Using as their starting point a 1976 Newsweek cover story on the emerging politicization of evangelical Christians, contributors to this collection engage the scholarly literature on evangelicalism from a variety of angles to offer new answers to persisting questions about the movement. The standard historical narrative describes the period between the 1925 Scopes Trial and the early 1970s as a silent one for evangelicals, and when they did re-engage in the political arena, it was over abortion. Randall J. Stephens and Randall Balmer challenge that narrative. Stephens moves the starting point earlier in the twentieth century, and Balmer concludes that race, not abortion, initially motivated activists. In his examination of the relationship between African Americans and evangelicalism, Dan Wells uses the Newsweek story's sidebar on black activist and born-again Christian Eldridge Cleaver to illuminate the former Black Panther's uneasy association with white evangelicals. Daniel K. Williams, Allison Vander Broek, and J. Brooks Flippen explore the tie between evangelicals and the anti-abortion movement as well as the political ramifications of their anti-abortion stance. The election of 1976 helped to politicize abortion, which both encouraged a realignment of alliances and altered evangelicals' expectations for candidates, developments that continue into the twenty-first century. Also in 1976, Foy Valentine, leader of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, endeavored to distinguish the South's brand of Protestant Christianity from the evangelicalism described by Newsweek. Nevertheless, Southern Baptists quickly became associated with the evangelicalism of the Religious Right and the South's shift to the Republican Party. Jeff Frederick discusses evangelicals' politicization from the 1970s into the twenty-first century, suggesting that southern religiosity has suffered as southern evangelicals surrendered their authenticity and adopted a moral relativism that they criticized in others. R. Ward Holder and Hannah Dick examine political evangelicalism in the wake of Donald Trump's election. Holder lays bare the compromises that many Southern Baptists had to make to justify their support for Trump, who did not share their religious or moral values. Hannah Dick focuses on media coverage of Trump's 2016 campaign and contends that major news outlets misunderstood the relationship between Trump and evangelicals, and between evangelicals and politics in general. The result, she suggests, was that the media severely miscalculated Trump's chances of winning the election.

Randall C. Zachman places Calvin in conversation with theologians such as Pascal, Kierkegaard, Ezra the Scribe, Julian of Norwich and Karl Barth, and attends to themes in Calvin's theology which are often overlooked. Zachman draws out Calvin's use of astronomy and great concern to see ourselves in comparison to the immensity of the universe, acknowledging in wonder and awe our nothingness before God. Throughout, Zachman presents a Calvin who seeks a route out of self-deception to self-knowledge, though Kierkegaard shows that it is love, and not judgment, that most deeply reveals us to ourselves. The book discusses Calvin's understanding of the election of the Jews and their relationship to God, and further reconsiders Calvin's understanding of judgment and how the call to love our neighbour is undermined by the formation of alliances.

Spanning the continents, three internationally respected theologians demonstrate how the thought and legacy of Martin Luther can serve in an ecumenical and interfaith context as a resource for a radical critique of global economics and culture. Lutheran Christianity originated in its own era of economic and cultural crisis. One of the great misinterpretations of Martin Luther has considered his heritage as fundamentally reactionary, seeking to preserve the political status quo. Instead, set free by the biblical message of liberation, this book wields Luther's theology to engage the reality of poverty, hunger, oppression, and ecological degradation caused by an imperial capitalism as the most urgent theological issues in the contemporary world. The volume demonstrates the liberating possibilities of theology done out of a biblical and Lutheran perspective for the economic and cultural crises facing the church in the present century.

Mormonism: A Guide for the Perplexed explains central facets of the Mormon faith and way of life for those wishing to gain a clearer understanding of this rapidly growing world religion. As The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to grow in the United States and especially in other countries (with a total membership of over 15 million, more than 50% of which is outside the US), and as theologians and church leaders wrestle with whether Mormonism is in fact a valid expression of modern Christianity, this distinctive religious tradition has become increasingly an object of interest and inquiry. This book is the ideal companion to the study of this perplexing and often misunderstood religion. Covering historical aspects, this guide takes a careful look at the whole of Mormonism, its tenets and practices, as well as providing an insight into a Mormon life.

During the nineteenth century, camp meetings became a signature program of American Methodists and an extraordinary engine for their remarkable evangelistic outreach. Methodism in the American Forest explores the ways in which Methodist preachers interacted with and utilized the American woodland, and the role camp meetings played in the denomination's spread across the country. Half a century before they made themselves such a home in the woods, the people and preachers learned the hard way that only a fool would adhere to John Wesley's mandate for preaching in fields of the New World. Under the blazing American sun, Methodist preachers found a better outdoor sanctuary for larger gatherings: under the shade of great oaks, a natural cathedral, where they held forth with fervid sermons. The American forests, argues Russell E. Richey, served the preachers in another important way. The remote, garden-like solitude provided them with a place to seek counsel from the Holy Spirit, serving as a kind of Gethsemane. As seen by the American Methodists, the forest was also a desolate wilderness, and a means for them to connect with Israel's wilderness years after the Exodus and Jesus's forty days in the desert after his baptism by John. Undaunted, the preachers slashed their way through, following America's expanding settlement, and gradually sacralizing American woodlands as cathedral, confessional, and spiritual challenge-as shady grove, as garden, and as wilderness. The threefold forest experience became a Methodist standard. The meeting of Methodism's basic governing body, the quarterly conference, brought together leadership of all levels. The event stretched to two days in length and soon great crowds were drawn by the preaching and eventually the sacraments that were on offer. Camp meetings, if not a Methodist invention, became the movement's signature, a development that Richey tracks throughout the years that Methodism matured, becoming a central denomination in America's religious landscape.

This is an upper-level introduction to the German Reformer Martin Luther, who by his thought and action started the Reformation movement. Martin Luther was one of the most influential and important figures of the second millennium. His break with Rome and the development of separate Evangelical churches affected not just the religious life of Europe but also social and political landscapes as well. More books have been written about Luther than nearly any other historical figure. Despite all these books, Luther remains an enigmatic figure. This book proposes to examine a number of key moments in Luther's life and fundamental theological positions that remain perplexing to most students. This book will also present an introduction to the primary sources available to a student and important secondary works that ought to be consulted. "Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

In this book S. J. D. Green offers an important account of the causes, courses and consequences of the secularisation of English society. He argues that the critical cultural transformation of modern English society was forged in the agonised abandonment of a long-domesticated Protestant, Christian tradition between 1920 and 1960. Its effects were felt across the nation and among all classes. Yet their significance in the evolution of contemporary indigenous identities remains curiously neglected in most mainstream accounts of post-Victorian Britain. Dr Green traces the decline of English ecclesiastical institutions after 1918. He also investigates the eclipse of once-common moral sensibilities during the years up to 1945. Finally, he examines why subsequent efforts to reverse these trends so comprehensively failed. His work will be of enduring interest to modern historians, sociologists of religion, and all those concerned with the future of faith in Britain and beyond.

Liberal Christian theology permeates mainlines denominations and progressive circles of the church to this day. But what is liberal theology? What are progressive Christians progressing toward, and what are they leaving behind?

In Against Liberal Theology, professor and theologian Roger E. Olson warns progressive and mainline Christians against passively accepting the ideas of liberal theology without thinking through the consequences. In doing so, he examines the basic beliefs of the Christian faith, the main ideas of liberal theology, the way today's mainline and progressive Christianity relates to classic liberalism, and how classic Christian faith and liberal Christianity connect and contradict. Following in the footsteps of Gresham Machen's now-classic Christianity and Liberalism 100 years ago, Olson worries that liberal Christianity may not be Christianity but a different religion altogether.

After examining the origins of liberal theology in the nineteenth century, Olson examines how liberal theology views:

• Sources of truth
• The Bible
• God
• Jesus Christ
• Salvation
• The Future

Gentle but direct, Olson provides an even-handed assessment and critique of the ideas of liberal theology and worries that liberal Christianity has strayed too far from the classic Christian orthodoxy of the fathers and creeds to be considered "Christian" at all.