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The first edition of this award-winning reference, published in 1977, contained 425 biographical profiles of the most significant American religious figures. This new edition includes profiles for 125 additional people, and the earlier biographical sketches have been revised and updated. The volume includes religious leaders who died before July 1, 1992. Among its pages are entries for reformers, philosophers, social activists, doers and dreamers. While many of the people are mainstream, white ordained clergymen, many more stand outside traditional denominations and reflect the cultural and religious diversity of modern America. The result is a systematic overview of 400 years of American religion from the colonial period to the present day. Each profile begins with a capsule summary of the chief events in that person's life. The biographical essay that follows places the basic facts of the figure's life within the larger context of American religious history. A bibliography of the most significant works by and about the figure concludes each entry. Appendices at the end of the work categorize each individual by religious denomination and by place of birth.
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In this absorbing history, Henry Warner Bowden chronicles the encounters between native Americans and the evangelizing whites from the period of exploration and colonization to the present. He writes with a balanced perspective that pleads no special case for native separatism or Christian uniqueness. Ultimately, he broadens our understanding of both intercultural exchanges and the continuing strength of American Indian spirituality, expressed today in Christian forms as well as in revitalized folkways. "Bowden makes a radical departure from the traditional approach. Drawing on the theories and findings of anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, he presents Indian-missionary relatio...
A collection of articles examining the histories and impact of European immigrants to the West.
In Standing Apart, fifteen Latter-day Saint scholars explore how the idea of a universal Christian apostasy has functioned as a category to mark, define, and set apart "the other" in the development of Mormon historical consciousness and in the construction of Mormon narrative identity.
Conventional wisdom holds that tradition and history meant little to nineteenth-century American Protestants, who relied on common sense and "the Bible alone." The Old Faith in a New Nation challenges this portrayal by recovering evangelical engagement with the Christian past. Even when they appeared to be most scornful toward tradition, most optimistic and forward-looking, and most confident in their grasp of the Bible, evangelicals found themselves returning, time and again, to Christian history. They studied religious historiography, reinterpreted the history of the church, and argued over its implications for the present. Between the Revolution and the Civil War, American Protestants wer...
"National Book Award-winning author and historian Martin E. Marty's A Nation of Behavers is a characteristically perceptive new map of American religion. . . . Marty's years of astute observation of America's religious trends and developments have yielded six informal but clearly defined clusters around which people attempt to find not only basic group identity but also some kind of power. Anyone concerned about belief and its manifestations will be immensely aided by Marty's cogent comments on recent religious happenings."—Commonweal "This is a book for everyone, more than for the scholar of American religion. . . . Its value is in breadth of vision and new interpretation."—Dean R. Hoge, Theology Today "As a means of making sense out of the potpourri of competing groups that compose religious America today, A Nation of Behavers is a first-rate tool."—Edward A. Fiske, New York Times
Mormon founder Joseph Smith is one of the most controversial figures of nineteenth-century American history, and a virtually inexhaustible subject for analysis. In this volume, fifteen scholars offer essays on how to interpret and understand Smith and his legacy. Including essays by both Mormons and non-Mormons, this wide-ranging collection is the only available survey of contemporary scholarly opinion on the extraordinary man who started one of the fastest growing religious traditions in the modern world.