Resources available from Charlotte and Morton libraries give deep, authoritative, and broad access to information that cannot be matched by internet material. Students are encouraged to use library resources as much as possible. Yet, with a careful and watchful eye there are times when internet material can be helpful, particularly with historical material. The challenge is how narrow or broad should the subject of theology go? In some ways, all subject areas in this subject guide are theology-based and it is artificial to separate them into different disciplines. In other ways, if theology is so broadly defined, a subject guide can get so unwieldy that it becomes unmanageable. I have taken a very practical approach by listing resources that would fall mostly into the area of a general theology class. This is a start. Many of the websites have lots of options and places to go. I have tried to find the more impressive websites in order to save you some time and energy. I hope you will agree.
Table of Contents:
CHURCH FATHERS AND THEIR WRITINGS
EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORY
MEDIEVAL CHURCH HISTORY
REFORMATION AND COUNTER-REFORMATION
REVIVALISM AND MISSIONS
AMERICAN RELIGIOUS HISTORY RESOURCES
THE MODERN CHURCH
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CHURCH FATHERS AND THEIR WRITINGS
Early Church Fathers: Ante-Nicene; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
<http://www.ccel.org/fathers2>
One of the largest and best electronic primary resource web sites available on the net for Christian spiritual works. This site has documents from the Ante-Nicene Fathers (The writings of the Church Fathers down to 325 A.D.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (St. Augustine Volumes/ St. Chrysostom Volumes), and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series II (Various Church fathers, and seven ecumenical councils).
Institute for Christian Leadership: Guide to Early Church Documents
<http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/christian-history.html>
This web site contains pointers to Internet-accessible files relating to the early church, including canonical documents, creeds, the writings of the Apostolic Fathers and other historical texts relevant to church history.
New Advent: The Fathers of the Church
<http://www.newadvent.org/fathers>
An extensive listing of primary documents from the early patristic age.
EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORY
Internet Ancient History Sourcebook:Christian Origins
<https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/asbook11.asp>
An extensive project by Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York to provide ancient texts that are in public domain and can be used in the classroom. This is a companion to the Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
http://www.fourthcentury.com/
This website from Wisconsin Lutheran College is place that promotes and stores research tools and texts for the study of the Church and its environment in the Fourth Century.
MEDIEVAL CHURCH HISTORY
<http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/sbook.asp>
The Medieval Sourcebook is both a classroom resource and the largest collection of online medieval texts. This is an extensive project by Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York to provide ancient texts that are in public domain and can be used in the classroom.
<https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/goldenlegend/>
Historians interested in the "real lives" of individual saints value the earliest texts above all others. But for assessing the later cult of saints in Western Europe the Golden Legend Jacobus de Voragine, writing about 1260, achieved dominance in later western hagiographical literature - about 900 manuscripts of his Golden Legend survive. Thanks to the efforts of Robert Blackmon, the Medieval Sourcebook can now make available the full text of the seven volume edition published by Temple Classics in 1900. That was based on an older English translation by William Caxton, but with a text modernized by F.S. Ellis.
REFORMATION AND COUNTER-REFORMATION
Internet Archive of Texts and Documents: The Protestant Reformation
<http://web.archive.org/web/20011004212715/http://history.hanover.edu/early/prot.htm>
This is a web site with good links to documents and persons from Lutheran Reformations, Reformed Reformations, Radical Reformations, English Reformation, and Scottish Reformation. The resource links are very helpful at the end of the page.
Reformation
<http://www.mun.ca/rels/reform/index.html>
There are important texts, pictures, and links on the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. The categories are Luther, Phillip Melanchthon, Calvin, Zwingli, Bullinger, English/Scottish Reformation, Mennonites, Schwenkfelder, Counter-Reformation, Pictures, and Search Page.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook
<https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/modsbook.asp>
One of three main sources of historical information by Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York. This resources begins with the Reformation and has many resources from that time and beyond.
Theological Perspectives of the Reformation
http://www.reformationhappens.com/
This multi-media website covers a variety of Reformation topics, including events leading up to the Reformation, the Catholic response, the Magisterial Reformation, the English Reformation, the Radical Reformation, Women of the Reformation, and Popes of the Reformation. It also includes links for each topic for more information.
REVIVALISM AND MISSIONS
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/wesley/journal.toc.html
Spanning some fifty-five years, John Wesley's voluminous Journal records the daily tribulations experienced in traveling the length and breadth of the British Isles in the 18th century. This site provides full-text content.
The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University
http://edwards.yale.edu/
This site is a digital learning environment for research, education and publication, that presents all of Edwards’s writings, along with editorial materials that allow the reader to examine Edwards' thought.
AMERICAN RELIGIOUS HISTORY RESOURCES
Divining America Religion in American History
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/divam.htm
This site has links to essays by leading scholars on religion in American History, from the 17th through the 20th centuries, on almost every topic.
The Church in the Southern Black Community, 1780-1925
http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/
This site, by the University of NC and the Library of Congress, traces how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life. It focuses on how the black community adapted evangelical Christianity, making it a metaphor for freedom, community, and personal survival.
THE MODERN CHURCH
<https://guides.lib.cua.edu/c.php?g=711409&p=5378356>
This page list various online resources pertaining to the Second Vatican Council: general and background information, information regarding several of the documents and the individuals, a search engine dedicated to documents of the Second Vatican Council, as well as images and films of the Second Vatican Council. Most of the online resources are in English, several resources are in French.
Divining America: Religion in American History - The Twentieth-Century
This site has links to essays by leading scholars on religion in 20th Century American History, on topics such as the rise of fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and religion in post-WWII America.
