Educating People of Faith: Exploring the History of Jewish and Christian CommunitiesJohn H. Van Engen A much-needed addition to the emerging literature on the formative power of religious practices, "Educating People of Faith" creates a vivid portrait of the lived practices that shaped the faith of Jews and Christians in synagogues and churches from antiquity up to the seventeenth century. This significant book is the work of Jewish, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant scholars who wished to discover and describe how Jews and Christians through history have been formed in religious ways of thinking and acting. Rather than focusing solely on either intellectual or social life, the authors all use the concept of practices as they attend to the embodied, contextual character of religious formation. Their studies of religious figures, community life, and traditional practices such as preaching, sacraments, and catechesis are colorful, detailed, and revealing. The authors are also careful to cover the nature of religious education across all social levels, from the textual formation of highly literate rabbis and monks engaged in Scripture study to the local formation of illiterate medieval Christians for whom the veneration of saints' shrines, street performances of religious dramas, and public preaching by wandering preachers were profoundly formative. "Educating People of Faith" will benefit scholars and teachers desiring a fuller perspective on how lived practices have historically formed people in religious faith. It will also be useful to practical theologians and pastors who wish to make the resources of the past available to practitioners in the present. Contributors: John C. Cavadini |
Contents
Religious Formation in Ancient Judaism | 20 |
Christian Formation in the Early Church | 37 |
Simplifying Augustine | 52 |
Food in the Desert | 74 |
Faith Formation in Byzantium | 104 |
Community and Education in Premodern Judaism | 121 |
Practice beyond the Confines of the Medieval Parish | 139 |
Orality Textuality and Revelation as Modes of Education and Formation in Jewish Mystical Circles of the High Middle Ages | 167 |
The ThirteenthCentury English Parish | 197 |
The Cult of the Virgin Mary and Technologies of Christian Formation in the Later Middle Ages | 212 |
Luther and Formation in Faith | 242 |
Zwingli and Reformed Practice | 259 |
Catechesis in Calvins Geneva | 283 |
Ritual and Faith Formation in Early Modern Catholic Europe | 303 |
Spiritual Direction as Christian Pedagogy | 319 |
List of Contributors | 340 |
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