Now in its fourth edition, this bestselling textbook (over 125,000 copies sold) isolates key events that provide a framework for understanding the history of Christianity. The book presents Christianity as a worldwide phenomenon rather than just a Western experience. This popular textbook is organized around 14 key moments in church history, providing contemporary Christians with a fuller understanding of God as he has revealed his purpose through the centuries. The new edition includes a new preface, updates throughout the book, revised "further readings" for each chapter, new sidebar content, and study questions. It also more thoroughly highlights the importance of women in Christian history and the impact of world Christianity. Turning Points is well suited to introductory courses on the history of Christianity as well as study groups in churches. Additional resources for instructors are available through Textbook eSources.

Religious life in early America is often equated with the fire-and-brimstone Puritanism best embodied by the theology of Cotton Mather. Yet, by the nineteenth century, American theology had shifted dramatically away from the severe European traditions directly descended from the Protestant Reformation, of which Puritanism was in the United States the most influential. In its place arose a singularly American set of beliefs marked by heightened spiritual inwardness, a new confidence in individual reason, and an attentiveness to the economic and market realities of Western life. In America's God, Mark Noll has given us the definitive history of Christian theology in America from the time of Jonathan Edwards to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. It is a story of a flexible and creative theological energy that over time forged a guiding national ideology, the legacies of which remain with us to this day.

The world stands before a landmark date: October 31, 2017, the quincentennial of the Protestant Reformation. Countries, social movements, churches, universities, seminaries, and other institutions shaped by Protestantism face a daunting question: how should the Reformation be commemorated 500 years after the fact? Protestantism has been credited for restoring essential Christian truth, blamed for disastrous church divisions, and invoked as the cause of modern liberalism, capitalism, democracy, individualism, modern science, secularism, and so much else. In this volume, scholars from a variety of disciplines come together to answer the question of commemoration and put some of the Reformation's larger themes and trajectories of influence into historical and theological perspective. Protestantism after 500 Years? examines the historical significance of the Reformation and considers how we might expand and enrich the ongoing conversation about Protestantism's impact. The contributors to this volume conclude that we must remember the Reformation not only because of the enduring, sometimes painful religious divisions that emerged from this era, but also because a historical understanding of the Reformation has been a key factor towards promoting ecumenical progress through communication and mutual understanding.

2010 Christianity Today Book Award winner With characteristic rigor and insight, in this book Mark Noll revisits the history of the American church in the context of world events. He makes the compelling case that how Americans have come to practice the Christian faith is just as globally important as what the American church has done in the world. Noll backs up this substantial claim with the scholarly attentiveness we've come to expect from him, lucidly explaining the relationship between the development of Christianity in North America and the development of Christianity in the rest of the world, with attention to recent transfigurations in world Christianity. Here is a book that will challenge your assumptions about the nature of the relationship between the American church and the global church in the past and predict what world Christianity may look like.

"Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service," writes John Stott. "If we do not use the mind which God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality." While Christians have had a long heritage of rigorous scholarship and careful thinking, some circles still view the intellect with suspicion or even as contradictory to Christian faith. And many non-Christians are quick to label Christians as anti-intellectual and obscurantist. But this need not be so. In this classic introduction to Christian thinking, John Stott makes a forceful appeal for Christian discipleship that engages the mind as well as the heart.

A collection of America's historians, philosophers and theologians examines the role of religion in the founding of the United States. These essays, originally delivered at the Library of Congress, presents scholarship on a topic that still generates considerable controversy. Readers interested in colonial history, religion and politics, and the relationship between church and state should find the book helpful. Contributors include Daniel L. Driesbach, John Witte Jr, Thomas E. Buckley, Mark A. Knoll, Catherine A. Brekus, Michael Novak and James Hutson.

America's Book shows how the Bible decisively shaped American national history even as that history influenced the use of Scripture. It explores the rise of a strongly Protestant Bible civilization in the early United States that was then fractured by debates over slavery, contested by growing numbers of non-Protestant Americans (Catholics, Jews, agnostics), and torn apart by the Civil War. This first comprehensive history of the Bible in America explains why Tom Paine's anti-biblical tract The Age of Reason (1794) precipitated such dramatic effects, how innovations in printing by the American Bible Society created the nation's publishing industry, why Nat Turner's slave rebellion of 1831 and the bitter election of 1844 marked turning points in the nation's engagement with Scripture, and why Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were so eager to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. Noll's magisterial work highlights not only the centrality of the Bible for the nation's most influential religious figures (Methodist Francis Asbury, Richard Allen of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Catholic Bishop Francis Kenrick, Jewish scholar Solomon Schechter, agnostic Robert Ingersoll), but also why it was important for presidents like Abraham Lincoln; notable American women like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Frances Willard; dedicated campaigners for civil rights like Frederick Douglass and Francis Grimke; lesser-known figures like Black authors Maria Stewart and Harriet Jacobs; and a host of others of high estate and low. The book also illustrates how the more religiously plural period from Reconstruction to the early twentieth century saw Scripture become a much more fragmented, though still significant, force in American culture, particularly as a source of hope and moral authority for Americans on both sides of the battle over white supremacy-both for those hoping to fight it, and for others seeking to justify it.

Who were Jupiter Hammon, Lemuel Haynes and Daniel Alexander Payne? And what do they have in common with Martin Luther King Jr., Howard Thurman and James Cone? All of these were African American Christian theologians, yet their theologies are, in many ways, worlds apart. In this book, Thabiti Anyabwile offers a challenging and provocative assessment of the history of African American Christian theology, from its earliest beginnings to the present. He argues trenchantly that the modern fruit of African American theology has fallen far from the tree of its early predecessors. In doing so, Anyabwile closely examines the theological commitments of prominent African American theologians throughout American history. Chapter by chapter, he traces what he sees as the theological decline of African American theology from one generation to the next, concluding with an unflinching examination of several contemporary figures. Replete with primary texts and illustrations, this book is a gold mine for any reader interested in the history of African American Christianity. With a foreword by Mark Noll.

In the beginning of American history, the Word was in Spanish, Latin, and native languages like Nahuatal. But while Spanish and Catholic Christianity reached the New World in 1492, it was only with the coming of the Mayflower that English-language Bibles and Protestant Christendom arrived. The Puritans brought with them intense devotion to Scripture, as well as their ideal of Christendom - a civilization characterized by a thorough intermingling of the Bible with everything else. That ideal began this country's journey from the Puritan's City on a Hill to the Bible-quoting country the U.S. remains to this day. In the Beginning shows how important the Bible remained, even as that Puritan ideal changed considerably through the early stages of American history. It is no exaggeration to claim that the Bible has been - and by far - the single most widely-read text, distributed object, and cited or referenced book in all of American history. Author Mark Noll shows how seventeenth-century Americans received conflicting models of scriptural authority from Europe: the Bible under Christendom (high Anglicanism), the Bible over Christendom (moderate Puritanism), and the Bible against Christendom (Anabaptists, enthusiasts, Quakers). In the eighteenth century, the colonists turned increasingly to the Bible against Christendom, a stance that fueled the Revolution against Anglican Britain and prepared the way for a new country founded on the separation of church and state. One of the foremost scholars of American Christianity, Mark Noll brings a wealth of research and wisdom to In the Beginning. This book is the first of a projected two-volume study of the Bible in American history, and provides a sweeping, engaging, and insightful survey of the relationship between the Bible and public issues from the beginning of European settlement. A seminal new work from a world-class scholar, In the Beginning offers a fresh account of the contested, sometimes ambiguous, but definite biblical roots of American history.

This collection of all new essays offers a close look at the connections between American Protestants and money in the Antebellum period. During the first decades of the new American nation, money was everywhere on the minds of the church leaders and many of their followers. Economic questions were important for religious self-definition, they figured regularly in preaching and pamphleteering, and they contributed greatly to perceptions of morality both public and private. In fact, money was always a religious question. For this reason, argue the authors of these essays, it is impossible to understand broader cultural developments of the period - including political developments - without considering religion and economics together. Taken together, the essays provide essential background to an issue that continues to loom large and generate controversy in the Protestant community today.

The world stands before a landmark date: October 31, 2017, the quincentennial of the Protestant Reformation. Countries, social movements, churches, universities, seminaries, and other institutions shaped by Protestantism face a daunting question: how should the Reformation be commemorated 500 years after the fact? Protestantism has been credited for restoring essential Christian truth, blamed for disastrous church divisions, and invoked as the cause of modern liberalism, capitalism, democracy, individualism, modern science, secularism, and so much else. In this volume, scholars from a variety of disciplines come together to answer the question of commemoration and put some of the Reformation's larger themes and trajectories of influence into historical and theological perspective. Protestantism after 500 Years? examines the historical significance of the Reformation and considers how we might expand and enrich the ongoing conversation about Protestantism's impact. The contributors to this volume conclude that we must remember the Reformation not only because of the enduring, sometimes painful religious divisions that emerged from this era, but also because a historical understanding of the Reformation has been a key factor towards promoting ecumenical progress through communication and mutual understanding.

A readable, far-reaching history of a multi-denominational, multi-regional, and multi-ethnic religious group, Protestants in America explores the physical and ideological roots of the denomination up to the present day, and traces the origins of American Protestants all the way back to the first English colony at Jamestown. The book covers their involvement in critical issues from temperance to the civil rights movement, the establishment of Protestant organizations like the American Bible Society and the Salvation Army, and the significant expansion of their ethnic base since the first African-American Protestant churches were built in the 1770s. Mark Noll follows their direct impact on American history--from the American Revolution to World War I and beyond--and peppers his account with profiles of leading Protestants, from Jonathan Edwards and Phillis Wheatley to Billy Graham and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mark A. Noll presents a fresh and accessible history of Protestantism from the era of Martin Luther to the present day. Beginning with the founding of Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and Anabaptist churches in the sixteenth-century Reformation, he also considers the rise of other important Christian movements like Methodism and Pentecostalism. Focussing on worldwide developments, rather than just the familiar European and American histories, he considers the recent expansion of Protestant movements in Africa, China, India, and Latin America, emphasising the on-going and rapidly expanding story of Protestants worldwide. Noll examines the contributions from well-known figures including Martin Luther and John Calvin, along with many others, and explores why Protestant energies have flagged recently in the Western world yet expanded so dramatically elsewhere. Highlighting the key points of Protestant commonality including the message of Christian salvation, reliance on the Bible, and organization through personal initiative, he also explores the reasons for Protestantism's extraordinary diversity. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Religion has been a powerful political force throughout American history. When race enters the mix the results have been some of our greatest triumphs as a nation--and some of our most shameful failures. In this important book, Mark Noll, one of the most influential historians of American religion writing today, traces the explosive political effects of the religious intermingling with race.

Noll demonstrates how supporters and opponents of slavery and segregation drew equally on the Bible to justify the morality of their positions. He shows how a common evangelical heritage supported Jim Crow discrimination and contributed powerfully to the black theology of liberation preached by Martin Luther King Jr. In probing such connections, Noll takes readers from the 1830 slave revolt of Nat Turner through Reconstruction and the long Jim Crow era, from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s to "values" voting in recent presidential elections. He argues that the greatest transformations in American political history, from the Civil War through the civil rights revolution and beyond, constitute an interconnected narrative in which opposing appeals to Biblical truth gave rise to often-contradictory religious and moral complexities. And he shows how this heritage remains alive today in controversies surrounding stem-cell research and abortion as well as civil rights reform.

"God and Race in American Politics" is a panoramic history that reveals the profound role of religion in American political history and in American discourse on race and social justice.

How do religion and politics interact in America? How has that relationship changed over time? Why have American religious and political thought sometimes developed along a parallell course while at other times they have moved in opposite directions? These are among the many important and fascinating questions addressed in this volume. Originally published in 1990 as Religion and American Politics: From The Colonial Period to the 1980s (4921 paperback copies sold), this book offers the first comprehensive survey of the relationship between religion and politics in America. It features a stellar lineup of scholars, including Richard Carwardine, Nathan Hatch, Daniel Walker Howe, George Marsden, Martin Marty, Harry Stout, John Wilson, Robert Wuthnow, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown. Since its publication, the influence of religion on American politics--and, therefore, interest in the topic--has grown exponentially. For this new edition, Mark Noll and new co-editor Luke Harlow offer a completely new introduction, and also commission several new pieces and eliminate several that are now out of date. The resulting book offers a historically-grounded approach to one of the most divisive issues of our time, and serves a wide variety of courses in religious studies, history, and politics.

During the anxiety-laden period from the Great Depression through World War II to the Cold War, Americans found a welcome escape in the new medium of radio. Throughout radio's "Golden Age," religious broadcasting in particular contributed significantly to American culture. Yet its historic role often has been overlooked. In Ministers of a New Medium, Kirk D. Farney explores the work of two groundbreaking leaders in religious broadcasting: Fulton J. Sheen and Walter A. Maier. These clergymen and professors-one a Catholic priest, the other a Lutheran minister-each led the way in combining substantive theology and emerging technology to spread the gospel over the airwaves. Through weekly nationwide broadcasts, Maier's The Lutheran Hour and Sheen's Catholic Hour attracted listeners across a spectrum of denominational and religious affiliations, establishing their hosts-and Christian radio itself-as cultural and religious forces to be reckoned with. Farney examines how Sheen and Maier used their exceptional erudition, their sensitivity to the times, their powerful communication skills, and their unwavering Christian conviction, all for the purpose of calling the souls of listeners and the soul of a nation to repentance and godliness. Their combination of talents also brought their respective denominations, Roman Catholicism and Missouri Synod Lutheranism, from the periphery of the American religious landscape to a much greater level of recognition and acceptance. With careful attention to both the theological content and the cultural influence of these masters of a new medium, Farney's study sheds new light on the history of media and Christianity in the United States.