The unfolding of the American West is paralleled by the evolution of the Mormon religion. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith. Public hostility to his claims of divine revelations drove the Mormons from New York State to Missouri to Illinois, where Smith was murdered by a furious mob. Leadership was eventually assumed by Brigham Young, who guided his flock westward in search of the 'New Zion'. Legend has it that, when they reached the vast open spaces of the Great Basin, he ended the journey by declaring, 'This is the place'. Building on his critically acclaimed book about the origins of the Mormon faith, Ernest H Taves offers further stylometric analysis of texts from the "Book of Mormon" and recounts the spellbinding story of the cross-continental trek and establishment of the Mormon empire. Covering the years between Smith's assassination in 1844 to the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, Taves also includes discussion of polygamy and its effect on Utah's petition for statehood, and the economic impact of the 1849 gold rush on the Mormon community. A story of both monumental triumph and intense tragedy, "This is the Place" is a critical yet sympathetic examination of an integral part of American history.

Much misunderstood, Mormonism had a colorful beginning in the 19th century, as a visionary named Joseph Smith founded and built a community of believers with their own unique faith. In the late-20th century, the church had to come to terms with its own growth and organization, as well as with the increasing pervasiveness of globalization, secularization, and cultural changes. Today Mormonism is one of the major religions in America, and continues to grow internationally. However, though the church itself remains strong, it is elusive to those of other faiths. Here, a seasoned author and third-generation Mormon sheds light on the everyday lives and practices of faithful Mormons. Bushman's readers will come away with a more thorough appreciation of what it means to be Mormon in the modern world. Much misunderstood, Mormonism had a colorful beginning in the 19th century, as a visionary named Joseph Smith founded and built a community of believers with their own unique faith. In the late-20th century, the church had to come to terms with its own growth and organization, as well as with the increasing pervasiveness of globalization, secularization, and cultural changes. Today Mormonism is one of the major religions in America, and one that continues to grow internationally. However, though the church itself remains strong, it is elusive to those of other faiths. Here, a seasoned author and third-generation Mormon sheds light on the everyday lives and practices of faithful Mormons. Bushman's readers will come away with a more thorough appreciation of what it means to be Mormon in the modern world. Following Brigham Young into the Great Basin and founding communities that have endured for over 100 years, Mormons have forged a rich history in this country even as they built communities around the world. But the origins of this faith and those who adhere to it remain mysterious to many in the United States. Bushman allows readers a vivid glimpse into the lives of Mormons-their beliefs, rituals, and practices, as well as their views on race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexual orientation. The voices of actual Mormons reveal much about their inspiration, devotion, patriotism, individualism, and conservatism. With its mythical history and unlikely success, many wonder what has made this religion endure through the years. Here, readers will find answers to their questions about what it means to be Mormon in contemporary America.

Joseph Priestley was one of the most remarkable thinkers of the eighteenth century. Best known today as the scientist who discovered oxygen, he also made major contributions in the fields of education, politics, philosophy, and theology. This collection of essays by a team of experts covers the full range of Priestley's work and provides a new and up to date account of all his activities, together with a summary of his life and an account of his last years in America. The book will re-establish him as a major intellectual figure in Britain and America in the second half of the eighteenth century.

"I had an obsession with the Amish. Plan and simple. Objectively it made no sense. I, who worked hard at being special, fell in love with a people who valued being ordinary."

So begins Sue Bender's story, the captivating and inspiring true story of a harried urban Californian moved by the beauty of a display of quilts to seek out and live with the Amish. Discovering lives shaped by unfamiliar yet comforting ideas about time, work, and community, Bender is gently coaxed to consider, "Is there another way to lead a good life?"

Her journey begins in a New York men's clothing store. There she is spellbound by the vibrant colors and stunning geometric simplicity of the Amish quilts "spoke directly to me," writes Bender. Somehow, "they went straight to my heart."

Heeding a persistent inner voice, Bender searches for Amish families willing to allow her to visit and share in there daily lives. Plain and Simple vividly recounts sojourns with two Amish families, visits during which Bender enters a world without television, telephone, electric light, or refrigerators; a world where clutter and hurry are replaced with inner quiet and calm ritual; a world where a sunny kitchen "glows" and "no distinction was made between the sacred and the everyday."

In nine interrelated chapters--as simple and elegant as a classic nine-patch Amish quilt--Bender shares the quiet power she found reflected in lives of joyful simplicity, humanity, and clarity. The fast-paced, opinionated, often frazzled Bender returns home and reworks her "crazy-quilt" life, integrating the soul-soothing qualities she has observed in the Amish, and celebrating the patterns in the Amish, and celebrating the patterns formed by the distinctive "patches" of her own life.

Charmingly illustrated and refreshingly spare, Plain and Simple speaks to the seeker in each of us.

Drawing from research conducted in Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda, Christianity, Islam, and Liberal Democracy offers a deeper understanding on how Christian and Islamic faith communities affect the political attitudes of those who belong to them and, in turn, prospects for liberal democracy. While many analysts have thought that religious diversity in developing countries is most often an obstacle to liberal democracy that creates political instability, the book concludes just the opposite. Robert A. Dowd draws on narrative accounts, in-depth interviews, and large-scale surveys to show that Christian and Islamic religious communities are more likely to support liberal democracy in religiously diverse and integrated settings than in religiously homogeneous or segregated settings. Religious diversity, in other words, is good for liberal democracy. In religiously diverse environments, religious leaders tend to be more encouraging of civic engagement, democracy, and religious liberty. The evidence, Dowd argues, should prompt policymakers interested in cultivating religiously-inspired support for liberal democracy to aid in the formation of religiously diverse neighborhoods, cities, and political organizations.

Joseph Smith, founding prophet and martyr of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, personally wrote, dictated, or commissioned thousands of documents. Among these are several highly significant sources that scholars have used over and over again in their attempts to reconstruct the founding era of Mormonism, usually by focusing solely on content, without a deep appreciation for how and why a document was produced. This book offers case studies of the sources most often used by historians of the early Mormon experience. Each chapter takes a particular document as its primary subject, considering the production of a document as an historical event in itself, with its own background, purpose, circumstances, and consequences. The documents are examined not merely as sources of information but as artifacts that reflect aspects of the general culture and particular circumstances in which they were created. This book will help historians working in the founding era of Mormonism gain a more solid grounding in the period's documentary record by supplying important information on major primary sources.

The Community of True Inspiration, or Inspirationists, was one of the most successful religious communities in the United States. This collection offers a broad variety of Inspirationist texts, almost all of them translated from German and published here for the first time.

This book of faith makes us to realize that the kingdom of God lives in us, rather on us as a location "up there." The kingdom of God is a spiritual location and not a geographical one. It is indeed a Kingdom of God, Not a Place Called Heaven. "Ye as lively stones have been built up into a spiritual house" (1 Peter 2:5) shows that man is a "spirit" even though he has a covering called the "body." In other words, the kingdom of God is a "life" and not a location, even though this "life" also exists in a location. Jesus referred in the scripture about the kingdom of God in "us" rather "on" us and said, "Neither shall they say, lo here: or lo there: behold, the kingdom of God is "within you" (Luke17:21). Those actually entering into the kingdom of God are not those just entering the heavens, they are not those entering into the earth, neither are those entering into the waters. But those who are actually entering into the kingdom of God are those entering into "Christ," and while in Christ, no doubt they could exist in any location whether heaven or earth, since the kingdom of God is a "life." Apostle Stanley Onyenali is a minister of the gospel of Christ in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He writes because "it is an inspiration from the holy spirit teaching me to demystify to the world what the kingdom of God is." He is working on his next book. Publisher's website: http://sbpra.com/StanleyOnyenali

This book presents the history and theology of a remarkable body of Christians, formed as a result of the revival of interest in the prophetic Scriptures stimulated by the events of the French Revolution. Here we have an example of a charismatic renewal within the mainstream Churches, which was rejected by them, and which hence led to a worldwide body, governed by "restored apostles," and with its own structure, liturgy, doctrine, and hierarchy of ministers. It was a movement directed towards the reunion of the Churches, uncompromising in its adherence to Scripture, its typological interpretation of the Old Testament, and in its longing for the Parousia. It sought to bring together all that was best in the various Christian traditions. Eastern as well as Western, in preparation for the return of the Church's Bridegroom in glory. The strong ecumenical purpose of this body; its approach to the reunification of Churches and clergy; the breadth and beauty of its liturgy; its resolution of internal tensions between the charismatic and established hierarchical ministries; and its emphasis on eschatology: all these are of particular relevance to Christians today.

Wife No. 19 is the compelling, informative and emotionally fraught biography of Ann Eliza Young, a member and wife within the Mormon church during the 19th century. Young sets out to chronicle a lengthy expos of the various misdeeds she witnessed or was personally part of. She describes the character of the founder and prophet of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, in the context of his interpersonal relationships. The gradual emergence of polygamy, and its uptake among the higher ranking members of the church, is detailed. Although the title highlights the polygamous relationships for which Mormonism gained notoriety, this book does not shy away from the other scandals or controversies. For example; the means via which Brigham Young dishonestly relieved his followers of their money, possessions and cattle via a number of schemes, and the frequent use of the local Native American populations as scapegoats.

This group biography follows three generations of ministers' daughters and wives in a famed American Unitarian family. Shifting the focus from pulpit to parsonage, and from sermon to whispered secrets, Cynthia Tucker humanizes the Eliots and their religious tradition and lifts up a largely neglected female vocation. Spanning 150 years from the early 19th century forward, the narrative shapes itself into a series of stories. Each of six chapters takes up a different woman's defining experience, from the deaths of numerous children and the anguish of infertility to the suffocation of small parish life with its chronic loneliness, doubt, and resentment. One woman confides in a rare close friend, another in the anonymous readers of magazines that publish her poems. A third escapes from an ill-fitting role by succumbing to neurasthenia, leaving one debilitating condition for another. The matriarch's granddaughters script larger lives, bypassing marriage and churchly employment to follow their hearts into same-sex relationships, and major careers in public health and preschool education. In two concluding chapters, Tucker enlarges the frame to bring in the regular parish women who collectively give voice to issues the ministers' kin must keep to themselves. All of the stories are linked by the women's continuing battles to make themselves heard over clerical wisdom that contradicts their reality.

Evangelical Bible study groups are the most prolific type of small group in American society, with more than 30 million Protestants gathering every week for this distinct purpose, meeting in homes, churches, coffee shops, restaurants, and other public and private venues across the country. What happens in these groups? How do they help shape the contours of American Evangelical life? While more public forms of political activism have captured popular and scholarly imaginations, it is in group Bible study that Evangelicals reflect on the details of their faith. Here they become self-conscious religious subjects, sharing the intimate details of life, interrogating beliefs and practices, and articulating their version of Christian identity and culture.

In Words upon the Word, James S. Bielo draws on over nineteen months of ethnographic work with five congregations to better understand why group Bible study matters so much to Evangelicals and for Evangelical culture. Through a close analysis of participants' discourse, Bielo examines the defining themes of group life--from textual interpretation to spiritual intimacy and the rehearsal of witnessing. Bielo's approach allows these Evangelical groups to speak for themselves, illustrating Bible study's uniqueness in Evangelical life as a site of open and critical dialogue. Ultimately, Bielo's ethnography sheds much needed light on the power of group Bible study for the ever-evolving shape of American Evangelicalism.

Evangelical theology is a burgeoning field. Evangelicals have been growing in numbers and prominence worldwide, and the rise to academic prominence of evangelical historians, scripture scholars, ethicists, and theologians--many of whom have changed the face of their disciplines--has demonstrated the growing maturity of this movement's intellectual leaders. This volume surveys the state of the discipline on topics of greatest importance to evangelical theology. Each chapter has been written by a theologian or scholar who is widely recognized for his or her published work and is considered a leading thinker on that particular topic. The authors critically assess the state of the question, from both classical and evangelical traditions, and propose a future direction for evangelical thinking on the subject.