Since her groundbreaking memoir In My Father's House, which recounts an agonizing break from fundamentalist polygamy, Dorothy Allred Solomon has continued to publish on the lives of Mormon women and the dissonance many experience in connection to fundamentalist pasts. The more Solomon delved into issues of agency, the more she felt her own dissonance and began to look for answers in her ancestral past-those early women she knew only through family stories. Finding Karen: An Ancestral Mystery springs from a decade of research into Solomon's paternal great-great grandmother Karen Sorensen Rasmussen, who converted to Mormonism in Denmark and emigrated to the United States in 1859. Held up to Solomon throughout childhood as an icon of feminine heroism, a stoic handcart immigrant who helped establish Zion in Utah, Karen became equally emblematic of Solomon's own strong-willed determination and of everything Solomon found lacking in herself. Finding Karen is a revelatory journey, twinned with Solomon's own in surprising ways. As valuable a study in recovering history as it is in the need to re-examine family stories, Solomon's retelling takes readers through the twists and turns of discovery/recovery as she encounters them. In doing so, she illuminates not only the risk inherent in trusting even what persists as historic record but also the insights to be gained from assiduous persistence.

Hymnody is widely recognised as a central tenet of Methodism's theological, doctrinal, spiritual, and liturgical identity. Theologically and doctrinally, the content of the hymns has traditionally been a primary vehicle for expressing Methodism's emphasis on salvation for all, social holiness, and personal commitment, while particular hymns and the communal act of participating in hymn singing have been key elements in the spiritual lives of Methodists. An important contribution to the history of Methodism, British Methodist Hymnody argues that the significance of hymnody in British Methodism is best understood as a combination of its official status, spiritual expression, popular appeal, and practical application. Seeking to consider what, when, how, and why Methodists sing, British Methodist Hymnody examines the history, perception, and practice of hymnody from Methodism's small-scale eighteenth-century origins to its place as a worldwide denomination today.

What does the practice of religion look like in Latin American today? In this book, which examines religious practice in three Latin American cities- Lima, Peru; Cordoba, Argentina; and Montevideo, Uruguay- Gustavo Morello reveals the influence of modernity on average citizens' cultural practices. Technological development, the dynamics of capitalism, the specialization of spheres of knowledge- all these aspects of modernity were thought to diminish the importance of religion. Yet, Morello argues, if we look at religion as ordinary Latin Americans practice it, we discover that modernity has not diminished religion, but transformed it, creating what Morello calls "enchanted modernity." In Latin America, there is more religion than secularists expect, but of a different kind than religious leaders would wish. Morello explores how urban, contemporary Latin Americans, both believers and non-believers, from different social classes and religious affiliations, experience transcendence in everyday life. Using semi-structured interviews with 254 individuals in three cities with shifting religious landscapes and different cultural histories, Morello highlights the diversity within Latin America, exploring societies that are understudied and examining a broad array of religious traditions: "nones" (agnostics, non-affiliated, atheist), Catholics, Evangelicals (including mainstream Protestants, Pentecostals, neo-Evangelicals), and other traditions (including Jews, Muslims, Mormons, African-derived traditions, and Buddhists). Morello emphasizes elements, nuances, and dynamics that have previously been overlooked and that can enrich the study of religion other non-western societies. The book seeks to contribute to a critical theory of contemporary religion- one that is not centered in the North Atlantic world and that takes seriously the voices of the Latin American people.

To many people, the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion has the aura of an institution that is dislocated and adrift. Buffeted by tempestuous and stormy debates on sexuality, gender, authority and power - to say nothing of priorities in mission and ministry, and the leadership and management of the church - a once confident Anglicanism appears to be anxious and vulnerable. The Future Shape of Anglicanism offers a constructive and critical engagement with the currents and contours that have brought the church to this point. It assesses and evaluates the forces now shaping the church and challenges them culturally, critically, and theologically. The Future Shape of Anglicanism engages with the church of the present that is simultaneously dissenting and loyal, as well as critical and constructive. For all who are engaged in ecclesiological investigations, and for those who study the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion, this book offers new maps and charts for the present and future. It is an essential companion and guide to some of the movements and forces that are currently shaping the church.

Why would a supernatural God build a supernatural Church and then expect it to function naturally? He wouldn’t! God wants the gospel delivered and demonstrated by believers who live in a unique flow of the miraculous.

In Releasing the Miraculous, author and pastor James Tan shares that the Holy Spirit infilling is really about God outpouring Himself through operations we call the nine gifts of the Spirit.

In 1 Corinthians 12:7, the apostle Paul describes these gifts as manifestations of the Spirit, which in the Greek literally means a shining forth! That’s God’s plan for you—to shine forth with the light of God in the same way electricity manifests in countless ways around you every day.

To help you shine forth with Holy Spirit power, James covers…

• A practical, scriptural study of each gift
• Sharpening your spiritual senses
• Yielding yourself to higher operations and leadings of the Spirit
• How your flow of tongues is your doorway to a flow of the supernatural
• Creating an environment where the gifts flourish

No believer is “gift-less”! So yield yourself to the Spirit like never before because heaven is waiting on you to demonstrate the miraculous to the world!

Become a Resting Place For God's Presence and Power!

Historically, God has moved mightily through revivals, awakenings, and outpourings of His Spirit. But these legendary moments are only a glimpse into what God desires for you each and every day.

Your everyday life can be a permanent dwelling place for God’s presence.

Todd Smith, pastor of Christ Fellowship Dawsonville and leader of the North Georgia Revival, has firsthand experience in creating a habitation for God. He was on the verge of quitting the ministry when the Holy Spirit began showing him how to create a place in his life for the presence of God to live.

Today, Todd shares these keys with you! Discover how to…

• Shift from revival visitation to Holy Spirit habitation—where God’s manifest presence rests upon you with power.
• Become a carrier of God’s holy fire—where you impact the atmosphere around you.
• Practice core values that protect the presence—keys that help you cultivate and sustain a lifestyle saturated in God’s presence and power.
• Create atmospheres that pass God’s test—discover what the Holy Spirit is seeking in order for Him to manifest His presence.
• Pray three things that position you for supernatural setups.
• Discover the supernatural power and peace that comes when you make your life a habitation for God’s glory!

In 1893, Said Jureidini, an Arabic-speaking Christian from the Ottoman Empire, experienced an evangelical conversion while attending the Chicago World's Fair.Two years laterhe founded the first Baptist church in modern-day Lebanon. For financial support, he aligned his fledgling church with American Landmark Baptists and, later, Southern Baptists. By doing so, Jureidini linked the fate of Baptists in Lebanon with those in the United States. In Evangelizing Lebanon , Melanie E. Trexler explores the complex, reflexive relationship between Baptist missionaries from the States and Baptists in Lebanon. Trexler pays close attention to the contexts surrounding the relationships, the consequences, and the theologiesinherent to missionary praxis, carefully profiling the perspectives of both the missionaries and the Lebanese Baptists. Trexler thus discovers a fraught mutuality at work. U.S. missionaries presented new models of church planting, evangelism, and educational opportunities that empowered the Lebanese Baptists to accomplish personal and communal goals. In turn, Lebanese Baptists prompted missionaries to rethink their ideas about mission, Muslim-Christian relations, and even American foreign policy in the region. But Trexler also reveals how missionaries' efforts to evangelize Muslims came to threaten the very security of the Lebanese Baptists. Trexler shows how Baptist missionary theology and praxis in Lebanon had more to do with bolstering an insular Baptist identity in the U.S. than it did with engaging in interfaith relationships with Lebanese Muslims. Ironically, American Baptists' efforts to help ultimately spunoutof control and led to unintended consequences. Trexler's study of Baptists in Lebanon serves as a warning for missional identity everywhere, Baptist or not: missionary insistence on a narrow and politically useful definition of what it means to be Christian can both aid and undermine, build and destabilize.

Intensely persecuted during the English Interregnum, early Quakers left a detailed record of the suffering they endured for their faith. Margaret Fell, Letters, and the Making of Quakerism is the first book to connect the suffering experience with the communication network that drew the faithful together to create a new religious community. This study explores the ways in which early Quaker leaders, particularly Margaret Fell, helped shape a stable organization that allowed for the transition from movement to church to occur. Fell's role was essential to this process because she developed and maintained the epistolary exchange that was the basis of the early religious community. Her efforts allowed for others to travel and spread the faith while she served as nucleus of the community's communication network by determining how and where to share news. Memory of the early years of Quakerism were based on the letters Fell preserved. Marjon Ames analyzes not only how Fell's efforts shaped the inchoate faith, but also how subsequent generations memorialized their founding members.

Mexican American Religions is a concise introduction to the religious life of Mexican American people in the United States. This accessible volume uses historical narrative to explore the complex religious experiences and practices that have shaped Mexican American life in North America. It addresses the religious impact of U.S. imperial expansion into formerly Mexican territory and examines how religion intertwines with Mexican and Mexican American migration into and within the United States. This book also delves into the particularities and challenges faced by Mexican American Catholics in the United States, the development and spread of Mexican American Protestantism and Pentecostalism, and a growing religious diversity. Topics covered include: Mesoamerican religions Iberian religion and colonial evangelization of New Spain The Colonial era Religion in the Mexican period The U.S.-Mexican War and the racialization of Mexican American religion Mexican migration and the Catholic Church Mexican American Protestants Mexican American Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity Mexican American Catholics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Curanderismo Religion and Mexican American civil rights Pilgrimage and borderland connections Mexican American Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, and Secularism Mexican American Religions provides an overview of this incredibly diverse community and its ongoing cultural contribution. Ideal for students and scholars approaching the topic for the first time, the book includes sections in each chapter that focus on Mexican American religion in practice.

A panoramic history of Puritanism in England, Scotland, and New England This book is a sweeping transatlantic history of Puritanism from its emergence out of the religious tumult of Elizabethan England to its founding role in the story of America. Shedding critical light on the diverse forms of Puritan belief and practice in England, Scotland, and New England, David Hall describes the movement's deeply ambiguous triumph under Oliver Cromwell, its political demise with the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, and its perilous migration across the Atlantic to establish a "perfect reformation" in the New World. This monumental book traces how Puritanism was a catalyst for profound cultural changes in the early modern Atlantic world, opening the door for other dissenter groups such as the Baptists and the Quakers, and leaving its enduring mark on religion in America.

This book explores recent developments in South African Pentecostalism, focusing on new prophetic churches. The chapters engage with a number of paradigm shifts in Christology, identified as complementing Christ, competing with Christ, removing Christ and replacing Christ. What are the implications of these shifts? Does it mean that believers no longer believe in Christ but in their leaders? Does it shift believers' faith towards materiality than the person of Christ? This volume will be valuable for scholars of African Christianity and in particular those interested in the neo-prophetic movement and Christology in a South African context.

In June 1722, three families from Moravia settled on the estate of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf in Berthelsdorf, Saxony. Known as the community of Herrnhut, their settlement quickly grew to become the epicenter of a transatlantic religious movement, one that would attract thousands of Europeans, American Indians, and enslaved Africans: the Moravian Church. Written by one of the leading archivists of the Moravian Church, this book investigates the origins of Herrnhut. Paul Peucker argues that Herrnhut was intended to be a Philadelphian community, uniting "true Christians" from all denominations. It was a separatist movement, but it concealed its separatism behind the pretense of an affiliation with the Lutheran Church and behind a chosen historical identity, that of the renewed Unity of Brethren. Peucker's analysis, based on hundreds of documents from archives in Germany and the United States, demonstrates how Herrnhut was able to grow and thrive despite existing regulations against new religious groups, uncovers Count Zinzendorf's role in keeping Herrnhut outside the state church, and provides a new foundation from which to interpret the Moravian church's later years. Three centuries after Herrnhut's founding, this intriguing history brings to light new information about the early years of the Moravian church. Peucker's work will be especially valuable to students and scholars of eighteenth-century religion, Pietism, and Moravian history.

Christian Theology: The Basics is a concise introduction to the nature, tasks and central concerns of theology - the study of God within the Christian tradition. Providing a broad overview of the story that Christianity tells us about our human situation before God, this book will also seek to provide encouragement and a solid foundation for the reader's further explorations within the subject. With debates surrounding the relation between faith and reason in theology, the book opens with a consideration of the basis of theology and goes on to explore key topics including: The identity of Jesus and debates in Christology The role of the Bible in shaping theological inquiry The centrality of the Trinity for all forms of Christian thinking The promise of salvation and how it is achieved. With suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter along with a glossary Christian Theology: The Basics, is the ideal starting point for those new to study of theology.

This book explores the ways in which modern Hindu identities were constructed in the early nineteenth century. It draws parallels between sixteenth and eventeenth Cecntury Protestantism and the rise of modernity in the West, and the Hindu reformation in the nineteenth century which contributed to the rise of Vedantic Hindu modernity discourse in India. The nineteenth century Hindu modernity, it is argued, sought both individual flourishing and collective emancipation from Western domination. For the first time Hinduism began to be constructed as a religion of sacred texts. In particular, texts belonging to what could be loosely called Vedanta: Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. In this way, the main protagonists of this Vedantist modernity were imitating Western Protestantism, but at the same time also inventing totally novel interpretations of what it meant to be Hindu. The book traces the major ideological paths taken in this cultural-religious reformation from its originator Rammohun Roy up to its last major influence, Rabindranath Tagore. Bringing these two versions of modernity into conversation brings a unique view on the formation of modern Hindu identities. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of religious, Hindu and South Asian studies, as well as religious istory and interreligious dialogue.

First published in 1880, this is a fascinating collection of essays by the nineteenth-century theologian and historian George P. Fisher, arranged into three key classifications. The first group comprises papers that relate to the history, polity and dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church, with a particular focus on how the religion of ancient Rome reappears in the characteristic features of Latin Christianity. The second group of essays relates to the New England theology that was pioneered by Jonathan Edwards and entailed important modifications to the philosophy of Calvinism. Unitarianism is also discussed in detail, which is the subject of a paper on Channing, who was regarded as the most prominent representative of the movement in America. The third set of essays explores Theism and Christian evidences, with papers presenting analyses of rationalistic theory, Atheism, and the intellectual and spiritual career of the Apostle Paul. A fascinating and comprehensive collection, this important reissue will be of particular value to students interested in the interplay between history and Christian theology.

With eloquence, candor, and simplicity, a celebrated author tells the story of his father's alcohol abuse and suicide and traces the influence of this secret on his life as a son, father, husband, minister, and writer.

In the late eighteenth century a small Shaker community travelled to America under the leadership of 'Mother Ann' Lee. The American communities they founded were based on ideals of pacifism, celibacy and gender equality. The texts included in this edition come from first-hand accounts of life in the Shaker communities during the nineteenth century.

Cathars have long been regarded as posing the most organised challenge to orthodox Catholicism in the medieval West, even as a "counter-Church" to orthodoxy in southern France and northern Italy. Their beliefs, understood to be inspired by Balkan dualism, are often seen as the most radical among medieval heresies. However, recent work has fiercely challenged this paradigm, arguing instead that "Catharism" is a construct, mis-named and mis-represented by generations of scholars, and its supposedly radical views were a fantastical projection of the fears of orthodox commentators. This volume brings together a wide range of views from some of the most distinguished internationalscholars in the field, in order to address the debate directly while also opening up new areas for research. Focussing on dualism and anti-materialist beliefs in southern France, Italy and the Balkans, it considers a number of crucial issues. These include: what constitutes popular belief; how (and to what extent) societies of the past were based on the persecution of dissidents; and whether heresy can be seen as an invention of orthodoxy. At the same time, the essays shed new light on some key aspects of the political, cultural, religious and economic relationships between the Balkans and more western regions of Europe in the Middle Ages. Antonio Sennis is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at University College London Contributors: John H. Arnold, Peter Biller, Caterina Bruschi, David d'Avray, Joerg Feuchter, Bernard Hamilton, R.I. Moore, Mark Gregory Pegg, Rebecca Rist, Lucy J. Sackville, Antonio Sennis, Claire Taylor, Julien Thery-Astruc, Yuri Stoyanov