273: Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe by Edward Peters

273.6: Peters, Edward, ed. Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe: Documents in Translation. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980. 307 pp. ISBN 0-8122-1103-0.

Dewey Breakdown:

• 200: Religion
• 270: History of Christianity
• 273: Doctrinal controversies and heresies in general church history
• 273.6: 6th to 16th centuries

Every person is a unique entity. Because there are billions of people, there are billions of individual perspectives and beliefs. This creates a problem for any organization whose lifeblood is that everybody thinks along the same lines. Almost from the beginning, Christianity has had its share of splinter groups, in-fighting, and outright civil wars. Edward Peters, in Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, traces the path of Christian writers who focus their treatises on heretics, sects, and orthodoxy. From Tertullian to John of Brevicoxa, we get nearly one thousand years of church voices on those who seek to disagree.

271: Chasing Francis by Ian Morgan Cron

271.02: Cron, Ian Morgan. Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim’s Tale. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013. 212 pp. ISBN 978-0-3103-3669-3.

Dewey Breakdown:

• 200: Religion
• 270: History of Christianity
• 271: Religious congregations and orders in church history
• 271.02: Eremitical religious orders

Chase Falson is a man struggling with his faith. The church he has spent years building in New England is doing well, but he can no longer muster up the same cookie-cutter sermons Sunday after Sunday. And then, when the only daughter of a reformed drug-addict dies in an innocuous bike accident, he loses his cool in front of his followers. He decides to find a new faith, a new way to Jesus and to Christianity. Ian Morgan Cron’s Chasing Francis follows his path.

270: Why Cities Matter by Stephen Um and Justin Buzzard

270.091732: Um, Stephen T. & Justin Buzzard. Why Cities Matter to God, the Culture, and the Church. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013. 148 pp. ISBN 978-1-4335-3289-4.

Dewey Breakdown:

• 200: Religion
• 270: Historical, geographical, or persons treatment of Christianity and the Christian Church
• 270.09: Areas, regions, places in general, persons
• +1732: Urban regions

This book is precisely the reason I wanted to do this project. Prior to starting, there would have been no way I would have a missive on how to (a) learn to love large cities, (b) understand their narratives, and then (c) use that knowledge to began to share your faith with other in hopes that the entire city will become a part of the Christian faith. Stephen Um and Justin Buzzard, in Why Cities Matter, help those with faith or fledgling churches to leverage an understanding of urban environments into a flourishing of religiosity, where the faithful listen actively to both their city’s and their neighbor’s narrative in order to find a common connection  from which to spread the message of Christianity.

278: On Earth as It Is in Heaven by Virginia Garrard-Burnett

278.08: Garrard-Burnett, Virginia, ed. On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Religion in Modern Latin America. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2000. 250 pp. ISBN 0-8420-2585-5.

Dewey Construction:

• 200: Religion
• 270: Christian Church history
• 278: Christianity and the Christian Church in South America
• +08: Church history

Normally, reading 250 pages isn’t a daunting task. A couple days, some classical music, and boom—another book bites the dust. This one, however, took a little more oomph to get through. Virginia Garrard-Burnett’s On Earth as It Is in Heaven is a collection of scholarly writings on religion in Latin America. It deals with church-state conflicts, folk Catholicism, new Christian beliefs, and religious pluralism in South America. Exciting, right? I know. Here we go.

277: Meetinghouse Hill, 1630-1783 by Ola E. Winslow

277.4: Winslow, Ola Elizabeth. Meetinghouse Hill, 1630-1783. New York: W.W. Norton, 1972. 316 pp. ISBN 0-393-00632-8.

Dewey Construction:

• 200: Religion
• 270: Christian Church history
• 277: Christianity and the Christian Church in North America
• 277.4: Christianity and the Christian Church in the Northeastern United States

Ola Elizabeth Winslow’s Meetinghouse Hill, 1630-1783 covers the history of New England town churches through Pre-Revolutionary America. What at first seems like a history of a single church in a single town is actually a tapestry portrait of the religion and civics of a whole region. She starts with a group of Massachusetts Pilgrims who go through the arduous process of electing town elders, church pillars, a teacher, and a pastor. Each choice is prayed, reasoned, discussed, and voted on. Church creation was a very serious matter in the mid-17^th century and each decision was scrutinized to within an inch of its life.