What the book highlights is the fact that Lewis consistently used his novels, both the fantasy Narnia novels and other works, to discuss the nature of evil and the problems that it faced for the individual. Consistently employing his characters to fulfill and further his case, most if not all his villains are presented as subjectivists or entirely self-absorbed. Take the White Witch of Narnia as an example: incapable of understanding true love or human empathy, she is condemned to a life of perpetual isolation, trapped in a endless cylce of repitition  incapable of connecting with other beings – human and non-human alike. What I think Lewis was exploring was that the nature of evil is at its most insidious when their in an absence of love or human empathy: in order to achieve and understand one another, we must love and truly empathise with one another. This I think is Lewis’s message that is so vital to an understanding to his concept of evil.

What is unique about the ideas presented in this book is that the nature of evil is presented in an entirely new light and addressed in a entirley different manner. There has been considerable critical acclaim for the book; Alan Jacobs, author of The Narnian: the Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis, describes how ‘few ideas were more central to Lewis’s thought than his critique of subjectivism. Particularly valuable in this study is Root’s insistence that Lewis considered fiction and poetry as key venue.’

C.S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil is available from James Clark & Co.

Blaise Fermor-Hesketh

And now, we are pleased to announce, it has arrived! We thought we would pass on the press release to pique your interest in this fascinating and insightful book:

The Process of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue

By Paul O. Ingram

In recent years there has been a burgeoning of interest in Buddhist-Christian studies, an area of theory which compares Buddhism and Christianity on comprehensive theological and philosophical grounds—such as ultimate reality, human nature, suffering, evil and the role of Christ and Buddha historically. It asks in what ways do these religions intersect and what can each learn from its religious ‘other’? Paul O. Ingram’s new publication explores this profoundly postmodern experience of religious pluralism.

Ingram’s new title builds chiefly on the theoretical basis of his previous work Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science, in which the dialogue between these two faiths was expanded to include their interaction with the natural sciences, creating a ‘trialogue’ of interpretation. The Process of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue turns again to dialogue and ‘trialogue’, revolutionising his original readings through the added perspective of Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, a theory of metaphysics that emphasises the role of processes in philosophical and ontological analysis. Ingram practically applies this mode of philosophy whereby: ‘process is fun­damental to not only human experience, but to the structure of reality, the way things and events really are’ (Author Introduction). The principal discovery at the heart of Ingram’s thesis is that the Buddhist-Christian dialogue in its three modes – conceptual, social engagement and interior – act as interdependent processes of creative transformation. According to this theory, the interreligious dialogue is a process by which the believer passes into the other faith tradition, inherits what can and cannot be appropriated into his/her own faith, before being reconciled into the original faith community

The Process of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue explores both faiths as comparative practical humanitarian forces in the world, which Ingram finds to be the ultimate “common ground” between Buddhism and Christianity. Thus transcending purely religious matters, the global-cultural span of this work gives rise to debates of social, environmental, economic and gender justice. This text will appeal therefore to those with interests as varied as philosophy, sociology, theology, comparative religion, ethics and mission studies.

Reviews for The Process of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue:

“The multifaceted complexity and richness of the work, however, issues from Paul Ingram’s wholehearted engagement with dialogue, not just as a scholar, but as a person. In plumbing the very depths of his own faith, he has been inexorably impelled to examine his life within the larger scope of human and cosmic diversity, to reach beyond any sort of dogmatically predefined boundaries. He is a scholar of Japanese Pure Land thought, East Asian Buddhism, and religion and science, but it is here in The Process of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue that he truly reveals the deep hues of his kaleidoscopic lifework.”

Mark Unno, University of Oregon

“Ingram offers an insightful, well-structured, and panoramic view of the field of Buddhist-Christian studies, mapping out the conceptual, socially engaged, and interior dimensions of the dialogue that continue to enrich and expand the horizons of both traditions.”

Ruben L.F. Habito, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

About the Author: Paul O. Ingram is Professor of Religion Emeritus at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. He is the author of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science, Wrestling with God, and Wrestling with the Ox: A Theology of Religious Experience.

If you are interested in reviewing this title, please contact our friendly Publicity and Sales team at James Clarke & Co: publicity@jamesclarke.co or sales@lutterworth.com.

If The Process of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue has intrigued you, you may also be interested inMeditation and Piety in the Far East by Karl Ludwig Reichelt, Martin Luther and Buddhism: Aesthetics of Suffering by Paul S. Chung and Islam and Christian Theology: A Study of the Interpretation of Theological Idea in the Two Religons by James Sweetman. To purchase The Process of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue or any of these related titles, please visit our website at www.jamesclarke.co.

You already know their names: St. Paul, St. Augustine of Hippo, St.Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, so why not learn what set these great men and women apart from the average church-goer and discover how their influence has shaped the Church throughout history? Evelyn Underhill’s Mystics of the Church explores not only the historical development of Christian mysticism and its role in the Church, but also provides fascinating insight in the spiritual growth of the individual mystics, their struggles, achievements and influence. Underhill illuminates the whole of her subject by drawing attention to the differences of approach that can bring a man along the road to the divine, from the zealous militancy of a Loyola to the passivity of the Quietists. Add some mystic inspiration to your life for only £20.00 £18.00!

Literature and Sacrament: The Sacred and the Secular in John Donne by Theresa M. DiPasquale is the perfect evening read for a lover of English literature. This elegant and scholarly study places Donne’s secular and religious poetry in the context of 17th-century popular culture and the Reformation debate on the Christian sacraments. DiPasquale sheds new light on the poetics of the period, as well as giving fresh and detailed readings of Donne’s poems. Enjoy an adept and engaging study of one of the greatest poets in the English language for a mere £52.50 £47.25!

Or if you prefer a riveting account of a rather over-looked historical period, try The Church in an Age of Negligence: Ecclesiastical Structure and Problems of Church Reform 1700-1840 by Peter Virgin. Using the same methods employed by pioneering psycho-historian Lewis Bernstein Namier to dissect 18th-century politics, Virgin provides a comprehensive understanding of the status of the clergy in Georgian society. In his exploration of ecclesiastical structure, incorporating tithe income, patronage, pluralism, non-residence and the numerous problems of church reform, Virgin overturns orthodoxies and puts forward a series of original and challenging views of the Georgian Church. Discover, or rediscover, a fascinating period of English history for £52.50 £47.25!

For more titles on religion and poetry, such as Milton and the Preaching Arts by Jameela Lares and On Poetry by Giovanni Antonio Viperano, please click here. If mysticism intrigues you, James Clarke & Co would like to recommend these alternative titles: The Life of the Servant by Henry Suso, Mystical Element of Religion: Two Volume Set by Friedrich von Hügel, Heresy and Mysticism in 16th Century Spain: The Alumbrados by Alastair Hamilton and many more. For more on the history of the Church, such as The Doctrine of Faith in the Reign of Henry VIII by D.B. Knox or Leonard Elliot-Binns’s The Early Evangelicals: A Religious and Social Study, please click here.

Offers end on September 30, 2011! Check out James Clarke & Co and our sister-publisher, The Lutterworth Press, for more special offers and irresistable titles!

RRP:£42.00 £35.70

Offer ends 30th September 2011

The riots of last month shook the country and with it, the perception of the country internationally. One could not help wondering what assumptions were being made all over the world about English social identity, and even more so within our own nation.

Gillian Brennan’s work challenges the established views of those who have followed the tendency of placing the origins of nationalism in the Middle Ages. It stresses the differences between the concepts of nationalism and patriotism and examines the connotations of patriotism in its own right rather than as nascent nationalism.

Gillian Brennan explores the advent of ‘Englishness’, as the result of a disparate community that was gradually centralised and inspired with a sense of unity. As the United Kingdom was born and an Empire started to flourish, this term was gradually replaced by ‘British’, which became the hallmark of a proud and successful nation.

What it is to be ‘British’ or ‘English’ as a signifier of identity is once more being re-appraised. Patriotism, Power and Print explains the origin of England’s social identity, for a community attempting to redefine it today.

Click Patriotism, Power and Print for more information on, or to buy, this title. For more offers from James Clarke & Co, click here.

Book of the Month: Philosophy, Dissent and Nonconformity by Alan P. F Sell.

Look through the keyhole into the Nonconformist colleges where philosophy’s answer to the Romantics—dissenting, dangerous living radicals— studied philosophy for two long centuries, outside of the mainstream Anglican-Oxbridge Academy. Over one hundred such institutions existed during the period from 1689-1920, and yet Dr. Sell is the very first to tell this alternative history of philosophical education, revealing the diversity that existed in the movement, accommodating everyone from Evangelicals to Rationalists. The subject matter taught was similarly diverse: from logic and metaphysics to ethics and theology. Academy tutors left in turn a small but rich legacy of publication, from which moral philosophy emerges as the unique concern among dissenting philosophical circles. Doctor Sell’s groundbreaking study focuses on such individual thinkers as Richard Price, Joseph Priestley and James Martineau, correcting the unjust overlooking of such figures that continues in Oxbridge-focussed history writings today.

For more information and a chance to get this book at a special reduced price for this month only, click here.

Rosemary Hahn (Publicity)

Related Titles:

• Voice of Nonconformity: William Robertson Nicoll and The British Weekly
  By Keith A. Ives
• Philosophy Begins in Wonder: An Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy, Theology and Science by Michael Funk Deckard and Péter Losonczi (editors)
•  The Proof of the External World: Cartesian Theism and the Possibility of Knowledge by Steven M. Duncan
• Foundations of Progressive Education: The History of the National Froebel Society by Joachim Liebschner

Within this hive of academic activity we will introduce four of our latest publications:

All Shall Be Well By Gregory MacDonald is a tour de force across centuries of minority Universalist thought, revealing the sheer diversity existing within the discourse.

God’s Wounds Volume I & II By Jeff B. Pool examine divine suffering through the prism of Creation and Evil respectively, in this crucial contribution to the field of hermeneutics.

Finally In The Shadow Of His Wings By Jonathan Macy relocates the role of angels in the protestant tradition through a combination of scripture analysis and pastoral theology. All three works boldly confront eschatological issues to leave us with much food for thought, not least concerning the destination of our souls!

_{T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding, (No. 4 of ‘Four Quartets’)}

Except of course that it wouldn’t, because for the last six years the Little Gidding T.S. Eliot Festival has been quietly growing. To investigate further and to ensure that Web of Friendship: Nicholas Ferrar and Little Gidding and Anglo-Catholic in Religion: T.S. Eliot and Christianity were duly promoted (they were), the newest member of the Lutterworth team attended the event incognito.

There are pictures below of the delightful scene she discovered but of course what the crowd were there for was words; they were not disappointed. In the form of readings, lectures, discussions and song, inspirational words flowed through the beautiful grounds of Ferrar House.

Setting for the Little Gidding Festival 2011

The weekend saw at least seven very erudite speakers engage with an equally passionate and opinionated audience on many aspects of Eliot’s life and legacy, particularly those pertaining to the physical and metaphysical importance of Little Gidding itself. The history of Little Gidding and the Ferrar family, the subject of Joyce Ransome’s new book, was known to Eliot and although it is the later history of the family and house which is alluded to in the symbolism of the forth of his ‘Four Quartets’, the piety of the location is significant to his poetry and indeed his own personal faith— the topic of  Barry Spurr’s work. In addition to the words, wonderful music was provided by Alexander Kershaw, the fantastic Time Loves Changes quartet and some 1920s and 30s music specially arranged by poet and priest Malcolm Guite.

Over 100 people attended the festival from all levels of familiarity with the bard. On Saturday Joyce Ransome herself was in the audience, and on Sunday the numbers were swelled by students of the T.S. Eliot International Summerschool.

The festival was a great success in terms of both enjoyment and learning however this is in

Erudite Speakers, click image for programme

proportion to the huge amount of effort in terms of planning and organising that went into the event. Particular praise and mention should go to Wendy and Paul Skirrow, the new occupiers of Ferrar House who took on the challenge of the festival having only been in residence eight months. Also to the members of the planning committee who not only planned but brilliantly compèred (Simon Kershaw), and lectured (Hugh Black-Hawkins) as well as representing their own societies-the Friends of Little Gidding and the T S Eliot Society (UK). Huge thanks should also go to the staff and volunteers for all their work behind the scenes, particularly in producing the amazing meals, teas and cakes that kept everyone going.

As a complete Eliot novice this under-cover observer would defiantly recommend attending the event in the future however the continuation of the festival depends on the hard work of those involved. If you would like more information about the festival and how you can help maintain Eliot’s memory at Little Gidding, please email eliotfestival@littlegidding.org.uk.

To find out more about The Web of Friendship: Nicholas Ferrar and Little Gidding by Joyce Ransome, or to request a review copy, please contact: Fiona Christie at sales@lutterworth.com

The Author of our new title The Web of Friendship will be reading an excerpt at a service of evensong at Westminster Abbey on Sunday 19^th June celebrating the ordination of Nicholas Ferrar there in 1626.

Joyce Ransome presents a story of a man whose  ministry to his family turned a worldly misfortune into a spiritual opportunity to unite in piety and become an example of community to their own and future generations.

Born in London in 1593, Nicholas Ferrar was educated at Clare Hall, which is now Clare College , in Cambridge and was elected a fellow there in 1610. From 1613 he travelled extensively on the continent for four years, and on his return worked with the Virginia Company, and was briefly elected to Parliament.

In 1626, he and his family made permanent their move to Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, a manor they had pruchased in 1624/5.  The household included Nicholas’s widowed mother, his brother John with his wife Bathsheba and their children, and his sister Susanna and her husband John Collett and their numerous children.  They restored the derelict manor house and church and established a life of prayer, education  and service based on scripture and the Book of Common Prayer, This mercantile family thus became a voluntary society that Nicholas hoped would preach to contemporaries by its example.

Although the family’s daily life followed a strict routine, it remained a household rather than a monastic community.  The family tended to the health and education of local children, and Nicholas and his family produced harmonies of the gospels that survive today as some of the finest in Britain.

Unusually women played an important role in the community of Little Gidding. Nicholas Ferrar’s mother, Mary, who had used her dower money to purchase Little Gidding, headed, with Nicholas, this unusual family.  She was noted for having in her sixties memorised the entire psalter.  She particularly concerned herself with the education of her granddaughters.  The two eldest granddaughters, Mary and Anna Collet, committed themselves to lives of chastity. As their grandmother grew older, Mary especially resumed much of her responsibility. She ran the surgery and book-binding work and bound the first concordance presented to Charles I.

Nicholas Ferrar was ordained to the diaconate by William Laud in Westminster Abbey in 1626 when the family had decided to make Gidding their permanent home. He wrote to his niece in 1631, ‘I purpose and hope by God’s grace to be to you not as a master but as a partner and fellow student.’ This indicates the depth and feeling of the community life Nicholas and his family strove to maintain.

Despite difficulties the community continued after the death of Nicholas on 4 December 1637, until the disruptions of the civil war years and the departure of many of the younger generation made it impossible to carry on the communal life as Nicholas had established it. Nevertheless the memory of Nicholas Ferrar and his family has continued to inspire Christians to lives of prayer, service and community.

While that hope to be an example to the world was at best only partially fulfilled in his lifetime, those who had known him at Little Gidding were able later to form networks that adapted that piety and voluntarism to create societies acceptable within the church. These men led the way to voluntary Anglicanism that characterized a ‘Church of England’ in transition from a national to an established but essentially voluntary institution.

Avoiding the hagiographic tone adopted by Ferrar’s biographers, Joyce Ransome shows how the search for community was central to his life and has therefore become the unifying theme around which she has constructed his biography.

For its fresh prospective on the unique Little Gidding that Ferrar created, this book will appeal to both an academic and general audience of readers interested in early modern history, church history, English literature, theology, family history (historical sociology) and gender studies.

For more information about Little Gidding Church or Ferrar Manor House please visit the Ferrar House Website. 

The Friends of Little Gidding maintain the memory of this family living a Christian life in accordance with the Book of Common Prayer according to high church principles. The Friends, first founded over 60 years ago, exist to help maintain the beauty and spirituality of Little Gidding Church and its surroundings, and to remember the life and example of Nicholas Ferrar and his family. The Friends also celebrate the connection between Little Gidding and the poet T S Eliot.  Its members will participate in the service which commemorates the life of Nicholas Ferrar and his ordination at Westminster Abbey.

For more information please visit the Friends of Little Gidding Website.

The Friends of Little Gidding will also be holding the Sixth Annual T S Eliot Festival at Little Gidding on Saturday 9^th July and Sunday 10^th July 2011.

The Festival is a major literary celebration of the life and work of Nobel Prize winning writer Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965). People attending will include visitors from the T S Eliot Summer School. Tickets for the weekend are £45 (early-bird price £40 before 8 June 2011), including Saturday afternoon tea and supper and Sunday lunch and tea.

To find out more about the event please click here

To purchase a copy of The Web of Friendship or to find out more about the book please click here

If you would like to review this book please contact Holly Crabbe at uspublicity@lutterworth.com

Douglas S. Earl’s new book, The Joshua Delusion? Rethinking Genocide in the Bible, due to release this July, argues that we have mistakenly read Joshua as a straightforward historical account and have ended up with a genocide God. In contrast, Earl offers a theological interpretation in which the mass killing of Canaanites is a deliberate use of myth to make important theological points that are still valid today.

“The book of Joshua is hagiographic in nature, which means that its intention was not to recount literal history so much as to make a moral point using the literary devices of warfare literature in order to encourage a certain type of orthodox religious behaviour among the faith community who gathers to hear the book as sacred scripture.”                                                                                     – By Thom Stark, author of The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries To Hide It).

The author surveys the origins of the problems that the book of Joshua has raised for Christians, and the roots of possible ways of reading it that might point to a different way of understanding the book.

“I am delighted, therefore, to commend this book as a model of how to approach difficulties in Scripture. Douglas Earl offers a way of thinking about Joshua that will be surprising and challenging to many. Yet, whether or not his thesis fully persuades, the way in which he approaches the text will surely appeal to all thoughtful Christians; for Earl is simultaneously radical, in that he utilizes fresh resources and challenges common ways of thinking about Joshua, and traditional, in that he reconnects with certain ancient and existentially fruitful Christian ways of handling the text”.                                    – Walter Moberly from the Foreword.

About the author: Douglas Earl did his PhD on the book of Joshua at the University of Durham. He is the author of Reading Joshua as Christian Scripture.

For more information about this title or to request a review copy, please contact Anna Pueyo at publicity@lutterworth.com

This four-yearly gathering of scholars from around the world has become a major event for the many disciplines concerned with Patristics. It gives scholars at all stages of their careers the opportunity to engage with a critical, but sympathetic audience.

The conference and more than five hundred individual contributions indicate the movement of research in the field as a whole. Famous names, addresses, lectures, seminars and topics discussed have marked the history of research in Patristics.

We will be at Stand 13 on the North School, First Floor and hope to see you there!

We will be at Stand 13 on the North School, First Floor and hope to see you there!

To find out more about the International Conference of Patristics visit http://www.patristics.org.uk/

Here are a few highlights from this years catalogue that we will be bringing along to the conference…

Early Christianity in North Africa by Francois Decret

Christian North Africa is a region often reduced to its dominant patristic personalities, yet Early Christianity in North Africa recognises the significant growth and dynamic nature of the African Christian community. Francois Decret explores the roots, diverse history, expansion and significant influence of the Christian Church in North Africa.

This book details the course of the great metamorphosis in North Africa’s identity which went from being Western, Roman and Christian to being part of the Eastern Arab-Muslim world and the effect that this had upon African Christianity.

Edward Smither, Associate Professor of Church History and Intercultural Studies at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, recognised the demand for this book after continuously recommending François Decret’s book to students.This quality translation of an important book captures the unique spirit of an invaluable chapter of church history.

 Early Christianity in North Africa will be available from July. For more information please click here.

The Philokalia and the Inner Life by Christopher C.H. Cook

 Christopher C. H. Cook focuses on the text of Philokalia, providing an intriguing and analytic work which is considered a critical examination of the spirituality of the Philokalia in relation to contemporary understandings of psychotherapy.

The author, like the shepherd of thoughts and ideas on the ‘mountain of contemplation’, explores intelligently the nature of mental well-being and inner life, as well as presenting an account of the pathologies of the soul (passions) and considering the remedies for them.

The book is essential reading for those interested in the contemporary world of psychotherapy, spirituality, the Philokalia texts and also a fruitful prayer as a path to mental well-being.

The Philokalia and the Inner Life is available now from our website. For more information please click here

The Earliest Christian Hymnbook by James H. Charlesworth

Two millennia ago a gifted poet in the Middle East composed the Earliest Christian Hymnbook called the Odes of Solomon and that gifted poet was the anonymous Odist who became the early poet laureate of Christianity.

Professor Charlesworth offers an inviting introduction and a translation of this work that is both engaging and true to the original languages. The poetry, hymns and odes of the first followers of Jesus are evidently present in the New Testament and this volume translates The Odes of Solomon with some of the hymns being obviously Christian while others perhaps Jewish.

The Earliest Christian Hymnbook will be available from July. For more information please click here

For more information about any of these titles please contact Holly Crabbe at uspublicity@lutterworth.com