Mormon studies is one of the fastest-growing subfields in religious studies. For this volume, Terryl Givens and Philip Barlow, two leading scholars of Mormonism, have brought together 45 of the top scholars in the field to construct a collection of essays that offers a comprehensive overview of scholarship on Mormons. The book begins with a section on Mormon history, perhaps the most well-developed area of Mormon studies. Chapters in this section deal with questions ranging from how Mormon history is studied in the university to the role women have played throughout Mormon history. Other sections examine revelation and scripture, church structure and practice, theology, society, and culture. The final two sections look at Mormonism in a larger context. The authors examine Mormon expansion across the globe-focusing on Mormonism in Latin America, the Pacific, Europe, and Asia-in addition to the interaction between Mormonism and other social systems, such as law, politics, and other faiths. Bringing together an unprecedented body of scholarship in the field of Mormon studies, The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism will be an invaluable resource for those within the field, as well as for people studying the broader, ever-changing American religious landscape.

Surprisingly Supernatural: A Practical Guide to Releasing the Gifts of the Spirit teaches believers to receive the gifts of the Spirit, and then how to release the spiritual gifts of prophecy, healings and miracles, discernment, and binding or driving out demons. Then the believers are encouraged to bring in the harvest. When believers learn how to release the gifts of the Spirit that is what the Bride of Christ is to do at the end of the age, and then she will enter into the wedding banquet (see Matt. 24:14; 25:9-10).

You Will Learn -That you are supposed to ask for the Holy Spirit, and ask for the gifts of the Spirit, and being continually filled by the Spirit was what the first disciples experienced, and they were the first ones called "Christians." -That if you will learn the conditions required for you to hear God's voice, then you will be able to prophecy. -That if you will learn the keys to healing, then you will begin to see the sick healed when you lay your hands on them. -That when you ask for the gift of discernment, then you will begin to discern demons and the defilement that is around you. Then you can cast out those demons. -That leylines are spiritual highways that demons travel on over the earth, and you will learn how to clean them off. -That when you release the gifts of the Spirit, you will easily be able to show nonbelievers that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and is the Savior of the World. -That the Bride of Christ is to be continually filled by the Spirit until she is clothed in the armor of light and clothed in Jesus Christ, then she will bring glory to the Lord (see Rom. 13:12, 14).

This book offers a theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich study of the intersections of contemporary Christianity and youth culture, focusing on evangelical engagements with punk, hip hop, surfing, and skateboarding. Ibrahim Abraham draws on interviews and fieldwork with dozens of musicians and sports enthusiasts in the USA, UK, Australia, and South Africa, and the analysis of evangelical subcultural media including music, film, and extreme sports Bibles. Evangelical Youth Culture: Alternative Music and Extreme Sports Subcultures makes innovative use of multiple theories of youth cultures and subcultures from sociology and cultural studies, and introduces the "serious leisure perspective" to the study of religion, youth, and popular culture. Engaging with the experiences of Pentecostal punks, surfing missionaries, township rappers, and skateboarding youth pastors, this book makes an original contribution to the sociology of religion, youth studies, and the study of religion and popular culture.

Stories of contemporary exorcisms are largely met with ridicule, or even hostility. Sean McCloud argues, however, that there are important themes to consider within these narratives of seemingly well-adjusted people-who attend school, go shopping, and watch movies-who also happen to fight demons. American Possessions examines Third Wave evangelical spiritual warfare, a late twentieth-, early twenty-first century movement of evangelicals focused on banishing demons from human bodies, material objects, land, regions, political parties, and nation states. While Third Wave beliefs may seem far removed from what many scholars view as mainstream religious practice in America, McCloud argues that the movement provides an ideal case study for identifying some of the most prescient tropes within the contemporary American religious landscape; namely "the consumerist," "the haunted," and "the therapeutic." Drawing on interviews, television shows, documentaries, websites, and dozens of spiritual warfare handbooks, McCloud examines Third Wave practices such deliverance rituals (a uniquely Protestant form of exorcism), spiritual housekeeping (the removal of demons from everyday objects), and spiritual mapping (searching for the demonic in the physical landscape). Demons, he shows, are the central fact of life in the Third Wave imagination. McCloud provides the first book-length study of this influential movement, highlighting the important ways that it reflects and diverts from the larger, neo-liberal culture from which it originates.

This volume offers a landmark analysis of the trinitarian impulses in contemporary worship music used by the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC). It considers whether the lyrics from the most commonly used PAOC songs are consistent with this Evangelical group's trinitarian statement of faith. Colin Gunton's trinitarian theology provides the theological rationale for eight original and qualitative content analyses of these songs. Three major areas are considered-the doctrine of God, human personhood, and cosmology. Making use of Gunton's notions of relationality, particularity, and perichoresis, along with several key Pentecostal scholars, this book serves as a helpful descriptive and prescriptive theological resource for the dynamic practice of a trinitarian faith.

In this important new volume, Arand, Kolb, and Nestingen bring the fruit of an entire generation of scholarship to bear on these documents, making it an essential and up-to-date class text. The Lutheran Confessions places the documents solidly within their political, social, ecclesiastical and theological contexts, relating them to the world in which they took place. Though the book is not a theology of the Confessions, readers will clearly understand the issues at stake in the narratives, both in their own time, and in ours.