'The limits of radicalism are those which end not in chaos but in the breaking of fresh ground.' Howard E. Root Previously unpublished--and only recently rediscovered by Dr Christopher R. Brewer in an uncatalogued box in the archives of Lambeth Palace Library--Canon Howard E. Root's 1972 Bampton Lectures, 'The Limits of Radicalism', have to do with nothing less than 'what theology is', a topic no less relevant today than it was in 1972. Against the radical reductionism of his time, Root defended the integrity of theology and 'theological truth'. Advocating a 'backward-looking' radicalism, he thought that tradition should display 'recognisable continuity', and yet at the same time--against reductionistic tendencies--that it might be enriched and enlarged via a wide variety of 'additive imagery' including, though not limited to, poetry and pop art, music and even television. We must 'begin where we are', said Root, for we cannot, in the manner of Leonard Hodgson, 'think ourselves into the minds and feelings of men 2000 years ago.' In this volume, which begins with a substantial, mostly biographical introduction, Dr Brewer argues that Root--a backward-looking radical who defended metaphysics and natural theology, and insisted that theologians look to the arts as theological resources--anticipates the work of David Brown and others concerned with tradition and imagination, relevance and truth. A fascinating glimpse into the recent history of British Christianity, Root's lectures, as well as the related appendices, are essential reading for theologians interested in the dynamics of a developing tradition and the theme of openness, as well as those with a particular interest in 1960s Cambridge radicalism and the British reception of the Second Vatican Council.

This is the first major study of the enigmatic religious society. By examining the Jehovah's Witnesses' dramatic recent expansion, Andrew Holden reveals the dependency of their quasi-totalitarian movement on the physical and cultural resources which have brought about the privatisation of religion, the erosion of community and the separation of 'fact' from faith.

This is the first major study of the enigmatic religious society. By examining the Jehovah's Witnesses' dramatic recent expansion, Andrew Holden reveals the dependency of their quasi-totalitarian movement on the physical and cultural resources which have brought about the privatisation of religion, the erosion of community and the separation of 'fact' from faith.

Popular Evangelicalism in American Culture explores the controversies, complexities, and historical development of the evangelical movement in America and its impact on American culture. Evangelicalism is one of the most dynamic and growing religious movements in America and has been both a major force in shaping American society and likewise a group which has resisted aspects of the modern world. Organised thematically this book demonstrates the impact of American culture on popular evangelicalism by exploring the following topics: politics; economics; salvation; millennialism; the megachurch and electronic churches; and popular culture. This accessible and thought-provoking volume will interest anyone concerned with the modern-day success of the Evangelical movement in America.

On September 11, 1857, a band of Mormon militia, under a flag of truce, lured unarmed members of a party of emigrants from their fortified encampment and, with their Paiute allies, killed them. More than 120 men, women, and children perished in the slaughter.
Massacre at Mountain Meadows offers the most thoroughly researched account of the massacre ever written. Drawn from documents previously not available to scholars and a careful re-reading of traditional sources, this gripping narrative offers fascinating new insight into why Mormons settlers in isolated southern Utah deceived the emigrant party with a promise of safety and then killed the adults and all but seventeen of the youngest children. The book sheds light on factors contributing to the tragic event, including the war hysteria that overcame the Mormons after President James Buchanan dispatched federal troops to Utah Territory to put down a supposed rebellion, the suspicion and conflicts that polarized the perpetrators and victims, and the reminders of attacks on Mormons in earlier settlements in Missouri and Illinois. It also analyzes the influence of Brigham Young's rhetoric and military strategy during the infamous "Utah War" and the role of local Mormon militia leaders in enticing Paiute Indians to join in the attack. Throughout the book, the authors paint finely drawn portraits of the key players in the drama, their backgrounds, personalities, and roles in the unfolding story of misunderstanding, misinformation, indecision, and personal vendettas.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre stands as one of the darkest events in Mormon history. Neither a whitewash nor an expose, Massacre at Mountain Meadows provides the clearest and most accurate account of a key event in American religious history."

This new study explores the role the Unitarians played in female emancipation. Many leading figures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were Unitarian, or were heavily influenced by Unitarian ideas, including: Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Florence Nightingale. Ruth Watts examines how far they were successful in challenging the ideas and social conventions affecting women. In the process she reveals the complex relationship between religion, gender, class and education and her study will be essential reading for those studying the origins of the feminist movement, nineteenth-century gender history, religious history or the history of education.

Shortlisted for the Herskovits Award, this book throws light on secrecy and violence in Uganda, Rwanda and the Great Lakes area of East Africa. On 17 March 2000 several hundred members of a charismatic Christian sect, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (MRTC), burnt to death in the group's headquarters in the Southwest Ugandan village of Kanungu. Days later the Ugandan police discovered a series of mass graves containing over 400 bodies on various other properties belonging to the sect. Was this mass suicide or mass murder? Based on eight years of historical andethnographic research, Ghosts of Kanungu provides a comprehensive and scholarly account of the MRTC and of the events leading up to the inferno. It argues that none of these events can be understood without reference to abroader social history of Southwestern Uganda during the twentieth century, in which anti-colonial movements, Catholic White Fathers missionaries, colonial relocation schemes, the breakdown of the Ugandan state, post-war reconstruction, the onset of HIV/AIDS, and the transformation of the regional Nyabingi fertility cult into a Marian church with worldwide connections, all played their part. RICHARD VOKES is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia Uganda: Fountain Publishers (PB)

Hans Mol was born in the Netherlands during the 1920s. His imprisonment by the Gestapo during World War II began a long intellectual journey, exploring the role of religion in society. His work on the sociology of religion throughout the 20th and 21st Century is distinctive in its quest for both methodological and existential balance Part One of this book includes a brief outline of Mol's most influential theory as originally explicated in Identity and the Sacred (1976). This is followed by a look at the initial reception of that theory in relation to the competing concepts of Mol's contemporaries. Part Two is comprised of four previously-unpublished essays written by Mol during the 70s and 80s. Covering topics from evolution to evangelicalism, the papers display the sweeping ambition of this sociologist as well as the tone and contours of his intellectual articulation. In the Postscript this volume concludes with select transcripts of interviews conducted between Adam Powell and Hans Mol during the Spring of 2012. This volume of Mol's work will be of keen interest to academics and students with an interest in the sociology of religion post-World War II and the development of contemporary Christian theology.

Make a good marriage great! Over 1000 women surveyed in order to create this book of tell all tips!

Although often regarded as marginal or obscure, Mormonism is a significant American religious minority, numerically and politically. The successes and struggles of this U.S. born religion reveal much about how religion operates in U.S. society. Mormonism: The Basics introduces the teachings, practices, evolution, and internal diversity of this movement, whose cultural icons range from Mitt Romney to the Twilight saga, from young male missionaries in white shirts and ties to polygamous women in pastel prairie dresses. This is the first introductory text on Mormonism that tracks not only the mainstream LDS but also two other streams within the movement-the liberalized RLDS and the polygamous Fundamentalists-thus showing how Mormons have pursued different approaches to defining their identity and their place in society. The book addresses these questions. Are Mormons Christian, and why does it matter? How have Mormons worked out their relationship to the state? How have Mormons diverged in their thinking about gender and sexuality? How do rituals and regulations shape Mormon lives? What types of sacred spaces have Mormons created? What strategies have Mormons pursued to establish a global presence? Mormonism: The Basics is an ideal introduction for anyone wanting to understand this religion within its primarily American but increasingly globalized contexts.

This book focuses on the gender roles within the Unification Church, and on particularly the gender roles as expressed through the vows of marriage. It examines the more widely shared patriarchal assumptions about women in a circumscribed socio-religious environment, with the Church's gender role system being investigated largely on the level of its theological explanations for gender roles. The Church's ethos, its lived reality, is also examined, and for this many interviews have been conducted with the 'blessed', the married couples. First published in 1992.

The Amish relationship to the environment is much more complicated than you might think. The pastoral image of Amish communities living simply and in touch with the land strikes a deep chord with many Americans. Environmentalists have lauded the Amish as iconic models for a way of life that is local, self-sufficient, and in harmony with nature. But the Amish themselves do not always embrace their ecological reputation, and critics have long questioned the portrayal of the Amish as models of environmental stewardship. In Nature and the Environment in Amish Life, David L. McConnell and Marilyn D. Loveless examine how this prevailing notion of the environmentally conscious Amish fits with the changing realities of their lives. Drawing on 150 interviews conducted over the course of 7 years, as well as a survey of household resource use among Amish and non-Amish people, they explore how the Amish understand nature in their daily lives and how their actions impact the natural world. Arguing that there is considerable diversity in Amish engagements with nature at home, at school, at work, and outdoors, McConnell and Loveless show how the Amish response to regional and global environmental issues, such as watershed pollution and climate change, reveals their deep skepticism of environmentalists. They also demonstrate that Amish households are not uniformly lower in resource use compared to their rural, non-Amish neighbors, though aspects of their home economy are relatively self-sufficient. The first comprehensive study of Amish understandings of the natural world, this compelling book complicates the image of the Amish and provides a more realistic understanding of the Amish relationship with the environment.

This book focuses on the gender roles within the Unification Church, and on particularly the gender roles as expressed through the vows of marriage. It examines the more widely shared patriarchal assumptions about women in a circumscribed socio-religious environment, with the Church s gender role system being investigated largely on the level of its theological explanations for gender roles. The Church s ethos, its lived reality, is also examined, and for this many interviews have been conducted with the blessed, the married couples.

First published in 1992."

In the late eighteenth century a small Shaker community travelled to America under the leadership of 'Mother Ann' Lee. The American communities they founded were based on ideals of pacifism, celibacy and gender equality. The texts included in this edition come from first-hand accounts of life in the Shaker communities during the nineteenth century.

Dr Carter argues that the church that Protestant missionaries planted in the non-Western World can no longer be adequately described as a Protestant church. Instead, it has produced what is effectively a new way of understanding Christian truth. This new paradigm, recently emerged from Protestantism, shares much in common with Protestantism, but also embraces a host of theologies and ecclesiologies that reflect developments distinct from those that produced the Reformation. Dr Carter traces the origins of this new theological paradigm and argues that it will largely determine the future of non-Western Christianity.

Written by an expert in the history of Protestant Christianity

The Shakers are perhaps the best known of American religious communities. Their ethos and organization had a practical influence on many other communities and on society as a whole. This three volume collection presents writings from a broad cross-section of those who opposed the Shakers and their way of life.

Interview with Allan Carlson

In an ironic twist, American evangelical leaders are joining mainstream acceptance of contraception. Godly Seed: American Evangelicals Confront Birth Control, 1873-1973, examines how mid-twentieth-century evangelical leaders eventually followed the mainstream into a quiet embrace of contraception, complemented by a brief acceptance of abortion. It places this change within the context of historic Christian teaching regarding birth control, including its origins in the early church and the shift in arguments made by the Reformers of the sixteenth century. The book explores the demographic effects of this transition and asks: did the delay by American evangelicals leaders in accepting birth control have consequences?

At the same time, many American evangelicals are rethinking their acceptance of birth control even as a majority of the nation's Roman Catholics are rejecting their church's teaching on the practice. Raised within a religious movement that has almost uniformly condemned abortion, many young evangelicals have begun to ask whether abortion can be neatly isolated from the issue of contraception. A significant number of evangelical families have, over the last several decades, rejected the use of birth control and returned decisions regarding family size to God. Given the growth of the evangelical movement, this pioneering work will have a large-scale impact.

What does it cost to follow Jesus? For these men and women, the answer was clear. They were ready to give witness to Christ in the face of intense persecution, even if it cost them their lives. From the stoning of Stephen to Nigerian Christians persecuted by Boko Haram today, these stories from around the world and through the ages will inspire greater faithfulness to the way of Jesus, reminding us what costly discipleship looks like in any age. Since the birth of Christianity, the church has commemorated those who suffered for their faith in Christ. In the Anabaptist tradition especially, stories of the boldness and steadfastness of early Christian and Reformation-era martyrs have been handed down from one generation to the next through books such as Thieleman van Braght's Martyrs Mirror (1660). Yet the stories of more recent Christian witnesses are often unknown. Bearing Witness tells the stories of early Christian martyrs Stephen, Polycarp, Justin, Agathonica, Papylus, Carpus, Perpetua, Tharacus, Probus, Andronicus, and Marcellus, followed by radical reformers Jan Hus, Michael and Margaretha Sattler, Weynken Claes, William Tyndale, Jakob and Katharina Hutter, Anna Janz, Dirk Willems. But the bulk of the book focuses on little-known modern witness including Veronika Loehans, Jacob Hochstetler, Gnadenhutten, Joseph and Michael Hofer, Emanuel Swartzendruber, Regina Rosenberg, Eberhard and Emmy Arnold, Johann Kornelius Martens, Ahn Ei Sook, Jakob Rempel, Clarence Jordan, Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, Tulio Pedraza, Stanimir Katanic, Samuel Kakesa, Kasai Kapata, Meserete Kristos Church, Sarah Corson, Alexander Men, Jose Chuquin, Norman Tattersall, Katherine Wu, and Ekklesiyar Yan'uwa a Nigeria. This book is part of the Bearing Witness Stories Project, a collaborative story-gathering project involving Anabaptist believers from many different traditions.

This illustrated booklet details the substantial contribution Huguenot society made to English banking and commerce as well as the crafts and other professions in London. The author, Robin Gwynn who was the Director of the 1983/85 "Huguenot Heritage" tercentenary commemoration under the patronage of H.M. The Queen, explains why London became England's principal center for the refugees in contrast to other communities. The Huguenots' assimilation into London society is examined, as are attitudes of the British to the new refugees.

Most forms of religion are best understood in the con- text of their relationship with the surrounding culture. This may be particularly true in the United States. Certainly immigrant Catholicism became Americanized; mainstream Protestantism accommodated itself to the modern world; and Reform Judaism is at home in American society. In Evangelicalism, Richard Kyle explores paradoxical adjustments and transformations in the relationship between conservative Protestant Evangelicalism and contemporary American culture.

Evangelicals have resisted many aspects of the modern world, but Kyle focuses on what he considers their romance with popular culture. Kyle sees this as an Americanized Christianity rather than a Christian America, but the two are so intertwined that it is difficult to discern the difference between them. Instead, in what has become a vicious self-serving cycle, Evangelicals have baptized and sanctified secular culture in order to be considered culturally relevant, thus increasing their numbers and success within abundantly populous and populist-driven American society. In doing so, Evangelicalism has become a middle-class movement, one that dominates America's culture, and unabashedly populist.

Many Evangelicals view America as God's chosen nation, thus sanctifying American culture, consumerism, and middle-class values. Kyle believes Evangelicals have served themselves well in consciously and deliberately adjusting their faith to popular culture. Yet he also thinks Evangelicals may have compromised themselves and their future in the process, so heavily borrowing from the popular culture that in many respects the Evangelical subculture has become secularism with a light gilding of Christianity. If so, he asks, can Evangelicalism survive its own popularity and reaffirm its religious origins, or will it assimilate and be absorbed into what was once known as the Great American Melting Pot of religions and cultures? Will the Gospel of the American dream ultimately engulf and destroy the Gospel of Evangelical success in America?

This thoughtful and thought-provoking volume will interest anyone concerned with the modern-day success of the Evangelical movement in America and the aspirations and fate of its faithful.