Book Reviews
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A Friendly Biography About an Extraordinary Man Michael Breen’s Sun Myung Moon: The Early Years, 1920-53
Journal of Unification Studies Vol. 2, 1998 – Pages 35-48 The publication of Michael Breen’s Sun Myung Moon: The Early Years, 1920-53 is something of an event within the evolving tradition of Unification historiography.[1] This is the case for three reasons. First, Unificationists are, if anything, a people who take their history seriously. Rev. Moon…
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BOOK REVIEW: An Understanding of Sin and Redemption in Traditional Christianity and in Unification Theology. Doctoral thesis by Alfred O’Connor, University of Wales, 1995.
Journal of Unification Studies Vol. 1, 1997 – Pages 139-142 Alfred O’Connor’s Ph.D. thesis, “An Understanding of Sin and Redemption in Traditional Christianity and in Unification Theology,” is, in my view, a ground-breaking effort in the process of affirming academic respectability for the discussion of Unification theology in scholarly circles. The Faculty of Arts of…
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BOOK REVIEW: God’s Secret Formula: Deciphering the Riddle of the Universe and the Prime Number Code. By Peter Plichta. Rockport, MA: Element Books, 1997.
Journal of Unification Studies Vol. 1, 1997 – Pages 136-139 I was introduced to Peter Plichta several years ago, while I was working with Franz Fiege at the International Religious Foundation. Dr. Plichta had some revolutionary new ideas about science, and especially about how numbers, like 3 and 4, were at the center of reality.…
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BOOK REVIEW: The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. By Rodney Stark. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Journal of Unification Studies Vol. 1, 1997 – Pages 131-136 How often, in refuting the cult animus attached to the Unification Church, have we argued, “Look, early Christianity was a cult.” It is a seemingly obvious statement, yet few church historians have taken it seriously. It has been commonplace to regard the growth of new…
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BOOK REVIEW: Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross. By Robert Hamerton-Kelly. Fortress Press, 1992.
Journal of Unification Studies Vol. 1, 1997 – Pages 127-131 Not since the days of Bultmann’s challenge to “demythologize” has there been anything like the commotion over Rene Girard’s attempt to reformulate New Testament theology. Robert Hamerton-Kelly’s book Sacred Violence is the best exposition of the Girardian approach applied to the theology of Paul.[1] Kelly…