...This introductory chapter presents a new perspective on how white evangelical Christians have become an important constituency for the Republican Party in the United States. Sociologist Robert Wuthnow has described this shift as part of a larger restructuring of American religion that took place...

... with being a Christian. The chapter argues that these opinion leaders contribute to “thin coherence” between religious identity and partisanship, even for individuals in their church who subscribe to moderate, progressive, or ambivalent political attitudes. Evangelical Christians do not collectively...

... traditions related to those of the people they now ruled over, especially Jews and Christians. These were two groups who had, long before the rise of Islam, developed answers to a whole host of religious questions that Muslims now had also to confront. Moreover, the answers, traditions, antiquity...

...This chapter explores a small and neglected group of martyrs who converted from Islam to Christianity. It is divided into five sections: the first surveys the evidence for true apostasy in legal, historical, and ritual literature written by Muslims and Christians. The second discusses the life...

...This introductory chapter provides an overview of Christianity in the twentieth century. The twentieth century has suffered comparative neglect at the hands of modern Western historians of Christianity, who have, on the whole, remained more interested in the intellectual and social challenges posed...

...This concluding chapter argues that the twentieth century was indeed a period of extraordinary and sustained Christian growth in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. Yet it also witnessed a serious recession from Christian faith in most of Europe, Australasia, and parts of North America...

...This chapter delves into the nuanced reactions of the Inquisition to the general pardon of 1604, a pivotal event shaping the fate of New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula. It examines how the conflict of values evolved during this turbulent period, exploring whether blood purity inquiries were...

...This chapter discusses the 1627 general pardon, an edict of grace that marked a significant shift in Portugal's treatment of New Christians. The general pardon was made to incentivize New Christian financiers in Madrid to facilitate the migration of their affluent counterparts in Portugal...

... Ottoman Christians were victims of massacre, atrocities, and extermination. The chapter begins with a discussion of the concept and practice of intervention in nineteenth-century international relations, explaining the term “intervention.” It then provides a brief overview of the history of the Eastern...

... the province of Syria, before discussing how Europeans saw themselves compared to how they portrayed Mount Lebanon's populations. It then analyzes the conditions that brought about the massacre of the Ottoman Christians in 1860, along with the European governments' reaction and the motives...

...This chapter examines discourses about recitation in Zoroastrian and Christian literature. It first considers a Zoroastrian distinction similar to the one the Babylonian Talmud makes between the reciter and the scholar. It then looks at a Christian author who is also using a negative portrayal...

...This chapter discusses how, for medieval Christians, belief was a way of negotiating this characteristic predicament of a religion that posits an utterly transcendent deity but then desires to know him. Belief mitigated the potential hubris that adhered in every attempt to approach God, not only...

... the environment while others who could afford it asked Christians to produce liturgical objects that were in accordance with their religious laws and special sensitivities. collateral Constantini Honorade elite moneylending moneylending pawnbroking Seguier Raymond and Marthend Sibon Juliette Kracauer...

... as they exist now. Ample documentation points to Jewish silversmiths, bookbinders, painters, and coral craftsmen helping Christians decorate their devotional articles. Christian liturgical objects coral rosaries Jewish artists and craftsmen Sicilian coral Sparti Aldo Machlufus de Actono bookbinding...

.... Since this hierarchy forms the backdrop of the nascent Christological speculations, it appears that it is the relationship between God and his Son in particular that is at stake in these sources. Additionally, some of these midrashim hint at the increasingly heated debate between Jews and Christians...

...How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? This book explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups...

...This chapter looks into the contested debates of pagan virtue found in Augustine of Hippo's works. The critique of “pagan virtue” presents a special challenge for the Augustinian account of political hope. The chapter considers an alternative Augustinian account that recognizes non-Christians...

.... It also highlights forced conversionary sermons that became a defining feature of early modern Rome, which are considered another kind of occasion when Christians observed a crowd of Jews in public. The chapter establishes that sermons to Jews helped to define the New Rome of the early modern era...

...This chapter examines how graffiti was inscribed and painted by ancient Jews to communicate with and about the divine. It begins with a discussion of paintings and carvings that cover the surfaces of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—revered by many Christians as the site where Jesus was crucified...

... for this. Of paramount importance are basic demographic facts. The religious backgrounds of immigrants in Western Europe and the United States are different, mostly Christian in the United States as compared to Western Europe, where a large proportion is Muslim. Muslims of immigrant origin in Western Europe also have...