Bøger af Jane Shaw

The little-known story of the charismatic, utopian leader Octavia and her devoted followers in the interwar years In 1919, in the wake of the upheaval of World War I, a remarkable group of English women came up with their own solution to the world's grief: a new religion. At the heart of the Panacea Society was a charismatic and autocratic leader, a vicar's widow named Mabel Bartlrop. Her followers called her Octavia, and they believed that she was the daughter of God, sent to build the New Jerusalem in Bedford.When the last living members of the Panacea Society revealed to historian Jane Shaw their immense and painstakingly preserved archives, she began to reconstruct the story of a close-knit utopian community that grew to include seventy residents, thousands of followers, and an international healing ministry reaching 130,000 people. Shaw offers a detailed portrait of Octavia and describes the faith of her devoted followers who believed they would never die. Vividly told, by turns funny and tragic, Octavia, Daughter of God is about a moment at the advent of modernity, when a generation of newly empowered women tried to re-make Christianity in their own image, offering a fascinating window into the anxieties and hopes of the interwar years.

Biblical and poetic reflections on Lenten themes of salvation, forgiveness, sin.A Practical Christianity: Meditations for the Season of Lent is a devotional book that challenges readers to take up ¿practical Christianity¿¿proposing Christian faith as something we do, not something we merely believe in. The starting point for Christianity lies within its practice, says the author, and not in the blind acceptance of a chunk of undigested doctrine. The book samples fiction, poetry, art and music, combined with the wisdom of scripture and theology, to help pilgrims make sense of faith in the context of everyday life. Shaw reconsiders the central doctrines of Christian faith through the lens of how we practice them. She explores five themes: dust, forgiveness, time, doubt and love¿devoting a chapter to each. This thematic approach is a way of presenting (covertly, since it¿s not revealed until the end of the book) the doctrines of Creation and Sin, Forgiveness, the Trinity, Salvation, and finally Love.

She discovered a utopian community that once had seventy residents, thousands of followers, and an international healing ministry that reached 130,000 people around the globe. Octavia, Daughter of God is a fascinating group biography and a revelatory work of cultural and narrative history.