Christian Women and Modern China presents a social history of women pioneers in Chinese Protestantism from the 1880s to the 2010s. The author interrupts a hegemonic framework of historical narratives by exploring formal institutions and rules as well as social networks and social norms that shape the lived experiences of women. This book achieves a more nuanced understanding about the interplays of Christianity, gender, power and modern Chinese history. It reintroduces Chinese Christian women pioneers not only to women's history and the history of Chinese Christianity, but also to the history of global Christian mission and the global history of many modern professions, such as medicine, education, literature, music, charity, journalism, and literature.

Evangelicals and scholars of religious history have long recognized George Whitefield (1714-1770) as a founding father of American evangelicalism. But Jessica M. Parr argues he was much more than that. He was an enormously influential figure in Anglo-American religious culture, and his expansive missionary career can be understood in multiple ways. Whitefield began as an Anglican clergyman. Many in the Church of England perceived him as a radical. In the American South, Whitefield struggled to reconcile his disdain for the planter class with his belief that slavery was an economic necessity. Whitefield was drawn to an idealized Puritan past that was all but gone by the time of his first visit to New England in 1740. Parr draws from Whitefield's writing and sermons and from newspapers, pamphlets, and other sources to understand Whitefield's career and times. She offers new insights into revivalism, print culture, transatlantic cultural influences, and the relationship between religious thought and slavery. Whitefield became a religious icon shaped in the complexities of revivalism, the contest over religious toleration, and the conflicting role of Christianity for enslaved people. Proslavery Christians used Christianity as a form of social control for slaves, whereas evangelical Christianity's emphasis on ""freedom in the eyes of God"" suggested a path to political freedom. Parr reveals how Whitefield's death marked the start of a complex legacy that in many ways rendered him more powerful and influential after his death than during his long career.

Journeying to Justice provides the very first comprehensive appraisal of the tumultuous journey towards equity and reconciliation amongst British and Jamaican Baptists across two centuries of Christian missionary work, in which slavery, colonialism and racism has loomed large. This ground-breaking text brings together scholars and practitioners, lay and ordained, peoples from a variety of culturally and ethnically diverse backgrounds, all speaking to the enduring truth of the gospel of Christ as a means of effecting social, political and spiritual transformation. Journeying to Justice reminds us that the way of Christ is that of the cross and that grace is always costly and being a disciple demands commitment to God and to others with whom we walk this journey of faith. At a time when the resurgence of nationalism is threatening to polarise many nations this text reminds us that in Christ there is solidarity amongst all peoples.

American Unitarians were not onlookers to the drama of Protestantism in the nineteenth century, but active participants in its central conundrum: biblical authority. Unitarians sought what other Protestants sought, which was to establish the Bible as the primary authority, only to find that the task was not so simple as they had hoped. This book revisits the story of nineteenth century American Unitarianism, proposing that Unitarianism was founded and shaped by the twin hopes of maintaining biblical authority and committing to total free inquiry. This story fits into the larger narrative of Protestantism, which, this book argues, has been defined by a deep devotion to the singular authority of the Bible (sola scriptura) and, conversely, a troubling ambivalence as to how such authority should function. How, in other words, can a book serve as a source of authority? This work traces the greater narrative of biblical authority in Protestantism through the story of four main Unitarian figures: William Ellery Channing, Andrews Norton, Theodore Parker, and Frederic Henry Hedge. All four individuals played a central role, at different times, in shaping Unitarianism, and in determining how exactly religious authority functioned in their nascent denomination. Besides these central figures, the book goes both backward, examining the evolution of biblical authority from the late medieval period in Europe to the early nineteenth century in America, and forward, exploring the period of Unitarian experimentation of religious authority in the late nineteenth century. The book also brings the book firmly into the present, exploring how questions about the Bible and religious authority are being answered today by contemporary Unitarian Universalists. Overall, this book aims to bring the American Unitarians firmly back into the historical and historiographical conversation, not as outliers, but as religious people deeply committed to solving the Protestant dilemma of religious authority.