Conservative Protestants are mentioned repeatedly in the ongoing conversation about social capital, individualism, and community in the United States. As John Wilson notes in his introduction, evangelicals are frequently discussed either as a threat to civil society or as apparent counterexamples to the prevailing view of American society's fragmentation. The essays in this volume take another look at the role of evangelicals in American civic life. The prominent contributors examine evangelicals' beliefs and activity on topics ranging from bioethics to race relations and welfare reform to international human rights. Taken together, the essays show that, contrary to what critics have proclaimed, the social commitment of evangelicals extends considerably beyond family-related issues, and that their activity in the public sphere makes an essential contribution to the public good. Clearly written and persuasively argued, A Public Faith: Evangelicals and Civic Engagement is a powerful correction to the misconceptions about evangelicals that abound in the current civil-society debate. Co-published with the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Explores the role of race and consumer culture in attracting urban congregants to an evangelical church The Urban Church Imagined illuminates the dynamics surrounding white urban evangelical congregations' approaches to organizational vitality and diversifying membership. Many evangelical churches are moving to urban, downtown areas to build their congregations and attract younger, millennial members. The urban environment fosters two expectations. First, a deep familiarity and reverence for popular consumer culture, and second, the presence of racial diversity. Church leaders use these ideas when they imagine what a "city church" should look like, but they must balance that with what it actually takes to make this happen. In part, racial diversity is seen as key to urban churches presenting themselves as "in touch" and "authentic." Yet, in an effort to seduce religious consumers, church leaders often and inadvertently end up reproducing racial and economic inequality, an unexpected contradiction to their goal of inclusivity. Drawing on several years of research, Jessica M. Barron and Rhys H. Williams explore the cultural contours of one such church in downtown Chicago. They show that church leaders and congregants' understandings of the connections between race, consumer culture, and the city is a motivating factor for many members who value interracial interactions as a part of their worship experience. But these explorations often unintentionally exclude members along racial and classed lines. Indeed, religious organizations' efforts to engage urban environments and foster integrated congregations produce complex and dynamic relationships between their racially diverse memberships and the cultivation of a safe haven in which white, middle-class leaders can feel as though they are being a positive force in the fight for religious vitality and racial diversity. The book adds to the growing constellation of studies on urban religious organizations, as well as emerging scholarship on intersectionality and congregational characteristics in American religious life. In so doing, it offers important insights into racially diverse congregations in urban areas, a growing trend among evangelical churches. This work is an important case study on the challenges faced by modern churches and urban institutions in general.

The Sound of Gravel is Ruth Wariner's unforgettable and deeply moving story of growing up in a polygamist Mormon doomsday community. The thirty-ninth of her father's forty-one children, Ruth is raised on a farm in the hills of Mexico, where polygamy is practiced without fear of legal persecution. There, Ruth's family lives in a home without indoor plumbing or electricity and attends a church where preachers teach that God will punish the wicked by destroying the world. In need of government assistance and supplemental income, Ruth and her siblings are carted back and forth between Mexico and the United States, where her mother collects welfare and her father works a variety of odd jobs. Ruth comes to love the time she spends in the States, realising that perhaps the belief system into which she was born is not the one for her. As she enters her teen years, she becomes a victim of abuse in a community in which opposition toward men is tantamount to arguing with God. Finally, and only after devastating tragedy, Ruth finds an opportunity to escape. Recounted from the innocent and hopeful perspective of a child, The Sound of Gravel is the remarkable true story of a girl forced to define a place for herself within a community of misguided believers. This is a gripping tale of triumph, courage, resilience, and love.

James Dobson, founder of the conservative Christian foundation Focus on the Family, is well-known to the secular world as a crusader for the Christian right. But within Christian circles he is known primarily as a childrearing expert. Millions of American children have been raised on his message, disseminated through books, videos, radio programs, magazines, and other media. While evangelical Christians have always placed great importance on familial responsibilities, Dobson placed the family at the center of Christian life. Only by sticking to proper family roles can we achieve salvation. Women, for instance, only come to know God fully by submitting to their husbands and nurturing their children. Such uniting of family life and religion has drawn people to the organization, just as it has forced them to wrestle with what it meant to be a Christian wife, husband, mother, father, son, or daughter. Adapting theories from developmental psychology that melded parental modeling with a conservative Christian theology of sinfulness, salvation, and a living relationship with Jesus, Dobson created a new model for the Christian family. But what does that model look like in real life? Drawing on interviews with mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, Practicing What the Doctor Preached explores how actual families put Dobson's principles into practice. To what extent does Focus shape the practices of its audience to its own ends, and to what extent does Focus' understanding of its members' practices and needs shape the organization? Susan B. Ridgely shows that, while Dobson is known for being rigid and dogmatic, his followers show surprising flexibility in the way they actually use his materials. She examines Focus's listeners and their changing needs over the organization's first thirty years, a span that saw the organization expand from centering itself on childrearing to entrenching itself in public debates over sexuality, education, and national politics.

In the years since 1945, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown rapidly in terms of both numbers and public prominence. Mormonism is no longer merely a home-grown American religion, confined to the Intermountain West; instead, it has captured the attention of political pundits, Broadway audiences, and prospective converts around the world. While most scholarship on Mormonism concerns its colorful but now well-known early history, the essays in this collection assess recent developments, such as the LDS Church's international growth and acculturation; its intersection with conservative politics in recent decades; its stances on same-sex marriage and the role of women; and its ongoing struggle to interpret its own tumultuous history. The scholars draw on a wide variety of Mormon voices as well as those of outsiders, from Latter-day Saints in Hyderabad, India, to "Mormon Mommy blogs," to evangelical "countercult" ministries. Out of Obscurity brings the story of Mormonism since the Second World War into sharp relief, explaining the ways in which a church very much rooted in its nineteenth-century prophetic and pioneering past achieved unprecedented influence in the realms of American politics and international business.

Emily B. Baran offers a gripping history of how a small, American-based religious community, the Jehovah's Witnesses, found its way into the Soviet Union after World War II, survived decades of brutal persecution, and emerged as one of the region's fastest growing religions after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. In telling the story of this often misunderstood faith, Baran explores the shifting boundaries of religious dissent, non-conformity, and human rights in the Soviet Union and its successor states. Soviet Jehovah's Witnesses are a fascinating case study of dissent beyond urban, intellectual nonconformists. Witnesses, who were generally rural, poorly educated, and utterly marginalized from society, resisted state pressure to conform. They instead constructed alternative communities based on adherence to religious principles established by the Witnesses' international center in Brooklyn, New York. The Soviet state considered Witnesses to be the most reactionary of all underground religious movements, and used extraordinary measures to try to eliminate this threat. Yet Witnesses survived, while the Soviet system did not. After 1991, they faced continuing challenges to their right to practice their faith in post-Soviet states, as these states struggled to reconcile the proper limits on freedom of conscience with European norms and domestic concerns. Dissent on the Margins provides a new and important perspective on one of America's most understudied religious movements.

With at least fifteen million adherents around the globe, Mormonism maintains a powerful claim not only on the loyalties of believers but on the interests and imagination of non-Mormons as well. No issue in Mormonism has made more headlines than the faith's distinctive take on sex and gender. From its polygamous nineteenth-century past to its twentieth century stand against the ERA and its twenty-first century fight against same-sex marriage, the LDS Church has consistently positioned itself on the frontlines of battles over gender-related identities, roles, and rights. Even as the LDS Church has maintained a very conservative position in public debates over sex and gender, Mormon women have developed their own brand of feminism rooted in Mormon history and theology. To be a Mormon feminist is to live the tension between the visionary theology of Mormonism (for example, the faith's distinctive belief that God is a married couple, a man and woman) and its conservative institutional politics, between women's experience-based knowledge and the all-male Church hierarchy. This groundbreaking book gathers together for the first time essential writings of the contemporary Mormon feminist movement from its historic beginnings in 1970 to its vibrant present, offering a guide to the best of Mormon feminist thought and writing. This volume presents the voices of Mormon women-including historians, humorists, theologians, activists, and artists-as they have challenged assumptions and stereotypes, recovered lost histories of Mormon women's leadership, explored the empowering potential of Mormon theology, pushed for progress and change in the contemporary church, and joined their voices with other feminists of faith hoping to build a better world. Designed for use by book clubs, study groups, and classes, this highly accessible but rigorously developed book includes a timeline of key events in Mormon feminist history, discussion questions, and a topical guide.

The prosperous Cluniac priory of St John the Evangelist, Pontefract, was founded around 1090 by Robert de Lacy, remaining subject to its mother-house of La Charite-sur-Loire until the fourteenth century. The charters in this two-volume work have been arranged by type: seigniorial charters; episcopal and papal charters; royal charters; and those relating to priory property, arranged geographically according to proximity to Pontefract. The chartulary is particularly valuable for topographical studies and local and family history - in many cases the names of all witnesses have been transcribed. The manuscript was originally compiled in the first half of the thirteenth century, with additions made on blank leaves over the following centuries (not included by the editor). Volume 1, published in 1899, comprises the first 45 folios, containing 233 charters, and an introduction on the history of the priory and the de Lacy family. Each Latin charter is preceded by a brief English summary.

Teaching Spirits offers a thematic approach to Native American religious traditions. Within the great multiplicity of Native American cultures, Joseph Epes Brown has perceived certain common themes that resonate within many Native traditions. He demonstrates how these themes connect with each other, whilst at the same time upholding the integrity of individual traditions. Brown illustrates each of these themes with in-depth explorations of specific native cultures including Lakota, Navajo, Apache, Koyukon, and Ojibwe. Brown demonstrates how Native American values provide an alternative metaphysics that stand opposed to modern materialism. He shows how these spiritual values provide material for a serious rethinking of modern attitudes, as well as how they may help non-native peoples develop a more sensitive response to native concerns. Throughout, he draws on his extensive personal experience with Black Elk, who came to symbolize for many the greatness of the imperiled native cultures.

Combining vivid ethnographic storytelling and incisive theoretical analysis, New Monasticism and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism introduces readers to the fascinating and unexplored terrain of neo-monastic evangelicalism. Often located in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods, new monastic communities pursue religiously inspired visions of racial, social, and economic justice-alongside personal spiritual transformation-through diverse and creative expressions of radical community For most of the last century, popular and scholarly common-sense has equated American evangelicalism with across-the-board social, economic, and political conservatism. However, if a growing chorus of evangelical leaders, media pundits, and religious scholars is to be believed, the era of uncontested evangelical conservatism is on the brink of collapse-if it hasn't collapsed already. Wes Markofski has immersed himself in the paradoxical world of evangelical neo-monasticism, focusing on the Urban Monastery-an influential neo-monastic community located in a gritty, racially diverse neighborhood in a major Midwestern American city. The resulting account of the way in which the movement is transforming American evangelicalism challenges entrenched stereotypes and calls attention to the dynamic diversity of religious and political points of view which vie for supremacy in the American evangelical subculture. New Monasticism and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism is the first sociological analysis of new monastic evangelicalism and the first major work to theorize the growing theological and political diversity within twenty-first-century American evangelicalism.

The Founder of JetBlue. The former CEO of Dell Computers. The CEO of Deloitte & Touche. The former Dean of the Harvard Business School - and now a US Presidential candidate in Mitt Romney.
They all have one thing in common. They are devout Mormons who work long hours but always spend their Sundays exclusively with their families, and always put their spouses and children first. How do they do it?
Critically acclaimed author and investigative journalist Jeff Benedict (a Mormon himself) examines these highly successful business execs and discovers how their beliefs have influenced them, and enabled them to achieve incredible success.With original interviews and unparalleled access, Benedict shares what truly drives these individuals, and the invaluable life lessons from which anyone can benefit.

As an electoral bloc, contemporary white evangelical Christians maintain a remarkable ideological and partisan conformity, perhaps unmatched by any other community outside of African Americans. Historically, evangelicals have supported various political parties, but their approach to civil religion, or the way that they apply the spiritual to the public realm, has, as Republican Theology argues, been consistent in its substance since the founding of the nation. Put simply, this civil religion holds that limited government and a free-market are essential to the cultivation of Christian virtue, while the livelihood of the republic depends on the virtue of its citizens. While evangelicals have long promoted conservative moral causes, from temperance and anti-obscenity in the nineteenth century to abstinence education in the twentieth, they have also aligned themselves on many other seemingly unrelated agendas: in support of the Revolution in the 1770s, on antislavery in the 1820s, against labor unionism in the 1880s, against the New Deal in the 1930s, on assertive anticommunism in the 1950s (a major theme in Billy Graham's early sermons), and in favor of deregulation and lower taxes in the 1980s.
As Benjamin T. Lynerd contends, the rise of the "New Right" movement at the end of the twentieth century had as much to do with small-government ideology as with a recovery of traditional morality. This libertarian ethos combined with restrictive public moralism is conflicted, and it creates friction both within the New Right alliance and within the church, particularly among evangelicals interested in social justice. Still, it has formed the entire subtext of evangelical participation in American politics from the 1770s into the twenty-first century. Lynerd looks at the evolution of evangelical civil religion, or "republican theology" to demonstrate how evangelicals navigate this logic.

In this first volume of his magisterial study of the foundations of Mormon thought and practice, Terryl L. Givens offers a sweeping account of Mormon belief from its founding to the present day. Situating the relatively new movement in the context of the Christian tradition, he reveals that Mormonism continues to change and grow.
Givens shows that despite Mormonism's origins in a biblical culture strongly influenced by nineteenth-century Restorationist thought, which advocated a return to the Christianity of the early Church, the new movement diverges radically from the Christianity of the creeds. Mormonism proposes its own cosmology and metaphysics, in which human identity is rooted in a premortal world as eternal as God. Mormons view mortal life as an enlightening ascent rather than a catastrophic fall, and reject traditional Christian concepts of human depravity and destiny. Popular fascination with Mormonism's social innovations, such as polygamy and communalism, and its supernatural and esoteric elements-angels, gold plates, seer stones, a New World Garden of Eden, and sacred undergarments-have long overshadowed the fact that it is the most enduring and even thriving product of the nineteenth century's religious upheavals and innovations.
Wrestling the Angel traces the essential contours of Mormon thought from the time of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to the contemporary LDS church, illuminating both the seminal influence of the founding generation of Mormon thinkers and the significant developments in the church over almost 200 years. The most comprehensive account of the development of Mormon thought ever written, Wrestling the Angel will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the Mormon faith.

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.

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.

Evangelicalism has played a prominent role in western religion since the dawn of modernity. Coinciding with the emergence of the Enlightenment in America and Europe, evangelicalism flourished during the transatlantic revivals of the eighteenth century. In addition to adopting Protestantism's core beliefs of justification by faith, scripture alone, and the priesthood of believers, early evangelicals emphasized conversion and cross-cultural missions to a greater extent than Christians of previous generations. Most people today associate early evangelicalism with only a few of its leaders. Yet this was a religious movement that involved more people than simply Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and George Whitefield. Early evangelicals were Anglicans, Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Moravians, and Presbyterians and could be found in America, Canada, Great Britain, and Western Europe. They published hymns, historical works, poems, political pamphlets, revival accounts, sermons, and theological treatises. They recorded their conversion experiences and kept diaries and journals that chronicled their spiritual development. Early Evangelicalism: A Reader is an anthology that introduces a host of important religious figures. After brief biographical sketches of each author, this book offers over sixty excerpts from a wide range of well-known and lesser-known Protestant Christians, representing a variety of denominations, geographical locations, and underrepresented groups in order to produce the most comprehensive sourcebook of its kind.

Philip L. Barlow offers an in-depth analysis of the approaches taken to the Bible by major Mormon leaders, from its beginnings to the present. He shows that Mormon attitudes toward the Bible comprise an extraordinary mix of conservative, liberal, and radical ingredients: an almost fundamentalist adherence to the King James Version co-exists with belief in the possibility of new revelation and surprising ideas about the limits of human language. Barlow's exploration takes important steps toward unraveling the mystery of this quintessential American religious phenomenon. This updated edition of Mormons and the Bible includes an extended bibliography and a new preface, casting Joseph Smith's mission into a new frame and treating evolutions in Mormonism's biblical usage in recent decades.

In 1997, Terryl Givens's The Viper on the Hearth was praised as a new classic in Mormon studies. In the wake of Mormon-inspired and -created artistic, literary, and political activity - today's "Mormon moment" - Givens presents a revised and updated edition of his book to address the continuing presence and reception of the Mormon image in contemporary culture. "The Viper on the Hearth by Terryl L. Givens is a remarkably lucid and useful study of the patterns of American prejudices against the Mormon people. It provides also a valuable paradigm for the study of all religious 'heresy'." - Harold Bloom "A well-researched and insightful book...He illuminates the phenomena of religious heresy and persecution generally. The book is thoroughly documented, and Givens writes with a graceful style. This is an excellent example of both historical and literary scholarship." - American Historical Review "Contains provocative insights into American culture, LDS identity, nineteenth-century literature, rhetorics of oppression, and religious formation. The narrative is short, subtle, and crisp; Givens rarely wastes a sentence. A work to be read with patience and care. I highly recommend this book." - Religious Studies Review "The book is sophisticated, long on analysis...He has read widely in the vast secondary literature...and produced a study worthy of its prestigious publisher." - Church History "Widely researched, theoretically informed, and gracefully written, this work is a model of significant interdisciplinary study." - Western American Literature "It could influence American religion studies the same way Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy challenged and changed perceptions. Intelligently conceived,...skillful textual analysis,...exemplary scholarship...It illuminates dilemmas and paradoxes central to American religion and culture generally. The prose, illustrations, and overall construction of the book are aesthetically pleasing. The exemplary scholarship significantly enriches Mormon historiography....Few books succeed, as this one does, in stimulating thought far beyond their own scope." - Journal of Mormon History "A subtlety and sophistication that will delight and enlighten readers. The most detailed and sophisticated study to date of patterns of representation in 19th c anti-Mormonism." - BYU Studies "A powerful and compelling thesis...[an] ingenious reading... Chapter five should become a classic in Mormon Studies. For a great reading experience in thoughtful and independently conceived religious and cultural thinking rare in Mormon studies, turn to this addition in the excellent 'Religion in America Series,' published by Oxford University Press." - Journal of American Ethnic History "Well-researched and illuminating study...Gives us a fresh understanding of the process of myth-making...Locates it arguments in a carefully constructed historical context." - Journal of the Early Republic "In this fascinating study, he examines how Mormons have been constructed as the great and abominable 'other.' Interestingly, although the religion was once scorned for its 'weirdness,' it is now because Mormons occupy what used to be the center that they fall into contempt." - Utah Historical Quarterly "A wonderfully thought-through look at the interrelationships between fiction, religion, and the culture of humor/hostility....It represents a significant contribution to our understanding of literary relations." - Larry H. Peer, Brigham Young University "This is the first full explanation of why Mormons have been demonized by a nation that prides itself on open toleration of all faiths. Givens carefully appraises every past explanation for the printed attacks and physical persecutions that occurred from the 1830s onward, as newspapers, novels, and satires convinced a 'tolerant' public that Mormons should not be tolerated. He then makes a convincing argument that the primary affront the Mormons offered was theological: their anthropomorphic picture of God and of his continuing personal revelations to the one true church. The book is thus an impressive achievement that should interest not just Mormons or other religious believers but anyone who cares about how 'freedom-loving,' 'tolerant' Americans turned 'heretics' into subhuman monsters deserving destruction." - Wayne Booth, University of Chicago (Emeritus)

1940. Illustrated with Photographs. Brigham Young at Home is a valuable addition to the history of the home life of pioneer days. Reared in the famous Beehive House, Mrs. Spencer has carried with her through life the patient, loving influence of her parents. As she goes back in memory to the old home, she revives the scenes and varied events which filled her childhood days. She tells of the amusements of the children and the tender solicitation that President Young always had for the members of his family. Simple and straightforward, he was generous and patient, and the day was always begun with a solemn prayer to God. Nature gave to President Young a resolute will, a keen intellect, and a forceful individuality, with which he met the problems of Church and State. In the home, he was happy when he could lay aside the business of his high office, and take part in the play and mirth of the children. Contents: Life with Father; The Beehive House; Father's Wives; The Utah War; Indian Friends and Foes; Schools; The Theatre; Social Affairs; Holidays; Visitors; Early-Day Communication; Manufacturing; and Empire Building.

Mr Brown has written an assessment of the Evangelical revival in the Church of England at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He makes a number of important points about the Evangelicals: who they were, what they tried to do, how they tried to do it, and what success they had. He establishes how much they made the later Victorian age what it was and also suggest how the movement came to lose its hold on the foremost minds if the age in the third generation. This is a most extraordinary and brilliant introduction to the change of mind between two ages, and it is as interesting to the student of literature and the general reader as to the historian. What real part was played by Wilberforce and the Clapham sect? How is it that the time of Jane Austen is noticeably more refined than that of Fielding, and the age of George Eliot even more so? All these questions are answered in Mr Brown's book; a dazzling performance, and an enlightening one.

In an era where church attendance has reached an all-time low, recent polling has shown that Americans are becoming less formally religious and more promiscuous in their religious commitments. Within both mainline and evangelical Christianity in America, it is common to hear of secularizing pressures and increasing competition from nonreligious sources. Yet there is a kind of religious institution that has enjoyed great popularity over the past thirty years: the evangelical megachurch. Evangelical megachurches not only continue to grow in number, but also in cultural, political, and economic influence. To appreciate their appeal is to understand not only how they are innovating, but more crucially, where their innovation is taking place. In this groundbreaking and interdisciplinary study, Justin G. Wilford argues that the success of the megachurch is hinged upon its use of space: its location on the postsuburban fringe of large cities, its fragmented, dispersed structure, and its focus on individualized spaces of intimacy such as small group meetings in homes, which help to interpret suburban life as religiously meaningful and create a sense of belonging. Based on original fieldwork at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, one of the largest and most influential megachurches in America, Sacred Subdivisions explains how evangelical megachurches thrive by transforming mundane secular spaces into arenas of religious significance.

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.

The massacre at Mountain Meadows on September 11, 1857, was the single most violent attack on a wagon train in the thirty-year history of the Oregon and California trails. Yet it has been all but forgotten. Will Bagley's Blood of the Prophets is an award-winning, riveting account of the attack on the Baker-Fancher wagon train by Mormons in the local militia and a few Paiute Indians. Based on extensive investigation of the events surrounding the murder of over 120 men, women, and children, and drawing from a wealth of primary sources, Bagley explains how the murders occurred, reveals the involvement of territorial governor Brigham Young, and explores the subsequent suppression and distortion of events related to the massacre by the Mormon Church and others.

In April 2008, state police and child protection authorities raided Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado, Texas, a community of 800 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a polygamist branch of the Mormons. State officials claimed that the raid, which was triggered by anonymous phone calls from an underage girl to a domestic violence hotline, was based on evidence of widespread child sexual abuse. In a high-risk paramilitary operation, 439 children were removed from the custody of their parents and held until the Third Court of Appeals found that the state had overreached. Not only did the state fail to corroborate the authenticity of the hoax calls, but evidence reveals that Texas officials had targeted the FLDS from the outset, planning and preparing for a confrontation. Saints under Siege provides a thorough, theoretically grounded critical examination of the Texas state raid on the FLDS while situating this event in a broader sociological context. The volume considers the raid as an exemplar case of a larger pattern of state actions against minority religions, offering comparative analyses to other government raids both historically and across cultures. In its look beyond the Texas raid, it provides compelling evidence of social intolerance and state repression of unpopular minority faiths in general, and the FLDS in particular.