As younger generations drift away from evangelical churches, the number of religiously unaffiliated young adults grows. Is the drift because of politics, personal morality, rebelliousness, culture wars, or something else? In this project, 16 young adults from the Churches of Christ participate in qualitative interviews over a five-year span. They describe messages they learned about success and survival from their faith communities as children, and how they have embraced and reinterpreted those messages into helpful life principles as adults. The resulting study explores issues of ethnicity in evangelical borderland communities and contrasts Latinx narratives with white narratives in religious and educative contexts. Findings also revealed gendered narratives, class-based narratives, and the glaring absence of helpful narratives around sexuality, filtered through the lenses of religion and education. The central finding of the interviews is this: participants experienced the Church of Christ as rewarding conformity with community, a strategy (when it works) which secures the future of the denomination and cements a conservative doctrine in the next generation of leadership. However, the study concludes that true survival narratives were the narratives participants constructed in response to the narratives provided by Churches of Christ.

In light of the reality of cultural and religious pluralism, Peter Phan demonstrates that Christian mission can only be carried on dialogically - especially among the poor and with deep respect for other religious traditions and their cultures. In Our Own Tongues is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in the emergence of "world christianity" and its future in the 21st century.

Dialogue of Life is the inspiring testament of Bob McCahill, a priest and missioner who for twenty years has pursued an unusual witness among the Muslim poor of Bangladesh. Rather than traditional pastoral work, McCahill simply tries to live as a friend and brother to his Muslim neighbors, offering a positive witness to the gospel ideals of service and love. In a series of small towns he has lived a life of utter simplicity, serving the sick, showing respect for Muslim piety, and explaining to all those who inquire the reasons for his way of life and good works. In simple yet vivid prose, Father McCahill describes his life, the rhythms of his days and those of his poor but faith-filled neighbors, the occasions for "interreligious dialogue" that emerge out of this living encounter, and his challenging reflections on the implications of this experience for Christian life and mission in the world. Enhanced by McCahill's own prizewinning photographs, Dialogue of Life is a moving example of spirituality in action, and witness to "God who is larger than our hearts".

Mission Legacies was inspired by the popular series of biographies from the International Bullentin of Missionary Research (IBMR). Seventy-eight of these legacies have been edited and gathered in this major reference and resource for church, libraries, students, and scholars. Mission Legacies tells the story of the missionary movement both in its classical achievements and in its time-bound weaknesses. These biographies are solid, critical assessments of their subjects. Their authors are a "who's who" of church historians, carefully chosen for their mastery of the life and significance of the leaders featured and the context in which they worked.

Although many refer to the American South as the "Bible Belt," the region was not always characterized by a powerful religious culture. In the seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, religion-in terms both of church membership and personal piety-was virtually absent from southern culture. The late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, however, witnessed the astonishingly rapid rise of evangelical religion in the Upper South. Within just a few years, evangelicals had spread their beliefs and their fervor, gaining converts and building churches throughout Virginia and North Carolina and into the western regions. But what was it that made evangelicalism so attractive to a region previously uninterested in religion?
Monica Najar argues that early evangelicals successfully negotiated the various challenges of the eighteenth-century landscape by creating churches that functioned as civil as well as religious bodies. The evangelical church of the late eighteenth century was the cornerstone of its community, regulating marriages, monitoring prices, arbitrating business, and settling disputes. As the era experienced substantial rifts in the relationship between church and state, the disestablishment of colonial churches paved the way for new formulations of church-state relations. The evangelical churches were well-positioned to provide guidance in uncertain times, and their multiple functions allowed them to reshape many of the central elements of authority in southern society. They assisted in reformulating the lines between the "religious" and "secular" realms, with significant consequences for both religion and the emerging nation-state.
Touching on the creationof a distinctive southern culture, the position of women in the private and public arenas, family life in the Old South, the relationship between religion and slavery, and the political culture of the early republic, Najar reveals the history behind a religious heritage that remains a distinguishing mark of American society.