Series: The Encyclopedia of Christianity (EC)

Volume 3 of the EC contains 342 articles constituting the alphabetical entries J–O -- articles on significant topics ranging from Jesus, the kingdom of God, liberation theology, and Martin Luther to medical ethics, the Middle Ages, North American theology, and the Orthodox Church. Like each volume in the complete EC, this book incorporates many enhancements of and additions to the third revised edition of the German Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon: Internationale theologische EnzyklopSdie, on which the EC is based. Among the new features of this English work are the following:

• articles on all but the smallest countries of the world, including former communist states that have gained their independence since 1989;
• the latest, best statistical information, compiled by David B. Barrett, on the religious affiliation and ecclesiastical breakdown of each country and continent;
• the addition of over seventy biographical articles on prominent figures throughout church history;
• many expanded or entirely new articles that address topics of particular interest to English-speaking readers.

Unparalleled in scholarship and breadth of content, the Encyclopedia of Christianity will long serve as the standard reference work for the study of Christianity in the past and the present -- and its trajectory into the twenty-first century.