The belief that Native Americans might belong to the fabled "lost tribes of Israel"-Israelites driven from their homeland around 740 BCE-took hold among Anglo-Americans and Indigenous peoples in the United States during its first half century. In Lost Tribes Found, Matthew W. Dougherty explores what this idea can tell us about religious nationalism in early America. Some white Protestants, Mormons, American Jews, and Indigenous people constructed nationalist narratives around the then-popular idea of "Israelite Indians." Although these were minority viewpoints, they reveal that the story of religion and nationalism in the early United States was more complicated and wide-ranging than studies of American "chosen-ness" or "manifest destiny" suggest. Telling stories about Israelite Indians, Dougherty argues, allowed members of specific communities to understand the expanding United States, to envision its transformation, and to propose competing forms of sovereignty. In these stories both settler and Indigenous intellectuals found biblical explanations for the American empire and its stark racial hierarchy. Lost Tribes Found goes beyond the legal and political structure of the nineteenth-century U.S. empire. In showing how the trope of the Israelite Indian appealed to the emotions that bound together both nations and religious groups, the book adds a new dimension and complexity to our understanding of the history and underlying narratives of early America.

Say the words "evangelical worship" to anyone in the United States - even if they are not particularly religious - and a picture will likely spring to mind unbidden: a mass of white, middle-class worshippers with eyes closed, faces tilted upward, and hands raised to the sky. Yet despite the centrality of this image, many scholars have underestimated evangelical worship as little more than a manipulative effort to arouse devotional exhilaration. It is frequently dismissed as a reiteration of nineteenth-century revivalism or a derivative imitation of secular entertainment - three Christian rock songs and a spiritual TED talk. But by failing to engage this worship seriously, we miss vital insights into a form of Protestantism that exerts widespread influence in the United States and around the world. Evangelical Worship offers a new way forward in the study of American evangelical Christianity. Weaving together insights from American religious history and liturgical studies, and drawing on extensive fieldwork in seven congregations, Melanie C. Ross brings contemporary evangelical worship to life. She argues that corporate worship is not a peripheral "extra" tacked on to a fully-formed spiritual, political, and cultural movement, but rather the crucible through which congregations forge, argue over, and enact their unique contributions to the American mosaic known as evangelicalism.

John Leland (1754-1841) was one of the most influential and entertaining religious figures in early America. As an itinerant revivalist, he demonstrated an uncanny ability to connect with a popular audience, and contributed to the rise of a "democratized" Christianity in America. A tireless activist for the rights of conscience, Leland also waged a decades-long war for disestablishment, first in Virginia and then in New England. Leland advocated for full religious freedom for all-not merely Baptists and Protestants-and reportedly negotiated a deal with James Madison to include a Bill of Rights in the Constitution. Leland developed a reputation for being "mad for politics" in early America, delivering political orations, publishing tracts, and mobilizing New England's Baptists on behalf of the Jeffersonian Republicans. He crowned his political activity by famously delivering a 1,200-pound cheese to Thomas Jefferson's White House. Leland also stood among eighteenth-century Virginia's most powerful anti-slavery advocates, and convinced one wealthy planter to emancipate over 400 of his slaves. Though among the most popular Baptists in America, Leland's fierce individualism and personal eccentricity often placed him at odds with other Baptist leaders. He refused ordination, abstained from the Lord's Supper, and violently opposed the rise of Baptist denominationalism. In the first-ever biography of Leland, Eric C. Smith recounts the story of this pivotal figure from American Religious History, whose long and eventful life provides a unique window into the remarkable transformations that swept American society from 1760 to 1840.

The Dutch Republic was the most religiously diverse land in early modern Europe, gaining an international reputation for toleration. In Reformation and the Practice of Toleration, Benjamin Kaplan explains why the Protestant Reformation had this outcome in the Netherlands and how people of different faiths managed subsequently to live together peacefully. Bringing together fourteen essays by the author, the book examines the opposition of so-called Libertines to the aspirations of Calvinist reformers for uniformity and discipline. It analyzes the practical arrangements by which multiple religious groups were accommodated. It traces the dynamics of religious life in Utrecht and other mixed communities. And it explores the relationships that developed between people of different faiths, especially in 'mixed' marriages.