This baptismal study guide will prepare children ages 8-10 for a wonderful walk with Jesus. it offers lessons with activities that parents and children can enjoy together as a bonding experience. The activities include not only fill-in-the-blank but also word games, Bible crosswords, and even a maze.

This book makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of childhood studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture by drawing on the intersecting fields of girlhood, evangelicalism, and reform to investigate texts written in North America about girls, for girls, and by girls. Responding both to the intellectual excitement generated by the rise of girlhood studies, as well as to the call by recent scholars to recognize the significance of religion as a meaningful category in the study of nineteenth-century literature and culture, this collection locates evangelicalism at the center of its inquiry into girlhood. Contributors draw on a wide range of texts, including canonical literature by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan Warner, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and overlooked archives such as US Methodist Sunday School fiction, children's missionary periodicals, and the Christian Recorder, the flagship newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. These essays investigate representations of girlhood that engage, codify, and critique normative Protestant constructions of girlhood. Contributors examine girlhood in the context of reform, revealing the ways in which Protestantism at once constrained and enabled female agency. Drawing on a range of critical perspectives, including African American Studies, Disability Studies, Gender Studies, and Material Culture Studies, this volume enriches our understanding of nineteenth-century childhood by focusing on the particularities of girlhood, expanding it beyond that of the white able-bodied middle-class girl and attending to the intersectionality of identity and religion.

Many Christians who receive a prophetic message, or "word," from the Lord don't understand that its fulfillment is not necessarily automatic. Others don't know how to determine if a prophetic word really is from the Lord. And still others don't understand what prophetic ministry is and how it works.
A veteran prophetic warrior, Barbara Wentroble is aware of the need for training in Bible-based prophetic ministry. With insight and wisdom, she explains not only how prophetic ministry works, but also how believers today--like biblical characters of old--may need to engage in spiritual warfare in order to receive promises that really are from God. Wentroble shows that prophetic words are not confined to church walls, and are not for a select few Christians but for all. She gives readers the guidelines and prophetic etiquette they need to help prevent abuse and misunderstanding, while helping them find the incredible blessing of the biblical gift of prophecy.

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.

Letters of important clergyman provide a well-informed and lively commentary upon the religion, politics and society of the time. The letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808) illuminate the career and opinions of one of the most prominent and controversial clergymen of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His petitions for liberalism within the Church of England in 1772-3, his subsequent resignation from the Church and his foundation of a separate Unitarian chapel in London in 1774 all provoked profound debate in the political as well as the ecclesiastical world. His chapel became a focal point for the theologically and politically disaffected and during the 1770s and early 1780s attracted the interest of many critics of British policy towards the American colonies. Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Priestley and Richard Price were among Lindsey's many acquaintances. The first of this two-volume edition of the letters of Theophilus Lindsey covers the period from 1747 to the eve of the French Revolution; their subjects include religious and political debate, campaigns for ecclesiastical and political reform, and the emergence of a theologically distinct Unitarian denomination. The letters are accompanied by full notes and introduction. G.M.DITCHFIELD is Professor of Eighteenth-Century History, University of Kent at Canterbury.

The ?Nonconformist conscience? was a major force in late Victorian and Edwardian politics. The well-attended chapels of England and Wales bred a race of Christian politicians who tried to exert a moral influence on public affairs. This book analyses the political impact of the Nonconformists at the peak of their strength when they were near the centre of key debates of the time over such matters as the growth of the British Empire and state provision of social services. They had also launched campaigns of their own to disestablish the Church of England and to secure public control of the nation's schools. Based on extensive original research, this study is the first to examine these themes.

This book examines how Methodism and popular review criticism intersected with and informed each other in the eighteenth century. Methodism emerged at a time when the idea of a 'public square' was taking shape, a process facilitated by the periodical press. Perhaps more so than any previous religious movement, Methodism, and the publications associated with it, received greater scrutiny largely because of periodical literature and the emergence of popular review criticism. The book considers in particular how works addressing Methodism were discussed and critiqued in the era's two leading literary periodicals - The Monthly Review and The Critical Review. Focusing on the period between 1749 and 1789, the study encompasses the formative years of popular review criticism and some of the more dramatic moments in the textual culture of early Methodism. The author illustrates some of the specific ways these review journals diverged in their critical approaches and sensibilities as well as their politics and religious opinions. The Monthly's and the Critical's responses to the Methodists' own publishing efforts as well as the anti-Methodist critique are shown to be both multifaceted and complex. The book critically reflects on the pretended neutrality, reasonableness, and objectivity of reviewers, who at times found themselves negotiating between the desire to regulate literary tastes and the impulse to undermine the Methodist revival. It will be relevant to scholars of religion, history and literary studies with an interest in Methodism, print culture, and the eighteenth century.

This book treads new ground by bringing the Evangelical and Dissenting movements within Christianity into close engagement with one another. While Evangelicalism and Dissent both have well established historiographies, there are few books that specifically explore the relationship between the two. Thus, this complex relationship is often overlooked and underemphasised. The volume is organised chronologically, covering the period from the late seventeenth century to the closing decades of the twentieth century. Some chapters deal with specific centuries but others chart developments across the whole period covered by the book. Chapters are balanced between those that concentrate on an individual, such as George Whitefield or John Stott, and those that focus on particular denominational groups like Wesleyan Methodism, Congregationalism or the 'Black Majority Churches'. The result is a new insight into the cross pollination of these movements that will help the reader to understand modern Christianity in England and Wales more fully. Offering a fresh look at the development of Evangelicalism and Dissent, this volume will be of keen interest to any scholar of Religious Studies, Church History, Theology or modern Britain.

Brigham Young was a rough-hewn craftsman from New York whose impoverished and obscure life was electrified by the Mormon faith. He trudged around the United States and England to gain converts for Mormonism, spoke in spiritual tongues, married more than fifty women, and eventually transformed a barren desert into his vision of the Kingdom of God. While previous accounts of his life have been distorted by hagiography or polemical expose, John Turner provides a fully realized portrait of a colossal figure in American religion, politics, and westward expansion.

After the 1844 murder of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Young gathered those Latter-day Saints who would follow him and led them over the Rocky Mountains. In Utah, he styled himself after the patriarchs, judges, and prophets of ancient Israel. As charismatic as he was autocratic, he was viewed by his followers as an indispensable protector and by his opponents as a theocratic, treasonous heretic.

Under his fiery tutelage, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints defended plural marriage, restricted the place of African Americans within the church, fought the U.S. Army in 1857, and obstructed federal efforts to prosecute perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. At the same time, Young's tenacity and faith brought tens of thousands of Mormons to the American West, imbued their everyday lives with sacred purpose, and sustained his church against adversity. Turner reveals the complexity of this spiritual prophet, whose commitment made a deep imprint on his church and the American Mountain West."

A historical account of how leading evangelicals in the late nineteenth century fused a passion for evangelism with social service, cultural engagement and political activism.

How did America's white evangelicals, from often progressive history, come to right-wing populism? Addressing populism requires understanding how its historico-cultural roots ground present politics. How have the very qualities that contributed much to American vibrancy-an anti-authoritarian government-wariness and energetic community-building-turned, under conditions of distress, to defensive, us-them worldviews? Readers will gain an understanding of populism and of the socio-political and religious history from which populism draws its us-them policies and worldview. The book ponders the tragic cast of the white evangelical story: (i) the distorting effects of economic and way-of-life duress on the understanding of history and present circumstances and (ii) the tragedy of choosing us-them solutions to duress that won't relieve it, leaving the duress in place. Readers will trace the trajectory from economic, status loss, and way-of-life duresses to solutions in populist, us-them binaries. They will explore the robust white evangelical contribution to civil society but also to racism, xenophobia, and sexism. White evangelicals not in the ranks of the right-their worldview and activism-are discussed in a final chapter. This book is valuable reading for students of political and social sciences as well as anyone interested in US politics.

Philip Gorski is a very well-known and highly respected author. His work on Christianity and Democracy is ground breaking and he is a pioneer of the field. The book is incredibly topical and will be of interested to those studying Christianity, religion and politics and evangelicalism. This will be the first academic book to take this approach to the subject area.

This book explores the life and spirituality of John Cennick (1718-1755) and argues for a new appreciation of the contradictions and complexities in early evangelicalism. It explores Cennick's evangelistic work in Ireland, his relationship with Count Zinzendorf and the creative tension between the Moravian and Methodist elements of his participation in the eighteenth-century revivals. The chapters draw on extensive unpublished correspondence between Cennick and Zinzendorf, as well as Cennick's unique diary of his first stay in the continental Moravian centres of Marienborn, Herrnhaag and Lindheim. A maverick personality, John Cennick is seen at the centre of some of the principal controversies of the time. The trajectory of his emergence as a prominent figure in the revivals is remarkable in its intensity and hybridity and brings into focus a number of themes in the landscape of early evangelicalism: the eclectic nature of its inspirations, the religious enthusiasm nurtured in Anglican societies, the expansion of the pool of preaching talent, the social tensions unleashed by religious innovations, and the particular nature of the Moravian contribution during the 1740s and 1750s. Offering a major re-evaluation of Cennick's spirituality, the book will be of interest to scholars of evangelical and church history.