To mark the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation this opulent volume invites the reader to embark on a journey through the world and across a period of time that extends across five centuries and four continents: It describes in detail the global diversity and history of the effects - and also the conflict potential - of Protestantism between the cultures. Which traces has Protestantism left in its contact with other denominations, religions and lifestyles? How did it change through these e ncounters - and not least: how did people adopt the Protestant doctrine; how did they modify it and live by it? On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 this lavishly illustrated volume demonstrates the diversity and history of t he effects - and also the conflict potential of Protestantism. It tells a global history of effect and counter - effect which began in around 1500 and extends into the present day, shown by the examples of Europe, Germany and Sweden, the United States, South Korea and Tanzania.

The belief that Native Americans might belong to the fabled "lost tribes of Israel"-Israelites driven from their homeland around 740 BCE-took hold among Anglo-Americans and Indigenous peoples in the United States during its first half century. In Lost Tribes Found, Matthew W. Dougherty explores what this idea can tell us about religious nationalism in early America. Some white Protestants, Mormons, American Jews, and Indigenous people constructed nationalist narratives around the then-popular idea of "Israelite Indians." Although these were minority viewpoints, they reveal that the story of religion and nationalism in the early United States was more complicated and wide-ranging than studies of American "chosen-ness" or "manifest destiny" suggest. Telling stories about Israelite Indians, Dougherty argues, allowed members of specific communities to understand the expanding United States, to envision its transformation, and to propose competing forms of sovereignty. In these stories both settler and Indigenous intellectuals found biblical explanations for the American empire and its stark racial hierarchy. Lost Tribes Found goes beyond the legal and political structure of the nineteenth-century U.S. empire. In showing how the trope of the Israelite Indian appealed to the emotions that bound together both nations and religious groups, the book adds a new dimension and complexity to our understanding of the history and underlying narratives of early America.