Modern Church Books

Religion and the Founding of the American Republic

James H. Hutson

Amazon Price: $22.45 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Library of Congress Amazon Marketplace: 19 new & used starting at $15.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General AAS
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Scholarly presentation of a volatile subject 4 out of 5 stars.
14 of 14 people found this review helpful.

A masterful treatment of a difficult subject. Refreshing in it's even-handedness, staying clear of the strident presentation too often represented in this subject area. Based on substantial quotations from original text, the author presents the facts of the federal and state legal positions on church and religion. Further, he presents the influence of religious principles on the development of the government institutions within the context of that culture and society. Very well written. And very readable - not too scholarly.

Editorial Review:

A balanced and lively look at the role of religion between colonization and the 1840s.

Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South

Mitchell Snay

Amazon Price: $27.50 List Price: $27.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: The University of North Carolina Press Amazon Marketplace: 33 new & used starting at $5.18

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 19th Century -> Antebellum
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> South
Subjects -> History -> Historical Study -> Social History

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The centrality of religion in the life of the Old South, the strongly religious nature of the sectional controversy over slavery, and the close affinity between religion and antebellum American nationalism all point toward the need to explore the role of religion in the development of southern sectionalism. In Gospel of Disunion Mitchell Snay examines the various ways in which religion adapted to and influenced the development of a distinctive southern culture and politics before the Civil War, adding depth and form to the movement that culminated in secession. From the abolitionist crisis of 1835 through the formation of the Confederacy in 1861, Snay shows how religion worked as an active agent in translating the sectional conflict into a struggle of the highest moral significance. At the same time, the slavery controversy sectionalized southern religion, creating separate institutions and driving theology further toward orthodoxy. By establishing a biblical sanction for slavery, developing a slaveholding ethic for Christian masters, and demonstrating the viability of separation from the North through the denominational schisms of the 1830s and 1840s, religion reinforced central elements in southern political culture and contributed to a moral consensus that made secession possible.

Bold as a Lamb

Ken Anderson

Amazon Price: $9.89 List Price: $10.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Zondervan Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Religious
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Must-Read! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Whether or not you are a Christian, this book will touch your soul. Samuel Lamb spent over 20 years in Chinese prisons for sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. As a Christian, it has challenged me in my walk with Christ.

God's Awesomeness Demonstrated Through One Man's Life 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

In 1996, a friend loaned me their copy of Bold as a Lamb just one month prior to our trip to China. This book gave me a stronger understanding of the real presecution that takes place everyday in this fallen world that desperately needs Jesus Christ. This book recounts the story of one Christian man's life within the wallls of China. How he spent over 20 years of his life in prison because of his faith in Jesus Christ. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone Christian or not. Also, to those who teach High School or College students this would be an excellent book for classroom reading and discusion. While in China, I personally met Pastor Samual Lamb and worshiped with his home church.

Editorial Review:

This is the eye-opening true story of Pastor Samuel Lamb, one of China's best-known pastors. Imprisoned for more than twenty years for preaching the Gospel, he built a phenomenal "house church" and became the beloved pastor to more than a thousand people.

Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love

Patrick Ahern

Amazon Price: $19.00 List Price: $19.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Image Amazon Marketplace: 40 new & used starting at $8.57

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Religious
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Catholicism -> Inspirational
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Catholicism -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

St. Therese of Lisieux, who died unknown in a Carmelite convent at the age of 24, became one of the most influential women in the world after her autobiography (The Story of a Soul) was posthumously published in 1898. Mother Teresa of Calcutta took her name from Therese; Edith Piaf kept Therese's picture on her night table; in 1997, Pope John Paul II made her a Doctor of the Church-- only the third woman to receive this distinction. Her autobiography describes a spiritual life full of everyday revelations--she saw God in jam sandwiches, pretty hats, and beautiful flowers. Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love shows how her commonplace spirituality ministered to an aimless young priest unsure of his vocation and unstable in his devotion. Maurice Belliere wrote to Therese's Mother Prioress to ask that a nun pray for him, Therese was assigned to the task, and their 21 letters (edited and with commentary by Patrick Traherne) illustrate the young woman's extraordinary ability to love. She wasn't deeply familiar with Maurice, and she didn't agree with him on lots of things, but she was naturally inclined to have faith in him--a necessary aspect of love, and one that deserves attention. --Michael Joseph Gross

The Soul of Elizabeth Seton

Joseph I. Dirvin

Amazon Price: $9.56 List Price: $11.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Ignatius Press Amazon Marketplace: 30 new & used starting at $3.04

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Religious
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

An in depth very well written book on Mother Seton 5 out of 5 stars.
21 of 22 people found this review helpful.

In my studies of Saint Elizabeth Seton I have found this book to be of most value. It goes beyond the auto-biography and dips into the soul of Elizabeth Seton and the reader. This book shows us how we can use Mother Seton's example to better our own lives by becoming closer to God. It truely is a good spiritual read.

Mother Elizabeth Seton: A worthy example for religious emulation. 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Baley Seton is one of the most remarkable saints of the Roman Catholic Church, because of all that she-by God's grace-accomplished in her short life: wife, mother, convert, founder, superior and educator. Growing up as a child, Elizabeth Seton had a deep devotion to God while as a member of the Episcopalian Church. Early on, she had written of "passionate wishes that there were such places in America as I read of in novels, where people could be shut from the world and pray, and be good always." Pg 123. And it is amazing how the fruit of that desire became mainfested.

Before entering the Catholic Church in 1807, Elizabeth Seton had the vocation of marrage and family, and while in that union, as willed for her, she lived it out to the respectable hilt, living by a standard of service and sacrifice for others. That approach to life was fully embossed with a smattering of religious principles, fundamentals that were crucial to who Elizabeth felt herself to be. The pinnacle of Truth-Christ Jesus-was who she desired, but she did not fully feel Him until she was thrust into being a co-carrier of the cross, a calling for each and every one of us on this planet. That cross came, when, from a point of wealth and priviledge, she lost all. And it was finalized in Italy, when, for the hopeful recovery and convalescence of her husband, she lost him, too. Bereft and alone, her future religious husband was awaiting her.

The sacramental union that she had so longed for but could never feel in her own church was finally brought to her via the instruments of service-the Filicchi Family-and upon their gentle explanation of the true faith, Elizabeth, "...sank on my knees in the first place I found vacant, and shed a torrent of tears at the recollection of how long I had been a stranger in the house of my God, and the accumulated sorrow that had separated me from it." Pg. 67. Yet the Presence of Love, stole into her soul and made her "delight in seeing old men and women, young women and all sorts of people kneeling promiscuously about the alter, as inattentive to us and other passengers as if we were not there...everyone is so intent on their prayers and Rosary that it is very immaterial what a stranger does." Pg. 67.

As I am sure with a majority of converts and reverts to the Roman Catholic Church, there is a cup of suffering that one must drink in order to be a paltry imitator of the Crucified One, for whithout suffering, how do we become refined and evolve to being someone better? We suffer and we listen, and we go from there. And Mother Elizabeth fully obeyed that in the process of her arduous conversion, for those who bore witness to what was happening to her, felt that she was abandoning her past and those within it. And that is a common dread experienced by many families and friends: a relinquishment to the worldly here and now in order to accept a religious and supernatural ideal, not an easy thing to digest. She followed through, because she knew that God used people for a purpose, as she later expanded on while a religious mother: "What was the first role of our dear Savior's life? You know it was to do His Father's Will...I know what His Will is by those who direct me; whatever they bid me do, if it is ever so small in itself, is the Will of God for me." Pg. 160.

Out of all the histories and biographies that have been written about Saint (Mary) Ellizabeth Ann Baley Seton, I would have to echo what my fellow Amazon reviewer said in this spiritual portrait being one of the best. Though it does not directly focus on the American Sisters of Charity or the environment and times in which Mother Seton lived, it does-with good sincere intentions-delve deeply into the thinking, soul and consciousness of Mother Seton. Fr. Dirvin's book is a succinctly written, incisive and penetrating intellectual and religious homage, a work for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Rise and Fall of American Lutheran Pietism: The Rejection of an Activist Heritage

Paul Kuenning

Amazon Price: $35.00 List Price: $35.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Mercer University Press Amazon Marketplace: 27 new & used starting at $21.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Church History -> Modern Church
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Protestantism -> Lutheran
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Protestantism -> General

The Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740-1745 (Institute of Early American History & Culture)

Richard L. Bushman

Amazon Price: $21.95 List Price: $21.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University of North Carolina Press Amazon Marketplace: 15 new & used starting at $16.40

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Historical Study -> Social History
Subjects -> Reference -> General AAS
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Church History -> Modern Church

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

great documents 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book is put together well; the documents are in a good order that helps give the reader an overview of the Great Awakening. As a Christian, the documents are inspiring and interesting because some of them give a glimpse of people who were fervent for and enjoying the Lord. The freshness of their contact with the Lord as seen in these primary sources is similar to our fresh experiences of the Lord today!

Primary Sources Documenting the Great Awakening 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I am doing a paper on the preaching of Whitefield and Edwards during the Great Awakening, so I almost jumped for joy when this book came in the mail! Here you have theological treatises and tracts and narratives from revivalists who witnessed the tremendous workings of God during the time of the TransAtlantic religious revivals. You have Samuel Blair's faithful narrative of the revival in 1744 Pennsylvania, George Whitefield's eyewitness reports from his journals, and even some of the anti-revival literature of Charles Chauncey.

You also have the regrettable reports of the extremism encouraged by James Davenport as well as some of Jonathan Edwards' later reflections.

The bottom line is that this is a treasure trove of primary source data about the years of revival in the colonies. A must have for those interested in this era of history.

Revolution and Religion: American Revolutionary War and the Reformed Clergy

Keith L. Griffin

Amazon Price: $19.95 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 3 to 5 weeks By: Paragon House Publishers Amazon Marketplace: 10 new & used starting at $16.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> Colonial Period -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> Revolution & Founding -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Mid-Atlantic

Out on the Edge: A Wake-Up Call for Church Leaders on the Edge of the Media Reformation

Amazon Price: $23.50 List Price: $23.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Abingdon Press Amazon Marketplace: 56 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Church History -> Modern Church
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Church History -> General
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Church History -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Succint and Practical Guide To Postmodern Ministry 5 out of 5 stars.
16 of 19 people found this review helpful.

I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Slaughter's book! He gives a great,concise overview of how times have changed in the way of communication. It helped me realize that many churches have remained content to use methodologies that may have worked 20 or more years ago while neglecting technology that has created a new paradigm for effective, relevant communication. Mr. Slaughter includes actual job descriptions and schedules of key people needed to produce, what he calls, a multi-sensory worship experience. A very helpful cd-rom is included with several examples of what he describes in the book. If you are involved in planning worship services, you need this book!

This Is a Wake-Up Call Church Leaders Better Hear! 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 12 people found this review helpful.

Out on the edge of the traditional congregation a media reformation is occurring. One place where this reformation can be seen is at Ginghamsburg Church in Tipp City, Ohio. Another place is in this book by its lead pastor.

Michael Slaughter has been the lead pastor of this congregation since 1979. Upon his arrival at Ginghamsburg he found 90 persons who existed as a dying United Methodist congregation. At the time of this writing, a core membership group of more than 1000 persons provide five weekend worship experiences for more than 3000 persons.

The congregation has a contemporary style that attracts preChristians, seekers, and others on the edge of Christianity. Simultaneously, for those who understand the subtle presentation of theology and Christian symbolism, there are more than enough places to connect with spiritual trandition and culture.

Through the medium of this book Michael Slaughter shares his convictions concerning the life and death nature of the media reformation, a postmodern approach to congregation, and methodologies for building effective multi-sensory worship leadership teams.

A bonus is a CD-ROM included with the book. It contains materials that talks about the process of designing worship, six sample worship scenarios, a media portfolio of selected worship elements, and a searchable text of this book.

In addition to buying and reading this book, take advantage of visiting the congregation when you are in the Cincinnati area, or attend one of their annual teaching church events.

Worlds Of Wonder, Days Of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England

David D. Hall

List Price: $29.95 By: Knopf Amazon Marketplace: 11 new & used starting at $5.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> General AAS
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Church History -> Modern Church
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Church History -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgement 5 out of 5 stars.
25 of 25 people found this review helpful.

Hall uses the popular religion of early New England to argue that for clergy and lay people alike religion was a part of everyday life, and although the clergy and lay people's religious interpretations of events could differ their choices of interpretation were limited by their shared culture. Hall argues that the vast majority of the early New Englanders shared a common middle class background and a common religious background influenced by the Reformation. Both the clergy and lay people agreed that it was especially important for each person to be able to read the Bible on his own. But, the power to read the Bible also gave lay people the confidence to have interpretations of the Bible that differed from those of their ministers. The belief in wonders, supernatural events or extraordinary events (earthquakes, meteors, etc.), was a remnant of their Elizabethan culture. Both clergy and lay people attributed religious meanings to wonders, with the clergy sometimes writing popular books detailing wonders. The popularity of these stories encouraged the printing of wonder books not written by clergy as well. By the later 1600's, the clergy were increasingly attributing wonders to explainable natural events, but with the self-confidence gained by their literacy lay people still often gave religious significance to natural events. Their shared culture made universal literacy extremely important, but literacy empowered lay people to disagree with clergy sanctioned interpretations of Scripture. This empowerment of the lay people went so far as to have them feel confident enough to disagree with their ministers over the issue of sacraments, particularly baptism and the rites of the Last Supper. This confidence also gave lay people the ability to break rituals, such as confession, weddings (dancing even though it was prohibited), and sickness (relying on doctors and folk medicine instead of only on prayer).

Editorial Review:

This book tells an extraordinary story of the people of early New England and their spiritual lives. It is about ordinary people--farmers, housewives, artisans, merchants, sailors, aspiring scholars--struggling to make sense of their time and place on earth. David Hall describes a world of religious consensus and resistance: a variety of conflicting beliefs and believers ranging from the committed core to outright dissenters. He reveals for the first time the many-layered complexity of colonial religious life, and the importance within it of traditions derived from those of the Old World. We see a religion of the laity that was to merge with the tide of democratic nationalism in the nineteenth century, and that remains with us today as the essence of Protestant America.