Self-serving lackey, self-deceiving puppet, Swiss Protestant partisan, or sensible Erasmian humanist: which, if any, was Thomas Cranmer? For centuries historians have offered often bitterly contradictory answers. Although Cranmer was a key participant in the changes to English life brought about by the Reformation, his reticent nature and lack of extensive personal writings have left a vacuum that in the past has too often been filled by scholarly prejudice or presumption. For the first time, however, this book examines in-depth little used manuscript sources to reconstruct Cranmer's theological development on the crucial Protestant doctrine of justification. The author explores Cranmer's cultural heritage, why he would have been attracted to Luther's thought, and then provides convincing evidence for the Reformed Protestant Augustinianism which Cranmer enshrined in the formularies of the Church of England. For Cranmer the glory of God was his love for the unworthy; the heart of theology was proclaiming this truth through word and sacrament. Hence, the focus of both was on the life of on-going repentance, remembering God's gracious love inspired grateful human love.

In this remarkable work in Atlantic history, Jorge Canizares-Esguerra demonstrates with lavish scholarship and visual imagery the European settlers' struggle with Satanic forces that permeated the colonization and settlement of Europeans, both Hispanic and British, in the Western Hemisphere. He explores the epical narratives written in Spanish, Latin, and English, of that deeply embedded struggle, and shows how Christians in America thereafter fought to preserve a spiritual "garden" free of demonic forces. The struggle he describes in this original and challenging book, experienced by Christians of the time as heroic and inescapable, was an essential part of Atlantic history in the years of its early development.--Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University
"Recent scholarship on early modern Europe has shown how, contrary to the sharp contrasts of historical folklore, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations dreamed comparable dreams, and promoted comparable forms of political, economic, and social development. Now Professor Canizares-Esguerra completes the picture for the Americas of roughly the same era; in a book notable for skillful deployment of a rich visual material, he shows how Spanish and Puritan clerics, at opposite ends of a mutual anathema, dreamed comparable dreams, and shared common fears of an advancing kingdom of the devil."--James Tracy, University of Minnesota

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Read the Introduction.

"This is a timely book about the tortuous journey of biblical feminism in our time. The book will sober its own constituencies while also contributing to the ongoing analysis of contemporary American religion and gender."
--Marie Griffith, author of "God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission"

"Pamela Cochran interweaves two engaging stories in this carefully researched study, both of which are vitally important to our understanding of American evangelicalism. One story is about the small cadre of feminist leaders within evangelicalism who struggled heroically against the tide of rising political conservatism and male dominance. The other is about evangelicalism's often unwitting embrace of biblical hermeneutics, therapeutic individualism, and consumerism, and its difficulties in adapting to an increasingly pluralistic culture. Scholars in religious studies, history, and the social sciences will benefit greatly from reading this book."
--Robert Wuthnow, author of "Saving America?: Faith-Based Services and the Future of Civil Society"

"A valuable book that tells a story that is obscured amid the thunderous and simplifying voices that dominate public discussion of religion and gender politics."
--"Altar Magazine"

"Finally! Cochran's Evangelical Feminism provides a detailed analysis of the articulation of egalitarianism and feminist ideas--and their opponents--in evangelical organizations, theological debates and leadership in the 1970s and 1980s. A welcome addition to the field."
--Sally K. Gallagher, author of "Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life"

"Cochran intends herconcrete analysis of the split among evangelical feminists to exemplify larger themes in the story of American religious life, including inclusivity, anti-institutionalism, individualism, voluntarism, and populism. This text would make a worthy addition to women's studies collections and to theological libraries." --"Choice"

For most people, the terms "evangelical" and "feminism" are contradictory. "Evangelical" invokes images of conservative Christians known for their strict interpretation of the Bible, as well as their support of social conservatism and traditional gender roles. So how could an evangelical support feminism, a movement that seeks, at its most basic level, to redress the inequalities, injustice, and discrimination that women face because of their sex?

Evangelical Feminism offers the first history of the evangelical feminist movement. It traces the emergence and theological development of biblical feminism within evangelical Christianity in the 1970s, how an internal split among members of the movement came about over the question of lesbianism, and what these developments reveal about conservative Protestantism and religion generally in contemporary America.

Cochran shows that biblical feminists have been at the center of changes both within evangelicalism and in American culture more broadly by renegotiating the religious symbols which shape its deepest values.

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Read the Introduction.

athis book of offers a degree of courageous moral engagement that builds at least a tenuous bridge across the cultural divide.a
--Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

a Nelson has given us a wonderfully intimate glimpse into how rituals and belief animate the religious experiences of black-southerners. This is an important work that will challenge scholars of religion and race to rethink the nature of religious experience.a
--American Journal of Sociology

"Nelson reveals the spiritual lives of black Southerners like few authors before him. In beautifully written and theoretically engaging prose, the ritual experience of low country worshippers emerges in rich and compelling detail. This book will surely deepen our understanding of power and authority in African American religious life."
--Marla Frederick, author of "Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith"

"A very welcome book, not just for what we learn about one African American congregation, but for its reminder of what it means to see the world with religious eyes. Nelson's guided tour of a Charleston, South Carolina, pentecostal AME church is both enlightening and elegantly written. This book will shift the terms of debate about the role of ritual and experience in American religious life."
--Jim Spickard, University of Redlands

Dreams and visions, prophetic words from God about "dusty souls," speaking in tongues while "in the spirit"--narratives of these and similar events comprise the heart of Every Time I Feel the Spirit. This in-depth study of a Black congregation in Charleston, South Carolina provides a window intothe tremendously important yet still largely overlooked world of African American religion as the faith is lived by ordinary believers.

For decades, scholars have been preoccupied with the relation between Black Christianity, civil rights, and social activism. Every Time I Feel the Spirit is about black religion as religion. It focuses on the everyday experience of religion in the church, congregants' relationships with God, and the role that God and Satan play in congregants' lives--not only as objects of belief but as actual agents. It explores the concepts of religious experience and religious ritual, while emphasizing the attributions that people make to the operation of spiritual forces and beings in their lives.

Through interviews and field work, Nelson uncovers what religious people themselves see as important about their faith while extending and refining sociological understandings of religious ritual and religious experience.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Preface.

"A timely analysis of a religious movement that is quietly exercising enormous political influence today. Shuck's careful reading of LaHaye's troubling vision establishes unexpected connections with the leading edge of contemporary network culture."
--Mark C. Taylor, author of About Religion: Economies of Faith in Virtual Culture

"With this book, Glenn W. Shuck establishes himself as one of the foremost scholars of American evangelical Christianity. This work is both wonderfully written and creative. Based on Shuck's even-handed and insightful analysis, the reader learns about the meaning and astonishing popularity of books about end times, especially the Left Behind series. Marks of the Beast provides a dynamic lens into the meaning of religion in modern times."
--Michael O. Emerson, Director, Du Bois Center for the Advanced Study of Religion and Race, University of Notre Dame "A provocative study."
--"Berkshire Eagle""Well-researched work employing sociological, literary, and theological perspectives."--"Choice"

The "Left Behind" series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins has become a popular culture phenomenon, selling an astonishing 40 million copies to date. These novels, written by two well-known evangelical Christians, depict the experiences of those "left behind" in the aftermath of the Rapture, when Christ removes true believers, leaving everyone else to suffer seven years of Tribulation under Satan's proxy, Antichrist.

In Marks of the Beast, Shuck uncovers the reasons behind the books' unprecedented appeal, assessing why the novels have achieved a status within the evangelical community even greater than HalLindsey's 1970 blockbuster "The Late Great Planet Earth," It also explores what we can learn from them about evangelical Christianity in America.

Shuck finds that, ironically, the series not only reflects contemporary trends within conservative evangelicalism but also encourages readers--especially evangelicals--to embrace solutions that enact, rather than engage, their fears. Most strikingly, he shows how the ultimate vision put forth by the series' authors inadvertently undermines itself as the series unfolds.

How important was music to Martin Luther? Drawing on hundreds of liturgical documents, contemporary accounts of services, books on church music, and other sources, Joseph Herl rewrites the history of music and congregational song in German Lutheran churches. Herl traces the path of music and congregational song in the Lutheran church from the Reformation to 1800, to show how it acquired its reputation as the "singing church."
In the centuries after its founding, in a debate that was to have a strong impact on Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries, the Lutheran church was torn over a new style of church music that many found more entertaining than devotional. By the end of the eighteenth century, Lutherans were trying to hold their own against a new secularism, and many members of the clergy favored wholesale revision or even abandonment of the historic liturgy in order to make worship more relevant in contemporary society. Herl paints a vivid picture of these developments, using as a backdrop the gradual transition from a choral to a congregational liturgy.
The author eschews the usual analyses of musical repertoire and deals instead with events, people and ideas, drawing readers inside the story and helping them sense what it must have been like to attend a Lutheran church in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Parallel developments in Catholic churches are discussed, as are the rise of organ accompaniment of hymns and questions of musical performance practice. Although written with academic precision, the writing is clear and comprehensible to the nonspecialist, and entertaining anecdotes abound.
Appendixes include translations of several importanthistorical documents and a set of tables outlining the Lutheran mass as presented in 172 different liturgical orders. The bibliography includes 400 Lutheran church orders and reports of ecclesiastical visitations read by the author.

Renaissance English poetry was closely involved with affairs of state: some poets held high office, others wrote to influence those in power and to sway an increasingly independent public opinion. In this revised edition of his groundbreaking study, Norbrook offers a clear account of the issues that engaged the passions of such leading figures as Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, and John Milton, and provides introductions to a host of neglected writers.

This study approaches the Puritan experience in church government from the perspective of both the pew and the pulpit. For ten years, James Cooper immersed himself in local manuscript church records. These previously untapped documents provide a fascinating glimpse of lay-clerical relations in colonial Massachusetts, and reveal that ordinary churchgoers shaped the development of Congregational practices as much as the clerical and elite personages who for so long have populated histories of the period. Cooper's new findings both challenge existing models of church hierarchy and offer a new dimension to our understanding of the origins of New England democracy.

The early twentieth century saw the transformation of the southern Irish Protestants from a once strong people into an isolated, pacified community. Their influence, status and numbers had all but disappeared by the end of the civil war in 1923 and they were to form a quiescent minority up to modern times. This book tells the tale of this transformation and their forced adaptation, exploring the lasting effect that it had on both the Protestant community and the wider Irish society and investigating how Protestants in southern Ireland view their place in the Republic today.

John Knox's First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, one of the most notorious political tracts of the sixteenth century, has been more often referred to than read. Its true significance as one of a series of pamphlets which Knox wrote in 1558 on the theme of rebellion is therefore easily overlooked. This new edition of his writings includes not only The First Blast, but the three other tracts of 1558 -The Letter to the Regent of Scotland, The Appellation to the Scottish Nobility, and The Letter to the Commonalty of Scotland - in which Knox confronted the problem of resistance to tyranny. Related material, mostly drawn from Knox's own History of the Reformation in Scotland, illuminates the development of his views before 1558 and illustrates their application in the specific circumstances of the Scottish Reformation and the rule of Mary Queen of Scots. This edition thus brings together for the first time all of Knox's most important writings on rebellion.

John Knox's First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, one of the most notorious political tracts of the sixteenth century, has been more often referred to than read. Its true significance as one of a series of pamphlets which Knox wrote in 1558 on the theme of rebellion is therefore easily overlooked. This new edition of his writings includes not only The First Blast, but the three other tracts of 1558 -The Letter to the Regent of Scotland, The Appellation to the Scottish Nobility, and The Letter to the Commonalty of Scotland - in which Knox confronted the problem of resistance to tyranny. Related material, mostly drawn from Knox's own History of the Reformation in Scotland, illuminates the development of his views before 1558 and illustrates their application in the specific circumstances of the Scottish Reformation and the rule of Mary Queen of Scots. This edition thus brings together for the first time all of Knox's most important writings on rebellion.

This collection of all new essays offers a close look at the connections between American Protestants and money in the Antebellum period. During the first decades of the new American nation, money was everywhere on the minds of the church leaders and many of their followers. Economic questions were important for religious self-definition, they figured regularly in preaching and pamphleteering, and they contributed greatly to perceptions of morality both public and private. In fact, money was always a religious question. For this reason, argue the authors of these essays, it is impossible to understand broader cultural developments of the period - including political developments - without considering religion and economics together. Taken together, the essays provide essential background to an issue that continues to loom large and generate controversy in the Protestant community today.

The book provides a comparative study of the national Churches of England, Ireland, and Scotland: the Churches established by law to instruct the people and serve as guardians of the nation's faith. It traces the end of the confessional State idea in the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1846, and explores the movements to assert the spiritual independence of the Churches from State control.

Rebuilding Zion offers a pivotal new perspective on Reconstruction. Stowell carefully considers the religious interpretations of the Civil War by the main groups that defined Reconstruction-southern whites, northern whites, and freedmen - and shows how the southern churches became one of the principal bulwarks of the New South.

Given the significance of spiritual direction in modern Christianity, surprisingly little attention has been given to the tradition upon which today's spiritual direction is built. A long and interesting history does exist, though, as shown by Patricia Ranft in A Woman's Way. Ranft's insights shed light on the understanding society had of women as spiritual beings and on the position of women in a Christian society. This book delineates the history of spiritual direction for women and by women within the larger context of the history of Christian spirituality and its understanding of human perfectibility. By examining the ways in which women practiced spiritual direction, this study reveals the degree to which women influenced society by using an avenue of influence previously overlooked by scholars.

This study investigates the historical and political conditions which have contributed to the state of the Protestant community in China, and the kinds of spirituality and religious life that it has evolved. The authors draw on extensive fieldwork, and offer fascinating insights into the beliefs and practices of a little-documented section of Chinese society. They show that healing, protection, and vengeance by gods have been deep-rooted elements of Chinese religiosity for several hundred years, notions appropriated by Christians who now emphasize the powers of Jesus. Chinese Protestantism is seen to result from an interesting blend of the old and the new, and comparative material is adduced which sets Protestantism side by side with Catholicism and Buddhism, the two religions in China of comparable scope. A wide range of sources are utilized by the authors, and these lead to one of the most complete and detailed surveys of Christianity in China ever produced.

A richly documented study of the interrelation between religious reformation and territorial state-building in the German region of upper Franconia from the later Middle Ages through the Confessional era. Religious reform and the rise of the territorial state were the central features of early modern German history. Reformation and state-building, however, had a much longer history, beginning in the later Middle Ages and continuingthrough the early modern period. In this insightful new study, Smith explores the key relationship between the rise of the territorial state and religious upheavals of the age, centering his investigation on the diocese of Bamberg in upper Franconia. During the Reformation, the diocese was split in half: the parishes in the domains of the Franconian Hohenzollerns became Lutheran; those under the secular jurisdiction of the bishops of Bamberg remainedCatholic. Drawing from a broad range of archival sources, Smith offers a compelling look at the origins and course of Catholic and Protestant reform. He examines the major religious crises of the period -- the Great Schism, the Conciliar Movement, the Hussite War, the Peasant's War, the Thirty Years' War, and the Witch Craze -- comparing their impact on the two states and showing how events played out on the local, territorial, and imperial stages. Careful analysis of the sources reveals how religious beliefs shaped politics in the emerging territorial principalities, explaining both the similarities as well as the profound differences between Lutheran and Catholic conceptions ofthe state. William Bradford Smith is Professor of History at Oglethorpe University.

This book studies the early history of the Protestant revival movements of the eighteenth century from a European as well as Anglo-American perspective. Professor Ward examines the crisis in the Protestant world beyond that established and protected by the Westphalia treaties, and its impact upon the morale of Protestant communities which enjoyed diplomatic guarantees or other forms of public protection. He traces the widespread outbreak of forms of revival to the emergence of a common Protestant mind, shaped by the appreciation of common problems. The religious effects of widespread emigration produced by persecution, war and distress are traced, and the chronology of the familiar revivals of the West is related to the crises of Eastern revival. The Protestant Evangelical Awakening is based on archival and published resources extending from Eastern Europe to the American colonies, and marks a major contribution to our understanding of the religious history of both continents.

The religious revolution known as the 'Reformation' must rank among the most crucial and transforming events in English history. Yet its original reception by the English people remains largely obscure. Did they welcome the innovations - or did they resist? By what internal motivations were their responses determined? And by what external influences were their attitudes shaped? These are the key issues explored by Robert Whiting in this major investigation, based primarily on original research in the south-west. Dr Whiting's controversial conclusion is that for most of the population the Reformation was less a conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism than a transition from religious commitment to religious passivity or even indifference.

This is a case study of one pietist religious group, the Bruderhof. A Christian brotherhood founded on Anabaptist and evangelical pietist doctrine, they practice community of goods, seeking to emulate the vision of the Apostolic church and fulfill the ethic of brotherhood taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Rubin offers compelling accounts of the lives of Bruderhof apostates who foundered over issues of faith, and relates these crises to the central tenets of Bruderhof theology, their spirituality, and community life.

'His finest work and one that was both symptom and engine of the concept of "history from below" ... Here Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, Muggletonians, the early Quakers and others taking advantage of the collapse of censorship to bid for new kinds of freedom were given centre stage' Times Higher Education In 'The World Turned Upside Down' Christopher Hill studies the beliefs of such radical groups as the Diggers, the Ranters, the Levellers and others, and the social and emotional impulses that gave rise to them. The relations between rich and poor classes, the part played by wandering 'masterless' men, the outbursts of sexual freedom, the great imaginative creations of Milton and Bunyan - these and many other elements build up into a marvellously detailed and coherent portrait of this strange, sudden effusion of revolutionary beliefs. 'Established the concept of an "English Revolution" every bit as significant and potentially as radical as its French and Russian equivalents' Daily Telegraph 'Brilliant ... marvellous erudition and sympathy' David Caute, New Statesman 'This book will outlive our time and will stand as a notable monument to the man, the committed radical scholar, and one of the finest historians of the age' The Times Literary Supplement 'The dean and paragon of English historians' E.P. Thompson

In this book, twelve historians examine the nature of the American Protestant establishment and its response to the growing pluralism of this century. The authors conclude that the period surveyed forms a distinct epoch in the evolution of American Protestantism. The days when Protestant cultural authority could be taken for granted were over, but a new era in which religious pluralism would be widely accepted had not yet arrived.

Church Life: Pastors, Congregations, and the Experience of Dissent in Seventeenth-Century England addresses the rich, complex, and varied nature of 'church life' experienced by England's Baptists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians during the seventeenth century. Spanning the period from the English Revolution to the Glorious Revolution, and beyond, the contributors examine the social, political, and religious character of England's 'gathered' churches and reformed parishes: how pastors and their congregations interacted; how Dissenters related to their meetings as religious communities; and what the experience of church life was like for ordinary members as well as their ministers, including notably John Owen and Richard Baxter alongside less well-known figures, such as Ebenezer Chandler. Moving beyond the religious experience of the solitary individual, often exemplified by conversion, Church Life redefines the experience of Dissent, concentrating instead on the collective concerns of a communally-centred church life through a wide spectrum of issues: from questions of liberty and pastoral reform to matters of church discipline and respectability. With a substantial introduction that puts into context the key concepts of 'church life' and the 'Dissenting experience', the contributors offer fresh ways of understanding Protestant Dissent in seventeenth-century England: through differences in ecclesiology and pastoral theory, and via the buildings in which Dissent was nurtured to the building-up of Dissent during periods of civil war, persecution, and revolution. They draw on a broad range of printed and archival materials: from the minutes of the Westminster Assembly to the manuscript church books of early Dissenting congregations.

This book explores the complex ways in which England's gradual transformation from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant nation presented men and women with new ways in which to fashion their own identities and to define their relationships with society.
The past generation's research into the religious history of early modern England has heightened our appreciation for the persistence of traditional beliefs in the face of concerted attacks by followers of Henry VIII and his successor Edward VI. The book argues that the present challenge for historians is to move beyond this revisionist characterization of the English Reformation as a largely unpopular and unsuccessful exercise of state power to assess its legacy of increasing religious diversification. The contributors cast a post-revisionist light on religious change by showing how the Henrician break with Rome and the Edwardian implementation of a Protestant agenda had a lasting influence on the laity's beliefs and practices, forging a legacy that Mary I's efforts to restore Catholicism could not overturn.
If, as revisionist research has stressed, late medieval Christianity provided the laity with a wide array of means with which to internalize and individualize their religious experiences, then surely the events of the reigns of Henry and Edward vastly expanded the field over which the religiosity of English men and women could range. This book addresses the unfolding consequences of this theological variegation to assess how individual spiritual beliefs, aspirations, and practices helped shape social and political action on a family, local, and national level.