjustments is to allow people the opportunity to feel welcome in a church that they would consider as home.

This book is a must read for followers of Jesus. The church is called to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world, walking with people in their struggles. It will help us to walk with people if we understand them and the origin of those struggles and what may be helpful. This book is a readable, practical guide for the faith community. Readers will learn how early adversity may explain many struggles that they themselves and others have. That is not where the story ends, though. Readers will be equipped with tools that can reduce addiction and mental health struggles.Not only is Dr. Clements is a "sold out follower of Jesus," but she is also a university researcher who studies addiction, child development, and the effects of adversity. This book combines science and scripture to equip the church. Understanding the connection between past adversity and life struggles such as addiction, anxiety, depression can help us to move ourselves and others toward flourishing. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1291/thumbnail.jpg

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Throughout the history of the United States, its inhabitants have looked upon their nation as a special place. In some cases, this has exceeded the natural and simple love of home and country and taken a more extreme form. Important to this bent is the tendency to see the nation, its beliefs, and its actions around the world as divinely sanctioned and inspired in some regard. This is a generally necessary component to the idea of American Exceptionalism, which views the United States as a nation with a divinely imposed mission to spread civilization, freedom, and democracy to the ends of the earth. In many ways, the Roman Empire shared these pretentions of being the bearers of civilization to the rest of the world and of being a divinely chosen nation with that vocation. Voices within Christianity, as it developed, provided a potent antithesis to this aspect of Roman imperial ideology, critiquing Roman ideas of their own exceptionalism. By comparing the ideological basis of Roman and American concepts of exceptionalism, this thesis will attempt to apply the critique made by people like Jesus, Paul and Augustine to the United States today.

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<p>The McMaster University Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) is the largest IVCF chapter in Canada and the second largest recognized group of any kind at McMaster. The majority of its members are conservative Protestants who espouse "fundamentalist" interpretations of the Bible, womens' roles, the age of the earth, alcohol consumption, sexual ethics, and the necessity of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. IVCF members perceive a sharp distinction between themselves and their "non-Christian" peers and professors. An analysis of the apparently paradoxical success of this particular group should elucidate the relationship between contemporary evangelical groups and other secular institutions in North America. Drawing upon fieldwork with the McMaster IVCF, I argue that the chapter promotes two strategies for interacting with the nonChristian majority. First, the "fortress" strategy protects evangelicals and the evangelical ethos from a campus ethos many believers consider to be hostile to their values and beliefs. Second, the "bridge" strategy facilitates constructive and non-confrontational interactions between these evangelicals and their non-Christian peers. These two strategies help IVCF participants to negotiate metaphorical "contracts" between their faith on the one hand and their secular education and social setting on the other. Creative strategies such as those employed by McMaster IVCF members seem both to fortify and mitigate against evangelicals' sense of difference from non-Christians.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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….be very careful to do exactly as the priests, who are Levites, instruct you. You must follow carefully what I have commanded them. Remember what the LORD your God did to Miriam along the way after you came out of Egypt and what he did to Michal and Jezebel. Remember what the priests did to Athaliah in Judah (c.f Deuteronomy. 24:8b-9). These female politicians were cornered, arrested, charged, beheaded and fragmented! Only their heads (names) that were hanged in this public place, the Bible, remained. Nobody would tell that this is Miriam, Michal, Jezebel or Athaliah. Lists of their crimes stand appended to their heads and names in public. When they were all silenced and the kings had sat in their rightful places, all the people of the land rejoiced and there was peace in the cities because these women had been slain (c.f 2 Kings 11:20). So be very careful to follow instruction and rules such that you do not end up like any of them. (Embellished by the author) Indeed, Miriam, Michal, Jezebel and Athaliah are politically killed off in the Hebrew Bible. Certainly, no one would tell from the Hebrew Bible that these women were people of significant political and leadership profiles; but merely as wicked in the history of humanity. All their political significance and contributions were literary and ideologically mutilated and separated from their names and left in the wild to be eaten by stray dogs. Their decapitated and fragmented images minus their political profiles have been ingested into an ideological system that regulates gender world order and influences social, intellectual and linguistic discourses and pictorial misogynistic polemics in the modern world. Figuratively, the remains of these women have been preserved in the way politicians of the ancient times and recent past would keep remains of their opponents. Ancient rulers would preserve a head (skull) of a particular enemy. David in the Bible cuts off Goliath’s head (1 Samuel 17:51); and the Philistines cut off Saul’s head (1 Samuel 31:9). In the Roman Republic of early 1st Century BC, political enemies like Marius and Sulla were decapitated and their heads displayed in the Forum Romanum. In 1355 Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice in medieval Italy was beheaded and his head hanged in a public place for staging a coup that was aborted. English traitors especially during the Elizabethan era were mutilated and their heads customarily spiked on London Bridge and other public places. In all these mutilations, other parts of the body were never accounted for. Stray dogs and other scavengers ate them as the case was with Jezebel in 2 Kings 8. Both head and name are proper national and political identifiers of every individual. So also the name! A head and a name are good identifiers of a person’s identity and activities. In modern times, identity documents and political campaign posters bear personal names and portraits. Preserving mutilated remains of an enemy served an ideological purpose of scarring and deterring future oppositions. It also symbolised total subjugation and control of the enemy. In movies about the political history of Uganda, Idi Amin is shown speaking ridiculously to the mutilated heads of his opponents. Preserving names of female politicians in the way they are preserved in the Hebrew Bible narratives merely serves an ideological purpose. I have argued in this paper that Miriam, Michal, Jezebel and Athaliah are political women. To African postcolonial Bible readers, they are political characters that stand for unconformity, radical activism, dissension, equality and self-reification to lead their people as their male counterparts. Although theirs is leadership based on royalty (and social prestige particularly in the case of Miriam), in their literary form they experience similar chronic maladies of patriarchal stereotype as the modern women whose political participation is based on liberal democracies. They are presented as foreign and aberrant gender in the politics of their time according to the ideological standards of the Hebrew Bible narrator. Their remains in the Hebrew Bible are positioned to ideologically kill off their political significance and portray them as evil women who destabilise the natural order. The study is contextualised on women and politics in sub-Saharan Africa with Uganda and Kenya as case studies. Both Uganda and Kenya are East African countries, with similar colonial experiences. They are predominantly Christian countries and the Bible is a very significant literature in the lives of people. It is literally the Word of God that does not only prescribe a faith, but a culture, philosophy and ideologies that are perceived as holy and pristine in socio-political intercourse of the people. Though the recent histories are different between Kenya and Uganda, in both cases the rise in female influence in politics has been paralleled by a rise in linguistic and sometimes physical abuse of female politicians. The similarities between the androcentric cultural worldview of the Bible and the African cultures have fostered a negative attitude against women’s influence in national politics. The biblical image of Jezebel is often used as a summary figure of this misogyny. Jezebel, the foreign Canaanite queen turned ‘harlot’ by the Dtr redactor is used to name a political threat—a foreign gender group infiltrating the political arena in East Africa.