Barbara M. Cooper looks closely at the Sudan Interior Mission, an evangelical Christian mission that has taken a tenuous hold in a predominantly Hausa... Muslim area on the southern fringe of Niger. Based on sustained fieldwork, personal interviews, and archival research, this vibrant, sensitive, compelling, and candid book gives a unique glimpse into an important dimension of religious life in Africa. Cooper's involvement in a violent religious riot provides a useful backdrop for introducing other themes and concerns such as Bible translation, medical outreach, public preaching, tensions between English-speaking and French-speaking missionaries, and the Christian mission's changing views of Islam.

In this engaging and at times heartbreaking book, David Hempton looks at evangelicalism through the lens of well-known individuals who once embraced the... evangelical tradition, but later repudiated it. The author recounts the faith journeys of nine creative artists, social reformers, and public intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including such diverse figures as George Eliot, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Vincent van Gogh, and James Baldwin. Within their highly individual stories, Hempton finds not only clues to the development of these particular creative men and women but also myriad insights into the strengths and weaknesses of one of the fastest growing religious traditions in the modern world. Allowing his subjects to express themselves in their own voices—through letters, essays, speeches, novels, apologias, paintings—Hempton seeks to understand the factors at work in the shaping of their religious beliefs, and how their negotiations of faith informed their public and private lives. The nine were great public communicators, but in private often felt deep uncertainties. Hempton’s moving portraits highlight common themes among the experiences of these disillusioned evangelicals while also revealing fresh insights into the evangelical movement and its relations to the wider culture.  Featuring portraits of:·        George Eliot·        Frances W. Newman·        Theodore Dwight Weld·        Sarah Grimké·        Elizabeth Cady Stanton·        Frances Willard·        Vincent van Gogh·        Edmund Gosse·        James Baldwin 

Evangelicalism retains the doctrine of biblical authority that developed during the Protestant Reformation as well as the sense that each individual... stands in need of a life-transforming experience of forgiveness of sins that can only come through faith in Christ.With the rise of the Christian Right in American politics over the past quarter-century, there has been renewed interest in Protestant evangelicalism and fundamentalism and their roles in American culture. Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism is a collection of key primary readings tracing the history and development of this religious movement and its intersections with American life and politics, spanning the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century.The documents deal with issues such as biblical criticism, theology, revivalist preaching, religion and science, religion and politics, and social concerns such as gender and race. Countering notions among some that evangelicalism is monolithic, the diversity of the movement is made evident in texts from the evangelical Left as well as the Christian Right.Each section and many individual texts are prefaced by a brief editor's introduction explaining their background and context. During the period the book covers, evangelicalism went from being the dominant form of religion in America, then to the fringes, then back into the mainstream. These texts provide the reader with a sense of the central core as well as the range of evangelical thinking in the past century.

"Looking at what he calls 'The Coming Generation' of Evangelical opinion leaders and elites . . . Hunter draws a nuanced and finely detailed portrait of... young Evangelicals who, while certainly more conservative than the mainstream of American Protestants, are at least ambivalent about some important aspects of fundamentalism and at most ready to repudiate elements of fundamentalist faith, politics, and practice. . . . With this book, James Hunter confirms his position as one of the most informed and informing writers on American Evangelicalism."—Samuel C. Heilman, This World

Most observers explain evangelical Christians' bedrock support for Israel as stemming from the apocalyptic belief that the Jews must return to the Holy... Land as a precondition for the second coming of Christ. But the real reasons, argues Stephen Spector, are far more complicated. In Evangelicals and Israel, Spector delves deeply into the Christian Zionist movement, mining information from original interviews, web sites, publications, news reports, survey research, worship services, and interfaith conferences, to provide a surprising look at the sources of evangelical support for Israel. Israel is God's prophetic clock for many evangelicals - irrefutable proof that prophecy is true and coming to pass in our lifetime. But Spector goes beyond end-times theology to find a complex set of motivations behind Israel-evangelical relations. These include the promise of God's blessing for those who bless the Jews; gratitude to Jews for establishing the foundations of Christianity; remorse for the Church's past anti-Semitism; fear that God will judge the nations based on how they treated the Jewish people; and reliance on Israel as the West's firewall against Islamist terrorism. Spector explores many Christian Zionists' hostility toward Islam, but also uncovers an unexpected pragmatism and flexiblility concerning Israel's possession of the entire Holy Land. For evangelicals, politics frequently mixes with faith. Yet Spector argues that evangelical beliefs - though often portrayed as unifying and rigid - are in reality various and even contradictory. Spector uses George W. Bush's beliefs about the Bible as a sounding board for these issues and explores the evangelical influence on his Middle East policies. Evangelicals and Israel corrects much of the speculation about Bush's personal faith and about evangelicalism's impact on American-Middle East relations, and provides the fullest and most nuanced account to date of the motives and theology behind Christian Zionism.

##########... ####################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################

The cultural conflict that increasingly divides American society is particularly evident within Protestant Christianity. Liberals and evangelicals clash... in bitter competition for the future of their respective subcultures. In this book, James Wellman examines this conflict as it is played out in the American Northwest. Drawing on an in-depth study of twenty-four of the area's fastest-growing evangelical churches and ten vital liberal Protestant congregations, Wellman captures the leading trends of each group and their interaction with the wider American culture. He finds a remarkable depth of disagreement between the two groups on almost every front. Where evangelicals are willing to draw sharp lines on gay marriage and abortion, liberals complain about evangelical self-righteousness and disregard for personal freedoms. Liberals prefer the moral power of inclusiveness, while evangelicals frame their moral stances as part of a metaphysical struggle between good and evil. The entrepreneurial nature of evangelicalism translates into support of laissez-faire capitalism and democratic political advocacy. Liberals view both policies with varying degrees of apprehension. Such differences are significant on a national scale, with implications for the future of American Protestantism in particular and American culture in general. Both groups act in good faith and with good intentions, and each maintains a moral core that furthers its own identity, ideology, ritual, mission, and politics. In some situations, they share similar attitudes despite having different beliefs. Attending church services and interviewing senior pastors, lay leaders and new members, Wellman is able to provide new insights into the convenient categories of "liberal" and "evangelical," the nature of the conflict, and the myriad ways both groups affect and are affected by American culture.

Includes the memorable "The Skeleton in Armor," "The Arsenal at Springfield," "Mezzo Cammin," "The Rhyme of Sir Christopher" (from Tales of a Wayside... Inn), "Aftermath" and "Divina Commedia." Cambridge Edition.

Distinguished poet Horace Gregory has selected thirty-seven of Longfellow's most enduring poems for this edition, the only paperback of Longfellow's... poetry in print.

"El en caso del presente volumen se han seguido las indicaciones generales para toda la coleccion, indicaciones que ya se habian experimentado en los... dos volumenes anteriores, si bien ahora toman un aire especial, por tratarse de la introduccion a libros biblicos concretos, los Evangelios sinopticos y los Hechos de los Apostoles. Se da un especial relieve a lo que podemos considerar como datos adquiridos hoy dia por la ciencia biblica, pero a la vez se ofrecen las claves y la bibliografia suficiente para poder estar al tanto de las cuestiones abiertas y discutidas en el momento actual. Ademas, se ha dado un especial relieve a la teologia de los distintos libros estudiados, teniendo siempre en cuenta el contexto en que probablemente nacieron. Y se ofrecen una serie de iniciativas sobre textos concretos, para que puedan servir de ejercicios programados por el profesor de la asignatura o, sencillamente, por el lector de la obra. De este modo intentamos responder al proposito inicial de la coleccion, que se inscribe en el genero de los manuales universitarios, susceptibles de ser unitlizados en clase bajo la guia del profesor, pero tambien de ser leidos por quien quiera tener una idea suficientemente completa de los resultados de la investigacion contemporanea." [Excerpt from the "Presentacion."]

Most people think of evangelism as something an individual does--one person talking to one or more other people about the gospel. Bryan Stone, however,... argues that evangelism is the duty and call of the entire church as a body of witness. Evangelism after Christendom explores what it means to understand and put to work evangelism as a rich practice of the church, grounding evangelism in the stories of Israel, Jesus, and the Apostles. This thorough treatment is marked by an astute sensitivity to the ways in which Christian evangelism has in the past been practiced violently, intentionally or unintentionally. Pointing to exemplars both Protestant and Catholic, Stone shows pastors, professors, and students how evangelism can work nonviolently.

If God is in control of everything, can Christians sit back and not bother to evangelize? Or does active evangelism imply that God is not really... sovereign at all? J.I. Packer shows in this classic study how both of these attitudes are false. In a careful review of the biblical evidence, he shows how a right understanding of God's sovereignty is not so much a barrier to evangelism as an incentive and powerful support for it.

The most common methods of evangelism are tailor-made for extroverts. But what about the rest of us? Other Christians, including introverted, reflective... people, are left with feelings of guilt and fear and the desire to become more outgoing. The problem, says Mike Bechtle, is not their personality, but that they've been taught methods of evangelism that push them too far out of their comfort zone.In Evangelism for the Rest of Us, Bechtle shows readers how to share their faith in more comfortable ways by helping them discover and define their unique strengths within their personality type. With fresh, biblical insight, this much-needed resource renews a passion for sharing Christ with others, because telling the Good News does not have to be so intimidating.