The Council of Nicea was not merely clerics in a dark and ornate hall. It was brawls in churchyards. It was emperors and governors fighting to save the empire ... and perhaps salvage a little fame for themselves. It was political intrigues as the governments of church and state blended into a volatile stew.It was the way a fringe group of peace-loving communal worshipers of a crucified Palestinian prophet conquered the Roman Empire.

The Council of Nicea was not merely clerics in a dark and ornate hall. It was brawls in churchyards. It was emperors and governors fighting to save the empire ... and perhaps salvage a little fame for themselves. It was political intrigues as the governments of church and state blended into a volatile stew. It was the way a fringe group of peace-loving communal worshipers of a crucified Palestinian prophet conquered the Roman Empire.

The purpose of this book is to answer the following questions by presenting answers based on primary sources and interpretation by scholars, as well as logical deductions drawn from relevant research: 1.Did Jesus Christ ever exist? 2.Did the Roman Emperor Constantine and the Church of Rome transform Serapis Christus into Jesus Christ? 3.Did the Council of Nicea vote Christ as God? 4.Did the Council of Nicea decided on the number of books that should be in the New Testament? 5.Is there evidence that Jesus Christ had a wife, children and bloodline that can be traced into the French royalty? 6.Why did the Vatican destroy tens of thousands of early Judeo-Christian scrolls of the Old and New Testament? 7.Are God's chosen people Indo-European as portrayed in the West or African as the blacks of the Sub-Sahara and Africans in Diaspora (African-Americans)? 8.Has white ethnocentrism and nationalism transform the image, purpose, message, and value of Christianity? If so, is this transformation a contradiction? 9.What is the lasting legacy of the Council of Nicea and its impact on Christianity? The book examines the interpretations of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi library by Abdul Osman, the renowned Egyptian scholar/researcher. He has written Out of Egypt, The Hebrew Pharaohs of Egypt, Moses and Akhenaten, Jesus in the House of the Pharaohs, and Christianity: An Ancient Egyptian Religion. The Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi library was discovered shortly after the end of World War II. The library was first published in 1977, it includes unpublished gospels of the New Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls reveal the Jewish/Christian sect based on historical Jesus hundreds of years before the Roman Church's acknowledgement of the birth of Jesus Christ under the domain of the Roman empire. The Egypt of ancient times was known as "the land of the blacks" or Kemet for its people rather than the rich soil along the banks of the Nile as interpreted by Eurocentric pundits who see North and Northeast Africa as an extension of Europe. The evidence drawn from the unblemished remains and artifacts of pharaohs demonstrate that the people of Kemet are the ancestors of the blacks of Sub-Saharan Africa and Africans in Diaspora (African-Americans). Dynastic Kemet reigned over all civilization for thousands of years. It was the creator of all modern religions. Constant Indo-European and Asiatic invasions, along with internal strife and Nubian rebellions, led to hegemony by outsiders that have declined since the end of World War II and absolute control over colonial possessions. The present Arabic population that dominates North and Northeast Africa (today's Middle East) are Indo-European invaders that have held these lands since the 8th century. This population is more aligned with the Indo-European West than the non-Moslem population in their midst and south of the Sahara. They readily sold these non-believers into slavery until it was prohibited by Western nations. The book explores how Eurocentrism denies the truth about Black Africa's role in ancient and world history, as well as the development of modern Christianity. It examines the deplorable effects on the psyche of Africans in Diaspora and intra-racial victimization from street crime to national politics. The book also describes how Christianity have become anti-Christian and serve the interest of evil, envy, narcissism, intolerance and greed by disconnecting itself from the African authors of the gospel and their message.

This book introduces Liturgico-Political Theology, whose bedrock is the reality of the Paschal Mystery of Christ and the fruit it has borne for humanity: salvation. It presents this embrace of theology, liturgy and politics as part of the effects of the Christ Jesus won for humanity in His victorious death on Good Friday. It reiterates the inseparable connection between liturgy and life, in a way that liturgical celebrations do not leave those who take part passive and inactive persons. Hence, proceeding through an hermeneutic study of liturgical orations of various Masses as presented in the Roman Missal, the underlining messages and tasks given to political leaders in particular, and public servants in general, are articulated. They come to realize that the ultimate goal of politicking, is to emulate the selflessness of Jesus in serving humanity.

On the eastern border of Guatemala and Honduras, pilgrims and travelers flock to the Black Christ of Esquipulas, a large statue carved from wood depicting Christ on the cross. The Catholic shrine, built in the late sixteenth century, has become the focal point of admiration and adoration from New Mexico to Panama. Beyond being a site of popular devotion, however, the Black Christ of Esquipulas was also the scene of important debates about citizenship and identity in the Guatemalan nation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In The Black Christ of Esquipulas, Douglass Sullivan-Gonz�lez explores the multifaceted appeal of this famous shrine, its mysterious changes in color over the centuries, and its deeper significance in the spiritual and political lives of Guatemalans. Reconstructed from letters buried within the restricted Catholic Church archive in Guatemala City, the debates surrounding the shrine reflect the shifting categories of race and ethnicity throughout the course of the country's political trajectory. This "biography" of the Black Christ of Esquipulas serves as an alternative history of Guatemala and sheds light on some of the most salient themes in Guatemala's social and political history: state formation, interethnic dynamics, and church-state tensions. Sullivan-Gonz�lez's study provides a holistic understanding of the relevance of faith and ritual to the social and political history of this influential region.

Lumen Gentium, Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, changed how the church thinks about the laity, holiness, baptism, and even the nature and purpose of the church itself. In A Council That Will Never End, the highly regarded ecclesiologist Paul Lakeland marks the fiftieth anniversary of this document's promulgation by taking up three major themes of the constitution, analyzing the text, and identifying some of the questions with which it leaves us. These themes are the role of the bishop in the church and the ways Lumen Gentium's teaching relates to various tensions in today's church the laity and in particular the mixed blessing of describing them in the category of "secularity" and the relationships between the church and the people of God and what they tell us about the ways in which all people are offered salvation. Lakeland is convinced that Lumen Gentium leaves much unfinished business (as any historical document must), that attending to it will take us beyond much of the now sterile ecclesial divisions, and that the ecclesiology of humility it implies marks the way that theology must guide the church in the years ahead.