Parley P. Pratt's memoirs impress with their vivid and eventful accounts of the author's life. Foremost however is the author's supreme devotion to the Mormon church and the Lord God. Pratt begins by reminiscing on his youth. The early 19th century was an exciting but dangerous time to be alive; the United States was a fledgling nation, and its westward expansion was fraught with a variety of dangers and hardships. Some trusted only in what they believed they knew, but Pratt placed his trust in Jesus Christ's principles from an early age and was in youth part of the Baptist movement. However, he felt he could go further in God's name, and this led him to Joseph Smith and the Mormon church. As one of the earliest members of the Latter Day Saints, Pratt enjoyed a good degree of influence at the forefront of the church's activity. He was present as the denomination grew from its roots as a small, regional group of frontier settlers to a national and international creed with its base in Utah.

Bright Lights in the Desert explores the history of how members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Las Vegas have improved the regions' neighborhoods, inspired educational institutions, brought integrity to the marketplace, and provided wholesome entertainment and cultural refinement. The LDS influence has helped shape the metropolitan city because of its members' focus on family values and community service. Woods discusses how, through their beliefs and work ethics, they have impacted the growth of the area from the time of their first efforts to establish a mission in 1855 through the present day. Bright Lights in the Desert reveals Las Vegas as more than just a tourist destination and shows the LDS community's commitment to making it a place of deep religious faith and devotion to family.

This volume tells the story of the Churches of Christ, one of three major denominations that emerged in the United States from a religious movement led by Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone in the early 19th century. Beginning as an effort to provide a basis on which all Christians in America could unite, the leaders of the movement relied on the faith and practice of the primitive church. Ironically, this unity movement eventually divided precisely along the lines of its original agenda, as the Churches of Christ rallied around the restorationist banner while the Disciples of Christ gathered around the ecumenical cause. Yet, having begun as a countercultural sect, the Churches of Christ emerged in the 20th century as a culture-affirming denomination. This brief history, together with biographical sketches of major leaders, provides a complete overview of the denomination in America. The book begins with a concise yet detailed history of the denomination's beginnings in the early 19th century. Tracing the influence of such leaders as Stone and Campbell, the authors chronicle the triumphs and conflicts of the denomination through the 19th century and its reemergence and renewal in the 20th century. The biographical dictionary of leaders in the Churches of Christ rounds out the second half of the book, and a chronology of important events in the history of the denomination offers a quick reference guide. A detailed bibliographic essay concludes the book and points readers to further readings about the Churches of Christ.

This book provides a comprehensive explanation of how the Mormons have transformed from a hated and persecuted fringe group to a well-established world religion with viable candidates for all levels of American government. The Mormon tradition is unfamiliar and mysterious to most Americans outside of the religion, and understandably generates much curiosity. Mormons in American Politics: From Persecution to Power provides an intellectual foundation of Mormon development and emergence in politics, comprehensively examining significant issues and developments from historical, theological, cultural, and modern perspectives. The work analyzes diverse, contemporary topics including Mormons in popular culture, Mormon understandings of the Constitution, the Mormon welfare program, Mormon opposition to same-sex marriage, and the global expansion of Mormonism. The book is ideal for scholars and students of American politics, history, and culture; Mormon studies; religious studies; and religion and politics; as well as general readers who are interested in Mormon religion and culture or the rise of Mormon figures in mainstream American politics.

Over the last four decades, evangelical scholars have shown growing interest in other religions and their differing theologies. The result has been consensus on some issues and controversy over others, as scholars seek answers to essential questions: How are we to think about and relate to other religions, be open to the Spirit, and at the same time remain evangelical and orthodox? Gerald R. McDermott and Harold A. Netland offer a map of the terrain, describe new territory, and warn of hazardous journeys taken by some writers in exploring these issues. This volume offers critiques of a variety of theologians and religious studies scholars, including evangelicals, but it also challenges evangelicals to move beyond parochial positions. It is both a manifesto and a research program, critically evaluating the last forty years of Christian treatments of religious others, and proposing a comprehensive direction for the future. It addresses issues relating to the religions in both systematic theology and missiology-taking up long-debated questions such as contextualization, salvation, revelation, the relationship between culture and religion, conversion, social action, and ecumenism. The book concludes with responses from four leading thinkers of African, Asian, and European backgrounds: Veli-Matti Karkkainen, Vinoth Ramachandra, Lamin Sanneh, and Christine Schirrmacher.

The Protestant white majority in the nineteenth century was convinced that Mormonism represented a racial-not merely religious-departure from the mainstream and they spent considerable effort attempting to deny Mormon whiteness. Being white equalled access to political, social, and economic power, all aspects of citizenship in which outsiders sought to limit or prevent Mormon participation. At least a part of those efforts came through persistent attacks on the collective Mormon body, ways in which outsiders suggested that Mormons were physically different, racially more similar to marginalized groups than they were white. Medical doctors went so far as to suggest that Mormon polygamy was spawning a new race. Mormons responded with aspirations toward whiteness. It was a back and forth struggle between what outsiders imagined and what Mormons believed. Mormons ultimately emerged triumphant, but not unscathed. At least a portion of the cost of their struggle came at the expense of their own black converts. Mormon leaders moved away from universalistic ideals toward segregated priesthood and temples, policies firmly in place by the early twentieth century. So successful were they at claiming whiteness for themselves, that by the time Mormon Mitt Romney sought the White House in 2012, he was labelled "the whitest white man to run for office in recent memory. " Mormons once again found themselves on the wrong side of white.

Covers the 435-year history of the faith, life, and culture of Anabaptists in Europe and Mennonites throughout the world. Presented are people, movements, and places in their relation to Mennonites.

This Encyclopedia was jointly edited by historians and scholars of the Mennonite Church, the General Conference of Mennonites, and the Mennonite Brethren Church. More than 2,700 writers contributed articles.

Volume V includes updates on materials in the first four volumes plus nearly 1,000 new articles edited by Cornelius J. Dyck and Dennis D. Martin.

Covers the 435-year history of the faith, life, and culture of Anabaptists in Europe and Mennonites throughout the world. Presented are people, movements, and places in their relation to Mennonites.

This Encyclopedia was jointly edited by historians and scholars of the Mennonite Church, the General Conference of Mennonites, and the Mennonite Brethren Church. More than 2,700 writers contributed articles.

Volume V includes updates on materials in the first four volumes plus nearly 1,000 new articles edited by Cornelius J. Dyck and Dennis D. Martin.

It has long been accepted that when Samuel Taylor Coleridge rejected the Unitarianism of his youth and returned to the Church of England, he did so while accepting a general Christian orthodoxy. Christopher Corbin clarifies Coleridge's religious identity and argues that while Coleridge's Christian orthodoxy may have been sui generis, it was closely aligned with moderate Anglican Evangelicalism. Approaching religious identity as a kind of culture that includes distinct forms of language and networks of affiliation in addition to beliefs and practices, this book looks for the distinguishable movements present in Coleridge's Britain to more precisely locate his religious identity than can be done by appeals to traditional denominational divisions. Coleridge's search for unity led him to desire and synthesize the "warmth" of heart religion (symbolized as Methodism) with the "light" of rationalism (symbolized as Socinianism), and the evangelicalism in the Church of England, being the most chastened of the movement, offered a fitting place from which this union of warmth and light could emerge. His religious identity not only included many of the defining Anglican Evangelical beliefs, such as an emphasis on original sin and the New Birth, but he also shared common polemical opponents, appropriated evangelical literary genres, developed a spirituality centered on the common evangelical emphases of prayer and introspection, and joined Evangelicals in rejecting baptismal regeneration. When placed in a chronological context, Coleridge's form of Christian orthodoxy developed in conversation with Anglican Evangelicals; moreover, this relationship with Anglican Evangelicalism likely helped facilitate his return to the Church of England. Corbin not only demonstrates the similarities between Coleridge's relationship to a form of evangelicalism with which most people have little familiarity, but also offers greater insight into the complexities and tensions of religious identity in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain as a whole.

British Christian leader John Stott was one of the most influential figures of the evangelical movement during the second half of the twentieth century. Called the pope of evangelicalism by many, he helped to shape a global religious movement that grew rapidly during his career. He preached to thousands on six continents. Millions bought his books and listened to his sermons. In 2005, Time included him in its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Alister Chapman chronicles Stott's rise to global Christian stardom. The story begins in England with an exploration of Stott's conversion and education, then his ministry to students, his work at All Souls Langham Place, London, and his attempts to increase evangelical influence in the Church of England. By the mid-1970s, Stott had an international presence, leading the evangelical Lausanne movement that attracted evangelicals from almost every country in the world. Chapman recounts how Stott challenged evangelicals' habitual conservatism and anti-intellectualism, showing his role in a movement that was as dysfunctional as it was dynamic.
Godly Ambition is the first scholarly biography of Stott. Based on extensive examination of his personal papers, it is a critical yet sympathetic account of a gifted and determined man who did all he could to further God's kingdom and who became a Christian luminary in the process.

The 1893 Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, presented the Latter-day Saints with their first opportunity to exhibit the best of Mormonism for a national and an international audience after the abolishment of polygamy in 1890. The Columbian Exposition also marked the dramatic reengagement of the LDS Church with the non-Mormon world after decades of seclusion in the Great Basin.
Between May and October 1893, over seven thousand Latter-day Saints from Utah attended the international spectacle popularly described as the ''White City.'' While many traveled as tourists, oblivious to the opportunities to ''exhibit'' Mormonism, others actively participated to improve their church's public image. Hundreds of congregants helped create, manage, and staff their territory's impressive exhibit hall; most believed their besieged religion would benefit from Utah's increased national profile. Moreover, a good number of Latter-day Saint women represented the female interests and achievements of both Utah and its dominant religion. These women hoped to use the Chicago World's Fair as a platform to improve the social status of their gender and their religion. Additionally, two hundred and fifty of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's best singers competed in a Welsh eiseddfodd, a musical competition held in conjunction with the Chicago World's Fair, and Mormon apologist Brigham H. Roberts sought to gain LDS representation at the affiliated Parliament of Religions.
In the first study ever written of Mormon participation at the Chicago World's Fair, Reid L. Neilson explores how Latter-day Saints attempted to ''exhibit'' themselves to the outside world before, during, and after the Columbian Exposition, arguing that their participation in the Exposition was a crucial moment in the Mormon migration to the American mainstream and its leadership's discovery of public relations efforts. After 1893, Mormon leaders sought to exhibit their faith rather than be exhibited by others.

Why do thousands of Mormons devote their summer vacations to following the Mormon Trail? Why does the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Day Saints spend millions of dollars to build monuments and Visitor Centers that believers can visit to experience the history of their nineteenth-century predecessors who fled westward in search of their promised land? Why do so many Mormon teenagers dress up in Little-House-on-the-Prairie-style garb and push handcarts over the highest local hills they can find? And what exactly is a "traveling Zion"? In Pioneers in the Attic, Sara Patterson analyzes how and why Mormons are engaging their nineteenth-century past in the modern era, arguing that as the LDS community globalized in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, its relationship to space was transformed. Following their exodus to Utah, nineteenth-century Mormons believed that they must gather together in Salt Lake Zion - their new center place. They believed that Zion was a place you could point to on a map, a place you should dwell in to live a righteous life. Later Mormons had to reinterpret these central theological principles as their community spread around the globe, but to say that they simply spiritualized concepts that had once been understood literally is only one piece of the puzzle. Contemporary Mormons still want to touch and to feel these principles, so they mark and claim the landscapes of the American West with versions of their history carved in stone. They develop rituals that allow them not only to learn the history of the nineteenth-century journey west, but to engage it with all of their senses. Pioneers in the Attic reveals how modern-day Mormons have created a sense of community and felt religion through the memorialization of early Mormon pioneers of the American West, immortalizing a narrative of shared identity through an emphasis on place and collective memory.

Covers the 435-year history of the faith, life, and culture of Anabaptists in Europe and Mennonites throughout the world. Presented are people, movements, and places in their relation to Mennonites.

This Encyclopedia was jointly edited by historians and scholars of the Mennonite Church, the General Conference of Mennonites, and the Mennonite Brethren Church. More than 2,700 writers contributed articles.

Volume V includes updates on materials in the first four volumes plus nearly 1,000 new articles edited by Cornelius J. Dyck and Dennis D. Martin.

Over the past fifty years Brazil's evangelical community has increased from five to twenty-five percent of the population. This volume's authors use statistical overview, historical narrative, personal anecdote, social-scientific analysis, and theological inquiry to map out this emerging landscape. The book's thematic center pivots on the question of how Brazilian evangelicals are exerting their presence and effecting change in the public life of the nation. Rather than fixing its focus on the interior life of Brazilian evangelicals and their congregations, the book's attention is directed toward social expression: the ways in which Brazilian evangelicals are present and active in the common life of the nation.

Mormon founder Joseph Smith is one of the most controversial figures of nineteenth-century American history, and a virtually inexhaustible subject for analysis. In this volume, fifteen scholars offer essays on how to interpret and understand Smith and his legacy. Including essays by both Mormons and non-Mormons, this wide-ranging collection is the only available survey of contemporary scholarly opinion on the extraordinary man who started one of the fastest growing religious traditions in the modern world.

In People of Paradox, Terryl Givens traces the rise and development of Mormon culture from the days of Joseph Smith in upstate New York, through Brigham Young's founding of the Territory of Deseret on the shores of Great Salt Lake, to the spread of the Latter-Day Saints around the globe.
Throughout the last century and a half, Givens notes, distinctive traditions have emerged among the Latter-Day Saints, shaped by dynamic tensions--or paradoxes--that give Mormon cultural expression much of its vitality. Here is a religion shaped by a rigid authoritarian hierarchy and radical individualism; by prophetic certainty and a celebration of learning and intellectual investigation; by existence in exile and a yearning for integration and acceptance by the larger world. Givens divides Mormon history into two periods, separated by the renunciation of polygamy in 1890. In each, he explores the life of the mind, the emphasis on education, the importance of architecture and urban planning (so apparent in Salt Lake City and Mormon temples around the world), and Mormon accomplishments in music and dance, theater, film, literature, and the visual arts. He situates such cultural practices in the context of the society of the larger nation and, in more recent years, the world. Today, he observes, only fourteen percent of Mormon believers live in the United States.
Mormonism has never been more prominent in public life. But there is a rich inner life beneath the public surface, one deftly captured in this sympathetic, nuanced account by a leading authority on Mormon history and thought.

This study examines the major themes and personalities which influenced the outbreak of a number of Evangelical secessions from the Church of England and Ireland during the first half of the nineteenth century. Though the number of secessions was relatively small their influence was considerable, especially in highlighting in embarrassing fashion the tensions between the evangelical conversionist imperative and the principles of a national religious establishment.

The question of the reality of Cathars and other heresies is debated in this provocative collection. Cathars have long been regarded as posing the most organised challenge to orthodox Catholicism in the medieval West, even as a "counter-Church" to orthodoxy in southern France and northern Italy. Their beliefs, understood to be inspired by Balkan dualism, are often seen as the most radical among medieval heresies. However, recent work has fiercely challenged this paradigm, arguing instead that "Catharism" is a construct, mis-named and mis-represented by generations of scholars, and its supposedly radical views were a fantastical projection of the fears of orthodox commentators. This volume brings together a wide range of views from some of the most distinguished internationalscholars in the field, in order to address the debate directly while also opening up new areas for research. Focussing on dualism and anti-materialist beliefs in southern France, Italy and the Balkans, it considers a number of crucial issues. These include: what constitutes popular belief; how (and to what extent) societies of the past were based on the persecution of dissidents; and whether heresy can be seen as an invention of orthodoxy. At the same time, the essays shed new light on some key aspects of the political, cultural, religious and economic relationships between the Balkans and more western regions of Europe in the Middle Ages. Antonio Sennis is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at University College London Contributors: John H. Arnold, Peter Biller, Caterina Bruschi, David d'Avray, Joerg Feuchter, Bernard Hamilton, R.I. Moore, Mark Gregory Pegg, Rebecca Rist, Lucy J. Sackville, Antonio Sennis, Claire Taylor, Julien Thery-Astruc, Yuri Stoyanov

Science and Catholicism in Argentina (1750-1960) is the first comprehensive study on the relationship between science and religion in a Spanish-speaking country with a Catholic majority and a "Latin" pattern of secularisation. The text takes the reader from Jesuit missionary science in colonial times, through the conflict-ridden 19th century, to the Catholic revival of the 1930s in Argentina. The diverse interactions between science and religion revealed in this analysis can be organised in terms of their dynamic of secularisation. The indissoluble identification of science and the secular, which operated at rhetorical and institutional levels among the liberal elite and the socialists in the 19th century, lost part of its force with the emergence of Catholic scientists in the course of the 20th century. In agreement with current views that deny science the role as the driving force of secularisation, this historical study concludes that it was the process of secularisation that shaped the interplay between religion and science, not the other way around.