Building the Kingdom traces the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church, which began in America in the early 1800s and continues today throughout the world. The book covers the church's origin and history and includes a well-balanced discussion of difficult issues such as polygamy and the modern Mormon family's struggle to balance religious traditions with the demands of the modern world. The book includes an 8-page section of illustrations. Includes chronology, further reading, and index.

Book Description: These essays reveal how the scriptures, prophetic teachings, history, culture, rituals, and traditions of Mormonism have been, are, and can be used as warrants for a wide range of activities and attitudes from radical pacifism to legitimation of the United States use of preemptive force against its enemies. As a relatively young religion that for much of its early history was simply struggling for survival, Mormonism has not yet fully grappled with some of the pressing questions of war and peace, with all of the attendant theological, social, and political ramifications. Given the LDS Church s relative stability and measure of prominence and influence in the early twenty-first century, the time is ripe to examine the historical, spiritual, and cultural resources within the tradition that provide a foundation for constructive dialogue about how individual Latter-day Saints and the institutional Church orient themselves in a world of violence. While recognizing the important contributions of previous scholars who had offered analysis and reflection on the topic, these essays offer a more sustained and collaborative examination of Mormon perspectives on war and peace, drawing on both historical-social scientific research as well as more normative (theological and ethical) arguments. Praise for War & Peace In Our Time: "Whatever your current opinion on the topic, this book will challenge you to reflect more deeply and thoroughly on what it means to be a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, in an era of massive military budgets, lethal technologies, and widespread war." -Grant Hardy, author, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader s Guide
"This volume provides a fitting springboard for robust and lively debates within the Mormon scholarly and lay community on how to think about the pressing issues of war and peace." -Robert S. Wood, Dean Emeritus, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, and Chester W. Nimitz Chair Emeritus, U.S. Naval War College
"This collection of differing views by thoughtful scholars comprises a debate. Reading it may save us in the future from enacting more harm than good in the name of God, country, or presumption." -Philip Barlow, author, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion
I consider this book an absolutely essential resource for any latter-day Saint seeking to understand God s will regarding war. . . . Y]ou really ought to buy this book Alan Rock Waterman, Pure Mormonism Contributors: Patrick Q. Mason J. David Pulsipher Richard L. Bushman Joshua Madson Morgan Deane Robert A. Rees F.R. Rick Duran Mark Ashburst-McGee Jennifer Lindell Ethan Yorgason Jesse Samantha Fulcher Robert H. Hellebrand D. Michael Quinn Boyd Jay Petersen Loyd Ericson Eric A. Eliason Gordon Conrad Thomasson Ron Madson Mark Henshaw Valerie M. Hudson Eric Jensen Kerry M. Kartchner John Mark Mattox

Book Description: Doing theology is like building a comically circuitous Rube Goldberg machine: you spend your time tinkering together an unnecessarily complicated, impractical, and ingenious apparatus for doing things that are, in themselves, simple. But there is a kind of joy in theology s gratuity, there is a pleasure in its comedic machination, and ultimately if the balloon pops, the hamster spins, the chain pulls, the bucket empties, the pulley lifts, and (voila ) the book s page is turned some measurable kind of work is accomplished. But this work is a byproduct. The beauty of the machine, like all beauty, is for its own sake. This book is itself a Rube Goldberg machine, pieced together from a variety of essays written over the past ten years. They offer explicit reflections on what it means to practice theology as a modern Mormon scholar and they stake out substantial and original positions on the nature of the atonement, the soul, testimony, eternal marriage, humanism, and the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Praise for Rube Goldberg Machines: Adam Miller is the most original and provocative Latter-day Saint theologian practicing today. Richard Bushman, author of "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling"
Miller is a theologian of the ordinary, thinking about our ordinary beliefs in very non-ordinary ways while never insisting that the ordinary become extra-ordinary. James Faulconer, Richard L. Evans Chair of Religious Understanding, Brigham Young University
Rube Goldberg Machines is one of the best and most important commentaries on the gospel and on life itself that I have ever read. Thomas F. Rogers, "BYU Studies Quarterly"
Rube Golberg is a landmark work in the world of Mormon theology. Kirk Caudle, "The Mormon Book Review"
A theology of pure immanency is what Adam s given us and I can only hope that Mormon theology will never be the same again. Clark Goble, Mormon Metaphysics
This is great theology in all the right ways, but you ll have to read it yourselves to get a taste for its power. Buy the book and read it. Seriously. Samuel Brown, author of In Heaven as It Is On Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death
Adam Miller s Rube Goldberg Theology is full of ingenious, even dazzling formulations, and of lovely, often bracing and sometimes startling insights. Ralph Hancock, SquareTwo
It is a work of truly great theology that only could have been contrived ... by a brilliant Mormon. Brad Kramer, By Common Consent
Miller s Rube Goldberg theology is nothing like anything done in the Mormon tradition before. Blake Ostler, author of the Exploring Mormon Thought series About the Author: Adam S. Miller is a professor of philosophy at Collin College in McKinney, Texas. He is the author of Badiou, Marion, and St. Paul: Immanent Grace and Speculative Grace: An Experiment with Bruno Latour in Object-Oriented Theology, editor of An Experiment on the Word: Reading Alma 32, and director of the Mormon Theology Seminar.

The earth will eventually be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory. But how will our current world ever become the heaven of our dreams? The Lord is already on it; and, as the essays in this book provocatively proposes, He's following good engineering principles. Joseph Fielding Smith said, regarding inventions in these latter days, "The inspiration of the Lord has gone out and takes hold of the minds of men, though they know it not, and they are directed by the Lord. In this manner he brings them into his service." If there is "no such thing as immaterial matter," and "all spirit is matter," then what are the implications for such standard theological principles as creation, human progression, free will, transfiguration, resurrection, and immortality? In eleven stimulating essays, Mormon engineers probe gospel possibilities and future vistas dealing with human nature, divine progression, and the earth's future. Richard Bushman poses a vision-expanding proposal: "The end point of engineering knowledge may be divine knowledge. Mormon theology permits us to think of God and humans as collaborators in bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. Engineers may be preparing the way for humans to act more like gods in managing the world."

Most twentieth-century Americans fail to appreciate the power of Christian conversion that characterized the eighteenth-century revivals, especially the Great Awakening of the 1740s. The common disdain in this secular age for impassioned religious emotion and language is merely symptomatic of the shift in values that has shunted revivals to the sidelines.
The very magnitude of the previous revivals is one indication of their importance. Between 1740 and 1745 literally thousands were converted. From New England to the southern colonies, people of all ages and all ranks of society underwent the New Birth. Virtually every New England congregation was touched. It is safe to say that most of the colonists in the 1740s, if not converted themselves, knew someone who was, or at least heard revival preaching.
The Awakening was a critical event in the intellectual and ecclesiastical life of the colonies. The colonists' view of the world placed much importance on conversion. Particularly, Calvinist theology viewed the bestowal of divine grace as the most crucial occurrence in human life. Besides assuring admission to God's presence in the hereafter, divine grace prepared a person for a fullness of life on earth. In the 1740s the colonists, in overwhelming numbers, laid claim to the divine power which their theology offered them. Many experienced the moral transformatoin as promised. In the Awakening the clergy's pleas of half a century came to dramatic fulfillment.
Not everyone agreed that God was working in the Awakening. Many believed preachers to be demagogues, stirring up animal spirits. The revival was looked on as an emotional orgy that needlessly disturbed the churches and frustrated the true work of God. But from 1740 to 1745 no other subject received more attention in books and pamphlets.
Through the stirring rhetoric of the sermons, theological treatises, and correspondence presented in this collection, readers can vicariously participate in the ecstasy as well as in the rage generated by America's first national revival.

The years from 1690 to 1765 in America have usually been considered a waiting period before the Revolution. Mr. Bushman, in his penetrating study of colonial Connecticut, takes another view. He shows how, during these years, economic ambition and religious ferment profoundly altered the structure of Puritan society, enlarging the bounds of liberty and inspiring resistance to established authority.

This is an investigation of the strains that accompanied the growth of liberty in an authoritarian society. Mr. Bushman traces the deterioration of Puritan social institutions and the consequences for human character. He does this by focusing on day-to-day life in Connecticut--on the farms, in the churches, and in the town meetings. Controversies within the towns over property, money, and church discipline shook the "land of steady habits," and the mounting frustration of common needs compelled those in authority, in contradiction to Puritan assumptions, to become more responsive to popular demands.

In the Puritan setting these tensions were inevitably given a moral significance. Integrating social and economic interpretations, Mr. Bushman explains the Great Awakening of the 1740's as an outgrowth of the stresses placed on the Puritan character. Men, plagued with guilt for pursuing their economic ambitions and resisting their rulers, became highly susceptible to revival preaching.

The Awakening gave men a new vision of the good society. The party of the converted, the "New Lights," which also absorbed people with economic discontents, put unprecedented demands on civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The resulting dissension moved Connecticut, almost unawares, toward republicanattitudes and practices. Disturbed by the turmoil, many observers were, by 1765, groping toward a new theory of social order that would reconcile traditional values with their eighteenth-century experiences.

Vividly written, full of illustrative detail, the manuscript of this book has been called by Oscar Handlin one of the most important works of American history in recent years.

The American revolutionaries themselves believed the change from monarchy to republic was the essence of the Revolution. "King and People in Provincial Massachusetts" explores what monarchy meant to Massachusetts under its second charter and why the momentous change to republican government came about.
Richard L. Bushman argues that monarchy entailed more than having a king as head of state: it was an elaborate political culture with implications for social organization as well. Massachusetts, moreover, was entirely loyal to the king and thoroughly imbued with that culture.
Why then did the colonies become republican in 1776? The change cannot be attributed to a single thinker such as John Locke or to a strain of political thought such as English country party rhetoric. Instead, it was the result of tensions ingrained in the colonial political system that surfaced with the invasion of parliamentary power into colonial affairs after 1763.
The underlying weakness of monarchical government in Massachusetts was the absence of monarchical society -- the intricate web of patronage and dependence that existed in England. But the conflict came from the colonists' conception of rulers as an alien class of exploiters whose interest was the plundering of the colonies. In large part, colonial politics was the effort to restrain official avarice.
The author explicates the meaning of "interest" in political discourse to show how that conception was central in the thinking of both the popular party and the British ministry. Management of the interest of royal officials was a problem that continually bedeviled both the colonists and the crown. Conflict was perennial because the colonists and the ministry pursued diverging objectives in regulating colonial officialdom. Ultimately the colonists came to see that safety against exploitation by self-interested rulers would be assured only by republican government.