Nadya Williams – författare

In the middle of the third century CE, one North African bishop wrote a treatise for the women of his church, exhorting them to resist such culturally normalized yet immodest behaviors in their cosmopolitan Roman city as mixed public bathing in the nude, and wearing excessive amounts of jewelry and makeup. The treatise appears even more striking, once we realize that the scandalous virgins to whom it was addressed were single women who had dedicated their virginity to Christ.

Stories like this one challenge the general assumption among Christians today that the earliest Christians were zealous converts who were much more counterculturally devoted to their faith than typical church-goers today. Too often Christians today think of cultural Christianity as a modern concept, and one most likely to occur in areas where Christianity is the majority culture, such as the American "Bible Belt." The story that this book presents, refutes both of these assumptions.

Cultural Christians in the Early Church, which aims to be both historical and practical, argues that cultural Christians were the rule, rather than the exception, in the early church. Using different categories of sins as its organizing principle, the book considers the challenge of culture to the earliest converts to Christianity, as they struggled to live on mission in the Greco-Roman cultural milieu of the Roman Empire. These believers blurred and pushed the boundaries of what it meant to be a saint or sinner from the first to the fifth centuries CE, and their stories provide the opportunity to get to know the regular people in the early churches. At the same time, their stories provide a fresh perspective for considering the difficult timeless questions that stubbornly persist in our own world and churches: when is it a sin to eat or not eat a particular food? Are women inherently more sinful than men? And why is Christian nationalism a problem and, at times, a sin? Ultimately, recognizing that cultural sins were always a part of the story of the church and its people is a message that is both a source of comfort and a call to action in our pursuit of sanctification today.

Can Christians today read the great classics of Greco-Roman pagan literature for spiritual formation and growth in the virtues?

Classical scholar Nadya Williams responds with an unequivocal "Yes!" Even in the Late Roman Empire Christian readers, like Augustine and Boethius, did just this. But reading the classics this way requires reading differently than, perhaps, most people today are used to doing.

This is a book about reading the Greco-Roman classics as Christians--the why, the how, and to a lesser extent, the when. This exercise, equal parts intellectual and spiritual, is timely. Just as our bodies are what we eat, so are our minds what we consume. The past few years have seen the appearance of books on the value of literature in nourishing our minds and souls--developing the practice of reading not just the Bible but all that we read for spiritual formation. Most such books have focused largely on medieval and modern literature, involving antiquity only occasionally.

Almost two thousand years ago, as Christianity was first beginning to spread in the Ancient Mediterranean world, the gospel came to believers who had grown up hearing and reading the great works of pagan literature and seeing the pagan gods everywhere around in their world, saturated as it was with pagan gods in literature, public and private art, coins, and more. The joy in encountering Jesus and learning of his love for all sinful humanity, stood out particularly starkly against the cruelty of the pagan worldview that comes through so clearly in the myths. And yet, they too could see hints of truth and spiritual longings for salvation in those myths.

In twenty short chapters, Nadya Williams introduces the readers to one or two different ancient authors and their key works. She offers three interrelated reasons for Christians today to read the pagan classics for spiritual formation: reading to be surprised by joy, reading to understand the world of the Bible and the earliest Christians, and reading for character formation.

It is time Christians rediscovered the benefits of reading the great works of Greco-Roman classical literature as Christians.

This book explores the role played by civilians in shaping the outcomes of military combat across time and place.

This volume explores the contributions civilians have made to warfare in case studies that range from ancient Europe to contemporary Africa and Latin America. Building on philosophical and legal scholarship, it explores the blurred boundary between combatant and civilian in different historical contexts and examines how the absence of clear demarcations shapes civilian strategic positioning and impacts civilian vulnerability to military targeting and massacre. The book argues that engagement with the blurred boundaries between combatant and non-combatant both advance the key analytical questions that underpin the historical literature on civilians and underline the centrality of civilians to a full understanding of warfare. The volume provides new insight into why civilian death and suffering has been so common, despite widespread beliefs embedded in legal and military codes across time and place that killing civilians is wrong. Ultimately, the case studies in the book show that civilians, while always victims of war, were nevertheless often able to become empowered agents in defending their own lives, and impacting the outcomes of wars. By highlighting civilian military agency and broadening the sense of which actors affect strategic outcomes, the book also contributes to a richer understanding of war itself.

This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, international history, international relations and war and conflict studies.

This book explores the role played by civilians in shaping the outcomes of military combat across time and place.

This volume explores the contributions civilians have made to warfare in case studies that range from ancient Europe to contemporary Africa and Latin America. Building on philosophical and legal scholarship, it explores the blurred boundary between combatant and civilian in different historical contexts and examines how the absence of clear demarcations shapes civilian strategic positioning and impacts civilian vulnerability to military targeting and massacre. The book argues that engagement with the blurred boundaries between combatant and non-combatant both advance the key analytical questions that underpin the historical literature on civilians and underline the centrality of civilians to a full understanding of warfare. The volume provides new insight into why civilian death and suffering has been so common, despite widespread beliefs embedded in legal and military codes across time and place that killing civilians is wrong. Ultimately, the case studies in the book show that civilians, while always victims of war, were nevertheless often able to become empowered agents in defending their own lives, and impacting the outcomes of wars. By highlighting civilian military agency and broadening the sense of which actors affect strategic outcomes, the book also contributes to a richer understanding of war itself.

This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, international history, international relations and war and conflict studies.