Moral Geography traces the development of a moral basis for American expansionism, as Protestant missionaries, using biblical language and metaphors, imaginatively conjoined the cultivation of souls with the cultivation of land and made space sacred. While the political implications of the mapping of American expansion have been much studied, this is the first major study of the close and complex relationship between mapping and missionizing on the American frontier. Moral Geograp...

When it comes to evangelicals and sex, it seems, whatever the question, the answer is "no." In Saving Sex, Amy DeRogatis argues that this could not be further from the truth. Demolishing the myth of evangelicals as anti-sex, she shows that American evangelicals claim that fabulous sex--in the right context--is viewed as a divinely-sanctioned, spiritual act. For decades, evangelical sex education has been a thriving industry. Evangelical couples have sought advice from Christian ps...

Published in 1859, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty presented one of the most eloquent defenses of individual freedom in nineteenth-century social and political philosophy and is today perhaps the most widely-read liberal argument in support of the value of liberty. Mill’s passionate advocacy of spontaneity, individuality, and diversity, along with his contempt for compulsory uniformity and the despotism of popular opinion, has attracted both admiration and condemnation.

Winner of the Distinguished Book Award from American Sociology Association Sociology of Religion Section Winner of the Richard Kalish Best Publication Award from the Gerontological Society of America Few things are more likely to cause heartache to devout parents than seeing their child leave the faith. And it seems, from media portrayals, that this is happening more and more frequently. But is religious change between generations common? How does religion get passed down ...

The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian", it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are most explicitly on display. A forerunner of soft science fiction novels and stories of the 1960s and '70s, the book stresses future changes in society and politics while pay...

The period of young adulthood, from ages 18 to 23, is popularly considered the most sexualized in life. But is it true? What do we really know about the sexual lives of young people today? Premarital Sex in America combines illuminating personal stories and comprehensive research surveys to provide the fullest portrait of heterosexuality among young adults ever produced. Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker draw upon a wealth of survey data as well as scores of in-depth interviews with...

As the world becomes more modern, it is not becoming more secular. Instead, on the street and in the corridors of power, religion is surging. As God is Back shows, for better or for worse, faith is on the increase - fuelled by an American-style model of personal, customer-driven, aggressively marketed religion.Shining a light on this huge, hidden world of faith, from Californian megachurches to exorcisms in Sao Paulo, from China's aspirant middle-class Christians to mosque...

In the last decade, 45% of all marriages in the U.S. were between people of different faiths. The rapidly growing number of mixed-faith families has become a source of hope, encouraging openness and tolerance among religious communities that historically have been insular and suspicious of other faiths. Yet as Naomi Schaefer Riley demonstrates in 'Til Faith Do Us Part, what is good for society as a whole often proves difficult for individual families: interfaith couples, Riley shows, are l...

The book that changed the American church, with new essays that "prove that one can be a dedicated Christian and a social reformer at the same time" ( The New York Times Book Review).Published at the beginning of the twentieth century, Christianity and the Social Crisis is the epoch-making book that dramatically expanded the church's vision of how it could transform the world. This 100th anniversary edition updates this classic with contemporary es...

Transplanted Christianity is a comprehensive collection of documents detailing the history of the church in New Zealand from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century to the present day. Informative introductions and explanations by Allan Davidson and Peter Lineham fill in the context and make this a book of interest to the serious student of church history and the casual reader alike. This fifth edition is revised and has an extensive additional chapter covering issues facing the chu...

The clergyman critiques contemporary American life and offers Catholics—and Christians—guidance to living their faith vigorously, with confidence and hope.From the author of Living the Catholic Faith and Render unto Caesar comes a fresh, urgent, and ultimately hopeful treatise on the state of Catholic life and Christian community in the United States. America today is different in kind , not just in degree, from the past. And this new real...

Assembling Mass Observation Archive material with historiographies of family, house and nation from ancient-Greece to present-day Europe, China and America, this book contributes to current debates on identity, belonging, memory and material culture by exploring how power works in the small spaces of home.