Why did conversion to Christianity take place in some Asian areas and not others? What happened when sacred and religious texts from Abrahamic traditions, especially Christianity, were translated into Chinese? What were the effects when the secular and the religious were asserted to be separate realms? What were the consequences for ideas about the private, the public, and the state? How did re...

Among many indigenous peoples of Amazonia, shamanism and Christianity co-exist as central cultural elements shaping the ways in which people interpret and interact with the world. Despite centuries of co-existence, the relationship between shamanism and Christianity has entered an especially dynamic era as many of Amazonia’s indigenous peoples abandon Catholicism for Evangelical and Sabbatarian...

As a religion based on the teaching of Jesus Christ, from the outset Christianity has developed a completely different attitude toward health and illness than the Old Testament. Health and illness are now viewed through the eyes of Jesus Christ the redeemer, who accepted each and every man. The history of Christianity has had its episodes of masochistic attitude toward illness, but today it cle...

W. J. SHEILS (editor), The Church and healing, (Studies in Church History, No. 19), Oxford, Basil Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1982, 8vo, pp. xxiv, 440, £19.50. This collection of essays represents a thoughtful, stimulating, and generally successful cooperative attempt by medical and ecclesiastical historians to study an important topic, the relationship between the Christi...

W. J. SHEILS (editor), The Church and healing, (Studies in Church History, No. 19), Oxford, Basil Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1982, 8vo, pp. xxiv, 440, £19.50. This collection of essays represents a thoughtful, stimulating, and generally successful cooperative attempt by medical and ecclesiastical historians to study an important topic, the relationship between the Christi...

Note: Contribution to ‘Augustine and Manichaean Christianity’, the First South African Symposium on Augustine of Hippo, University of Pretoria, 24−26 April 2012. Dr Jacob van den Berg is participating as research fellow of Prof. Dr Hans van Oort, Professor Extraordinarius in the Department of Church History and Polity of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Afr...