Wife No. 19 is the compelling, informative and emotionally fraught biography of Ann Eliza Young, a member and wife within the Mormon church during the 19th century. Young sets out to chronicle a lengthy expos of the various misdeeds she witnessed or was personally part of. She describes the character of the founder and prophet of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, in the context of his interpersonal relationships. The gradual emergence of polygamy, and its uptake among the higher ranking members of the church, is detailed. Although the title highlights the polygamous relationships for which Mormonism gained notoriety, this book does not shy away from the other scandals or controversies. For example; the means via which Brigham Young dishonestly relieved his followers of their money, possessions and cattle via a number of schemes, and the frequent use of the local Native American populations as scapegoats.

This group biography follows three generations of ministers' daughters and wives in a famed American Unitarian family. Shifting the focus from pulpit to parsonage, and from sermon to whispered secrets, Cynthia Tucker humanizes the Eliots and their religious tradition and lifts up a largely neglected female vocation. Spanning 150 years from the early 19th century forward, the narrative shapes itself into a series of stories. Each of six chapters takes up a different woman's defining experience, from the deaths of numerous children and the anguish of infertility to the suffocation of small parish life with its chronic loneliness, doubt, and resentment. One woman confides in a rare close friend, another in the anonymous readers of magazines that publish her poems. A third escapes from an ill-fitting role by succumbing to neurasthenia, leaving one debilitating condition for another. The matriarch's granddaughters script larger lives, bypassing marriage and churchly employment to follow their hearts into same-sex relationships, and major careers in public health and preschool education. In two concluding chapters, Tucker enlarges the frame to bring in the regular parish women who collectively give voice to issues the ministers' kin must keep to themselves. All of the stories are linked by the women's continuing battles to make themselves heard over clerical wisdom that contradicts their reality.

In "Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition: A Typological Account," L. William Oliverio Jr. accounts for the development of Classical Pentecostal theology, as theological hermeneutics, through four types: the original Classical Pentecostal hermeneutic, the Evangelical-Pentecostal hermeneutic, the contextual-Pentecostal hermeneutic, and the ecumenical-Pentecostal hermeneutic. Oliverio gives special attention to key figures in shaping Pentecostal theology and the underlying philosophical assumptions which informed their theological interpretations of reality. The text concludes with a philosophical basis for future Pentecostal theological hermeneutics within the contours of a hermeneutical realism that affirms both the hermeneutical nature of all theology and the implicit affirmation of realism within theological accounts.

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.

While there are a growing number of researchers who are exploring the political and social aspects of the global Renewal movement, few have provided sustained socio-economic analyses of this phenomenon. The editors and contributors to this volume offer perspectivesin light of the growth of the Renewal movement in the two-thirds world.

Evangelical theology is a burgeoning field. Evangelicals have been growing in numbers and prominence worldwide, and the rise to academic prominence of evangelical historians, scripture scholars, ethicists, and theologians--many of whom have changed the face of their disciplines--has demonstrated the growing maturity of this movement's intellectual leaders. This volume surveys the state of the discipline on topics of greatest importance to evangelical theology. Each chapter has been written by a theologian or scholar who is widely recognized for his or her published work and is considered a leading thinker on that particular topic. The authors critically assess the state of the question, from both classical and evangelical traditions, and propose a future direction for evangelical thinking on the subject.

Why do you believe what you believe? Do you base it on your own opinions, other people's opinions, popular culture, scholars, the media? Or do you base your beliefs on the Bible, and the Bible only? God's inspired Word has stood the test of time, and it is the only solid foundation that we have to base our beliefs on. Thirty-Five Reasons Why I Keep the Bible Sabbath relies on the Word of God to clearly document why the seventh-day Sabbath of the Bible is, was, and will remain the true Sabbath. With clarity and sound conclusions, the author outlines thirty-five biblical reasons why he keeps the Sabbath, and why all Christians should return to their biblical roots. This book is an excellent resource for personal study. It is also a wonderful book for sharing with others or using as a basis for Bible studies.

The ?Nonconformist conscience? was a major force in late Victorian and Edwardian politics. The well-attended chapels of England and Wales bred a race of Christian politicians who tried to exert a moral influence on public affairs. This book analyses the political impact of the Nonconformists at the peak of their strength when they were near the centre of key debates of the time over such matters as the growth of the British Empire and state provision of social services. They had also launched campaigns of their own to disestablish the Church of England and to secure public control of the nation's schools. Based on extensive original research, this study is the first to examine these themes.

Development was founded on the belief that religion was not important to development processes. The contributors call this assumption into question & explore the practical impacts of religion by looking at the developmental consequences of Pentecostal Christianity in Africa, & contrasting Pentecostal & secular models of change.