In Redefining Heresy and Tolerance, Hung Tak Wai examines how the Qing empire governed Muslims and Christians under its rule with a non-interventionist policy. Manchu emperors adopted a tolerant attitude towards Islam and Christianity as long as political stability and loyalty remained unthreatened. However, Hung argues that such tolerance had its limitations. Since the mid-eighteenth century, the Qing court intentionally minimised the importance of the Islamic identity. Restrictions were imposed on the Muslims’ external connections with Western Asia. The Christian minority was kept distant from politics and the Han majority. At the same time, Confucian scholars began to acquire a new understanding of religion, but they were not encouraged to get in touch with the Muslims and Christians. This book demonstrates how, from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, the Qing government prevented Confucian scholar-bureaucrats from interfering in the religious life of Christians and Muslims, and how the Confucians’ understanding of ‘religion’ was reshaped during the implementation of such policy in the period. This book reveals that a different kind of ‘religious tolerance’ had already emerged among Sinophone intellectuals before their contact with the West. ‘This book goes beyond the assumption of a homogeneous Han society and pays attention to the religious groups that emerged after the seventeenth century, which differed from, or even contradicted, Confucianism and other Chinese religions, and it is concerned with how such alien communities influenced the development of Confucianism itself.’ —Wang Fan-sen, Academia Sinica ‘This book significantly enriches our comprehension of how early modern Confucians, as adherents of a state/public religion, engaged with Abrahamic religions. By delving into the dynamics of interreligious interaction, Redefining Heresy and Tolerance sheds new light on the encounters between Confucianism and the Abrahamic faiths, offering fresh insights into the complex religious landscape of Asian culture.’ —Huang Chin-shing, Academia Sinica

The authors strive to illuminate every aspect of Erasmus’ life, work, and legacy while providing an expert synthesis of the most inspiring research in the field. There is no volume to compare or to compete with this compendium of all Erasmian knowledge.

This interdisciplinary volume of essays brings together a team of leading early modern historians and literary scholars in order to examine the changing conceptions, character, and condemnation of 'heresy' in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Definitions of 'heresy' and 'heretics' were the subject of heated controversies in England from the English Reformation to the end of the seventeenth century. These essays illuminate the significant literary issues involved in both defending and demonising heretical beliefs, including the contested hermeneutic strategies applied to the interpretation of the Bible, and they examine how debates over heresy stimulated the increasing articulation of arguments for religious toleration in England. Offering fresh perspectives on John Milton, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and others, this volume should be of interest to all literary, religious and political historians working on early modern English culture.

Outside the Fold is a radical reexamination of religious conversion. Gauri Viswanathan skillfully argues that conversion is an interpretive act that belongs in the realm of cultural criticism. To that end, this work examines key moments in colonial and postcolonial history to show how conversion questions the limitations of secular ideologies, particularly the discourse of rights central to both the British empire and the British nation-state. Implicit in such questioning is an attempt to construct an alternative epistemological and ethical foundation of national community. Viswanathan grounds her study in an examination of two simultaneous and, she asserts, linked events: the legal emancipation of religious minorities in England and the acculturation of colonial subjects to British rule. The author views these two apparently disparate events as part of a common pattern of national consolidation that produced the English state. She seeks to explain why resistance, in both cases, frequently took the form of religious conversion, especially to "minority" or alternative religions. Confronting the general characterization of conversion as assimilative and annihilating of identity, Viswanathan demonstrates that a willful change of religion can be seen instead as an act of opposition. Outside the Fold concludes that, as a form of cultural crossing, conversion comes to represent a vital release into difference. Through the figure of the convert, Viswanathan addresses the vexing question of the role of belief and minority discourse in modern society. She establishes new points of contact between the convert as religious dissenter and as colonial subject. This convergence provides a transcultural perspective not otherwise visible in literary and historical texts. It allows for radically new readings of significant figures as diverse as John Henry Newman, Pandita Ramabai, Annie Besant, and B. R. Ambedkar, as well as close studies of court cases, census reports, and popular English fiction. These varying texts illuminate the means by which discourses of religious identity are produced, contained, or opposed by the languages of law, reason, and classificatory knowledge. Outside the Fold is a challenging, provocative contribution to the multidisciplinary field of cultural studies.

The Gold Medallion Award-winning book that presents a persuasive case for Christ as the only way to God in light of contemporary religious pluralism. A great majority of social commentators attempting to define modern Western culture land on a common characteristic: pluralism. This isn't unique to secular culture. Many modern approaches to Christian hermeneutics, or biblical interpretation, have given credence to contemporary pluralism. What began as a refreshing restraint and humility in modern theology has fallen more and more into irresoluteness. It's no secret that the contemporary challenges to Christianity are complex and serious. Yet, far from simple fear-mongering, or cultural warmongering, The Gagging of God takes a hard look at the background and intricacy—of pluralism, postmodernity, and hermeneutics—and equips thoughtful Christians to have intelligent, culturally sensitive, and passionate fidelity to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In his contemplative, even-handed approach, Carson provides a structure of Christian thought capable of facing the philosophies of today and piercing their surface. It invites Christians to grapple responsibly with urgent questions of biblically-grounded theology, spirituality, and the defining lines of Christianity, along with its range of challenges from without and within. The Gagging of God offers an in-depth look at the big picture, shows how the many ramifications of pluralism are all parts of a whole, and provides a systematic Christian response.

Erasmus was not only one of the most widely read authors of the early modern period, but one of the most controversial. For some readers he represented the perfect humanist scholar; for others, he was an arrogant hypercritic, a Lutheran heretic and polemicist, a virtuoso writer and rhetorician, an inventor of a new, authentic Latin style, etc. In the present volume, a number of aspects of Erasmus’s manifold reception are discussed, especially lesser-known ones, such as his reception in Neo-Latin poetry. The volume does not focus only on so-called Erasmians, but offers a broader spectrum of reception and demonstrates that Erasmus’s name also was used in order to authorize completely un-Erasmian ideals, such as atheism, radical reformation, Lutheranism, religious intolerance, Jesuit education, Marian devotion, etc. Contributors include: Philip Ford, Dirk Sacré, Paul J. Smith, Lucia Felici, Gregory D. Dodds, Hilmar M. Pabel, Reinier Leushuis, Jeanine De Landtsheer, Johannes Trapman, and Karl Enenkel.

Jude is one of the shortest books in the Bible. Perhaps that is one reason it is also relatively unknown in our day. Or perhaps the reason is that Jude calls the church to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. In contemporary American culture almost any religious debating or contending is considered hate speech. The churches feel the pressure of society against arguing over the truth, since the majority no longer believes there is such a thing as absolute truth. Therefore Jude is a refreshing voice calling all believers not to be tolerant of every movement that tries to intrude itself into the church. There is truth. God's word is truth. Consequently, believers are called to take a stand for the truth, and even to fight for the truth. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the complete truth of everlasting salvation to which nothing new needs to be added. The hope for this brief Bible study of Jude is that it will help God's people contend for the faith.