This volume introduces readers to the faith and work of four figures of the 19th century revival movement called the German Awakening: -- August Tholuck (1799-1871) -- Johann Hinrich Wichern (1808-1881) -- Theodor Fliedner (1800-1864) -- Friedrich von Bodelschwingh (1831-1910) The German Awakening engendered a spirituality that fostered human kindness, grounded it in awakened faith, and gave it the shape of loving service to society. This remarkable and unique scholarly contribution: -- translates the majority of its materials for the first time in English. -- includes a variety of spiritual genres -- sermons, hymns, commentaries, mission statements, etc.

This volume introduces readers to the faith and work of four figures of the 19th century revival movement called the German Awakening: -- August Tholuck (1799-1871) -- Johann Hinrich Wichern (1808-1881) -- Theodor Fliedner (1800-1864) -- Friedrich von Bodelschwingh (1831-1910) The German Awakening engendered a spirituality that fostered human kindness, grounded it in awakened faith, and gave it the shape of loving service to society. This remarkable and unique scholarly contribution: -- translates the majority of its materials for the first time in English. -- includes a variety of spiritual genres -- sermons, hymns, commentaries, mission statements, etc.

When a young Lutheran pastor named Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805-1880) interceded for a tormented woman in his village, he got more than he reckoned for. "We've seen enough of what the Devil can do", he told her. "Now let us see what God can do". But would one man's simple faith hold out against the onslaught of occult forces that began to reveal themselves? Two years later the enemy, defeated, howled, "Jesus is the victor!" and fled. Nothing would ever be the same in Mottlingen, Blumhardt's rural parish in the Black Forest. The palpable nearness of God -- and the reality of the great cosmic battle between good and evil -- was in many ways reminiscent of apostolic times. Sick and disabled people were healed, mental illness vanished, and stolen goods were returned. Murders were even solved, and broken marriages restored. Marked by the transformation of lives and relationships, yet devoid of exaggerated emotionalism and religiosity, the revival spread like a quiet tide, beyond the Black Forest, throughout Germany, and even farther, despite the efforts of a cynical press and Blumhardt's nervous ecclesiastical superiors. To those who despair over the spiritual poverty of contemporary Christianity, this book offers quiet but bold assurance that God can work as powerfully in our time as he did in his.

August Hermann Francke described his conversion to Pietism in gripping terms that included intense spiritual struggle, weeping, falling to his knees, and a decisive moment in which his doubt suddenly disappeared and he was “overwhelmed as with a stream of joy.” His account came to exemplify Pietist conversion in the historical imagination around Pietism and religious awakening. Jonathan Strom’s new interpretation challenges the paradigmatic nature of Francke’s narrative and seeks to uncover the more varied, complex, and problematic character that conversion experiences posed for Pietists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Grounded in archival research, German Pietism and the Problem of Conversion traces the way that accounts of conversion developed and were disseminated among Pietists. Strom examines members’ relationship to the pious stories of the “last hours,” the growth of conversion narratives in popular Pietist periodicals, controversies over the Busskampf model of conversion, the Dargun revival movement, and the popular, if gruesome, genre of execution conversion narratives. Interrogating a wide variety of sources and examining nuance in the language used to define conversion throughout history, Strom explains how these experiences were received and why many Pietists had an uneasy relationship to conversions and the practice of narrating them. A learned, insightful work by one of the world’s leading scholars of Pietism, this volume sheds new light on Pietist conversion and the development of piety and modern evangelical narratives of religious experience.

Today, practicing shamanism doesn't mean you have to live in a rain forest or a desert. Thanks to a modern renaissance of shamanic spirituality, practitioners from all walks of life now use powerful indigenous techniques for healing, insight, and spiritual growth. With Awakening to the Spirit World, teachers Sandra Ingerman and Hank Wesselman bring together a circle of renowned Western shamanic elders Tom Cowan, Carol Proud foot-Edgar, Jose Stevens, and Alberto Villoldo to present a comprehensive manual for making these practices accessible and available in our daily lives, including; How the original practice of shamanism shaped the world's spiritual traditions and why it is still relevant today The art of the shamanic journey a time-tested meditative method for experiencing important spiritual lessons and truths Guidance for avoiding common pitfalls of shamanic practice Instruction for working with your dreams, connecting to your spirit guides, healing yourself and your environment A CD of drumming to facilitate your shamanic journeys.

Though relatively unknown in America, Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805-1880) is widely recognized in his native Germany, in part because of Friedrich Zundel's landmark biography, now available in English for the first time. The terrifying battle between the spiritual forces of good and evil described here, and the awakening that followed, catapulted Blumhardt's parish into the public eye and still draws seekers to it. Zundel's account is fascinating on a historical level, but it is also infused with enduring pastoral insights and spiritual wisdom. Here is an almost unbelievable account of one person's faith in the inbreaking of God's kingdom and its victory over powers that bind and divide humanity.

In German Religious Women in Late Ottoman Beirut. Competing Missions, Julia Hauser offers a critical analysis of the German Protestant Kaiserswerth deaconesses’ orphanage and boarding school for girls in late Ottoman Beirut as situated within the larger field of educational development in the city. Drawing, among other sources, on the deaconesses’ largely unpublished letters home, her study illuminates that the only way missionary organizations like the deaconesses' could succeed was by entering into negotiations with their local environment, adapting their agenda in the process. Mission, therefore, was shaped not merely at home, but by conflictual negotiations on the periphery ‒ a perspective quite different from the top-down isolationist perspective of earlier research on missions.