In 1997, Terryl Givens's The Viper on the Hearth was praised as a new classic in Mormon studies. In the wake of Mormon-inspired and -created artistic, literary, and political activity - today's "Mormon moment" - Givens presents a revised and updated edition of his book to address the continuing presence and reception of the Mormon image in contemporary culture. "The Viper on the Hearth by Terryl L. Givens is a remarkably lucid and useful study of the patterns of American prejudices against the Mormon people. It provides also a valuable paradigm for the study of all religious 'heresy'." - Harold Bloom "A well-researched and insightful book...He illuminates the phenomena of religious heresy and persecution generally. The book is thoroughly documented, and Givens writes with a graceful style. This is an excellent example of both historical and literary scholarship." - American Historical Review "Contains provocative insights into American culture, LDS identity, nineteenth-century literature, rhetorics of oppression, and religious formation. The narrative is short, subtle, and crisp; Givens rarely wastes a sentence. A work to be read with patience and care. I highly recommend this book." - Religious Studies Review "The book is sophisticated, long on analysis...He has read widely in the vast secondary literature...and produced a study worthy of its prestigious publisher." - Church History "Widely researched, theoretically informed, and gracefully written, this work is a model of significant interdisciplinary study." - Western American Literature "It could influence American religion studies the same way Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy challenged and changed perceptions. Intelligently conceived,...skillful textual analysis,...exemplary scholarship...It illuminates dilemmas and paradoxes central to American religion and culture generally. The prose, illustrations, and overall construction of the book are aesthetically pleasing. The exemplary scholarship significantly enriches Mormon historiography....Few books succeed, as this one does, in stimulating thought far beyond their own scope." - Journal of Mormon History "A subtlety and sophistication that will delight and enlighten readers. The most detailed and sophisticated study to date of patterns of representation in 19th c anti-Mormonism." - BYU Studies "A powerful and compelling thesis...[an] ingenious reading... Chapter five should become a classic in Mormon Studies. For a great reading experience in thoughtful and independently conceived religious and cultural thinking rare in Mormon studies, turn to this addition in the excellent 'Religion in America Series,' published by Oxford University Press." - Journal of American Ethnic History "Well-researched and illuminating study...Gives us a fresh understanding of the process of myth-making...Locates it arguments in a carefully constructed historical context." - Journal of the Early Republic "In this fascinating study, he examines how Mormons have been constructed as the great and abominable 'other.' Interestingly, although the religion was once scorned for its 'weirdness,' it is now because Mormons occupy what used to be the center that they fall into contempt." - Utah Historical Quarterly "A wonderfully thought-through look at the interrelationships between fiction, religion, and the culture of humor/hostility....It represents a significant contribution to our understanding of literary relations." - Larry H. Peer, Brigham Young University "This is the first full explanation of why Mormons have been demonized by a nation that prides itself on open toleration of all faiths. Givens carefully appraises every past explanation for the printed attacks and physical persecutions that occurred from the 1830s onward, as newspapers, novels, and satires convinced a 'tolerant' public that Mormons should not be tolerated. He then makes a convincing argument that the primary affront the Mormons offered was theological: their anthropomorphic picture of God and of his continuing personal revelations to the one true church. The book is thus an impressive achievement that should interest not just Mormons or other religious believers but anyone who cares about how 'freedom-loving,' 'tolerant' Americans turned 'heretics' into subhuman monsters deserving destruction." - Wayne Booth, University of Chicago (Emeritus)

In her powerful, prophetic teaching style, bestselling author Jennifer Eivaz helps readers to continually sharpen their gifting in order to minister healing, breakthrough, and a supernatural display of God's glory. Helping those with this unique and powerful anointing, she teaches how to * learn the value of spending time in the secret place with God * distinguish the extraordinary voice of God * grow in knowledge of signs and dreams * avoid pet doctrines, fads, and heresies * understand when to keep a prophetic word, and when to let it go The world is desperate to hear the voice of God clearly--it is vital that his prophets give true expression to all that is on his heart. Are you prepared to become all God has created you to be?

Groundbreaking Book Now Revised and Updated A witch's coven in Argentina became a lighthouse of prayer in less than 60 minutes. A prodigal son returned to the Lord in California. An adopted son and the father who had cast him out years before were reunited in Christ. These are real stories of real lives and cities being transformed through the power of prayer evangelism. In this revised and updated edition of a watershed book, bestselling author Ed Silvoso shows that when you change a city's spiritual climate, everything--and everybody--is transformed. It was something the early church knew innately, and here Ed shares a proven, biblical, and practical plan to help you change the spiritual climate of your city. Fulfilling the Great Commission is no longer a distant hope; it is a fast-approaching reality that we may see in our own lifetime. What better time to join the effort?

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.

Drawing from six decades of Scripture-based teaching and study in the original Greek and Hebrew, the late Derek Prince clearly explains the foundation for Christian faith, salvation, baptism, the Holy Spirit, laying on of hands, the believer's resurrection, and eternal judgment. This revised book, which has been translated and distributed worldwide in more than sixty languages, offers Christians evrything they need to develop a strong, balanced, spirit-filled life, including a comprehensive index of topics and a compelte index of Scripture verses.

In People of Paradox, Terryl Givens traces the rise and development of Mormon culture from the days of Joseph Smith in upstate New York, through Brigham Young's founding of the Territory of Deseret on the shores of Great Salt Lake, to the spread of the Latter-Day Saints around the globe. Throughout the last century and a half, Givens notes, distinctive traditions have emerged among the Latter-Day Saints, shaped by dynamic tensions-or paradoxes-that give Mormon cultural expression much of its vitality. Here is a religion shaped by a rigid authoritarian hierarchy and radical individualism; by prophetic certainty and a celebration of learning and intellectual investigation; by existence in exile and a yearning for integration and acceptance by the larger world. Givens divides Mormon history into two periods, separated by the renunciation of polygamy in 1890. In each, he explores the life of the mind, the emphasis on education, the importance of architecture and urban planning (so apparent in Salt Lake City and Mormon temples around the world), and Mormon accomplishments in music and dance, theater, film, literature, and the visual arts. He situates such cultural practices in the context of the society of the larger nation and, in more recent years, the world. Today, he observes, only fourteen percent of Mormon believers live in the United States. Mormonism has never been more prominent in public life. But there is a rich inner life beneath the public surface, one deftly captured in this sympathetic, nuanced account by a leading authority on Mormon history and thought.

More than fifty years ago, a reporter for Guideposts magazine set out to gather information about a strange new occurrence happening all over the country. John Sherrill, a skeptic when it came to speaking in tongues and the baptism with the Holy Spirit, was determined to retain his objectivity while digging out the facts. What he found would change his life. With more than 2.5 million copies sold, this classic work is the story of one man's journey from skepticism to a life-changing relationship with God. Filled with historical and biblical accounts of speaking in tongues, this is also the deeply personal and moving story of how you, too, can walk in the power of the Spirit day by day. Now includes a new epilogue and update on how to lean on the Holy Spirit for unity in an increasingly divisive world.

John Erskine was the leading evangelical in the Church of Scotland in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Educated in an enlightened setting at Edinburgh University, he learned to appreciate the epistemology of John Locke and other empiricists alongside key Scottish Enlightenment figures such as his ecclesiastical rival, William Robertson. Although groomed to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, Erskine changed career paths in order to become a minister of the Kirk. He was deeply moved by the endemic revivals in the west of Scotland and determined that his contribution to the burgeoning evangelical movement on both sides of the Atlantic would be much greater as a clergyman than a lawyer. Yet Erskine was no "enthusiast." He integrated the style and moral teachings of the Moderate Enlightenment into his discourses and posited new theories on traditional views of Calvinism in his theological treatises. Erskine's thought never transgressed the boundaries of orthodoxy; his goal was to update evangelicalism with the new style and techniques of the age without sacrificing the gospel message. While widely recognized as an able preacher and theologian, Erskine's primary contribution to evangelicalism was as a disseminator. He sent correspondents like the New England pastor Jonathan Edwards countless religious and philosophical works so that he and others could learn about current ideas, update their writings, and provide an apologetic against perceived heretical authors. Erskine also was crucial in the publishing of books and pamphlets by some of the best evangelical theologians in America and Britain. Within his lifetime, Erskine's main contribution was as a propagator of an enlightened form of evangelicalism.

Scripting Pentecost explores and develops an analysis of worship and liturgy in Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions around the world. It is organized into two main sections: history and theology, and global case studies. The first section considers early Pentecostal traditions, the influence of the Welsh revival, classical Pentecostalism, the Charismatic Renewal movement and subsequent practices up to the present day. It also provides contemporary constructive theological reflections on sung worship, sacramental theology and liturgical practices. The second section offers a selection of global case studies from America, Europe, Kenya, Myanmar, Venezuela and Papua New Guinea. These case studies focus on contemporary worship and liturgical practices and their significance for Pentecostal and Charismatic studies..

Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity is a global phenomenon that comprises a quarter of the world's two billion Christians and is growing rapidly. This volume reveals that the primary appeal of pentecostalism worldwide is as a religion of healing. Contrary to popular stereotypes of flamboyant, fraudulent, anti-medical "faith healing" televangelists who preach a materialistic, "health and wealth" gospel, handle serpents, or sensationally "exorcize" demons, this book offers a more nuanced portrait. The collected essays illumine local variations, hybridities, and tensions in practices on six continents, and depict the extent of human suffering and powerlessness experienced by people everywhere and the attractiveness to many of a global religious movement that promises material relief by invoking spiritual resources. This is the first book of its kind. Achieving the twin goals of thick description and comparative analysis of global practices is best achieved by bringing area experts into conversation. This volume's distinguished, international team of contributors includes sociologists, anthropologists, historians, political scientists, theologians, and religious studies scholars from North America, Europe, and Africa. Read together, these essays set the agenda for a new program of scholarly inquiry into some of the largest forces of change at work in the world today-globalization, pentecostalism, and healing-each of which is extremely powerful in itself and which together are reshaping our world in vastly significant ways.

Peter McAuslan heeded Mormon missionaries spreading the faith in his native Scotland in the mid-1840s. The uncertainty his family faced in a rapidly industrializing economy, the political turmoil erupting across Europe, the welter of competing religions-all were signs of the imminent end of time, the missionaries warned. For those who would journey to a new Zion in the American West, opportunity and spiritual redemption awaited. When McAuslan converted in 1848, he believed he had a found a faith that would give his life meaning. A few years later, McAuslan and his family left Scotland for Utah, but soon after he arrived, his doubts grew about the religious community he had joined so wholeheartedly. Historian Polly Aird tells the story of how McAuslan first embraced, then came to question, and ultimately renounced the Mormon faith and left Utah. It would be the most courageous act of his life. In Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector, Aird tells of Scottish emigrants who endured a harrowing transatlantic and transcontinental journey to join their brethren in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. But to McAuslan and others like him, the Promised Land of Salt Lake City turned out to be quite different from what was promised: droughts and plagues of locusts destroyed crops and brought on famine, and U.S. Army troops threatened on the borders. Mormon leaders responded with fiery sermons attributing their trials to divine retribution for backsliding and sin. When the leaders countenanced violence and demanded absolute obedience, Peter McAuslan decided to abandon his adopted faith. With his family, and escorted by a U.S. Army detachment for protection, he fled to California. Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector reveals the tumultuous 1850s in Utah and the West in vivid detail. Drawing on McAuslan's writings and other archival sources, Aird offers a rare interior portrait of a man in whom religious fervor warred with indignation at absolutist religious authorities and fear for the consequences of dissension. In so doing, she brings to life a dramatic but little-known period of American history.

Originating from a small group of Bible students who met under Charles Taze Russell's leadership and grew into an international Society, to which the second leader Joseph Franklin Rutherford and gave the name 'Jehovah's Witnesses'. Two World Wars shaped Watch Tower attitudes to civil government, armed conflict, and medical innovations such as blood transfusion, as well as to mainstream churches. The twenty-first century has seen some important changes in the Watch Tower organization, and coverage is given to changes in organizational structure, its use of the World Wide Web, and its major relocation from Brooklyn to Warwick. This updated second edition of Historical Dictionary of Jehovah's Witnesses contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on key concepts, themes, and people relating to Jehovah's Witnesses. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Jehovah's Witnesses.

The surprising career of Joseph Smith's famous book Late one night in 1823, Joseph Smith, Jr., was reportedly visited in his family's farmhouse in upstate New York by an angel named Moroni. According to Smith, Moroni told him of a buried stack of gold plates that were inscribed with a history of the Americas' ancient peoples, and which would restore the pure Gospel message as Jesus had delivered it to them. Thus began the unlikely career of the Book of Mormon, the founding text of the Mormon religion and perhaps the most important sacred text ever to originate in the United States. Paul Gutjahr traces the life of this remarkable book, showing how it launched one of the fastest-growing new religions on the planet and has featured in everything from comic books and action figures to movies and an award-winning Broadway musical.

An edition of four previously unpublished heretical dialogues in Middle English, translated or adapted from Wycliffite sources composed circa 1380-1420. These previously unpublished prose treatises, cast as fictional dialogues, all survive in the form of single manuscripts, probably by different authors, but they cohere in their ideological outlook, subject matter, and debate form. The Dialogue between Jon and Richard concerns the four orders of friars; the Dialogue between a Friar and a Secular claims to be the written record of an oral debate that took place before a Lord Duke of Gloucester, and invites the lord to judge the two disputants: the friar offers a series of tendentious propositions on salvation, sin, and mendicancy, rebutted by the secular priest. The Dialogue between Reson and Gabbyng is a free translation and adaptation of the first twelve chapters of Wyclif's Dialogus (Speculum ecclesie militantis). The Dialogue between a Clerk and a Knight stages a conflict between papal and imperial, or regal, power, insisting on the rights of the king and his lords to remove the goods of corrupt clergy from England. These dialogues provide a comprehensive introduction to Wycliffite belief, and arguments on a range of controversial topics. The edition includes an introduction, detailed explanatory notes, and a glossary.

Use your spiritual authority to cancel the devil’s plans!

In our day, a powerful revelation has been released, teaching all believers how to enter the realm of breakthrough prayer and Kingdom authority—the Courts of Heaven.

As a believer operating in the courts of heaven, you have been granted the legal right to issue divine restraining orders against satan and his demons!

Through revelatory insights, Biblical examples, and supernatural testimonies, Dr. Francis Myles invites you to enter Heaven’s courtrooms, step into your place of spiritual governance, and release divine restraining orders that destroy the schemes of the enemy!

• This groundbreaking teaching will empower you to:
• Restrain the devil’s power against your life.
• Increase your spiritual authority as a judge in the Courts of Heaven.
• Identify and overcome the “Delilah Spirit” that aims at your destiny.
• Apply practices modeled by key biblical figures to issue divine restraining orders.

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.

Ebenezer Obadare examines the overriding impact of Nigerian Pentecostal pastors on their churches, and how they have shaped the dynamics of state-society relations during the Fourth Republic. Pentecostal pastors enjoy an unprecedented authority in contemporary Nigerian society, exerting significant influence on politics, public policy, popular culture, and the moral imagination. In Pastoral Power, Clerical State, Ebenezer Obadare investigates the social origins of clerical authority in modern-day Nigeria with an eye to parallel developments and patterns within the broader African society. Obadare focuses on the figure of the pastor as a bearer of political power, thaumaturgical expertise, and sexual attractiveness who wields significant influence on his church members. This study makes an important contribution to the literature on global Pentecostalism. Obadare situates the figure of the pastor within the wider context of national politics and culture and as a beneficiary of the dislocations of the postcolonial society in Africa's most populous country. Obadare calls our attention to the creative ways in which Nigeria's Pentecostal pastors utilize religious doctrines, beckon spiritual forces, and manipulate their alliances with national powerbrokers to consolidate their influence and authority. In contrast to rapidly eroding pastoral authority in the West, pastoral authority is increasing in Nigeria. This engaging book will appeal to those who want to understand the far-reaching political and social implications of religious movements-especially Christian charismatic and evangelical movements-in contemporary African societies. It will be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, religion, political science, and African studies.

Studies of religion among our nation's newest immigrants largely focus on how religion serves the immigrant community -- for example by creating job networks and helping retain ethnic identity in the second generation. In this book Ecklund widens the inquiry to look at how Korean Americans use religion to negotiate civic responsibility, as well as to create racial and ethnic identity. She compares the views and activities of second generation Korean Americans in two different congregational settings, one ethnically Korean and the other multi-ethnic. She also conducted more than 100 in-depth interviews with Korean American members of these and seven other churches around the country, and draws extensively on the secondary literature on immigrant religion, American civic life, and Korean American religion. Her book is a unique contribution to the literature on religion, race, and ethnicity and on immigration and civic life.