Herbert Giles was in the diplomatic service in China from 1867 to 1893. His frank observations on Chinese culture and people form the basis of these short essays, published in 1876. On his retirement, he returned to England and served as the Chair of Chinese at Cambridge for 35 years.

With roots stretching to before the Civil War, the National Convocation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) today serves as the connection between African Americans and the Stone-Campbell Movement. Founders of the African American Convention movement were visionaries, coordinating the opposition to slavery, forced relocation of free African Americans to Africa, and a multitude of social ills. Following emancipation, organizations that later became the National Convocation worked ...

A modern-day civil rights champion tells the stirring story of how he helped start a movement to bridge America’s racial divide.Over the summer of 2013, the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II led more than a hundred thousand people at rallies across North Carolina to protest restrictions to voting access and an extreme makeover of state government. These protests—the largest state government–focused civil disobedience campaign in American history—came to be known as...

A prize-winning, five-decade history of the evangelical movement in Southern California that explains a sweeping realignment of American politics.From Bible Belt to Sun Belt tells the dramatic and largely unknown story of “plain-folk” religious migrants: hardworking men and women from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas who fled the Depression and came to California for military jobs during World War II. Investigating this fiercely pious community at a grassroot...

A definitive history of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement and an intriguing reference for persons outside the movement, The Century of the Holy Spirit details the miraculous story of Pentecostal/Charismatic growth--in the U.S. and around the world. This book features five chapters by the premier Pentecostal historian, Vinson Synan, with additional contributions by leading Pentecostal/Charismatic authorities--David Barrett, David Daniels, David Edwin Harrell Jr., Peter Hocke...

“The Negroes must have Jesus, Jobs, and Justice,” declared Nannie Helen Burroughs, a nationally known figure among black and white leaders and an architect of the Woman’s Convention of the National Baptist Convention. Burroughs made this statement about the black women’s agenda in 1958, as she anticipated the collapse of Jim Crow segregation and pondered the fate of African Americans. Following more than half a century of organizing and struggling against racism in American society, sexism...

It's been said that the most segregated time of the week is Sunday morning. The church experiences the same racial tensions as the rest of society and this certainly does not bring glory to God. In Winning the Race to Unity, Clarence Shuler directly confronts this racial divide and challenges the church to face these problems and tackle them head on. Come along on this necessary journey and prepare to grow and be changed.

In No Depression in Heaven, Alison Collis Greene demonstrates how the Great Depression and New Deal transformed the relationship between church and state. Grounded in Memphis and the Delta, this book traces the collapse of voluntarism, the link between southern religion and the New Deal, and the gradual alienation of conservative Christianity from the state. At the start of the Great Depression, churches and voluntary societies provided the only significant source of aid for those...

**How the history of Texas illuminates America's post–**Civil War pastTracing the intersection of religion, race, and power in Texas from Reconstruction through the rise of the Religious Right and the failed presidential bid of Governor Rick Perry, Rough Country illuminates American history since the Civil War in new ways, demonstrating that Texas's story is also America’s. In particular, Robert Wuthnow shows how distinctions between "us" and “them” are pe...

A prizewinning historian pens this biography of C.L. Franklin, the greatest African-American preacher of his generation, father of Aretha, and civil rights pioneer.

A noted theologian explains how the radical idea of Christian love animated the African American civil rights movement and how it can power today's social justice strugglesSpeaking to his supporters at the end of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared that their common goal was not simply the end of segregation as an institution. Rather, "the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved communit...

This religious history of white Mississippians shows how their faith played a critical role in their response to the Civil Rights Era.It seems perplexing that a place as proudly Christian as Mississippi could also unapologetically oppress its Black population. Yet, as Carolyn Renée Dupont richly details in Mississippi Praying, white southerners' evangelical religion gave them no reason to view segregation as a moral evil, and many believed that God had orda...