Memphis Theological Seminary

Objective: This study aimed to determine the relationship between spiritual, religious, and existential well-being and self-efficacy for appropriate medication use in African American women with hypertension. Methods: In this study, we conducted cross-sectional correlations using linear regression analysis. An African American sample of women from across the United States with hypertension was chosen through a purposive sampling technique. An online survey was used. Results: There were 186 African American women with hypertension who took part in the study, with an average age of 57.15 (SD = 12.79) years. The study found significant correlations between spiritual (p = .022), religious (p = .033), and existential (p = .021) well-being and self-efficacy for appropriate medication use in African American women with hypertension. The study concluded that no women reported high spiritual, religious, or existential well-being, only moderate. Nor were they very confident that they would take their medications under changing or challenging circumstances. Conclusion: African American women are the most religious aggregate in the United States, and there is evidence that spiritual, religious, and existential well-being affects their self-efficacy for appropriate medication use. Clinicians and researchers must collaborate to enhance medication adherence through continuous education, assessment, and reinforcement while also attuning their practice to spiritual, religious, and existential well-being effects on self-efficacy for appropriate medication use in African American women.

Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God: The Wittenberg School and Its Scripture-Centered Proclamation. By Robert Kolb . Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2016. viii + 517 pp. $49.99 cloth. - Volume 86 Issue 3

Adams’ monograph places two black Christian women at the center of religion and politics in Summit, New Jersey. Through the stories of Violet Johnson and Florence Spearing Randolph, Adams describes a white suburban community in terms of race and gender activism. Ordinary black women not only were leaders in their faith communities, but they also played a significant role in American religion and suburbanization.Johnson and Randolph initially galvanized support for missionary and temperance work, aiming for small improvements in their community. They shifted their focus toward suffrage, which black women significantly aided, endorsing politicians whose policies would promote civic righteousness and urging Christians to understand voting as a spiritual practice. Rising religious and social conservativism in addition to the Great Depression exacerbated racial tensions, resulting in white marginalization of black citizens, and black men’s marginalization of black women. Though Jim Crow settled into the North, Adams argues that Johnson and Randolph’s contribution to black women’s consciousness and activism laid the foundation for the civil-rights movement and womanism.Adams’ work reveals a number of themes. First, women’s religious clubs, such as the Women’s Auxiliary to the National Baptist Convention and the Women’s Temperance Union, heavily influenced women’s organizing. Black churches launched women into discursive and public leadership amid patriarchal, classist, and racist structures. Second, racial tension took different forms in the North and South. Black women in the North were able to form alliances with white women in ways that southern black women could not, but as Jim Crow spread, these divides became ubiquitous, particularly concerning anti-lynching and civil-rights laws. Third, white racism fueled support of black churches as management sites, which ultimately encouraged black communities to become politically engaged against white supremacy. The white-topped hierarchy that the New Deal favored, however, left many black citizens under the control of white economic power. Fourth, black women held diverse opinions about the relationship between religion, politics, race, gender, and class; they were not unanimous in support of causes or strategies.Black Christian Women’s Activism explores the mixed motivations behind white people’s support of black church women’s activism, and the complications surrounding the alliance of black church women with white women’s organizations. Adams also explores how these relationships evolved over time. She examines the tenuous relationships between black men and women, particularly in the context of racial and class negotiations locally and nationally. Black women were constantly negotiating women’s work in the church and race work in the women’s movement.Adams’ book will aid research that explores the relationships between politics and religion, gender and class, community organizing, and history. Her detailed, grassroots account of a lay woman and ordained minister subverts the typical top-down narrative in its analysis of how the themes of race, gender, class, and history interact with, and influence, each other. Adams’ demonstration of diversity within groups, as well as the variety of organizations devoted to particular issues, strengthens her work and enriches the narrative. She also manages to weave a superb historiography seamlessly throughout the book.

International relief and development agencies consistently rank among the largest evangelical organizations, and in recent decades, they have gained increased exposure and influence within the greater humanitarian community. World Vision, the largest evangelical agency, is also the largest Christian humanitarian organization in the world. Themes of politics and culture wars have led many to scholars to categorize American evangelicals into distinct conservative and liberal parties. Yet the history of American evangelicals’ humanitarianism demonstrates how they often resisted such dichotomies. As evangelical humanitarian agencies expanded exponentially over the past five decades, they came to embrace a “holistic gospel” that helped shape evangelical mission debates concerning the relationship between evangelism and social action; they engaged international evangelicals that forced Americans to reconsider their own categories; and many modeled a practical ecumenism that allowed evangelicals to expand beyond a limited subculture to work alongside other religious and even secular NGOs. While other evangelical progressives fragmented over identity politics or remained tethered to small alterative communities, the leading aid agencies have achieved broad support across evangelicalism, making them some of the most influential voices.

Theological Librarianship is an open access journal publishing peer-reviewed articles, as well as essays and reviews, on subjects at the intersection of librarianship and religious and theological studies that potentially impact libraries.

Abstract The editor of Teaching Theology and Religion facilitated this reflective conversation with four teachers who recently moved from undergraduate institutions to seminaries and divinity schools. Three major themes emerge in the conversation: (1) developing their pedagogical craft in undergraduate settings made them better teachers in their new contexts; (2) they moved, in part, to achieve a “better balance” between teaching and scholarship, and while this was generally achieved it was manifest in unexpected ways; (3) the communities or publics among whom and on behalf of whom they engage in broader service shifted in ways that have effected both their scholarship and their teaching; and (4) the move to a new teaching context enhanced their professional lives because they were able to consider their own visions of career in relation to the mission of their new institutions.

Abstract To engage in ecumenism and common witness is always a challenge when one church predominates in a society. In the case of many Latin American countries, the Catholic Church is both historically and demographically dominant, and often has a history of special relations with the states. Protestants, on the other hand, come mostly from evangelical and Pentecostal traditions with little ecumenical history or motivation. This article outlines some of the 20th century history of the churches in Chile against the background of the reception of Vatican II, and especially its leadership on religious freedom and ecumenism. Social and political events in Chile, as well as the particular demography and history of its Christianity, make this a unique context for ecumenical development. Some of these factors and the churches' responses are outlined as resources for global Christian reflection on mission, unity and society.

The articles are quite readable and should be accessible to casual readers.However, at times one can sense a density in the articles where Flinn has shortened a much longer discussion.Articles vary in length from one column to several pages.Appropriate "see also" references often are provided, and every article offers suggestions for further reading.The work includes a useful chronology, a thorough index, and occasional, appropriate, black-and-white photographs