Bringing immigrants onstage as central players in the drama of rural
capitalist transformation, Anne Kelly Knowles traces a community of
Welsh immigrants to Jackson and Gallia counties in southern Ohio. After
reconstructing the gradual process of community-building, Knowles
focuses on the pivotal moment when the immigrants became involved with
the industrialization of their new region as workers and investors in
Welsh-owned charcoal iron companies. Setting the southern Ohio Welsh in
the context of Welsh immigration as a whole from 1795 to 1850, Knowles
explores how these strict Calvinists responded to the moral dilemmas
posed by leaving their native land and experiencing economic success in
the United States.
Knowles draws on a wide variety of sources, including obituaries and
community histories, to reconstruct the personal histories of over 1,700
immigrants. The resulting account will find appreciative readers not
only among historical geographers, but also among American economic
historians and historians of religion.

'Send Back the Money!' is a thorough and gripping examination of a fascinating and forgotten aspect of Scottish and American relations and Church history. A seminal period of Abolition activity is exposed by Iain Whyte through a study of the fiery 'Send back the Money!' campaign named after 'the hue and cry of the day' that encapsulated the argument that divided families, communities, and the Free Church itself. This examination of the Free Church's involvement with American Presbyterianism in the nineteenth century reveals the ethical furore caused by a Church wishing to emancipate itself from the religious and civil domination supported by the established religion of the state. The Free Church therefore found an affinity with those oppressed elsewhere, but subsequently found itself financially supported by the Southern slave states of America. Whyte sensitively handles this inherent contradiction in the political, ecclesiastical, and theological institutions, while informing the reader of the roles of charismatic characters such as Robert Burns, Thomas Chalmers and Frederick Douglass. These key individuals shaped contemporary culture with action, great oratory, and rhetoric. The author adroitly draws parallels from the twentieth century onwards, bringing the reader to a fuller understanding of the historic and topical issues within global Christianity, and the contentious topic of slavery. 'Send back the Money!' throws light upon nineteenth-century culture, British and American Abolitionists, and ecclesiastical politics, and is written in a clear and engaging style.

John Calvin was born on 10 July 1509. Five hundred years later, the ideas of this French theologian continue to influence churches all around the world, and Western culture in general. He has also been a victim of caricature and misunderstanding, even within his own lifetime. The contributors to this stimulating volume, linked with the 2009 Moore College School of Theology, are united by the conviction that Calvin needs to be heard afresh, understood first on his own terms and then drawn on as a theological resource for Christian life and thought today. The essays explore selected aspects of Calvin's contribution and encourage us to read Calvin for ourselves and to engage with him as he speaks about the knowledge of God the Creator and Redeemer, whom he served with a singular devotion, cannot but mean that we will have our vision of God expanded and our love for him inflamed. The contributors are Peter Adam, Michael Jensen, Paul Helm, Robert Doyle, Mark Thompson, Oliver Crisp, David HAhne, Martin Foord, John McClean, Andrew Cameron, Peter Jensen and Colin Bale.

In On Time, Punctuality, and Discipline in Early Modern Calvinism, Max Engammare explores how the sixteenth-century Protestant reformers of Geneva, France, London, and Bern internalized a new concept of time. Applying a moral and spiritual code to the course of the day, they regulated their relationship with time, which was, in essence, a new relationship with God. As Calvin constantly reminded his followers, God watches his faithful every minute. Come Judgment Day, the faithful in turn will have to account for each minute. Engammare argues that the inhabitants of Calvin s Geneva invented the new habit of being on time, a practice unknown in Antiquity. It was also fundamentally different from notions of time in the monastic world of the medieval period and unknown to contemporaries such as Erasmus, Vives, the early Jesuits, Rabelais, Ronsard, or Montaigne. Engammare shows that punctuality did not proceed from technical innovation. Rather, punctuality was above all a spiritual, social, and disciplinary virtue.

Calvin's 1559 Institutes is one of the most important works of theology that emerged at a pivotal time in Europe's history. As a movement, Calvinism has often been linked to the emerging features of modernity, especially to capitalism, rationalism, disenchantment, and the formation of the modern sovereign state. In this book, Michelle Sanchez argues that a closer reading of the 1559 Institutes recalls some of the tensions that marked Calvinism's emergence among refugees, and ultimately opens new ways to understand the more complex ethical and political legacy of Calvinism. In conversation with theorists of practice and signification, she advocates for reading the Institutes as a pedagogical text that places the reader in the world as the domain in which to actively pursue the 'knowledge of God and ourselves' through participatory uses of divine revelation. Through this lens, she reconceives Calvin's understanding of sovereignty and how it works in relation to the embodied reader. Sanchez also critically examines Calvin's teaching on providence and the incarnation in conversation with theorists of political theology and modernity who emphasize the importance of those very doctrines.

Traditional views of puritan social thought have done a great injustice to the intellectual history of the sixteenth century. They have presented puritans as creators of a disciplined, progressive, ultimately revolutionary theory of social order. The origins of modern society and politics are laid at the feet of zealous English protestants whose only intellectual debts are owed to Calvinist theology and the Bible. Professor Todd demonstrates that this view is fundamentally ahistorical. She places puritanism back in its own historical milieu, showing puritans as the heirs of a complex intellectual legacy, derived no less from the Renaissance than from the Reformation. The focus is on puritan social thought as part of a sixteenth-century intellectual consensus. This study traces the continuity of Christian humanism in the social thought of English protestants.

The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards offers a state-of-the-art summary of scholarship on Edwards by a diverse, international, and interdisciplinary group of Edwards scholars, many of whom serve as global leaders in the burgeoning world of research and writing on 'America's theologian'. As an early modern clerical polymath, Edwards is of interest to historians, theologians, and literary scholars. He is also an interlocutor for contemporary clergy and philosophical theologians. All such readers-and many more-will find here an authoritative overview of Edwards' life, ministry, and writings, as well as a representative sampling of cutting-edge scholarship on Edwards from across several disciplines. The volume falls into four sections, which reflect the diversity of Edwards studies today. The first section turns to the historical Edwards and grounds him in his period and the relevant contexts that shaped his life and work. The second section balances the historical reconstruction of Edwards as a theological and philosophical thinker with explorations of his usefulness for constructive theology and the church today. In part three, the focus shifts to the different ways and contexts in which Edwards attempted to realize his ideas and ideals in his personal life, scholarship, and ministry, but also to the ways in which these historical realities stood in tension with, limited, or resisted his aspirations. The final section looks at Edwards' widening renown and influence as well as diverse appropriations. This Handbook serves as an authoritative guide for readers overwhelmed by the enormity of the multi-lingual world of Edwards studies. It will bring readers up to speed on the most important work being done and then serve them as a benchmark in the field of Edwards scholarship for decades to come.

Dutch society has enjoyed a reputation, or notoriety, for permissiveness since the sixteenth century. The Dutch Republic in the Golden Age was the only society that tolerated religious dissenters of all persuasions in early modern Europe. Paradoxically, it was committed to a strictly Calvinist public Church and also to the preservation of religious plurality. R. Po-chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop have brought together a group of leading historians from the U.K., the U.S. and the Netherlands. Their outstanding essays probe the history and myth of Dutch religious toleration.

Martin Bucer (1491-1551) was one of the most important sixteenth century Reformers, who became leader of the Reformed Churches in Switzerland and South Germany after the death of Zwingli. To mark the 500th anniversary of his birth, an international team of specialists on Bucer highlight his contribution in thought and practice to building the community of the Church in England and Europe. The issues addressed also raise matters of contemporary significance, such as Church-state relations, Protestant-Catholic unity, and tensions between a church of true believers and a "people's" church.

A revealing new portrait of John Calvin that captures his human complexity and the sixteenth-century world in which he fought his personal and theological battles During the glory days of the French Renaissance, young John Calvin (1509-1564) experienced a profound conversion to the faith of the Reformation. For the rest of his days he lived out the implications of that transformation-as exile, inspired reformer, and ultimately the dominant figure of the Protestant Reformation. Calvin's vision of the Christian religion has inspired many volumes of analysis, but this engaging biography examines a remarkable life. Bruce Gordon presents Calvin as a human being, a man at once brilliant, arrogant, charismatic, unforgiving, generous, and shrewd. The book explores with particular insight Calvin's self-conscious view of himself as prophet and apostle for his age and his struggle to tame a sense of his own superiority, perceived by others as arrogance. Gordon looks at Calvin's character, his maturing vision of God and humanity, his personal tragedies and failures, his extensive relationships with others, and the context within which he wrote and taught. What emerges is a man who devoted himself to the Church, inspiring and transforming the lives of others, especially those who suffered persecution for their religious beliefs.

Calvinism was the most dynamic and disruptive religious force of the later sixteenth century. Its emergence on the international scene shattered the precarious equilibrium established in the first generation of the Reformation, and precipitated three generations of religious warfare. This collection of essays probes different aspects of this complex phenomenon at a local level. Contributors present the results of their detailed work on societies as diverse as France, Germany, Highland Scotland and Hungary. Among wider themes approached are the impact of Calvin's writings, Calvinism in higher education, the contrasting fates of reformed preachers in town and country, Calvinist discipline and apocalyptic thought, and the shadowy affinity of merchants and scholars who formed a critical part of the 'Calvinist International'.

Award-winning essayist Lance Morrow writes about the partnership of God and Mammon in the New World-about the ways in which Americans have made money and lost money, and about how they have thought and obsessed about this peculiarly American subject. Fascinated by the tracings of theology in the ways of American money Morrow sees a reconciliation of God and Mammon in the working out of the American Dream. This sharp-eyed essay reflects upon American money in a series of individual life stories, including his own. Morrow writes about what he calls "the emotions of money," which he follows from the catastrophe of the Great Depression to the era of Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Donald Trump. He considers money's dual character-functioning both as a hard, substantial reality and as a highly subjective force and shape-shifter, a sort of dream. Is money the root of all evil? Or is it the source of much good? Americans have struggled with the problem of how to square the country's money and power with its aspiration to virtue. Morrow pursues these themes as they unfold in the lives of Americans both famous and obscure: Here is Thomas Jefferson, the luminous Founder who died broke, his fortune in ruin, his estate and slaves at Monticello to be sold to pay his debts. Here are the Brown brothers of Providence, Rhode Island, members of the family that founded Brown University. John Brown was in the slave trade, while his brother Moses was an ardent abolitionist. With race in America a powerful subtheme throughout the book, Morrow considers Booker T. Washington, who, with a cunning that sometimes went unappreciated among his own people, recognized money as the key to full American citizenship. God and Mammon is a masterly weaving of America's money myths, from the nation's beginnings to the present.

In an eloquent defense of Calvinist theology, author and professor Michael Horton invites us to explore the teachings of Calvinism-also commonly known as Reformed theology-by showing how it is biblical and Christ-centered, leading us to live our lives for the glory of God. The system of theology known as Calvinism has been immensely influential for the past five hundred years, but it's often encountered negatively as a fatalistic belief system that confines human freedom and renders human action and choice irrelevant. Taking us beyond the caricatures and typical reactions, For Calvinism: Explores the historical roots of Reformed thought. Delivers the essence of Calvinism, examining its distinctive characteristics, such as election, atonement, effectual calling, and perseverance. Encourages us to consider its rich resources for faith and practice in the present age. As a companion to Roger Olson's Against Calvinism critique and response, readers will be able to compare contrasting perspectives and form their own opinions on the merits and weaknesses of Calvinism.

This book reconsiders the career of an important, controversial, but neglected figure in this history of Irish Presbyterianism. The Revd Isaac Nelson is mostly remembered for his opposition to the evangelical revival of 1859, but this book demonstrates that there was much more to Nelson's career. Nelson started out as a protege of Henry Cooke and as an exemplary young evangelical minister. Upon aligning himself with the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society and joining forces with American abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, Nelson emerged as a powerful voice against compromise with slaveholders. One of the central objectives of this book is to show that anti-slavery, especially his involvement with the 'Send Back the Money' controversy in the Free Church of Scotland and the debate over fellowship with slaveholders at the Evangelical Alliance, was crucially important to the development of Nelson into one of Irish Presbyterianism's most controversial figures. His later opposition to the 1859 Revival has often been understood as being indicative of Nelson's opposition to evangelicalism. This book argues that such a conclusion is mistaken and that Nelson opposed the Revival as a Presbyterian evangelical. His later involvement with the Land League and the Irish Home Rule movement, including his tenure as the Member of Parliament for County Mayo, could be easily dismissed as an entirely discreditable affair. While avoiding romantic nostalgia in relation to Nelson's nationalism, this book argues that Nelson's basis for advocating Home Rule was not as peculiar as it might first appear.

Was Jonathan Edwards the stalwart and unquestioning Reformed theologian that he is often portrayed as being? In what ways did his own conversion fail to meet the standards of his Puritan ancestors? And how did this affect his understanding of the Divine Being and of the nature of justification? Becoming Divine investigates the early theological career of Edwards, finding him deep in a crisis of faith that drove him into an obsessive lifelong search for answers. Instead of a fear of God, which he had been taught to understand as proof of his conversion, he experienced a 'surprising, amazing joy'. Suddenly he saw the Divine Being in everything and felt himself transported into a heavenly world, becoming one with the Divine family. What he developed, as he sought to make sense of this unexpected joy, is a theology that is both ancient and early modern: a theology of divine participation rooted in the incarnation of Christ.

"Like Augustine, Calvin, and Edwards, Bavinck was a man of giant mind, vast learning, ageless wisdom, and great expository skill, and to have these volumes now in full English is a wonderful enrichment. Solid but lucid, demanding but satisfying, broad and deep and sharp and stabilizing, Bavinck's magisterial "Reformed Dogmatics" remains after a century the supreme achievement of its kind."--J. I. Packer, Regent College

"Finally Bavinck becomes available to the English-speaking world. The Dutch version has shaped generations of theologians and helped them to preach, think, and act on a fresh, Reformed basis. The strength of Bavinck's dogmatics is that it's neither conservative nor progressive, but its biblical character makes it constantly up-to-date. Baker Academic and the Dutch Reformed Translation Society deserve praise for this project, from which without doubt church and theology will profit for years to come."--Herman Selderhuis, Theologische Universiteit Appeldoorn

"What a wonderful gift to the English-speaking theological world! The topics explored by Bavinck are still of the utmost importance, and he addresses them here in a theological voice that is amazingly fresh."--Richard J. Mouw, president, Fuller Theological Seminary

"Pastors and theologians will welcome the historic first complete translation of Herman Bavinck's "Reformed Dogmatics," . . . This masterful theological work is now available to passionate students of theology."--R. Albert Mohler Jr., Preaching

"Arguably the most important systematic theology ever produced in the Reformed tradition. I have found it to be the most valuable. English-speaking theology throughout the twentieth century until now has beensingularly impoverished by not having at its disposal a translation of Bavinck's "Dogmatiek" in its entirety. The appearance of this volume will be an incomparable boon for generations of students, pastors, teachers, and others, serving to deepen understanding and enrich reflection in both historical and systematic theology."--Richard B. Gaffin Jr., Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia

Updated edition of classic introduction to the essential tenets of Calvinistic theology: its history and content, a biblical defense, and a guide to further study.

The fascinating story of America's oldest thriving heritage language. Winner of the Dale W. Brown Book Award by the Young Center for Anabaptists and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College While most world languages spoken by minority populations are in serious danger of becoming extinct, Pennsylvania Dutch is thriving. In fact, the number of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers is growing exponentially, although it is spoken by less than one-tenth of one percent of the United States population and has remained for the most part an oral vernacular without official recognition or support. A true sociolinguistic wonder, Pennsylvania Dutch has been spoken continuously since the late eighteenth century despite having never been "refreshed" by later waves of immigration from abroad. In this probing study, Mark L. Louden, himself a fluent speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch, provides readers with a close look at the place of the language in the life and culture of two major subgroups of speakers: the "Fancy Dutch," whose ancestors were affiliated mainly with Lutheran and German Reformed churches, and traditional Anabaptist sectarians known as the "Plain people"-the Old Order Amish and Mennonites. Drawing on scholarly literature, three decades of fieldwork, and ample historical documents-most of which have never before been made accessible to English-speaking readers-this is the first book to offer a comprehensive look at this unlikely linguistic success story.