Revival meeting
A revival meeting is a series of Christian religious services held to inspire active members of a church body to gain new converts. Nineteenth-century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon said, "Many blessings may come to the unconverted in consequence of a revival among Christians, but the revival itself has to do only with those who possess spiritual life." These meetings are conducted by churches or missionary organizations throughout the world. Notable historic revival meetings were conducted in the US by evangelist Billy Sunday and in Wales by evangelist Evan Roberts. A revival meeting consists of several consecutive nights of services conducted at the same time and location, most the building belonging to the sponsoring congregation but sometimes a rented assembly hall, for more adequate space, to provide a setting, more comfortable for non-Christians, or to reach a community where there are no churches. Tents were frequently employed in this effort in the recent past, still are, but less so due to the difficulties in heating and cooling them and otherwise making them comfortable, an increasing consideration with modern audiences.
Ben M. Bogard, from 1909 to 1914, conducted revivals full-time in seven southern states. In 1924, he founded the American Baptist Association, the Missionary Baptist denomination, still based in Texarkana, Texas. ABA churches have traditionally held revivals once or twice a year; the length of such meetings varies. Until the last quarter-century they were a week or more in duration in the Southern United States, they may be held for three or four days. Evangelist Billy Graham planned a week-long crusade in New York City, which extended from May 15 to September 1, 1957. More than two million people went to New York's Madison Square Garden to hear. Most groups holding revival meetings tend to be of a conservative or fundamentalist nature, although some are still held by Mainline groups, which conducted them with a far greater frequency. Similar events may be referred to as "crusades", most those held by Billy Graham and Oral Roberts. Along with camp meetings, the holding of revival services is an integral part of the Methodist tradition, in which they serve to offer individuals the New Birth and entire sanctification.
Conservative Mennonites continue to hold and promote protracted revival meetings of seven or eight days duration at least once per year in a given congregation. The visiting evangelist is chosen from among related congregations. Many revivals are conducted by nondenominational community churches, most of which are conservative in theology; this movement has been portrayed by director Richard Brooks in his 1960 film Elmer Gantry with Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons, adapted from Sinclair Lewis' eponymous novel. The Stephen King novel, features a major character, a revival meeting faith healer. There is a revival scene in the 1997 film The Apostle. Duvall's portrayal of an evangelical minister earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination. Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian begins with a scene set at a revival meeting; the Academy Award-winning documentary Marjoe reviews the career of child-evangelist Marjoe Gortner, giving a behind-the-scenes look at revivals he promoted as an adult.
Neil Diamond's Brother Love's Traveling Salvation. The music video for OneRepublic's Counting Stars depicts a Christian revival meeting. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie depicts a week of revival meetings at the Congregational church in De Smet, South Dakota. Remembrances of revival-meetings attended as a youth were the inspiration for the second movement of Charles Ives' Orchestral Set No. 2, The Rockstrewn Hills Join in the People's Outdoor Meeting. Camp meeting Christian revival Tabernacle Tent revival
Church of the East in China
The Church of the East or Nestorian Church had a presence in China during two periods: first from the 7th through the 10th century, during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries. Locally, the religion was known as Jingjiao/Ching-chiao, which means the “Luminous Religion”. Two Nestorian monks were preaching Christianity in India in the 6th century before they smuggled silkworm eggs from China to the Eastern Roman Empire; the first recorded Christian mission to China was led by the Syriac monk known in Chinese as Alopen. Alopen's mission arrived in the Chinese capital Chang'an in 635, during the reign of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty. Taizong extended official tolerance to the mission and invited the Christians to translate their sacred works for the imperial library; this tolerance was followed by many of Taizong's successors, allowing the Church of the East to thrive in China for over 200 years. China became a metropolitan province of the Church of the East, under the name Beth Sinaye, in the first quarter of the 8th century.
According to the 14th-century writer ʿAbdishoʿ of Nisibis, the province was established by the patriarch Sliba-zkha. Arguing from its position in the list of exterior provinces, which implied an 8th-century foundation, on grounds of general historical probability, ʿAbdishoʿ refuted alternative claims that the province of Beth Sinaye had been founded either by the 5th-century patriarch Ahha or the 6th-century patriarch Shila. In 781 the Christian community in Chang'an erected a tablet known as the Nestorian Stele on the grounds of a local monastery; the stele contains a long inscription in Chinese with Syriac glosses, composed by the cleric Adam the metropolitan of Beth Sinaye. The inscription describes the eventful progress of the Nestorian mission in China since Alopen's arrival; the inscription mentions the archdeacons Gigoi of Khumdan and Gabriel of Sarag. These references confirm that the Church of the East in China had a well-developed hierarchy at the end of the 8th century, with bishops in both northern capitals, there were other dioceses besides Chang'an and Lo-yang.
Shortly afterwards Thomas of Marga mentions the monk David of Beth ʿAbe, metropolitan of Beth Sinaye during the reign of Timothy I. Timothy I is said to have consecrated a metropolitan for Tibet, a province not again mentioned; the province of Beth Sinaye is last mentioned in 987 by the Arab writer Ibn al-Nadim, who met a Nestorian monk who had returned from China, who informed him that'Christianity was just extinct in China. The collapse of the Church of the East in China coincided with the fall of the Tang Dynasty, which led to a tumultuous era. Dozens of Jingjiao texts were translated from Syriac into Chinese. Only a few have survived; these are referred to as the Chinese Jingjiao Documents. One of the surviving texts, the Zunjing or Book of Praise, lists about 35 books, translated into Chinese. Among these books are some translations of the Scriptures, including the Pentateuch - Genesis is known as 渾元經, the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles and a collection of the Pauline epistles; these translations of the Scriptures have not survived.
However, three non-scriptural Christian books listed in the Zunjing are among the Jingjiao manuscripts that were discovered in the early 20th century: the Sutra on the Origin of Origins, the Sutra of Ultimate and Mysterious Happiness, the Hymn of Perfection of the Three Majesties. Two additional Jingjiao manuscripts not listed in the Zunjing have been discovered: Sutra of Hearing the Messiah and Treatise on the One God; the Church of the East had significant evangelical success under the Mongol Empire. The Mongol invasion of China in the 13th century allowed the church to return to China. By the end of the century two new metropolitan provinces had been created for China: Tangut and'Katai and Ong'; the province of Tangut covered northwestern China, its metropolitan seems to have sat at Almaliq. The province evidently had several dioceses though they cannot now be localised, as the metropolitan Shemʿon Bar Qaligh of Tangut was arrested by the patriarch Denha I shortly before his death in 1281'together with a number of his bishops'.
The province of Katai and Ong, which seems to have replaced the old Tang dynasty province of Beth Sinaye, covered northern China and the country of the Christian Ongut tribe around the great bend of the Yellow River. The metropolitans of Katai and Ong sat at the Mongol capital Khanbaliq; the patriarch Yahballaha III grew up in a monastery in northern China in the 1270s, the metropolitans Giwargis and Nestoris are mentioned in his biography. Yahballaha himself was consecrated metropolitan of Katai and Ong by the patriarch Denha I shortly before his death in 1281. During the first half of the 14th century there were Nestorian Christian communities in many cities in China, the province of Katai and Ong had several suffragan dioceses. In 1253 William of Rubruck mentioned a Nestorian bishop in the town of'Segin'; the tomb of a Nestorian bishop named Shlemun, who died in 1313, has been discovered at Quanzhou in Fujian province. Shlemun's epitaph described him as'administrator of the Christians and Manicheans of Manzi'.
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Thomas Chalmers
Thomas Chalmers DD LLD, was a Scottish minister, professor of theology, political economist, a leader of both the Church of Scotland and of the Free Church of Scotland. He has been called "Scotland's greatest nineteenth-century churchman", he served as Vice-president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1835–42. The New Zealand town of Port Chalmers was named after Chalmers. A bust of Chalmers is on display in the Hall of Heroes of the National Wallace Monument in Stirling; the Thomas Chalmers Centre in Kirkliston is named after him. He was born at the son of Elizabeth Hall and John Chalmers, a merchant. Age 11 Chalmers attended the University of St Andrews studying mathematics. In January 1799 he was licensed as a preacher of the gospel by the St Andrews presbytery. In May 1803, after attending further courses of lectures at the University of Edinburgh, acting as assistant to the professor of mathematics at St Andrews, he was ordained as minister of Kilmany, about 9 miles from the university town, where he continued to lecture.
Kilmany was a small and predominantly agricultural parish, with a population under 800 in 1811. Chalmers made an issue within the University of St Andrews of the quality of mathematics teaching, it came to involve attacks on the professor of natural philosophy. His mathematical lectures roused enthusiasm. Chalmers opened mathematical classes on his own account which attracted many students. In 1805 he became a candidate for the vacant professorship of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, but was unsuccessful. In 1815 he became minister of the Tron Church, Glasgow, in spite of determined opposition to him in the town council on the grounds of his evangelical teaching. From Glasgow his reputation as a preacher spread throughout the United Kingdom; when he visited London Samuel Wilberforce wrote, "all the world is wild about Dr Chalmers." At this time he lived at wellington Place in Glasgow. In November 1817 Chalmers used a memorial sermon for Princess Charlotte of Wales to appeal for a Christian effort to deal with the social condition of Glasgow.
His parish contained about 11,000 persons, of these about one-third were not connected with any church. He considered that parochial organizations had not kept pace in the city with the growing population, he declared. The town council agreed to build one new church, attaching to it a parish of 10,000 persons weavers and factory workers, this church was offered to Chalmers. In September 1819 he became minister of the church and parish of St John, where of 2000 families more than 800 had no connection with any Christian church, he first addressed himself to providing schools for the children. Two school-houses with four endowed teachers were established, where 700 children were taught, at moderate fees. Between 40 and 50 local Sabbath schools were opened; the parish was divided into 25 districts with 60 to 100 families. Chalmers was the centre of visiting families and holding evening meetings. In 1823 Chalmers accepted the chair of moral philosophy at the University of St Andrews, the seventh academic offer made to him during his eight years in Glasgow.
His lectures led some students to devote themselves to missionary effort. Among his pupils were William Lindsay Alexander, Alexander Duff, James Aitken Wylie. At this period Robert Morrison and Joshua Marshman visited St Andrews. In November 1828 Chalmers was transferred to the chair of theology at the University Edinburgh, he introduced the practice of following the lecture with a viva voce examination on what had been delivered. He introduced text-books. In 1834 Chalmers was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in the same year he became corresponding member of the Institute of France. C. L. At this time he was living at 3 Forres Street on the Moray Estate in the west end of Edinburgh. In 1834 he became leader of the evangelical section of the Scottish Church in the General Assembly, he was appointed chairman of a committee for church extension, in that capacity made a tour through a large part of Scotland, addressing presbyteries and holding public meetings. He issued numerous appeals, with the result that in 1841, when he resigned his office as convener of the church extension committee, he was able to announce that in seven years upwards of £300,000 had been contributed, 220 new churches had been built.
His efforts to induce the Whig government to assist in this effort were unsuccessful. In 1840 Chalmers was unsuccessful in applying for the chair of divinity at the University of Glasgow, it went to the Moderate Alexander Hill. Chalmers found himself at the head of the party in the Church of Scotland which stood for "non-intrusionism": the principle that no minister should be intruded into any parish contrary to the will of the congregation. Cases of conflict between the church and the civil power arose in Auchterarder and Marnoch; the courts made it clear that the Church, in their opinion, held its temporalities on condition of rendering such obedience as the courts required. The Church appealed to the government for relief. In political manoeuvres with Westminster politicians, Chalmers was opposed by John Hope. In January 1843 the government put a final negative on the church's claims for spiritual independence; the non-intrusionist movement ended in the Disruption: on 18 May 1843, 470 clergy withdrew fr
Liaoning
Liaoning is a province located in the northeastern part of China, being the smallest but the most populous province in the region. The modern Liaoning province was established in 1907 as Fengtian or Fengtien province and was renamed Liaoning in 1929 known as Mukden Province at the time for the Manchu pronunciation of Shengjing, the former name of the provincial capital Shenyang. Under the Japanese-puppet Manchukuo regime, the province reverted to its 1907 name, but the name Liaoning was restored in 1945 and again in 1954. Liaoning is the southernmost province of Northeast China also known as Manchuria, it is known in Chinese as "the Golden Triangle" from its shape and strategic location, with the Yellow Sea in the south, North Korea's North Pyongan and Chagang provinces in the southeast, Jilin to the northeast, Hebei to the southwest, Inner Mongolia to the northwest. The Yalu River marks its border with North Korea, emptying into the Korea Bay between Dandong in Liaoning and Sinuiju in North Korea.
In the past Liaoning formed part of Korean kingdoms as Gojoseon and Goguryeo, as well as Chinese polities such as the Yan State and the Han Dynasty. It was inhabited by non-Han peoples such as Xiongnu, Xianbei. In addition, the Balhae, Jurchen, Mongol Empire and Northern Yuan ruled Liaoning; the Ming Empire took control of Liaoning in 1371, just three years after the expulsion of the Mongols from Beijing. Around 1442, a defense wall was constructed to defend the agricultural heartland of the province from a potential threat from the Jurchen-Mongol Oriyanghan from the northwest. Between 1467 and 1468, the wall was expanded to protect the region from the northeast as well, against attacks from Jianzhou Jurchens. Although similar in purpose to the Great Wall of China, this "Liaodong Wall" was of a lower-cost design. While stones and tiles were used in some parts, most of the wall was in fact an earth dike with moats on both sides. Despite the Liaodong Wall, the Manchus conquered Liaodong, or eastern Liaoning, in the early 17th century, decades before the rest of China fell to them.
The Manchu dynasty, styled "Later Jin", established its capital in 1616–1621 in Xingjing, located outside of the Liaodong Wall in the eastern part of the modern Liaoning Province. It was moved to Dongjing, in 1625 to Shengjing. Although the main Qing capital was moved from Shengjing to Beijing after it fell to the Qing in 1644, Shengjing retained its importance as a regional capital throughout most of the Qing era; the Qing conquest of Liaoning resulted in a significant population loss in the area, as many local Chinese residents were either killed during fighting, or fled south of the Great Wall, many cities being destroyed by the retreating Ming forces themselves. As late as 1661, the Civil Governor of Fengtian Province, Zhang Shangxian reported that, outside of Fengtian City and Haicheng, all other cities east of the Liaohe were either abandoned, or hardly had a few hundred residents left. In the Governor's words, "Tieling and Fushun only have a few vagrants". West of the Liaohe, only Ningyuan and Guangning had any significant populations remaining.
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the imperial Qing government recruited migrants from south of the Great Wall to settle the sparsely populated area of Fengtian Province. Many of the current residents of Liaoning trace their ancestry to these seventeenth century settlers; the rest of China's Northeast, remained off-limits to Han Chinese for most of the Manchu era. To prevent the migration of Chinese to those regions, the so-called Willow Palisade was constructed; the Palisade encircled the agricultural heartlands of Fengtian, running in most areas either somewhat outside the old Ming Liaodong Wall, or reusing it, separating it from the Manchu forests to the northeast and the Mongol grazing lands to the northwest. On, the Qing government tried to stop the migrants flow to Fengtian or to make some settlers return to their original places of residence – or, failing that, to legalize them. For example, an edict issued in 1704 commented on the recent Han Chinese settlers in Fengtian having failed to comply with earlier orders requiring them to leave, asked them either to properly register and join a local defense group, or to leave the province for their original places within the next ten years.
Ten years naturally, another edict appeared, reminding of the necessity to do something with illegal migrants... In any event, the restrictive policy was not as effective as desired by the officials in Beijing, Fengtian's population doubled between 1683 and 1734. During the Qing Dynasty, Manchuria was ruled by three generals, one of whom, the General of Shengjing ruled much of modern Liaoning. In 1860, the Manchu government began to reopen the region to migration, which resulted in Han Chinese becoming the dominant ethnic group in the region. In the 20th century, the province of Fengtian was set up in; when Japan and Russia fought the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905, many key battles took place in Liaoning, including the Battle of Port Arthur and the Battle of Mukden, which was, to that point, t
Xiamen
Xiamen known from its Hokkien pronunciation as Amoy, is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian province, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Jimei, Tong'an, Xiang'an. Altogether, these cover an area of 1,699.39 square kilometers with a population of 3,531,347 as of 2010. The urbanized area of the city has spread from its original island to include parts of all six of its districts, with a total population of 1,861,289; this area connects to Quanzhou in the north and Zhangzhou in the west, making up a metropolis of more than five million people. The Jinmen or Kinmen Islands administered by the Republic of China lie less than 6 kilometers away. Xiamen Island possessed a natural harbor in Yundang Bay, but Fujian's international trade was long restricted to Quanzhou or to Guangzhou in Guangdong. Due to the siltification of Quanzhou's harbor, the British insisted that Xiamen be opened to foreign trade in the treaty that ended the First Opium War in 1842.
Under the Qing, both before and after the war, there was a large-scale emigration of Chinese from southern Fujian who spread Hokkien-speaking communities to Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. The overseas Chinese continue to support Xiamen's cultural institutions; as part of the Opening Up Policy under Deng Xiaoping, Xiamen became one of China's original four special economic zones opened to foreign investment and trade in the early 1980s. Its former harbor was enclosed using land excavated during the city's expansion, the city continues to remain an island connected by bridges to the rest of mainland China; the city is known for its mild climate, Hokkien culture and Gulangyu Island, as well as its low pollution. In 2006, Xiamen was ranked as China's 2nd-"most suitable city for living", as well as China's "most romantic leisure city" in 2011; the area around Xiamen Bay appears as Tong'an in some Han records. Xiamen Island was described as Jiahe Islet c. 976. It received its present name from the Xiamen Castle erected on the island by Zhou Dexing in 1387 during the Ming.
The name was written using the Chinese characters meaning "Lower Gate". When its port prospered under the Qing, the name was considered unrefined and changed to homophonous characters meaning "Mansion Gate". Xiamen is the atonal pinyin romanization of the characters' pronunciation in Mandarin, it has been romanized as Hiamen. The former English name "Amoy" was based on the same name's pronunciation in the Zhangzhou dialect of Hokkien, Ē-mûi. Xiamen was named Siming for a few years during its occupation by the loyalist Southern Ming forces of Koxinga; the Qing restored the former name upon their conquest of the area, but Koxinga's name was in turn restored after the Xinhai Revolution that inaugurated the republic in 1912. The name Xiamen was restored again but Siming continues to be used as the name of one of its districts. Xiamen is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian whose urban core grew up from the port of Xiamen on southern Xiamen Island, now located within Siming District, it now includes Gulangyu Island and the rugged coast of the mainland from the northeast bank of the Jiulong River in the west to the islands of Xiang'an in the east.
Xiamen Island lies about one degree north of the Tropic of Cancer. It is divided between Siming District in the south. Siming includes Gulangyu, its mainland territory is divided among Haicang, Tong'an, Xiang'an districts. In the 19th century, Xiamen's harbor on Yundang Bay was considered one of the world's great natural harbors. Land reclamation has since been used to fill in the mouth of this inlet, turning it into Siming District's Yundang Lake; the municipal government is located on other reclaimed land beside it. The nearest point of Liehyu in the Kinmen Islands, still controlled by the Republic of China from Taiwan, lies only 6 kilometers off Xiamen Island. Xiamen has a monsoonal humid subtropical climate, characterised by long and humid summers and short and dry winters; the warmest month is July, with a 24-hour average of 27.8 °C, the coolest month is January, averaging 12.8 °C. Extremes since 1951 have ranged from 1.5 °C on 29 December 1991 to 39.2 °C on 20 July 2007. Spring, both by humidity and percentage of sunshine, is the dampest season but typhoons in late summer and early autumn can make the latter period wetter overall.
Summer and autumn are marked by comparatively sunny conditions, while autumn is dry. The annual rainfall is 1,350 millimeters. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 24% in March to 56% in July, the city receives 1,853 hours of bright sunshine annually. Frost occurs rarely, the last snowfall in the city took place in January 1893, when snow fell at Guangzhou, Macau, in the inland parts of Hong Kong and in the hills of Taipei; the area is known within China for its low pollution. The area of Xiamen was bypassed by the Qin and Han conquests and colonization of Guangdong, which passed west of Fujian down the Lingqu Canal between the Xiang and Li rivers, it was first organized as Tong'an County in AD 282 under the Jin, but it lost this status soon afterwards. Tong'an County was again established in 933 under the Later Tang; the settlement on the southeastern shore of Xiamen Island developed as a seaport under the Song, although legal foreign trade was restricted to nearby Quanz
Presbyterianism
Presbyterianism is a part of the reformed tradition within Protestantism, which traces its origins to Britain Scotland. Presbyterian churches derive their name from the presbyterian form of church government, governed by representative assemblies of elders. A great number of Reformed churches are organized this way, but the word Presbyterian, when capitalized, is applied uniquely to churches that trace their roots to the Church of Scotland, as well as several English dissenter groups that formed during the English Civil War. Presbyterian theology emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Scriptures, the necessity of grace through faith in Christ. Presbyterian church government was ensured in Scotland by the Acts of Union in 1707, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain. In fact, most Presbyterians found in England can trace a Scottish connection, the Presbyterian denomination was taken to North America by Scots and Scots-Irish immigrants; the Presbyterian denominations in Scotland hold to the Reformed theology of John Calvin and his immediate successors, although there is a range of theological views within contemporary Presbyterianism.
Local congregations of churches which use presbyterian polity are governed by sessions made up of representatives of the congregation. The roots of Presbyterianism lie in the Reformation of the 16th century, the example of John Calvin's Republic of Geneva being influential. Most Reformed churches that trace their history back to Scotland are either presbyterian or congregationalist in government. In the twentieth century, some Presbyterians played an important role in the ecumenical movement, including the World Council of Churches. Many Presbyterian denominations have found ways of working together with other Reformed denominations and Christians of other traditions in the World Communion of Reformed Churches; some Presbyterian churches have entered into unions with other churches, such as Congregationalists, Lutherans and Methodists. Presbyterians in the United States came from Scottish immigrants, Scotch-Irish immigrants, from New England Yankee communities, Congregational but changed because of an agreed-upon Plan of Union of 1801 for frontier areas.
Along with Episcopalians, Presbyterians tend to be wealthier and better educated than most other religious groups in United States, are disproportionately represented in the upper reaches of American business and politics. Presbyterian tradition that of the Church of Scotland, traces its early roots to the Church founded by Saint Columba, through the 6th century Hiberno-Scottish mission. Tracing their apostolic origin to Saint John, the Culdees practiced Christian monasticism, a key feature of Celtic Christianity in the region, with a presbyter exercising "authority within the institution, while the different monastic institutions were independent of one another." The Church in Scotland kept the Christian feast of Easter at a date different from the See of Rome and its monks used a unique style of tonsure. The Synod of Whitby in 664, ended these distinctives as it ruled "that Easter would be celebrated according to the Roman date, not the Celtic date." Although Roman influence came to dominate the Church in Scotland, certain Celtic influences remained in the Scottish Church, such as "the singing of metrical psalms, many of them set to old Celtic Christianity Scottish traditional and folk tunes", which became a "distinctive part of Scottish Presbyterian worship".
Presbyterian history is part of the history of Christianity, but the beginning of Presbyterianism as a distinct movement occurred during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. As the Catholic Church resisted the reformers, several different theological movements splintered from the Church and bore different denominations. Presbyterianism was influenced by the French theologian John Calvin, credited with the development of Reformed theology, the work of John Knox, a Scotsman and a Roman Catholic Priest, who studied with Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland, he brought back Reformed teachings to Scotland. The Presbyterian church traces its ancestry back to England and Scotland. In August 1560 the Parliament of Scotland adopted the Scots Confession as the creed of the Scottish Kingdom. In December 1560, the First Book of Discipline was published, outlining important doctrinal issues but establishing regulations for church government, including the creation of ten ecclesiastical districts with appointed superintendents which became known as presbyteries.
In time, the Scots Confession would be supplanted by the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, which were formulated by the Westminster Assembly between 1643 and 1649. Presbyterians distinguish themselves from other denominations by doctrine, institutional organization and worship; the origins of the Presbyterian churches are in Calvinism. Many branches of Presbyterianism are remnants of previous splits from larger groups; some of the splits have been due to doctrinal controversy, while some have been caused by disagreement concerning the degree to which those ordained to church office should be required to agree with the Westminster Confession of Faith, which serves as an important confessional document – second only to the Bible, yet directing particularities in the standardization and translation of the Bible – in Presbyterian churches. Presbyteria
Faith
Faith, derived from Latin fides and Old French feid, is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept. In the context of religion, one can define faith as confidence or trust in a particular system of religious belief. Religious people think of faith as confidence based on a perceived degree of warrant, while others who are more skeptical of religion tend to think of faith as belief without evidence; the English word faith is thought to date from 1200–1250, from the Middle English feith, via Anglo-French fed, Old French feid, feit from Latin fidem, accusative of fidēs, akin to fīdere. James W. Fowler proposes a series of stages of faith-development across the human life-span, his stages relate to the work of Piaget and Kohlberg regarding aspects of psychological development in children and adults. Fowler defines faith as an activity of trusting and relating to the world based on a set of assumptions of how one is related to others and the world. Intuitive-Projective: a stage of confusion and of high impressionability through stories and rituals.
Mythic-Literal: a stage where provided information is accepted in order to conform with social norms. Synthetic-Conventional: in this stage the faith acquired is concreted in the belief system with the forgoing of personification and replacement with authority in individuals or groups that represent one's beliefs. Individuative-Reflective: in this stage the individual critically analyzes adopted and accepted faith with existing systems of faith. Disillusion or strengthening of faith happens in this stage. Based on needs and paradoxes. Conjunctive faith: in this stage people realize the limits of logic and, facing the paradoxes or transcendence of life, accept the "mystery of life" and return to the sacred stories and symbols of the pre-acquired or re-adopted faith system; this stage is called negotiated settling in life. Universalizing faith: this is the "enlightenment" stage where the individual comes out of all the existing systems of faith and lives life with universal principles of compassion and love and in service to others for upliftment, without worries and doubt (middle-late adulthood.
No hard-and-fast rule requires individuals pursuing faith to go through all six stages. There is a high probability for individuals to be content and fixed in a particular stage for a lifetime. Stage 6 is the summit of faith development; this state is considered as "not fully" attainable. In the Bahá'í Faith, faith is meant, conscious knowledge, second, the practice of good deeds the acceptance of the divine authority of the Manifestations of God. In the religion's view and knowledge are both required for spiritual growth. Faith involves more than outward obedience to this authority, but must be based on a deep personal understanding of religious teachings. Faith in Buddhism refers to a serene commitment in the practice of the Buddha's teaching and trust in enlightened or developed beings, such as Buddhas or bodhisattvas. Buddhists recognize multiple objects of faith, but many are devoted to one particular object of faith, such as one particular Buddha. In early Buddhism, faith was focused on the Triple Gem, that is, Gautama Buddha, his teaching, the community of spiritually developed followers, or the monastic community seeking enlightenment.
Although offerings to the monastic community were valued highest, early Buddhism did not morally condemn peaceful offerings to deities. A faithful devotee was called upāsika, for which no formal declaration was required. In early Buddhism, personal verification was valued highest in attaining the truth, sacred scriptures, reason or faith in a teacher were considered less valuable sources of authority; as important as faith was, it was a mere initial step to the path to wisdom and enlightenment, was obsolete or redefined at the final stage of that path. While faith in Buddhism does not imply "blind faith", Buddhist practice requires a degree of trust in the spiritual attainment of Gautama Buddha. Faith in Buddhism centers on the understanding that the Buddha is an Awakened being, on his superior role as teacher, in the truth of his Dharma, in his Sangha. Faith in Buddhism can be summarised as faith in the Three Jewels: the Buddha and Sangha, it is intended to lead to the goal of enlightenment, or bodhi, Nirvana.
Volitionally, faith implies a courageous act of will. It combines the steadfast resolution that one will do a thing with the self-confidence that one can do it. In the stratum of Buddhist history Mahāyāna Buddhism, faith was given a much more important role; the concept of the Buddha Nature was developed, as devotion to Buddhas and bodhisattvas residing in Pure Lands became commonplace. With the arising of the cult of the Lotus Sūtra, faith gained a central role in Buddhist practice, further amplified with the development of devotion to the Amitabha Buddha in Pure Land Buddhism. In the Japanese form of Pure Land Buddhism, under the teachers Hōnen and Shinran, only entrusting faith toward the Amitabha Buddha was believed to be a fruitful form of practice, as the practice of celibacy and other Buddhist disciplines were dismissed as no longer effective in this day and age, or contradicting the virtue of faith. Faith was defined as a state similar to enlightenment, with a sense of self-negation and humil
