Southern Manuscript Sermons before 1800 – A Bibliographic Database

For many years early sermonic literature has proven to be the key to the understanding of the New England mind through the study of Puritan texts and, by extension and implication of scholarly emphases, the American mind.

This bibliography is the first guide to the study of the manuscript sermon literature of the Southern Colonies/States of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. No other tool exists. This bibliographic database will help scholars construct a fuller picture of the regional nature of the Southern mind before 1800 as well as its contribution to a national ethos, ultimately leading to a more balanced appraisal of American intellectual history by providing access to a considerable body of southern sermons to place alongside those of the northern and middle states for critical assessment.

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10 facts about Mormonism

The CNN Belief Blog thinks that since there are two presidential candidates who are Mormon that they would give you ten facts about their faith.

Here’s the full list, but below are some highlights.

2. Mormons consider themselves Christian but their beliefs and practices differ from traditional Christianity in key ways, including belief in sacred texts outside the Bible and practices like posthumous proxy baptism and wearing special undergarments.

3. There are about 14 million Mormons today, which more than half living outside the United States.

4. The Mormon religion was founded in upstate New York in 1830, when Joseph Smith published a translation of writings he said he found and translated from Egyptian-style hieroglyphics into English. That’s the Book of Mormon, which believers say consists of writings produced by ancient American civilizations.

6. Early Mormons faced intense persecution, so church headquarters relocated from New York to Missouri to Illinois in rapid succession. Joseph Smith was killed by a mob in Illinois. His successor, Brigham Young, led early Mormons to the Great Salt Lake in what’s now Utah, where church headquarters remains.

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Texas exorcism seminar draws in crowd of hundreds

A conference on evil and the unknown compelled hundreds to gather at a weekday presentation offered by the Catholic Diocese of San Angelo.

About 700 individuals from all over West Texas traveled to San Angelo Monday for a seminar on exorcism and diabolical influence.

“It’s one of the best presentations we’ve ever had,” said Bishop Michael Pfeifer with the Catholic Diocese of San Angelo. “It’s something very, very unique. The people were enthralled, and they had so many questions to ask.”

What I didn’t know was that all baptized babies have been exorcised:

Every baptized Catholic has gone through a simple form of an exorcism, Pfeifer said. One of the prayers a priest uses while baptising a person is to free him or her from the evil influence of the devil and put the person under the care of Jesus. This is because of original sin, which Pfeifer said all Catholics believe carries on throughout the human race.

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