"I was brought into a Christian church by a so-called Christian lady. While I received Jesus Christ in my heart, she left the service to go sleep with my husband."
"Before I had time to think, there stood Mr. (X). In a split second, he grabbed me and began to squeeze my breasts and crotch. I remember struggling to escape. I was twelve years old."
"Our church's youth pastor became sick with cancer. Medical treatment was resisted, and all they did was pray and fast around him 24 hours a day. He died He was 26 years old."
Ten years as a minister with the Assemblies of God Church turned Austin Miles into one of today's most outspoken critics of the church and propelled him into the international spotlight as an important spokesperson on a subject that has been handled far too delicately for far too long.
Miles' first book, the controversial Don't Call Me Brother, sold thousands of copies, appeared on several religious bestseller lists, and led to an unprecedented outpouring of media attention and public response. This book updates events following the publication of the book and the televangelist scandals, and includes letters from Miles' admirers and critics - from a 70-year-old man who sees the truth about born-again Christianity for the first time, to a ministerial candidate with a high-heel fetish. Letters from followers of the late faith-healer William Branham call the book "blasphemous"; others detail tragic stories of molestation, the loss of life savings, and the alientaion of family members. These letters, many of them expressing confusion and pain, provide the springboard for Miles' hard-hitting examination of deceptive religious organizations and for updates on the cast of characters that still controls much of the religious thinking of our time.

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.

Parley P. Pratt's memoirs impress with their vivid and eventful accounts of the author's life. Foremost however is the author's supreme devotion to the Mormon church and the Lord God. Pratt begins by reminiscing on his youth. The early 19th century was an exciting but dangerous time to be alive; the United States was a fledgling nation, and its westward expansion was fraught with a variety of dangers and hardships. Some trusted only in what they believed they knew, but Pratt placed his trust in Jesus Christ's principles from an early age and was in youth part of the Baptist movement. However, he felt he could go further in God's name, and this led him to Joseph Smith and the Mormon church. As one of the earliest members of the Latter Day Saints, Pratt enjoyed a good degree of influence at the forefront of the church's activity. He was present as the denomination grew from its roots as a small, regional group of frontier settlers to a national and international creed with its base in Utah.

This volume tells the story of the Churches of Christ, one of three major denominations that emerged in the United States from a religious movement led by Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone in the early 19th century. Beginning as an effort to provide a basis on which all Christians in America could unite, the leaders of the movement relied on the faith and practice of the primitive church. Ironically, this unity movement eventually divided precisely along the lines of its original agenda, as the Churches of Christ rallied around the restorationist banner while the Disciples of Christ gathered around the ecumenical cause. Yet, having begun as a countercultural sect, the Churches of Christ emerged in the 20th century as a culture-affirming denomination. This brief history, together with biographical sketches of major leaders, provides a complete overview of the denomination in America. The book begins with a concise yet detailed history of the denomination's beginnings in the early 19th century. Tracing the influence of such leaders as Stone and Campbell, the authors chronicle the triumphs and conflicts of the denomination through the 19th century and its reemergence and renewal in the 20th century. The biographical dictionary of leaders in the Churches of Christ rounds out the second half of the book, and a chronology of important events in the history of the denomination offers a quick reference guide. A detailed bibliographic essay concludes the book and points readers to further readings about the Churches of Christ.

This book provides a comprehensive explanation of how the Mormons have transformed from a hated and persecuted fringe group to a well-established world religion with viable candidates for all levels of American government. The Mormon tradition is unfamiliar and mysterious to most Americans outside of the religion, and understandably generates much curiosity. Mormons in American Politics: From Persecution to Power provides an intellectual foundation of Mormon development and emergence in politics, comprehensively examining significant issues and developments from historical, theological, cultural, and modern perspectives. The work analyzes diverse, contemporary topics including Mormons in popular culture, Mormon understandings of the Constitution, the Mormon welfare program, Mormon opposition to same-sex marriage, and the global expansion of Mormonism. The book is ideal for scholars and students of American politics, history, and culture; Mormon studies; religious studies; and religion and politics; as well as general readers who are interested in Mormon religion and culture or the rise of Mormon figures in mainstream American politics.

Over the last four decades, evangelical scholars have shown growing interest in other religions and their differing theologies. The result has been consensus on some issues and controversy over others, as scholars seek answers to essential questions: How are we to think about and relate to other religions, be open to the Spirit, and at the same time remain evangelical and orthodox? Gerald R. McDermott and Harold A. Netland offer a map of the terrain, describe new territory, and warn of hazardous journeys taken by some writers in exploring these issues. This volume offers critiques of a variety of theologians and religious studies scholars, including evangelicals, but it also challenges evangelicals to move beyond parochial positions. It is both a manifesto and a research program, critically evaluating the last forty years of Christian treatments of religious others, and proposing a comprehensive direction for the future. It addresses issues relating to the religions in both systematic theology and missiology-taking up long-debated questions such as contextualization, salvation, revelation, the relationship between culture and religion, conversion, social action, and ecumenism. The book concludes with responses from four leading thinkers of African, Asian, and European backgrounds: Veli-Matti Karkkainen, Vinoth Ramachandra, Lamin Sanneh, and Christine Schirrmacher.

As an electoral bloc, contemporary white evangelical Christians maintain a remarkable ideological and partisan conformity, perhaps unmatched by any other community outside of African Americans. Historically, evangelicals have supported various political parties, but their approach to civil religion, or the way that they apply the spiritual to the public realm, has, as Republican Theology argues, been consistent in its substance since the founding of the nation. Put simply, this civil religion holds that limited government and a free-market are essential to the cultivation of Christian virtue, while the livelihood of the republic depends on the virtue of its citizens. While evangelicals have long promoted conservative moral causes, from temperance and anti-obscenity in the nineteenth century to abstinence education in the twentieth, they have also aligned themselves on many other seemingly unrelated agendas: in support of the Revolution in the 1770s, on antislavery in the 1820s, against labor unionism in the 1880s, against the New Deal in the 1930s, on assertive anticommunism in the 1950s (a major theme in Billy Graham's early sermons), and in favor of deregulation and lower taxes in the 1980s.
As Benjamin T. Lynerd contends, the rise of the "New Right" movement at the end of the twentieth century had as much to do with small-government ideology as with a recovery of traditional morality. This libertarian ethos combined with restrictive public moralism is conflicted, and it creates friction both within the New Right alliance and within the church, particularly among evangelicals interested in social justice. Still, it has formed the entire subtext of evangelical participation in American politics from the 1770s into the twenty-first century. Lynerd looks at the evolution of evangelical civil religion, or "republican theology" to demonstrate how evangelicals navigate this logic.

The Protestant white majority in the nineteenth century was convinced that Mormonism represented a racial-not merely religious-departure from the mainstream and they spent considerable effort attempting to deny Mormon whiteness. Being white equalled access to political, social, and economic power, all aspects of citizenship in which outsiders sought to limit or prevent Mormon participation. At least a part of those efforts came through persistent attacks on the collective Mormon body, ways in which outsiders suggested that Mormons were physically different, racially more similar to marginalized groups than they were white. Medical doctors went so far as to suggest that Mormon polygamy was spawning a new race. Mormons responded with aspirations toward whiteness. It was a back and forth struggle between what outsiders imagined and what Mormons believed. Mormons ultimately emerged triumphant, but not unscathed. At least a portion of the cost of their struggle came at the expense of their own black converts. Mormon leaders moved away from universalistic ideals toward segregated priesthood and temples, policies firmly in place by the early twentieth century. So successful were they at claiming whiteness for themselves, that by the time Mormon Mitt Romney sought the White House in 2012, he was labelled "the whitest white man to run for office in recent memory. " Mormons once again found themselves on the wrong side of white.