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No Christian denomination has had a longer or more varied existence in the American South than the Catholic Church. The Spanish missions established in Florida and Texas promoted Catholicism. Catholicism was the dominant religion among the French who settled in Louisiana. Prior to the influx of Irish immigrants in the 1840s, most American Catholics lived south of the Mason-Dixon line. Anti-Catholic prejudice was never as strong in the South as in the North or Midwest and was rare in the region before the twentieth century. This sweeping history stretches from the first European settlement of the continent through the end of the Spanish-American War. This book is divided into three distinct sections: the colonial era, the early Republic through the annexation of Texas in 1845, and the stormy latter half of the nineteenth century. It pays particular attention to church/state relations, mission work and religious orders, the church and slavery, immigration to the South, and the experience of Catholicism in a largely Protestant region. It also highlights the contributions and careers of certain important southern Catholics, both clerical and lay, and considers how the diverse Catholic ethnic and racial groups have expressed their faith—and their citizenship—through the centuries.

This book aims to illuminate Islam's rich theological engagement with the figure of Jesus, which can lay the groundwork for Muslim-Christian dialogue. This book explores the importance of Jesus in Islam and particularly Jesus's role in the narratives of Islamic Eschatology. Jesus's prophethood and his relationship to Muhammad are also explored. The book looks at various approaches to understanding Jesus in Islamic theology including the literalist, the modernist, and the interpretive. Jesus's place and his eschatological role in the Qur’an and in Hadith literature occupy a good segment of the book, and His eschatological role is elaborated in relation to several other important Islamic eschatological events and personages: the Final Hour, the Antichrist, and the Mahdi. Building on these observations of Jesus's role in Islam, the book looks at the history of Muslim-Christian relations and argues that Jesus can be an important figure linking the two religions in the advancement of interreligious dialogue. The book also contains translations of Saritoprak's interview with Fethullah Gülen on Jesus and common ground between Muslims and Christians and a section of Muhammed Hamdi Yazir's Hak Dini Kur’an Dili in which he comments on Qur’anic verses 3:45-51 and 3:55.

Much has been made of the dramatic rise of Protestantism in Latin America. Many view this as a sign that Catholicism's primacy in the region is at last beginning to wane. Overlooked by journalists and scholars has been the parallel growth of Charismatic, or Pentecostal, Catholicism in the region. This book offers the first comprehensive treatment of this movement, revealing its importance to the Catholic Church as well as the people of Latin America. Catholic Charismatics have grown worldwide to several hundred million, among whom Latin Americans number approximately 73 million participants. These individuals are helping the church become more extroverted by drawing many into evangelizing and mission work. The movement has rapidly acquired an indigenous Latin American character and is now returning to the United States through migration and is affecting Catholicism in the United States. The author of this book has witnessed firsthand the birth and maturing of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Latin America as both a social scientist and a Dominican missionary. Drawing upon important findings of Latin American scholars and researchers, this book explores and analyzes the origins of the most important Catholic movement in Latin America and its notable expansion to all countries of the region, bringing with it unusual vitality and notable controversy about its practices.

On one level, Saved and Sanctified tells a very particular story: this is the story of a church started above a horse stable in Great Migration Philadelphia, which, led by a charismatic woman born just sixteen years after the Emancipation Proclamation, not only survived the death of the founder, but also institutionalized power-sharing by female and male elders. On another level, this book tells a more universal story: this is the human story of institution-building, establishing community, and pursuing a life of faith while negotiating rapidly changing and often adversarial social realities. Crumbley first situates “The Church,” as members, “saints,” refer to it, within the socio-historical landscape of the Great Migration, when, over six decades, six million African Americans left the Jim Crow South. She does this not only by drawing on germane historical research, but also by documenting the oral histories of founding members, both North and South of the Mason Dixon Line. Crumbley also explores the ritual and symbolic content of The Church, as a Sanctified Church within Black Church traditions and as an expression of African Diaspora religion. She analyzes its institutionalization as an experiment in employing both gender and age as organizing principles. Crumbley brings a unique perspective to this historically embedded ethnography in that she looks at The Church through the telescopic lens of the trained anthropologist and through the microscopic lens of one raised within this faith community.

During the weekend of July 4, 1999, Benjamin “August” Smith went on a three-day rampage in Illinois and Indiana, attacking Asians, Orthodox Jews, and African Americans. He left two dead and nine wounded, and then committed suicide. As a former member — conveniently resigning the day before the shootings — of the World Church of the Creator (now officially known as the Creativity Movement), Smith was praised by the leader of the church as “Creator of the Year” for bringing attention to their existence and radical beliefs. Smith's rampage was the first many Americans had heard of this small, previously obscure organization. In this history of the Creativity Movement, one of the most radical organizations in the history of the American far right, the author reminds us that some of the most dangerous radical elements in the United States are home grown.