Uldine Utley defined the "girl evangelist" of the 1920s and 1930s. She began her preaching career at age eleven, published a monthly magazine by age twelve, and by age fourteen was regularly packingthelargest venues in major American cities, including Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden. She stood toe to toe with Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson, the most famous revivalist preachers of the day. She became a darling of the secular press and wasmimicked and modeledin fiction and plays. In Preacher Girl , the first full biography of Utley, author Thomas Robinson shows that Utley's rise to fame was no accident. Utley's parents and staff carefully marked out her path early onto headline success. Not unlike Hollywood, revivalism was a business in which celebrity equaled success. Revivalism mixed equal parts of glamour and gospel, making stars of its preachers. Utley was its brightest. But childhood fame came at a price. As a series of Utley's previously unpublished poems reveal, after a decade of preaching, she was facing a near-constant fight against physical and mental exhaustion as she experienced the clash between the expectations of revivalism and herdesires for a normal life. Utley burned out at age twenty-four. The revival stage folded; fame faded; only a broken heart and a wounded mind remained. Both Utley's meteoric rise and its tragic outcome illuminate American religion as a business. In his compelling chronicle of Utley's life, Robinson highlights the surprising power of American revivalism to equal Hollywood's success as well as the potentially devastating private costs of public religious leadership. Themarketing and promotion machine of revivalism brought both fame and hardship for Utleyaclashing by-products in thebusiness of winning souls for Christ.

Making Believe responds to a remarkable flowering of art by Mennonites in Canada. After the publication of his first novel in 1962, Rudy Wiebe was the only identifiable Mennonite literary writer in the country. Beginning in the 1970s, the numbers grew rapidly and now include writers Patrick Friesen, Sandra Birdsell, Di Brandt, Sarah Klassen, Armin Wiebe, David Bergen, Miriam Toews, Carrie Snyder, Casey Plett, and many more. A similar renaissance is evident in the visual arts (including artists Gathie Falk, Wanda Koop, and Aganetha Dyck) and in music (including composers Randolph Peters, Carol Ann Weaver, and Stephanie Martin). Confronted with an embarrassment of riches that resist survey, Magdalene Redekop opts for the use of case studies to raise questions about Mennonites and art. Part criticism, part memoir, Making Believe argues that there is no such thing as Mennonite art. At the same time, her close engagement with individual works of art paradoxically leads Redekop to identify a Mennonite sensibility at play in the space where artists from many cultures interact. Constant questioning and commitment to community are part of the Mennonite dissenting tradition. Although these values come up against the legacy of radical Anabaptist hostility to art, Redekop argues that the Early Modern roots of a contemporary crisis of representation are shared by all artists. Making Believe posits a Spielraum or play space in which all artists are dissembling tricksters, but differences in how we play are inflected by where we come from. The close readings in this book insist on respect for difference at the same time as they invite readers to find common ground while making believe across cultures.

An inside look at the foundational sacred text of one of the world's youngest and fastest growing religions

The Book of Mormon stands alongside the Bible as the keystone of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church/Mormonism). Translated by the prophet Joseph Smith from ancient writings inscribed on golden plates, the Book of Mormon is an account of people living in the Western Hemisphere in a timeline that parallels that of the Bible. It covers a thousand years of loss, discovery, war, peace, and spiritual principles that focus on the teachings of Jesus Christ, outlining a plan for salvation and the responsibilities we must assume to attain it.

The Book of Mormon: Selections Annotated & Explained explores this sacred epic that is cherished by more than twelve million members of the LDS church as the keystone of their faith. Probing the principal themes and historical foundation of this controversial and provocative narrative, Jana Riess focuses on key selections that offer insight into contemporary Mormon beliefs and scriptural emphases, such as the atonement of Christ, the nature of human freedom, the purpose of baptism, and the need for repentance from sin. She clarifies the religious, political, and historical events that take place in the ancient communities of the Book of Mormon and their underlying contemporary teachings that serve as the framework for spiritual practices that lie at the core of Mormon life.

Now you can experience this foundational sacred text even if you have no previous knowledge of Mormonism. This SkyLight Illuminations edition presents the key teachings and essential concepts of the Mormon faith tradition with insightful yet unobtrusive commentary that helps to dispel many of the misconceptions that have surrounded the Book of Mormon since its publication in 1830.

Early modern Quakers looked to their dreams to gain spiritual insight and developed a potent system of dreamwork that acted simultaneously as a device for gaining and retaining authority and as a democratizing force. Night Journeys recounts how Quakers on both sides of the Atlantic turned their sleeping experiences into powerful stories that advanced a more inclusive--but still imperial--vision of colonial and Revolutionary America.

Quakers did not keep their dreams to themselves. On the American mainland, Caribbean plantations, and in the British Isles, Quakers were competing to shape their imperial culture when they circulated dreams beyond meetinghouse walls and influenced larger transatlantic movements for reform.

Covering a broad time span that begins with the English civil war and ends with the creation of the American republic, Carla Gerona argues that dreams provided Quakers with mental maps to influence the values of their emerging colonial society, usually, though not exclusively, in progressive ways. Night visions, as Quakers often termed their dreams, contributed to social and cultural changes such as the abolition of slavery and religious reform. Simultaneously, dreams helped Quakers define and delineate their mission in America and the world, fostering innovative concepts of individuality, community, nation, and empire.

In 1856 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints employed a new means of getting converts to Great Salt Lake City who could not afford the journey otherwise. They began using handcarts, thus initiating a five-year experiment that has become a legend in the annals of Mormon and North American migration. Only one in ten Mormon emigrants used handcarts, but of those 3,000 who did between 1856 and 1860, most survived the harrowing journey to settle Utah and become members of a remarkable pioneer generation. Others were not so lucky. More than 200 died along the way, victims of exhaustion, accident, and, for a few, starvation and exposure to late-season Wyoming blizzards. Now, Candy Moulton tells of their successes, travails, and tragedies in an epic retelling of a legendary story. The Mormon Handcart Migration traces each stage of the journey, from the transatlantic voyage of newly converted church members to the gathering of the faithful in the eastern Nebraska encampment known as Winter Quarters. She then traces their trek from the western Great Plains, across modern-day Wyoming, to their final destination at Great Salt Lake. The handcart experiment was the brainchild of Mormon leader Brigham Young, who decreed that the saints could haul their own possessions, pushing or pulling two-wheeled carts across 1,100 miles of rough terrain, much of it roadless and some of it untrodden. The LDS church now embraces the saga of the handcart emigrants - including even the disaster that befell the Martin and Willie handcart companies in central Wyoming in 1856 - as an educational, faith-inspiring experience for thousands of youth each year. Moulton skillfully weaves together scores of firsthand accounts from the journals, letters, diaries, reminiscences, and autobiographies the handcart pioneers left behind. Depth of research and unprecedented detail make this volume an essential history of the Mormon handcart migration.

Malkhaz Songulashvili, former Archbishop of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia (EBCG), provides a pioneering, exacting, and sweeping history of Georgian Baptists. Utilizing archival sources in Georgian, Russian, German, and Englishatranslating many of these crucial documents for the first time into Englishahe recounts the history of the EBCG from its formation in 1867 to the present. While the particular story of Georgian Baptists merits telling in its own right, and not simply as a feature of Russian religious life, Songulashvili employs Georgian Baptists as a sustained case study on the convergence of religion and culture. The interaction of Eastern Orthodox, Western Protestant, and Russian dissenting religious traditionsamixed into the political cauldron of Russian occupation of a formerly distinct eastern European culturealed to a remarkable experiment in Christian free-church identity. Evangelical Christian Baptists of Georgia allows readers to peer through the lens of intercultural studies to see the powerful relationships among politics, religion, and culture in the formation of Georgian Baptists, and their blending of Orthodox tradition into Baptist life to craft a unique ecclesiology, liturgy, and aesthetics.

In the years since 1945, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown rapidly in terms of both numbers and public prominence. Mormonism is no longer merely a home-grown American religion, confined to the Intermountain West; instead, it has captured the attention of political pundits, Broadway audiences, and prospective converts around the world. While most scholarship on Mormonism concerns its colorful but now well-known early history, the essays in this collection assess recent developments, such as the LDS Church's international growth and acculturation; its intersection with conservative politics in recent decades; its stances on same-sex marriage and the role of women; and its ongoing struggle to interpret its own tumultuous history. The scholars draw on a wide variety of Mormon voices as well as those of outsiders, from Latter-day Saints in Hyderabad, India, to "Mormon Mommy blogs," to evangelical "countercult" ministries. Out of Obscurity brings the story of Mormonism since the Second World War into sharp relief, explaining the ways in which a church very much rooted in its nineteenth-century prophetic and pioneering past achieved unprecedented influence in the realms of American politics and international business.

How Believers Can Experience God's Presence Every Day It's easy to feel close to God while worshiping in church, raising our voices and our hearts with other believers as his presence permeates the atmosphere. Unfortunately, for many Christians, this is the only place they experience God's presence. But the Sunday morning experience shouldn't be the exception; it should be the norm. With wisdom and insights gained from years as a pastor and worship leader, John Belt has helped thousands of believers overcome seasons of spiritual dryness and encounter God's presence every day--and he can help you do the same. Full of inspiring stories and practical tools, this book outlines simple steps to experiencing God personally, reveals potential roadblocks, and gives you the keys to overcoming them. Here is the secret to experiencing God's presence and living victoriously and abundantly every single day.

In 1855 the Mormons established a mission at the foot of famous Lemhi Pass near Salmon River, where the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery first crossed the Continental Divide and Sacagawea was reunited with her brother. Fort Limhi was, at first, part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' outreach to the Indians throughout the West. But the mission soon assumed a critical role in Brigham Young's plans for the Saints as they faced the imminent confrontation with the U.S. government which came to be known as the Utah War.

"Fort Limhi: The Mormon Adventure in Oregon Territory" is an innovative account of a fascinating but forgotten story.

Journals, diaries, letters and recollections of the men and women who served at the mission during the three years of its existence provide a wealth of information about native history and culture in eastern Idaho. The Mormon missionaries intentionally selected a spot that put them at the crossroads of ancient trails used by Nez Perce, Shoshone, Bannock, and Flathead bands as they battled each other and pursued their annual pilgrimages to trade, harvest salmon, and hunt buffalo. The sources also cast important light on little-known trails followed by Indians, traders, and emigrants.

Ordinary western folk who survived an extraordinary exploit tell their stories in their own words, and these narratives are dramatic, compelling, ironic, enlightening, and downright fun. With its astonishing fish stories, desperate Indian battles, life-threatening chases, and heroic rides to rescue a terrified and helpless outpost, this work has all the elements of a great frontier novel. It even tells of the star-crossed love of Lewis Shurtliff and Louisa Moore, whose romance, like the story of Fort Limhi, came to a tragic ending.

Historians often seemed baffled by Brigham Young's visit to Fort Limhi in 1857 while the fires of the Mormon Reformation burned in Utah and the territory's relationship with the federal government was collapsing. Young's trip was far more than a vacation for his family and advisors. As award-winning author David Bigler reveals, the Salmon River Indian Mission played a pivotal role in the resolution of the Utah War of 1857-1858. The catastrophe that ended the colony at Fort Limhi brought Utah back from the very brink of war with the United States.

"Fort Limhi" provides new material on the obscure fur-trade veterans and misfits who called themselves "mountaineers" (the contemporary term for that "majority of scoundrels" now known as the fearless "Mountain Men") and sheds light on their contentious relations with their Mormon neighbors.

The story of Fort Limhi has long deserved a larger role in the history of Idaho and Montana. It provides new insights into the role of Mormons in the West and their Indian relations, and explains some long-standing puzzles about the Utah War of 1857-1858.

The letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808) illuminate the career and opinions of one of the most prominent and controversial clergymen of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His petitions for liberalism within the Church of England in 1772-3, his subsequent resignation from the church and his foundation of a separate Unitarian chapel in London in 1774 all provoked profound debate in the political as well as the ecclesiastical world. His chapel became a focal point for the theologically and politically disaffected and during the 1770s and early 1780s attracted the interest of many critics of British policy towards the American colonies. Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Priestley and Richard Price were among Lindsey's many acquaintances.BR The second and final volume of this edition covers the period from the regency crisis and the early stages of the French Revolution to Lindsey's death nineteen years later, at the height of the Napoleonic War. His letters from this period reveal in depth Lindsey's central role in the formation of Unitarianism as a distinctive denomination, his involvement in movements for religious and political reform, his close friendship with Joseph Priestley and the tribulations of dissenters during the 1790s. From his vantage point in London, Lindsey was a well-informed and well-connected observer of the responses in Britain to the French Revolution and the war of the 1790s, and he provides a lucid commentary on the political, literary and theological scene. As with Volume I, the letters are fully annotated and are accompanied by a full contextual introduction. G.M. DITCHFIELD is Professor of Eighteenth-Century History, University of Kent at Canterbury.

In this profoundly innovative book, Ashon T. Crawley engages a wide range of critical paradigms from black studies, queer theory, and sound studies to theology, continental philosophy, and performance studies to theorize the ways in which alternative or "otherwise" modes of existence can serve as disruptions against the marginalization of and violence against minoritarian lifeworlds and possibilities for flourishing. Examining the whooping, shouting, noise-making, and speaking in tongues of Black Pentecostalism-a multi-racial, multi-class, multi-national Christian sect with one strand of its modern genesis in 1906 Los Angeles-Blackpentecostal Breath reveals how these aesthetic practices allow for the emergence of alternative modes of social organization. As Crawley deftly reveals, these choreographic, sonic, and visual practices and the sensual experiences they create are not only important for imagining what Crawley identifies as "otherwise worlds of possibility," they also yield a general hermeneutics, a methodology for reading culture in an era when such expressions are increasingly under siege.

Quaker women were unusually active participants in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century cultural and religious exchange, as ministers, missionaries, authors and spiritual leaders. Drawing upon documentary evidence, with a focus on women's personal writings and correspondence, Naomi Pullin explores the lives and social interactions of Quaker women in the British Atlantic between 1650 and 1750. Through a comparative methodology, focused on Britain and the North American colonies, Pullin examines the experiences of both those women who travelled and preached and those who stayed at home. The book approaches the study of gender and religion from a new perspective by placing women's roles, relationships and identities at the centre of the analysis. It shows how the movement's transition from 'sect to church' enhanced the authority and influence of women within the movement and uncovers the multifaceted ways in which female Friends at all levels were active participants in making and sustaining transatlantic Quakerism.

When you agree with the marvelous promises given in the Word of God, you will begin to reap God's gifts of love, joy, peace, health, and favor. When you speak those promises out loud and into the lives of others, your words can work wonders. Now, E. W. Kenyon and Don Gossett join forces to build our faith, offering timeless wisdom and challenging us to live a bolder life for God. Through His power, believers should be able to overcome adversity and sin in such areas as finances, health, marriage and other relationships, and emotions. There is power in the blood of Jesus to defeat anything and everything the enemy brings against you! You, too, can speak words of life into those who are lost, suffering, and needy. Let your compassion flow. The bolder your faith words are, the greater your results will be.

The new Church's Teachings series has been one of the most recognizable and useful sets of books in the Episcopal Church. With the launch of the Church's Teachings for a Changing World series, visionary Episcopal thinkers and leaders have teamed up to write a new set of books, grounded and thoughtful enough for seminarians and leaders, concise and accessible enough for newcomers, with a host of discussion resources that help readers to dig deep. What's really going on when Episcopalians gather for worship? Musician Dent Davidson and Bishop Jeff Lee bring decades of partnership to this lively conversation about the rituals that make faith real--gathering, bathing, welcoming, storytelling, feasting, and sending God's people. More than a treatise on the Book of Common Prayer, Gathered for God opens fresh ways of seeing what the Prayer Book makes possible.

Drawing on archival material from Shaker members, observers, and apostates, noted historian Suzanne R. Thurman offers a scholarly yet eminently readable study of life in two of the oldest, most prominent American Shaker villages: the Harvard and Shirley communities of massachusetts.

Even as she delves into the complex fabric of Shaker social life, Thurman challenges traditional perceptions of gender roles within the community. Shaker spiritual and social ethics, she points out, strongly favored women. Celibacy and an androgynous theology, for instance, allowed androgynous social roles to evolve. Another key factor was the lively arena of nineteenth-century reformers and intellectuals in nearby Boston. With admirable detail, Thurman documents the relationship that grew between these forward thinkers and the Believers. Their influence, she argues, enlightened Shaker consciousness and empowered their women of Harvard and Shirley with opportunities denied them in the world at large.

The author also explores links, particularly economic, between Shakers and the greater American society. Treating Harvard and Shirley Believers as an idiosyncratic part of the nation rather than a fringe group, Thurman sheds new light on their constant struggle to be in the world but not of it.

William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury from 1633 to 1645, is a central figure in the history of seventeenth-century Britain. Laud's correspondence provides revealing insights into his mind, methods and activities, especially in the 1630s, as he sought to remodel the church and the clerical estate in the three kingdoms. The Further Correspondence of William Laud prints 223 letters, drawn from thirty-eight libraries and archives, which were not included in the nineteenth-century edition of his Works. It has real importance for our perception of Laud and the early Stuart church, greatly increasing the number of his letters for the 1620s and providing significant new information, such as the three earliest letters to his closest political ally, Thomas Wentworth, in 1630. Other correspondents include politicians such as Sir John Coke and Lord Keeper Coventry, the diplomat Sir William Boswell, numerous heads of colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge, and churchmen such as Bishops John Bridgeman of Chester and John Bramhall of Derry as well as Cyril Lucaris, Patriarch of Constantinople. A lengthy introduction assesses the ways in which these letters deepen our knowledge, broaden our understanding and refine our views of Laud's various roles, as chief ecclesiastical counsellor to Charles I, court politician and administrator, chancellor of Oxford University, and overseer of religious reformation in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. An appendix lists all of Laud's correspondence in chronological order. Collectively, the letters attest to his extraordinary energy and tireless commitment to reform and point to the indelible impact that Laud made on his contemporaries. KENNETH FINCHAM is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Kent. He has written extensively on religion and politics in early modern Britain, including two monographs, Prelate as Pastor: the Episcopate of James I (1990) and, with Nicholas Tyacke, Altars Restored: the Changing Face of English Religious Worship 1547-c.1700 (2007); edited two collections of essays, The Early Stuart Church 1603-1642 (1993) and, with Peter Lake, Religious Politics in post-Reformation England (2006); and edited two volumes of Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church (1994-8) for the Church of England Record Society.

The normative edition for all who sing, choir and congregation alike, containing all hymns and service music.

In 1768, John Witherspoon, Presbyterian leader of the evangelical Popular party faction in the Scottish Kirk, became the College of New Jersey's sixth president. At Princeton, he mentored constitutional architect James Madison; as a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress, he was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. Although Witherspoon is often thought to be the chief conduit of moral sense philosophy in America, Mailer's comprehensive analysis of this founding father's writings demonstrates the resilience of his evangelical beliefs. Witherspoon's Presbyterian evangelicalism competed with, combined with, and even superseded the civic influence of Scottish Enlightenment thought in the British Atlantic world. John Witherspoon's American Revolution examines the connection between patriot discourse and long-standing debates--already central to the 1707 Act of Union-about the relationship among piety, moral philosophy, and political unionism. In Witherspoon's mind, Americans became different from other British subjects because more of them had been awakened to the sin they shared with all people. Paradoxically, acute consciousness of their moral depravity legitimized their move to independence by making it a concerted moral action urged by the Holy Spirit. Mailer's exploration of Witherspoon's thought and influence suggests that, for the founders in his circle, civic virtue rested on personal religious awakening.

Unique, Powerful Way All Believers Can Experience Breakthrough

In the Bible, Moses sang. Miriam sang. So did Deborah, David, Mary, Paul, the angels, and so many more. The Israelites went to war singing; they sang over victories, over happy moments and hard moments. They knew something we've lost sight of: When we learn to sing God's words back to Him, we align the deepest spaces of our hearts with the deepest places of His--and we experience breakthrough. So why do we relegate singing the Word to just worship teams?

Julie Meyer, a Dove-nominated artist and worship leader, has been teaching all believers how to do just this. She shows that you don't need to know how to read music or even sing in tune. All you need is Scripture and a willingness to engage God in song. As you do, you will see heartache turn into hope, despair into destiny, fear into fearlessness. You stand on the Word, pray it, and even memorize it. Now it's time to sing it.

A Seventh-Day Adventist mother explains to her son the history and development of the Christian church from the first century to today, emphasizing the Protestant Reformation, the history of religion in America, and various Biblical prophecies.

Elizabeth Fry was one of the nineteenth century's most extraordinary women. Born the daughter of a Quaker banker, she was eighteen when she commandeered a laundry room to begin her own school. At twenty, she wed Joseph Fry and, over their marriage, they had eleven children. But a charitable visit to Newgate Prison would change the course of her life, and of history, forever. Unable to ignore the plight of the female convicts before her, she determined to do everything in her power to right the injustices they faced... By her death, Elizabeth was famous amongst royalty, parliament and women on the street alike; respected by Queen Victoria; supporter to William Wilberforce; and influence on Florence Nightingale. This biography, told with verve and pace, and interwoven with extracts from Elizabeth's private diaries, will inspire and move you with the turn of a page.