Word: church
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
July 1 is a day to remember for young Roman Catholics in the diocese of Phoenix. Since that date, by order of Bishop James S. Rausch, any couples wishing to marry in the church have been required to give their priest six months' advance notice. During the waiting period they must undergo a highly structured course of preparation and counseling, complete with a written "premarital inventory" that tests the conjugal attitudes of the would-be husband and wife...
What in heaven's name are the Church of the Four Leaf Clover, the Church of the Fuller Concept, and the Psychedelic Venus Church? Or the Infinite Way, the Faithists, Pragmatic Mysticism, and Soulcraft Inc.? Answer: just a handful of the U.S. denominations described in an unbelievable compendium called the Encyclopedia of American Religions (Consortium Books...
...standard Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches lists only 296 denominations. Lutheran Theologian Arthur C. Piepkorn tracked down 735 North American groups for his Profiles in Belief (Harper & Row is up to Volume IV of this posthumous seven-volume work). Now comes J. Gordon Melton's encyclopedia listing 1,187 "primary" denominations in the U.S., which makes him America's champion church hunter...
...pursued his hobby of spiritual taxonomy for 15 years. He is now a Methodist pastor in Evanston, Ill., and his rambling parsonage houses the Institute for the Study of American Religion. Melton has conducted hundreds of field interviews. During one foray to the offices of the animal-loving Church of All Worlds, his wife Dorothea went into a bathroom only to confront a live boa constrictor curled in the corner and a 4-ft. crocodile...
Austria's role is puzzling. The graven newsreel image of the Anschluss-the day that Hitler forcibly joined Austria to the Reich- is one of jubilation: jackbooted, goose-stepping infantry welcomed by cascades of flowers and the joyous peal of church bells'. Vienna-born Walter Maass, who specializes in wartime history (The Netherlands at War, Assassination in Vienna), strives to explain the complexities behind that event, and Austria's increasingly reluctant role during the seven years of Nazi rule (1938-45) that followed. Country Without a Name (Austria was absorbed into Germany as an assemblage of Nazi...