In The Long Defeat, Akiko Hashimoto explores the stakes of war memory in Japan after its catastrophic defeat in World War II, showing how and why defeat has become an indelible part of national collective life, especially in recent decades. Divisive war memories lie at the root of the contentious politics surrounding Japan's pacifist constitution and remilitarization, and fuel the escalating frictions in East Asia known collectively as Japan's "history problem." Drawing on ethnography, interviews, and a wealth of popular memory data, this book identifies three preoccupations - national belonging, healing, and justice - in Japan's discourses of defeat. Hashimoto uncovers the key war memory narratives that are shaping Japan's choices - nationalism, pacifism, or reconciliation - for addressing the rising international tensions and finally overcoming its dark history.

In The Long Defeat, Akiko Hashimoto explores the stakes of war memory in Japan after its catastrophic defeat in World War II, showing how and why defeat has become an indelible part of national collective life, especially in recent decades. Divisive war memories lie at the root of the contentious politics surrounding Japan's pacifist constitution and remilitarization, and fuel the escalating frictions in East Asia known collectively as Japan's "history problem." Drawing on ethnography, interviews, and a wealth of popular memory data, this book identifies three preoccupations - national belonging, healing, and justice - in Japan's discourses of defeat. Hashimoto uncovers the key war memory narratives that are shaping Japan's choices - nationalism, pacifism, or reconciliation - for addressing the rising international tensions and finally overcoming its dark history.

This book makes a fresh contribution to a growing genre of popular literature facing Christianity's late-modern or postmodern decline. It situates the broader fate of Christian faith within the eschatological realism of J.R.R. Tolkien's characterization of history as a "long defeat."

The sexual revolution is part of wider and deeper developments happening in our world. It asserts the total freedom of the individual to behave as if the traditions of religion, the wisdom of philosophy, and the realities of biology have no claim on how we live, especially in the area of sexuality. The author traces the history of the sexual revolution, from the early days of the Enlightenment through Marxist movements to our own times, and the failure of governments and even churches to defend sound principles for sexual behavior. He records the constant teaching of popes and Church councils and highlights their focus on the integration of sexual morality and personality within the contexts of human nature, marriage, and the welfare of children. Bishop Elliott acknowledges that Catholic parents, teachers, and pastors need guidance about sexual ethics. And so do high school and college students. To help them understand the teaching of the Church and affirm it, he offers not only the clarity that comes from a thorough understanding of the subject, but also the pastoral sensitivity that has resulted from decades of service to the Church.

Does the New Testament teach that a wife must submit to her husband as head? If so, does it have a lasting value beyond the cultural milieu in which it was first articulated? The Politics of Conjugal Love takes a fresh approach to this classic issue in theological anthropology, paying specific attention to the role of theological hermeneutics in its interpretation. Conor Sweeney and Brian T. Trainor contend that both “subordinationist” and “anti-subordinationist” readings of headship and submission miss the mark. Their alternative is a baptismally specified trinitarian reading in which headship and submission appear as modes intrinsic to both life in Christ and the love proper to the highest mode of trinitarian love.

Jesus did not say "take and think." He said "take and eat." This is embodied worship. It includes gestures, rites, kneeling, raising hands, and of course eating and drinking a holy meal with God. These activities are liturgies. Liturgy is the physical, embodied activity of worship--it's what we do in worship--everyone has a liturgy! As such, worship is the church's primary means of discipleship. Instead of fearing to kneel because it's "Roman Catholic," or fearing to raise your hands because it's "Pentecostal," perhaps we should simply see what God recommends in the Scriptures--then without fear and by faith (at the appropriate time) start kneeling, raising our hands, and eating a covenant meal with God (on a weekly basis). The hope is to replace a fear-driven approach to worship with a faith-driven, embodied worship that offers deep, robust, and beautiful worship experiences combined with the hope of great blessings. In doing so, we hope for nothing less than a new reformation--a reformation in worship.

The concept of vocation in an early modern setting calls to mind the priesthood or religious life in a monastery or cloister; to be “called” by God meant to leave the concerns of the world behind. Beginning in the mid-seventeenth century, French Catholic clergy began to promote the innovative idea that everyone, even an ordinary layperson, was called to a vocation or “state of life” and that discerning this call correctly had implications for one’s happiness and salvation, and for the social good. In Callings and Consequences Christopher Lane analyzes the origins, growth, and influence of a culture of vocation that became a central component of the Catholic Reformation and its legacy in France. The reformers’ new vision of the choice of a state of life was marked by four characteristics: urgency (the realization that one’s soul was at stake), inclusiveness (the belief that everyone, including lay people, was called by God), method (the use of proven discernment practices), and liberty (the belief that this choice must be free from coercion, especially by parents). No mere passing phenomena, these vocational reforms engendered enduring beliefs and practices within the repertoire of global Catholic modernity, even to the present day. An illuminating and sometimes surprising history of pastoral reform, Callings and Consequences helps us to understand the history of Catholic vocational culture and its role in the modernizing process, within Christianity and beyond.