Böcker av Robert Banks

Not what you expect. This look inside a first-century meeting will make you rethink what (or who?) the church really is."From a religious point of view the whole meeting left a lot to be desired. What had happened contained scarcely anything religious at all. They didn't even have a priest, let alone all the ritual that you expect. This wasn't quite what I had bargained for. Neither decently ritualistic nor exotically mysterious. All very simple and matter of fact."

Amy Oxley Wilkinson was arguably the most widely known female Australian missionary in China and the West in the early 20th century. She was the great granddaughter of colonial chaplain Samuel Marsden and granddaughter of celebrated explorer John Oxley. After rescuing an abandoned blind boy, she founded an innovative Blind Boys School in Fuzhou which is now a major institution in Fujian Province. Her husband Dr George Wilkinson set up the city's first hospital and introduced a program to address the pervasive curse of opium addiction.Amy's holistic and vocational approach to disability education brought her national and later international recognition. In 1920, the president of the new Chinese republic awarded her the Order of the Golden Grain, the highest honour a foreigner could receive. Two years later, Amy and the School's brass band were presented to Queen Mary in England.Amy's story highlights the significance of Australia's contribution to the development of early modern China and is a challenge to anyone committed to making their life count for others.

This book addresses one of the oldest questions posed to religious believers: if God made everything, who made God? Most recently levelled by the New Atheists, the question was asked in ancient Greece and has preoccupied religious believers in the centuries since. Here, renowned scholar Robert Banks explores the history of the objection - from its earliest vocalization in the ancient world to its most famous opponents, Freud, Marx, and others. Ideal for anyone with a general interest in new atheism, for those studying religion, or wanting to sort out what (if any) elements of their idea of God are man-made.

A fresh approach to the attitude of Jesus to the Mosaic Law, Dr Banks' book is concerned centrally with a detailed exegesis of the texts in the first three Gospels relevant to the ethical teaching and practice of Jesus as it related to Jewish Law.