With this book, Yaakov Ariel offers the first comprehensive history of Protestant evangelization of Jews in America to the present day. Based on unprecedented research in missionary archives as well as Jewish writings, the book analyzes the theology and activities of both the missions and the converts and describes the reactions of the Jewish community, which in turn helped to shape the evangelical activity directed toward it. Ariel delineates three successive waves of evangelism, the first directed toward poor Jewish immigrants, the second toward American-born Jews trying to assimilate, and the third toward Jewish baby boomers influenced by the counterculture of the Vietnam War era. After World War II, the missionary impulse became almost exclusively the realm of conservative evangelicals, as the more liberal segments of American Christianity took the path of interfaith dialogue. As Ariel shows, these missionary efforts have profoundly influenced Christian-Jewish relations. Jews have seen the missionary movement as a continuation of attempts to delegitimize Judaism and to do away with Jews through assimilation or annihilation. But to conservative evangelical Christians, who support the State of Israel, evangelizing Jews is a manifestation of goodwill toward them.
WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE MONTH "This is the incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit—but whose story has gone untold until now." —Wall Street Journal “Brilliantly researched, utterly gripping history: the first full account of a remarkable group of Jewish refugees—a top-secret band of brothers—who waged war on Hitler.”—Alex Kershaw, New York Times best-selling author of The Longest Winter and The Liberator The incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit—but whose story has gone untold until now June 1942. The shadow of the Third Reich has fallen across the European continent. In desperation, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff form an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees who have escaped to Britain. The resulting volunteers are a motley group of intellectuals, artists, and athletes, most from Germany and Austria. Many have been interned as enemy aliens, and have lost their families, their homes—their whole worlds. They will stop at nothing to defeat the Nazis. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top secret unit becomes known as X Troop. Some simply call them a suicide squad. Drawing on extensive original research, including interviews with the last surviving members, Leah Garrett follows this unique band of brothers from Germany to England and back again, with stops at British internment camps, the beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of Italy and Holland, and the hellscape of Terezin concentration camp—the scene of one of the most dramatic, untold rescues of the war. For the first time, X Troop tells the astonishing story of these secret shock troops and their devastating blows against the Nazis. “Garrett’s detective work is stunning, and her storytelling is masterful. This is an original account of Jewish rescue, resistance, and revenge.”—Wendy Lower, author of The Ravine and National Book Award finalist Hitler’s Furies
This is a biographical study which surveys the life and career of Boston Baptist Adoniram Judson Gordon (1836-1895) and examines pre-millennialism as his motivation and source of his theological understanding. The study examines a moderate Calvinistic Baptist, tracing his theological development and analyzing his embrace of pre-millennialism and its substantial impact on his pastorate, denominational work, relationships, and enterprises. Gordon's significant role in the shaping of late nineteenth-century North American Evangelical Protestant Christianity is demonstrated in this biography.
Though the Holocaust has been documented in depth, historians and the public know very little about the experience of Eastern European Jews during the preceding world war. A Nation of Refugees tells the story of how ordinary Jewish people in the Russian Empire survived World War I as refugees and civilians. It focuses on the resilience and organized campaigns of humanitarian war relief that countered violence and victimization. Above all, it captures the voices and experiences of refugees at a time of upheaval and war through first-hand accounts.
Brings together 1,000 focused biographies of Americans who affected how the United States made, supported, perceived, and protested its major wars from the Revolution to Gulf War II. Inventors and scientists, nurses and physicians, reformers and clerics, civil rights and labor leaders, financiers and economist, artists and musicians have all been soldiers on the home front. Home Front Heroes brings together brief and focused biographies of 1,000 Americans who affected how the United States made, supported, perceived and protested its major war efforts from the Revolution to Gulf War II. Battlefield victories and defeats are in a very real sense the reflection of the society waging war. Inventors and scientists, social reformers and clerics, civil rights and labor leaders, nurses and physicians, actors and directors, financiers and industrialists, economists and psychologists, artists and musicians, writers and journalists, have all been soldiers on the home front. The biographical entries highlighting the subjects' wartime contributions are arranged alphabetically. Many of the entries also include suggestions for further reading. Thematic indexes make it easy to look up people alphabetically by last name and by war, and other indices list entries under broad categories - Arts and Culture; Business, Industry, and Labor; Nursing and Medicine; Science, Engineering and Inventions - with more detailed occupational background. Entries include: Julia Ward Howe, composer of The Battle Hymn of the Republic; Robert Fulton, inventor of the steam engine and architect of the submarine Nautilus; Martin Brander, maker of Eliot's Saddle Ring Carbine; Robert Parker Parrott, inventor of the Parrott cannon; Novelist and War Correspondent Stephen Crane; Founder of the Army Nurse Corps Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee; Composer John Philip Sousa (Stars and Stripes Forever); Louis M. Terman, who invented the IQ test; Reginald Fessenden, developer of a sonic depth finder; machine-gun inventor Benjamin Hotchkiss; Labor leader John L. Lewis; Comedian and USO stalwart Bob Hope; Dr. Ancel Keys developer of the K-ration; napalm inventor Louis F. Fieser; and many more. The work is fully indexed, and contains an extensive bibliography.
The religious reform tradition known as the Stone-Campbell movement came into being on the American frontier in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Named for its two principal founders, Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell, its purpose was twofold: to restore the church to the practice and teaching of the New Testament and, by this means, to find a basis for reuniting all Christians. Today, there are three major branches of the Stone-Campbell tradition: the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Churches of Christ, and Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. This volume brings together twenty-six essays drawn from the significant scholarship on the Stone-Campbell Movement that has flourished over the past twenty years. Reprinted from diverse scholarly journals and concentrating on historiographic issues, the essays consider such topics as the movement's origins, its influence on the presidency, its presence in Britain, and its multicultural aspects. In their introduction, Casey and Foster reveal the connections between this scholarship and larger issues of American history, religion, and culture. They note that David Edwin Harrell Jr., and Richard T. Hughes--both of whom are represented in the collection--have provided competing paradigms of the social and intellectual history of the movement: While Harrell defends the legitimacy of the sectarian "non-institutional" Churches of Christ, Hughes legitimizes the current progressive movement found in Churches of Christ. Casey and Foster propose six additional historiographic constructs as alternatives to those of Harrell and Hughes and assess each paradigm's implications for the scholarship of the movement. The first major survey of research on the Stone-Campbell movement in a quarter of a century, this book will also serve as an invaluable resource for scholars of American religious movements in general. The Editors: Michael W. Casey is professor the communication at Pepperdine University. He is the author of The Battle Over Hermeneutics in the Stone-Campbell Movement, 1800-1870 and Saddlebags, City Streets, and Cyberspace: A History of Preaching in the Churches of Christ. Douglas A. Foster is associate professor of church history and director of the Center for Restoration Studies at Abilene Christian University. He is author of Will the Cycle Be Unbroken? Churches of Christ Face the Twenty-First Century and co-author of The Crux of the Matter: Crisis, Tradition, and the Future of Churches of Christ. The Contributors: Peter Ackers, Louis Billington, Monroe Billington, Paul M. Blowers, Michael W. Casey, Anthony L. Dunnavant, David B. Eller, Philip G. A. Griffin-Allwood, Jean F. Hankins, David Edwin Harrell Jr., Nathan O. Hatch, L. Edward Hicks, Richard T. Hughes, Deryck W. Lovegrove, John L. Morrison, Russ Paden, Paul D. Phillips, William C. Ringenberg, Stephen Vaughn, Earl Irvin West, Mont Whitson, Glenn Michael Zuber.
