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This unconventional cultural history explores the lifecycle of the radical historical Jesus, a construct created by the freethinkers, feminists, socialists and anarchists who used the findings of biblical criticism to mount a serious challenge to the authority of elite liberal divines during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Michael Pasquier examines the "lived" religion of French missionaries in their daily encounters with anti-Catholic Protestants and anti-clerical Catholics on the American frontier. Focusing on the collective thoughts, feelings, and actions of priests who found themselves caught between the formal canonical standards of the church and the informal experiences of missionaries in American culture, Pasquier illuminates the historical intersection of American, French, andRoman interests in the United States. He finds that at no point did French missionaries engage more directly in distinctively American affairs than in the religious debates surrounding slavery, secessions, and civil war. These issues, he shows, compelled even the most politically aloof missionariesto step out of the shadow of Rome and stake their church on the side of the Confederacy.

A new analysis and interpretation of the religious views of the nineteenth century American philosopher William James.

Comprising papers by such distinguished scholars as John Headley Brooke, James R. Moore, Ronald Numbers, and George Marsden, this collection shows that questions of science have been central to evangelical history in the United States, as well as in Britain and Canada.

In this work, the author maintains that theology became boring because the depiction of God as a "character" became boring, fashioned according to theologians' notions of character, derived from contemporary literature. He considers why a romantic characterization of God was problematic.

Findlay examines the relationship between the the mainstream Protestant Churches and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. His study makes clear the highly significant contribution made by liberal religious groups in this turbulent and historic decade of social change.

This interdisciplinary collection is the first book to address the organizational aspects of religion. Topics include the historical sources and patterns of US religious institutions, contemporary patterns of denominational authority, and the interface between religious and secular institutions.

In this work, the author explores the rapid growth of American Methodism following the Revolutionary War. He argues that Methodism's style, tone and agenda became part of the fabric of American life, influencing all other mass religious movements and areas unconnected to the church as well.

In Conjuring culture, Theophus H. Smith attempts to construct a more adequate analysis of African-American culture by using concepts derived from that culture. He bases his critique on the central concept of "conjure", and contends that Biblically-based themes, stories, and especially typology have crucially formed African-American culture as they have been simultaneously reformed and deployed by African-Americans.

This study offers a new interpretation of the puritan 'Antinomian' controversy and a skilful analysis of its wider and long term social and cultural significance. Breen argues that the controversy both reflected and fostered larger questions of identity that would persist in puritan New England throughout the 17th century.

The Revival of 1857-58 was a widespread religious awakening, most famous for urban prayer meetings in major metropolitan centres across the United States. This is a critical analysis of the revival which has often been overshadowed by earlier "great awakenings".

No American denomination identified itself more closely with the nation's democratic ideals than did the Baptists. Yet paradoxically no denomination wielded religious authority more effectively than they did. Wills traces this dichotomy to two rival strains within the Baptist church - moderates who emphasized personal religious freedom and tolerance, and fundamentalists who preached discipline.

This work offers a cultural history of Universalism - the idea that an all-good and all-powerful God saves all souls. Ann Bressler argues that Universalism began as a radical, eschatological, and communally-oriented faith and only later became a progressive and individualistic one.

Warren shows how a group of Protestant theologians forged a theology of international engagement for America in the 1930s and 40s which informed the public rationale for the United States participation in World War II and which stimulated American leadership in establishing organisation which promoted world order.

Focusing on the slaveholding border state of Missouri, Houses Divided shows that congregational and local denominational schisms, which arose initially over the moral question of African-American bondage, played a central role in sectionalism, Civil War, and Reconstruction.

Sympathetic Puritans places sympathy at the heart of Puritanism and challenges the literary history of sentimentalism. It argues that a Calvinist theology of fellow feeling shaped the politics, religion, rhetoric, and literature of seventeenth-century New England, influencing the development of American culture.

David Holland tells the stories of antebellum Americans who advocated the idea of an open canon, considering the place of cultural authority in a democratized society, the tension between subjective truths and communal standards, a rising historical consciousness, the expansion of print capitalism, and the principle of religious freedom.

Nathaniel Taylor was arguably the most influential and the most frequently misrepresented American theologian of his generation. While he claimed to be an Edwardsian Calvinist, very few people believed him. This book attempts to understand how Taylor and his associates could have counted themselves Edwardsians.

This book offers a comprehensive examination of Methodist practice, tracing its evolution from the earliest days up to the present. Using liturgical texts as well as written accounts in popular and private sources, Karen Westerfield Tucker investigates the various rites and seasons of worship in Methodism and examines them in relation to American society.

Fundamentalists in the City is a story of religious controversy and division, set within turn of the century and early twentieth-century Boston. It offers a new perspective on the rise of fundamentalism, emphasizing the role of local events, both sacred and secular, in deepening the divide between liberal and conservative Protestants.

Examines the debate over the proper connection in society between religion and public life, that took place in the fifty years following the American Revolution. This book challenges the conventional wisdom, finding an essential continuity to the period's public Christianity.

Religion in America has come to be regarded as obsessively concerned with sex and as uniformly supporting the conservative agenda of "family values". The 13 essays in this book aim to correct this distortion showing the complexities and conflicts that exist between and within the various religions.

This is an exploration of the interaction between African American religions and Jewish traditions, beliefs, and spaces. The collection's argument is that religion is the missing piece of the cultural jigsaw, and black-Jewish relations need the religious roots of their problem illuminated.

This is a collection of sixteen essays about the Muslim community in North America, by some of the leading American scholars of Islam. They focus on the ways in which American Muslims adapt their institutions as they become an indigenous part of America.

This text argues against the conventional idea that Protestantism ceased to play a role in American higher education around the end of the 19th century. It shows that Protestantism was modified to conform to the educational values and intellectual standards of the modern university.

This is an exploration of the interaction between African American religions and Jewish traditions, beliefs, and spaces. The collection's argument is that religion is the missing piece of the cultural jigsaw, and black-Jewish relations need the religious roots of their problem illuminated.

Following the author's fieldwork in black Baptist churches in Texas, he retraces the African origins of African-American forms of worship. His historical comparisons and linguistic analyses uncover striking parallels between "Afro-Baptist" services and religious rituals in West and Central Africa.

Amanda Porterfield examines the Mount Holyoke Missionaries founder, Mary Lyon, and the missionary women trained by her. She focuses on how these Protestant women brought cultural change through their Protestant teachings to several parts of the world, particularly northwest Persia, Maharashtra in western India, and Natal in southeast Africa.

The opening of the ministry to women has created a new situation within Protestant denominations. This work studies the impact of these gender changes and includes essays on Episcopal theology and women's spirituality, the urban church, ageing and the church, women's organizations.