In the mid-1980s, a radio program with a compelling spiritual message was accidentally received by listeners in Vietnam's remote northern highlands. The Protestant evangelical communication had been created in the Hmong language by the Far East Broadcasting Company specifically for war refugees in Laos. The Vietnamese Hmong related the content to their traditional expectation of salvation by a Hmong messiah-king who would lead them out of subjugation, and they appropriated the evangelical message for themselves. Today, the New Way (Kev Cai Tshiab) has some three hundred thousand followers in Vietnam. Tam T. T. Ngo reveals the complex politics of religion and ethnic relations in contemporary Vietnam and illuminates the dynamic interplay between local and global forces, socialist and postsocialist state building, cold war and post-cold war antagonisms, Hmong transnationalism, and U.S.-led evangelical expansionism.

In 1950, Christian Century ran a series of articles on twelve churches, some large, some small, each representing a strand of American mainline Protestantism. Now, nearly fifty years later, Randall Balmer--author and host of Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, the acclaimed book and PBS series on American evangelicism--has revisited each of these twelve churches to take the pulse of Protestantism today. The result is a remarkable narrative, graced with touches of local color and memorable portraits of the people involved, and filled with deft observations and carefully nuanced insights about Protestantism at century's end.
Much as he did in Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, Balmer crisscrosses America to give us a first-hand look at how Christianity has fared in the last half-century. What emerges is a church challenged by diminished influence, but with signs of hope for the future. For instance, he takes us to West Hartford, Connecticut, where we learn how a gregarious pastor, Bob Heppenstall, rekindled the spirit of the First Church of Christ Congregational--still housed in its stately, classic New England meetinghouse--that had suffered from inept management until recent years. And in Ames, Iowa, at the Collegiate United Methodist Church, we watch George White struggle to regain his church's once dominant voice in the religious life of the town, a voice now dimmed by the growth of fundamentalism. Some churches have held steadfastly to long-established roles, such as the Washington Prairie Lutheran Church, in Decorah, Iowa, which has been a model of continuity, serving its Norwegian-American community in much the same way since it was founded in 1851. And Balmer also visits some thriving churches, such as Hollywood's First Presbyterian Church, led by the great preacher John Lloyd Ogilvie, who was recently appointed chaplain of the U.S. Senate. In Minneapolis, Balmer encounters Mount Olivet Lutheran Church, a congregation that has not only increased its membership, but can now call itself the biggest Lutheran church in the world.
In Grant Us Courage, one of our most thoughtful chroniclers of the American scene offers an intimate look at mainline Protestantism at the close of the century. We come away with the feeling of having been there, of having listened to the voices of an important segment of Christian life, and of having found a deeper understanding of religious life in America today.

How did John Calvin understand and depict God's relationship with humanity? Influential readings of Calvin have seen a dialectical divine-human opposition as fundamental to his thought. As a result, the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity in his understanding of the divine-human relationship has been largely overlooked. In this fresh consideration of Calvin's Christian vision, however, Philip Butin demonstrates Calvin's consistent and pervasive appeal to the Trinity as the basis, pattern, and dynamic of God's relationship with humanity. Butin examines the historical background, controversial context, and distinctive features of Calvin's Trinity doctrine. He then explores the trinitarian character of Calvin's doctrines concerning revelation, redemption, and human response to God. Finally, his consideration of Calvin's doctrines of the church, baptism, and the eucharist suggests the contextuality, comprehensiveness, and coherence of Calvin's trinitarian vision.

This thought-provoking study examines an apparent paradox in the history of American Protestant evangelical religion. Fervent believers who devoted themselves completely to the challenges of making a Christian life, who longed to know God's rapturous love, all too often languished in despair, feeling forsaken by God. Indeed, some individuals became obsessed by guilt, terror of damnation, and the idea that they had committed an unpardonable sin. Ironically, those most devoted to fostering the soul's maturation seemingly neglected the well-being of the psyche. Drawing upon many sources, including unpublished diaries, spiritual narratives, and case studies of patients treated in nineteenth-century asylums, Julius Rubin thoroughly explores religious melancholy - as a distinctive stance toward life, a grieving over the loss of God's love, and an obsession and psycho pathology associated with the spiritual itinerary of conversion. The varieties of this spiritual sickness include sinners who would fast unto death ("evangelical anorexia nervosa"), religious suicides, and those obsessed with unpardonable sin. From colonial Puritans like Michael Wigglesworth to contemporary evangelicals like Billy Graham, Rubin shows that religious melancholy has shaped the experience of self and identity for those who sought rebirth as children of God. Religious Melancholy and Protestant Experience in America offers a fresh and revealing look at a widely recognized phenomenon. It will be of interest to scholars and students of religious studies, American history, psychology, and sociology of religion.