This book entitled « Two Centuries of Protestantism in Haiti (1816-2016): Implementation, Conversion and Secularization » is the result of the symposium of the bicentenary of Protestantism organized by the Institut universitaire de Formation des Cadres (INUFOCAD) from 15 to 17 August 2016. Under the auspices of the Protestant Federation of Haiti (FPH), this scientific event was a space for citizen reflection allowing to take a scientific look around a jubilee religion established in Haiti since 1816. It was an opportunity for academics and researchers to share with the scientific community and leaders of the Protestant sector critical knowledge about this religious phenomenon in order to contribute to the development of the sociology of religion in Haiti.

This course is intended to provide an up-to-date introduction to the development of English society between the late fifteenth and the early eighteenth centuries: a vital period of social, political, economic, and cultural transition, and one which provided the immediate context of early British settlement in North America. Particular issues addressed in the lectures and section discussions, and available for deeper study as essay topics, will include: the changing social structure; households; local communities; gender roles; economic development; urbanization; religious change from the Reformation to the Act of Toleration; the Tudor and Stuart monarchies; rebellion, popular protest and civil war; witchcraft; education, literacy and print culture; crime and the law; poverty and social welfare; the changing structures and dynamics of political participation and the emergence of parliamentary government.

This course examines the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) as an expression of the religious life and thought of ancient Israel, and a foundational document of Western civilization. A wide range of methodologies, including source criticism and the historical-critical school, tradition criticism, redaction criticism, and literary and canonical approaches are applied to the study and interpretation of the Bible. Special emphasis is placed on the Bible against the backdrop of its historical and cultural setting in the Ancient Near East.

The book proposes the hypothesis that six generic ways of being religious may be found in any large-scale religious tradition such as Christianity or Buddhism or Islam or Hinduism: sacred rite, right action, devotion, shamanic mediation, mystical quest, and reasoned inquiry. These are recurrent ways in which, socially and individually, devout members of these traditions take up and appropriate their stories and symbols in order to draw near to, and come into right relationship with, what the traditions attest to be the ultimate reality.