Mormon Women's History: Beyond Biography demonstrates that the history and experience of Mormon women is central to the history of Mormonism and to histories of American religion, politics, and culture. Yet the study of Mormon women has mostly been confined to biographies, family histories, and women's periodicals. The contributors to Mormon Women's History engage the vast breadth of sources left by Mormon women-journals, diaries, letters, family histories, and periodicals as well as art, poetry, material culture, theological treatises, and genealogical records-to read between the lines, reconstruct connections, recover voices, reveal meanings, and recast stories. Mormon Women's History presents women as incredibly inter-connected. Familial ties of kinship are multiplied and stretched through the practice and memory of polygamy, social ties of community are overlaid with ancestral ethnic connections and local congregational assignments, fictive ties are woven through shared interests and collective memories of violence and trauma. Conversion to a new faith community unites and exposes the differences among Native Americans, Yankees, and Scandinavians. Lived experiences of marriage, motherhood, death, mourning, and widowhood are played out within contexts of expulsion and exile, rape and violence, transnational immigration, establishing "civilization" in a wilderness, and missionizing both to new neighbors and far away peoples. Gender defines, limits, and opens opportunities for private expression, public discourse, and popular culture. Cultural prejudices collide with doctrinal imperatives against backdrops of changing social norms, emerging professional identities, and developing ritualization and sacralization of lived religion. The stories, experiences, and examples explored in Mormon Women's History are neither comprehensive nor conclusive, but rather suggestive of the ways that Mormon women's history can move beyond individual lives to enhance and inform larger historical narratives.

Isaiah Shembe's Prophetic Uhlanga: The Worldview of the Nazareth Baptist Church in Colonial South Africa examines the worldview generated and sustained by the Zulu Zionist prophet Isaiah Shembe and his congregation, the Nazareth Baptist Church, during South Africa's colonial era. The book contends that the worldview embraced by Shembe and his congregants was prophetically defined and reified. This argument challenges nationalist and postcolonialist discourses about colonized populations that have viewed empire and its consequences as the prime determinants of colonized individuals' lives. Through a close reading of the church's records, Joel E. Tishken demonstrates that at the heart of the narrative Shembe and church members told of themselves was a sincere and faithful conviction that Shembe was God's anointed prophet and his followers God's new chosen people. Within their understanding of colonial South Africa, British imperialism and white supremacy were part of God's cosmic vision to provide atonement and salvation for Africans - plans they believed God was prophetically communicating to Shembe. The historical narrative, theology, and identity of Shembe and his parishioners revolved around this prophetically prescribed explanation for the conditions of colonial Africa. Thus, Tishken argues that colonized communities interpreted their worlds in much more creative and complex ways than scholars have recognized. This book is applicable to courses on imperialism, South Africa, African religions, and the history of Christianity.

The 1920s saw one of the most striking revolutions in manners and morals to have marked North American society, affecting almost every aspect of life, from dress and drink to sex and salvation. Protestant Christianity was being torn apart by a heated controversy between traditionalists and the modernists, as they sought to determine how much their beliefs and practices should be altered by scientific study and more secular attitudes. Out of the controversy arose the Fundamentalist movement, which has become a powerful force in twentieth-century America.
During this decade, hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of young girl preachers, some not even school age, joined the conservative Christian cause, proclaiming traditional values and condemning modern experiments with the new morality. Some of the girls drew crowds into the thousands. But the stage these girls gained went far beyond the revivalist platform. The girl evangelist phenomenon was recognized in the wider society as well, and the contrast to the flapper worked well for the press and the public. Girl evangelists stood out as the counter-type of the flapper, who had come to define the modern girl. The striking contrast these girls offered to the racy flapper and to modern culture generally made girl evangelists a convenient and effective tool for conservative and revivalist Christianity, a tool which was used by their adherents in the clash of cultures that marked the 1920s.

Most Wesleyan-Holiness churches started in the US, developing out of the Methodist roots of the nineteenth-century Holiness Movement. The American origins of the Holiness movement have been charted in some depth, but there is currently little detail on how it developed outside of the US. This book seeks to redress this imbalance by giving a history of North American Wesleyan-Holiness churches in Australia, from their establishment in the years following the Second World War, as well as of The Salvation Army, which has nineteenth-century British origins. It traces the way some of these churches moved from marginalised sects to established denominations, while others remained small and isolated. Looking at The Church of God (Anderson), The Church of God (Cleveland), The Church of the Nazarene, The Salvation Army, and The Wesleyan Methodist Church in Australia, the book argues two main points. Firstly, it shows that rather than being American imperialism at work, these religious expressions were a creative partnership between like-minded evangelical Christians from two modern nations sharing a general cultural similarity and set of religious convictions. Secondly, it demonstrates that it was those churches that showed the most willingness to be theologically flexible, even dialling down some of their Wesleyan distinctiveness, that had the most success. This is the first book to chart the fascinating development of Holiness churches in Australia. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Wesleyans and Methodists, as well as religious history and the sociology of religion more generally.

The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, commonly known as the Shakers, followed Mother Ann Lee to the United States in 1774 when life in England became difficult. In the United States, they established several colonies whose governing principals included celibacy and agrarian communal living. Even at its peak, however, Shakerism claimed only about 4,500 members. Today, except for one active community in Sabbathday, Maine, the great Shaker villages are diminished, but the Shakers left an enduring impact on the religion and culture of the United States. The A to Z of the Shakers relates the history of this fascinating group through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 200 cross-referenced dictionary entries on Shaker communities, industries, individual families, and important people. Every definition, biography, and point of history was submitted to the Shakers at Sabbathday Lake for their review before it was included for publication. As such, the voice of the contemporary Shakers is found in the dictionary, and they have given it their unequivocal endorsement.

The Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender is an outstanding reference source to this controversial subject area. Since its founding in 1830, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has engaged gender in surprising ways. LDS practice of polygamy in the nineteenth century both fueled rhetoric of patriarchal rule as well as gave polygamous wives greater autonomy than their monogamous peers. The tensions over women's autonomy continued after polygamy was abandoned and defined much of the twentieth century. In the 1970s, 1990s, and 2010s, Mormon feminists came into direct confrontation with the male Mormon hierarchy. These public clashes produced some reforms, but fell short of accomplishing full equality. LGBT Mormons have a similar history. These movements are part of the larger story of how Mormonism has managed changing gender norms in a global context. Comprising over forty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into four parts: * Methodological issues * Historical approaches * Social scientific approaches * Theological approaches. These sections examine central issues, debates, and problems, including: agency, feminism, sexuality and sexual ethics, masculinity, queer studies, plural marriage, homosexuality, race, scripture, gender and the priesthood, the family, sexual violence, and identity. The Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, gender studies, and women's studies. The Handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as cultural studies, politics, anthropology, and sociology.

Evangelicalism, an inter-denominational religious movement that has grown to become one of the most pervasive expressions of world Christianity in the early twenty-first century, had its origins in the religious revivals led by George Whitefield, John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. With its stress on the Bible, the cross of Christ, conversion and the urgency of mission, it quickly spread throughout the Atlantic world and then became a global phenomenon. Over the past three decades evangelicalism has become the focus of considerable historical research. This research companion brings together a team of leading scholars writing broad-ranging chapters on key themes in the history of evangelicalism. It provides an authoritative and state-of-the-art review of current scholarship, and maps the territory for future research. Primary attention is paid to English-speaking evangelicalism, but the volume is transnational in its scope. Arranged thematically, chapters assess evangelicalism and the Bible, the atonement, spirituality, revivals and revivalism, worldwide mission in the Atlantic North and the Global South, eschatology, race, gender, culture and the arts, money and business, interactions with Roman Catholicism, Eastern Christianity, and Islam, and globalization. It demonstrates evangelicalism's multiple and contested identities in different ages and contexts. The historical and thematic approach of this research companion makes it an invaluable resource for scholars and students alike worldwide.

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.

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.

Exploring the response of evangelicals to the collapse of 'Greater Christian Britain' in Australia in the long 1960s, this book provides a new religious perspective to the end of empire and a fresh national perspective to the end of Christendom. In the turbulent 1960s, two foundations of the Western world rapidly and unexpectedly collapsed. 'Christendom', marked by the dominance of discursive Christianity in public culture, and 'Greater Britain', the powerful sentimental and strategic union of Britain and its settler societies, disappeared from the collective mental map with startling speed. To illuminate these contemporaneous global shifts, this book takes as a case study the response of Australian evangelical Christian leaders to the cultural and religious crises encountered between 1959 and 1979. Far from being a narrow national study, this book places its case studies in the context of the latest North American and European scholarship on secularisation, imperialism and evangelicalism. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, it examines critical figures such as Billy Graham, Fred Nile and Hans Mol, as well as issues of empire, counter-cultural movements and racial and national identity. This study will be of particular interest to any scholar of Evangelicalism in the twentieth century. It will also be a useful resource for academics looking into the wider impacts of the decline of Christianity and the British Empire in Western civilisation.

The Shakers' spiritual literacies, defined through an examination of their reading and writing practices, blur boundaries between traditionally masculine and feminine realms by using reason and emotion and by being innovative as well as traditional. This exploration of the relationship between literary practices and religious life in the 19th century, of such genres as autobiographies, elegies, histories, and doctrinal works, provides new insights into the many ways in which literacy enriches people's lives.

This volume will appeal not only to the growing body of Shaker scholars, but also to researchers interested in American literature and culture, literacy, religious history, and gender studies.

Scientific evidence and personal experience tell us that sincere, engaging personal relationships are essential for health and happiness. Yet, little is said about how we might actively nurture such relationships for ourselves and for people near us at home and work. Executive Coach Tony Mayo drew on the research of Brene Brown, Joseph Campbell, and others to compose this enthusiastically received non-sectarian sermon. Originally delivered to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston at their Sunday services on January 26, 2014, it has now has been revised and expanded for publication. How do we balance the universal human needs of authenticity and acceptance in our personal lives? How might we foster communities where others have the courage to be truly themselves with us? The word courage originally meant "to speak and act from the heart," or cour in Latin. Courage is required to express our deepest and most authentic selves because we so often fear judgment, rejection and exclusion. Comments from People Who Heard the Sermon "I so appreciate your wonderful talk yesterday morning. A great reminder for me to continue to take risks in my life and get out of my comfort zone as well as trusting others. It also reminded me of the importance of meditation in my life." -Church Member "Your message was loud and clear and magically delivered. Thank you." -Church Member "Tony Mayo covers a lot of meaningful ground in a handful of pages - he brings together courage, bravery, belonging, acceptance, compassion and more - and backs it up with insights, experience, AND academic references I loved it " -Ron Dimon, author of EPM Done Right (Wiley CIO Series) "I am moved and inspired. It is absolutely great, challenging, and rich. Plus more adjectives are in me - all superlative, I'm sure. I must listen to it at least 2 more times; there is a lot to grok here." -Lowell Nerenberg, Executive Coach "We were inspired by what you shared and how you shared it. Thank you." -Church Member "Tony, one of the things I valued most about your sermon is that so few words were wasted. You did not speak just to fill the time; each sentence added to the whole." -Church Member "Thank you, Tony, for such a wonderful message this morning. It was so uplifting and based on feedback, provided many with a transformational experience." -Church Board member "I found your sermon to be rich and meaningful. I agree that you should make it available in print. I would like to revisit it, and those who missed it should take a look " -Church Member "My life could use more Courage just now, and your talk gave me some ideas that could help." -Church Member "Tony, I have it on good authority that your sermon this last Sunday was about the best ever. Could I get a printed copy?" -Email from church member who had been out of town. "True courage comes from the heart. "I was fortunate enough to hear this sermon in real life and was glad to see that Tony has put it in writing so it will be easy to share. I love his distinction between courage that comes from the heart and bravery (related to bravado) that is put on like armor to conceal weakness. He encouraged us to live authentic lives, risking vulnerability as we act from our true selves. I need to revisit what he shared with us on that memorable Sunday " - Laurie Dodd, Attorney "It's rare that I find something so uplifting and encouraging. I am not a religious person and usually when I hear the word 'sermon' I run. His message is for everyone and stays clear of religious views that might preclude any person or group from understanding and enjoying what he has to share. "Tony has a wonderful way with words. I highly recommend reading this book or finding the audio version." - Michael Cohen

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.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon Church, is quickly becoming a global religion with more than 12 million members worldwide. In Japan, the number of official members has more than doubled since 1980. Yet this impressive growth has not been accompanied by research on Japanese Mormons. What attracts Japanese people, most of whom have little experience with Christianity, to an American faith? How are their lives as Japanese people affected by the Mormon Church? Based on research in a small congregation in northern Japan and in-depth interviews with foreign missionaries, Japanese Saints is the first book to provide an in-depth, qualitative examination of what it is like to be a Japanese Mormon. Hoffmann pays particular attention to how members joined the LDS Church, how it has affected relationships with family and friends, and what membership in the Church entails.

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.

The Churches in Christ are in growing disagreement about the direction that the Restoration Movement should take. A Heritage in Crisis introduces the background of this "identity crisis," evaluates nine specific issues that threaten to divide the Churches of Christ today--such as worship styles and women's roles--and suggests changes Churches in Christ can make in order to facilitate the change back to God's original intent for the church. More than simply an academic examination of doctrinal issues, A Heritage in Crisis seeks to identify a path by which the Churches of Christ might move into a future illuminated by the light of God's Word.

Mark Amstutz offers a groundbreaking exploration of the rise, evolution, and crucial impact of Evangelicals on American foreign affairs. In the nineteenth century, Protestant missionaries spearheaded global engagement by serving throughout the world. They gained fluency in foreign languages, developed knowledge about distant societies, and increased cross-cultural awareness. They also played a vital role in advancing human dignity by teaching and modeling values, building schools and clinics, and creating institutions that nurtured civil society. In view of their important role in global affairs, Amstutz argues, Evangelicals can be regarded as America's first internationalists. When modernists gained control of Protestant denominations at the turn of the twentieth century, traditional Protestants responded by creating a Fundamentalist movement that gave precedence to spiritual life but neglected social and political concerns. Four decades later, orthodox believers sought to restore the spiritual-temporal balance that had characterized traditional Protestantism. To a significant degree, contemporary Evangelicalism is the result of this movement. Amstutz illuminates the influence of the political theology of this group of believers on Evangelicals' thought and action on global affairs. Although the New Evangelicals have not established a body of teachings comparable to Catholics', they have developed a framework that has shaped members' social thought and political action. After highlighting distinctive features of Evangelicals' political ethics, Amstutz illustrates how such thinking has influenced the analysis of global poverty, U.S. foreign policy towards Israel, and a variety of foreign policy initiatives. In view of the increasing political advocacy of Evangelical groups, Amstutz concludes with a number of recommendations on how to strengthen Evangelicals' global engagement.

A harmless, unassuming caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen in northern Mexico on 4 November 2019. In a massacre that produced international headlines, nine people were killed and five others gravely injured. The victims were members of the La Mora and LeBaron communities-fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and settled in Mexico when polygamy was outlawed. In The Colony, the best-selling investigative journalist Sally Denton picks up where initial reporting on the killings left off, and in the process tells the violent history of the LeBaron clan and their homestead, from the first polygamist emigration to Mexico in the 1880s to the LeBarons' internal blood feud in the 1970s to the family's recent alliance with the NXIVM sex cult. Drawing on sources within Colonia LeBaron itself, Denton creates a mesmerising work of investigative journalism in the tradition of Under the Banner of Heaven and Going Clear.

Joel Osteen, Paula White, T. D. Jakes, Rick Warren, and Brian McLaren pastor some the largest churches in the nation, lead vast spiritual networks, write best-selling books, and are among the most influential preachers in American Protestantism today. Spurred by the phenomenal appeal of these religious innovators, sociologist Shayne Lee and historian Phillip Luke Sinitiere investigate how they operate and how their style of religious expression fits into America's cultural landscape. Drawing from the theory of religious economy, the authors offer new perspectives on evangelical leadership and key insights into why some religious movements thrive while others decline.

Holy Mavericks provides a useful overview of contemporary evangelicalism while emphasizing the importance of "supply-side thinking" in understanding shifts in American religion. It reveals how the Christian world hosts a culture of celebrity very similar to the secular realm, particularly in terms of marketing, branding, and publicity. Holy Mavericks reaffirms that religion is always in conversation with the larger society in which it is embedded, and that it is imperative to understand how those religious suppliers who are able to change with the times will outlast those who are not.

Evangelical Bible study groups are the most prolific type of small group in American society, with more than 30 million Protestants gathering every week for this distinct purpose, meeting in homes, churches, coffee shops, restaurants, and other public and private venues across the country. What happens in these groups? How do they help shape the contours of American Evangelical life? While more public forms of political activism have captured popular and scholarly imaginations, it is in group Bible study that Evangelicals reflect on the details of their faith. Here they become self-conscious religious subjects, sharing the intimate details of life, interrogating beliefs and practices, and articulating their version of Christian identity and culture.

In Words upon the Word, James S. Bielo draws on over nineteen months of ethnographic work with five congregations to better understand why group Bible study matters so much to Evangelicals and for Evangelical culture. Through a close analysis of participants' discourse, Bielo examines the defining themes of group life--from textual interpretation to spiritual intimacy and the rehearsal of witnessing. Bielo's approach allows these Evangelical groups to speak for themselves, illustrating Bible study's uniqueness in Evangelical life as a site of open and critical dialogue. Ultimately, Bielo's ethnography sheds much needed light on the power of group Bible study for the ever-evolving shape of American Evangelicalism.