At its founding, the United States was one of the most religiously diverse places in the world. Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Quakers, Dutch Reformed, German Reformed, Lutherans, Huguenots, Dunkers, Jews, Moravians, and Mennonites populated the nations towns and villages. Dozens of new denominations would emerge over the succeeding years. What allowed people of so many different faiths to forge a nation together?
In this richly told story of ideas, Chris Beneke demonstrates how the United States managed to overcome the religious violence and bigotry that characterized much of early modern Europe and America. The key, Beneke argues, did not lie solely in the protection of religious freedom. Instead, he reveals how American culture was transformed to accommodate the religious differences within it. The expansion of individual rights, the mixing of believers and churches in the same institutions, and the introduction of more civility into public life all played an instrumental role in creating the religious pluralism for which the United States has become renowned. These changes also established important precedents for future civil rights movements in which dignity, as much as equality, would be at stake.
Beyond Toleration is the first book to offer a systematic explanation of how early Americans learned to live with differences in matters of the highest importance to them --and how they found a way to articulate these differences civilly. Today when religious conflicts once again pose a grave danger to democratic experiments across the globe, Beneke's book serves as a timely reminder of how one country moved past toleration andtowards religious pluralism.

In recent decades, Christianity has acquired millions of new adherents in Africa, the region with the world's fastest-expanding population. What role has this development of evangelical Christianity played in Africa's democratic history? To what extent do its churches affect its politics? By taking a historical view and focusing specifically on the events of the past few years, Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa seeks to explore these questions, offering individual case studies of six countries: Nigeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, and Mozambique. Unlike most analyses of democracy which come from a secular Western tradition, these contributors, mainly younger scholars based in Africa, bring first-hand knowledge to their chapters and employ both field and archival research to develop their data and analyses. The result is a groundbreaking work that will be indispensable to everyone concerned with the future of this volatile region.
Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa is one of four volumes in the series Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in the Global South, which seeks to answer the question: What happens when a revivalist religion based on scriptural orthodoxy participates in the volatile politics of the Third World? At a time when the global-political impact of another revivalist and scriptural religion -- Islam -- fuels vexed debate among analysts the world over, these volumes offer an unusual comparative perspective on a critical issue: the often combustible interaction of resurgent religion and the developing world's unstable politics.

A revealing study of the radical attitudes of white evangelical Americans.

It is unparalleled in history, the procession of Latter-Day Saints pushing handcarts from Iowa City and Florence (Omaha) to their promised Zion by the Great Salt Lake. Many of the three thousand hardy souls who trudged across thirteen hundred miles of prairie, desert, and mountain from 1856 to 1860 were European converts to the Mormon faith. Without funds for wagons and oxen, they carried their possessions in two-wheeled carts powered and aided by their own muscle and blood. Some of the weary travelers would finally be welcomed by their brethren in Salt Lake City; others would go to wayside graves or get caught in early winter storms in the Rockies and hope to be rescued by the parties sent out by Brigham Young. The migration is described in "Handcarts to Zion," which draws on diaries and reports of the participants, rosters of the ten companies, and a collection of the songs sung on the trail and at "The Gathering." LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen dedicated the book to his mother, Mary Ann Hafen, who wrote about the long journey in "Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860: A Woman's Life on the Mormon Frontier," also a Bison Book.

In June 1949 the Soviet state arrested seven farmers from the village of Bila Tserkva. Not wealthy or powerful, the men were unknown outside their community, and few had ever heard of their small, isolated village on the southwestern border of Soviet Ukraine. Nevertheless, the state decided they were dangerous traitors who threatened to undermine public order, and a regional court sentenced them to twenty-five years of imprisonment for treason. In To Make a Village Soviet Emily Baran explores why a powerful state singled out these individuals for removal from society. Bila Tserkva had to become a space in which Soviet laws and institutions reigned supreme, yet Sovietization was an aspiration as much it was a reality. The arrested men belonged to a small and misunderstood religious minority, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and both Witnesses and their neighbours challenged the government's attempts to fully integrate the village into socialist society. Drawing from the case file and interviews with the families of survivors, Baran argues that what happened in Bila Tserkva demonstrates the sheer ambition of the state's plans for the Sovietization of borderland communities. A compelling history, To Make a Village Soviet looks to Bila Tserkva to explore the power and the limits of state control - and the possibilities created by communities that resist assimilation.

Although one of the fastest growing religious movements in the world, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints remains a mystery in terms of its core beliefs and theological structure. This timely book provides an important introduction to the basic history, doctrines and practices of The LDS--the "Mormon" Church. Emphasizing sacred texts and prophecies as well as the crucial Temple rituals of endowments, marriage and baptism, it is written by a non-believer, who describes Mormonism in ways that non-Mormons can understand.

Although one of the fastest growing religious movements in the world, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints remains a mystery in terms of its core beliefs and theological structure. This timely book provides an important introduction to the basic history, doctrines and practices of The LDS--the "Mormon" Church. Emphasizing sacred texts and prophecies as well as the crucial Temple rituals of endowments, marriage and baptism, it is written by a non-believer, who describes Mormonism in ways that non-Mormons can understand.

From Bible Belt to Sun Belt tells the dramatic and largely unknown story of "plain-folk" religious migrants: hardworking men and women from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas who fled the Depression and came to California for military jobs during World War II. Investigating this fiercely pious community at a grassroots level, Darren Dochuk uses the stories of religious leaders, including Billy Graham, as well as many colorful, lesser-known figures to explain how evangelicals organized a powerful political machine. This machine made its mark with Barry Goldwater, inspired Richard Nixon's "Southern Solution," and achieved its greatest triumph with the victories of Ronald Reagan. Based on entirely new research, the manuscript has already won the prestigious Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians. The judges wrote, "Dochuk offers a rich and multidimensional perspective on the origins of one of the most far-ranging developments of the second half of the twentieth century: the rise of the New Right and modern conservatism."

Building the Kingdom traces the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church, which began in America in the early 1800s and continues today throughout the world. The book covers the church's origin and history and includes a well-balanced discussion of difficult issues such as polygamy and the modern Mormon family's struggle to balance religious traditions with the demands of the modern world. The book includes an 8-page section of illustrations. Includes chronology, further reading, and index.