Winner of the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award (1995)"The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism's most respected historians.Unsparing in his indictment, Mark Noll asks why the largest single group of religious Americans—who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence—...

"The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism's most respected historians.Unsparing in his judgment, Mark Noll ask why the largest single group of religious Americans--who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence--have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship in North America. In nourishing bel...

America's Book shows how the Bible decisively shaped American national history even as that history influenced the use of Scripture. It explores the rise of a strongly Protestant Bible civilization in the early United States that was then fractured by debates over slavery, contested by growing numbers of non-Protestant Americans (Catholics, Jews, agnostics), and torn apart by the Civil War. This first comprehensive history of the Bible in America explains why Tom Paine's anti-bibl...

Religious life in early America is often equated with the fire-and-brimstone Puritanism best embodied by the theology of Cotton Mather. Yet, by the nineteenth century, American theology had shifted dramatically away from the severe European traditions directly descended from the Protestant Reformation, of which Puritanism was in the United States the most influential. In its place arose a singularly American set of beliefs. In America's God, Mark Noll has written a biography of this new Am...

The past, present, and future of a movement in crisisWhat exactly do we mean when we say "evangelical"? How should we understand this many-sided world religious phenomenon? How do recent American politics change that understanding?Three scholars have been vital to our understanding of evangelicalism for the last forty years: Mark Noll, whose Scandal of the Evangelical Mind identified an earlier crisis point for American evangelicals; David Bebbington, whose "Bebbington Quad...

Perhaps no other literary figure has transformed the American religious landscape in recent history as much as C. S. Lewis. Even before the international publication and incredible success of his fictional works such as The Chronicles of Narnia or apologetic works like Mere Christianity, Lewis was already being read "across the pond" in America. But who exactly was reading his work? And how was he received?With fresh research and shrewd analysis, this volume by noted historian Mark...

Christianity's demographics, vitality, and influence have tipped markedly toward the global South and East. Addressing this seismic shift, one of America's leading church historians shows how studying world Christianity changed and enriched his understanding of the nature of the faith as well as of its history.Mark Noll illustrates the riches awaiting anyone who gains even a preliminary understanding of the diverse histories that make up the Christian story. He shows how coming to ...

For the last few decades, Catholics and Protestants have been working to heal the wounds caused by centuries of mistrust. This book, a Christianity Today 2006 Book Award winner, provides an evaluation of contemporary Roman Catholicism and the changing relationship between Catholics and evangelicals.The authors examine past tensions, post-Vatican II ecumenical dialogues, and social/political issues that have brought Catholics and evangelicals together. While not ignoring si...

"Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service," writes John Stott. "If we do not use the mind which God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality."While Christians have had a long heritage of rigorous scholarship and careful thinking, some circles still view the intellect with suspicion or even as contradictory to Christian faith. And many non-Christians are quick to label Christians as anti-intellectual and obscurantist. But this need not be so. In this cl...

What role did Laura Ingalls Wilder's Christian faith play in her life and writing?The beloved Little Housebooks by Laura Ingalls Wilder have sold over 60 million copies since their publication in the first half of the twentieth century. Even her unpolished memoir, Pioneer Girl, which tells the true story behind the children's books, was widely embraced upon its release in 2014. Despite Wilder's enduring popularity, few fans know much about her Christian bel...

The definitive biography of Abraham Kuyper, giant of Dutch CalvinismThis is the first full-scale English-language biography of the highly influential and astonishingly multifaceted Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) -- theologian, minister, politician, newspaper editor, educational innovator, Calvinist reformer, and prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905.James Bratt is the ideal scholar to tell the story of Kuyper's remarkable life and work. He expertly traces...

The Reverend Lyman Beecher was once called “the father of more brains than any other man in America.” Among his eleven living children were a celebrity novelist, a college president, the most well-known preacher in America, a suffragist, a radical abolitionist, a pioneer in women’s education, and the founder of home economics. Rejecting many of their father’s Puritan beliefs, the deeply religious Beechers nevertheless embraced his quest to exert moral influence. They disagreed over issues ...