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Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bishop of Münster from 1933 until his death in 1946, is renowned for his opposition to Nazism, most notably for his public preaching in 1941 against Hitler's euthanasia project to rid the country of sick, elderly, mentally retarded, and disabled Germans. This biographical study of von Galen views him from a different perspective: as a complex figure who moved between dissent and complicity during the Nazi regime, opposing certain elements of National Socialism while choosing to remain silent on issues concerning discrimination, deportation, and the murder of Jews. The book places von Galen in the context of his times, describing how the Catholic Church reacted to various Nazi policies, how the anti-Catholic legislation of the Kulturkampf shaped the repertoire of resistance tactics of northwestern German Catholics, and how theological interpretations were used to justify resistance and/or collaboration. It discloses the reasons for von Galen's public denunciation of the euthanasia project and the ramifications of his openly defiant stance. The book reveals how the bishop portrayed Jews and what that depiction meant for Jews living in Nazi Germany. Finally, it investigates the creation of the image of von Galen as “Grand Churchman-Resister” and discusses the implications of this for the myth of Catholic conservative “resistance” constructed in post-1945 Germany.

This book examines how German Protestant and Catholic missionaries reconsidered their attitudes toward Confucianism and, more broadly, Chinese culture. In the 1860s, German missionaries attacked traditional Chinese values as antithetical to their goals of converting China to Christianity, and congregational leadership lay solely in German hands. By the 1930s, missionaries commented that Christianity’s global survival—both in China and the West—depended on a synthesis of Christ and Confucius. Even before they were forced by the Communists to leave in the early 1950s, the German missionaries had relinquished leadership to Chinese clergy. Why did these institutional and ideological shifts occur? How did German missionaries come to repudiate their former beliefs and tactics? This book argues that German missionaries, since their first entry into China, considered their missionary work in China as a failure. Propelled by failure, the German missionaries sought to reform their practices. These missionaries began to challenge Germany’s imperial project and even abandon central theological ideas such as the exclusivity of Christian salvation. Chinese Christians were crucial partners in the process, pushing the German missionaries to relinquish their previous claims of Christian superiority. In time, this thinking catalyzed a revolution among European Christians about the nature of Christianity itself. This book sheds light on the roots of Christianity’s global shift from being a predominantly European religion in the nineteenth century to a non-European one by the twenty-first century.

Centuries on, what the Reformation was and what it accomplished remain deeply contentious. This new history argues that sixteenth-century England was a society neither desperate for nor allergic to change, but one open to ideas of reform in various competing guises. King Henry VIII wanted an orderly, uniform Reformation, but his actions opened a Pandora's Box from which pluralism and diversity flowed and rooted themselves in English life. With sensitivity to individual experience as well as masterfully synthesizing historical and institutional developments, the book frames the perceptions and actions of people great and small, from monarchs and bishops to ordinary families and ecclesiastics, against a backdrop of profound change that altered the meanings of religion itself. This engaging history reveals what was really at stake in the overthrow of Catholic culture and the reshaping of the Church of England.

Philo was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who left behind one of the richest bodies of work from antiquity, yet his personality and intellectual development have remained a riddle. This book presents the first biography of Philo, arguing that his trip to Rome in 38 CE was a turning point in his life. There he was exposed to not only new political circumstances but also “a new cultural and philosophical environment.” Following the pogrom in Alexandria, Philo became active as an intellectual in the capital of the Empire, responding to the challenges of his time and creatively reconstructing his identity, though always maintaining pride in the Jewish tradition. Philo's trajectory from Alexandria to Rome and his enthusiastic adoption of new modes of thought rendered him a keen figure in the complex negotiation between East and West.