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Randall Balmer, an evangelical Christian and a historian of American religion, deftly combines ethnographic research, theological reflections, and historical context to examine the nature of the Religious Right today-and offers a rallying cry for liberal Christians to reclaim the noble traditions of their faith.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49546249797905,"sku":"GOR007172974","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49790295802129,"sku":"CIN0465005209G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49916411478289,"sku":"CIN0465005209A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51694010335505,"sku":"CIN0465005209VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52665627607313,"sku":"NLS9780465005208","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0465005209.jpg?v=1750814631"},{"product_id":"making-of-evangelicalism-book-randall-balmer-9781602582439","title":"The Making of Evangelicalism","description":"With impressively clear prose and a superb command of history, best-selling author Randall Balmer offers a spirited history of evangelical Christianity in the United States. Effortlessly situating developments in evangelicalism in their wider historical context, he demonstrates the ways American social and cultural settings influenced the course of the evangelical tradition. By revealing the four key moments in the movement's history, he ably demonstrates how American Evangelicalism is truly American. Concluding with a manifesto directing where evangelicalism must go from here forth, Balmer's  The Making of Evangelicalism will interest every readeraevangelical, mainline, secularawho wants to better understand evangelicals today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49710030848273,"sku":"CIN1602582432G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50936788222225,"sku":"CIN1602582432VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1602582432.jpg?v=1751057040"},{"product_id":"solemn-reverence-book-randall-balmer-9781586422714","title":"Solemn Reverence","description":"Solemn Reverence vividly portrays both the history of the separation of church and state and the various attempts to undermine that wall of separation. Despite the fact that the First Amendment and the separation of church and state has served the nation remarkably well, Balmer shows that previous episodes and ongoing efforts indicate its future is by no means assured.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49740073926929,"sku":"NGR9781586422714","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49943284646161,"sku":"CIN1586422715G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52510737236241,"sku":"NIN9781586422714","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1586422715.jpg?v=1751432719"},{"product_id":"bad-faith-book-randall-balmer-9780802879349","title":"Bad Faith","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eA surprising and disturbing origin story\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere is a commonly accepted story about the rise of the Religious Right in the United States. It goes like this: with righteous fury, American evangelicals entered the political arena as a unified front to fight the legality of abortion after the Supreme Court's 1973 \u003ci\u003eRoe v. Wade\u003c\/i\u003e decision. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe problem is this story simply isn't true. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLargely ambivalent about abortion until the late 1970s, evangelical leaders were first mobilized not by \u003ci\u003eRoe v. Wade \u003c\/i\u003ebut by \u003ci\u003eGreen v. Connally\u003c\/i\u003e, a lesser-known court decision in 1971 that threatened the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory institutions--of which there were several in the world of Christian education at the time. When the most notorious of these schools, Bob Jones University, had its tax-exempt status revoked in 1976, evangelicalism was galvanized as a political force and brought into the fold of the Republican Party. Only later, when a more palatable issue was needed to cover for what was becoming an increasingly unpopular position following the civil rights era, was the moral crusade against abortion made the central issue of the movement now known as the Religious Right. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this greatly expanded argument from his 2014 \u003ci\u003ePolitico \u003c\/i\u003earticle The Real Origins of the Religious Right, Randall Balmer guides the reader along the convoluted historical trajectory that began with American evangelicalism as a progressive force opposed to slavery, then later an isolated apolitical movement in the mid-twentieth century, all the way through the 2016 election in which 81 percent of white evangelicals coalesced around Donald Trump for president. The pivotal point, Balmer shows, was the period in the late 1970s when American evangelicals turned against Jimmy Carter--despite his being one of their own, a professed born-again Christian--in favor of the Republican Party, which found it could win their loyalty through the espousal of a single issue. With the implications of this alliance still unfolding, Balmer's account uncovers the roots of evangelical watchwords like religious freedom and family values while getting to the truth of how this movement began--explaining, in part, what it has become.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742185398545,"sku":"NGR9780802879349","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49858774237457,"sku":"CIN0802879349VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49870356414737,"sku":"CIN0802879349G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51414710321425,"sku":"NIN9780802879349","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51824766451985,"sku":"GOR014413518","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0802879349.jpg?v=1751107968"},{"product_id":"god-in-the-white-house-book-randall-balmer-9780060734053","title":"God in the White House","description":"\u003cp\u003eAmericans were once content to disregard religion as a criterion for voting. But today's voters have come to expect candidates to fully reveal their personal relationship to the Almighty. In God in the White House, Historian Randall Balmer takes us on a tour of presidential religiosity in the last half of the twentieth century - from Kennedy's 1960 speech that proposed an almost absolute wall between American political and religious life to George W. Bush's overt Christian messages. God in the White House explores the paradox of Americans' expectation that presidents should simultaneously trumpet their religious views and relationship to God while supporting the separation of church and state.\u003c\/p\u003e Randall Balmer is professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University, and visiting professor at Yale University Divinity School. He is editor-at-large for Christianity Today, and his commentaries on religion in America have appeared in Sojourners, The Nation, the New York Times, and in newspapers across the country. 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Although he stumbled early in his career,courting segregationists during his second campaign for Georgia governor,Carter's run for president marked a return to the progressive principles of his faith and helped reenergize the evangelical movement. Responding to his message of racial justice, women's rights, and concern for the plight of the poor, evangelicals across the country helped propel Carter to office. Yet four years later, those very same voters abandoned him for Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. Carter's defeat signaled the eclipse of progressive evangelicalism and the rise of the Religious Right, which popularized a dramatically different understanding of the faith, one rooted in nationalism, individualism, and free-market capitalism.An illuminating biography of our 39th president,  Redeemer  presents Jimmy Carter as the last great standard-bearer of an important strand of American Christianity, and provides an original and riveting account of the moments that transformed our political landscape in the 1970s and 1980s.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49918884380945,"sku":"CIN0465029582G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50490995802385,"sku":"CIN0465029582VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51609022955793,"sku":"GOR007031826","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52328858812689,"sku":"GOR014505865","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0465029582.jpg?v=1751447008"},{"product_id":"perfect-babel-of-confusion-book-randall-balmer-9780195152654","title":"A Perfect Babel of Confusion","description":"Examining the interaction of the Dutch and the English in colonial New York and New Jersey, this study charts the decline of European culture in North America. 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A Perfect Babel of Confusion redresses some of the historiographical neglect of the Middle Colonies and, in the process, sheds new light on Dutch colonial culture.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49937710547217,"sku":"CIN0195152654G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50230942925073,"sku":"GOR013893999","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50345464037649,"sku":"CIN0195152654A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52139066392849,"sku":"NLS9780195152654","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53621508604177,"sku":"CIN0195152654VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195152654.jpg?v=1751005783"},{"product_id":"grant-us-courage-book-randall-balmer-9780195100860","title":"Grant Us Courage","description":"In 1950, Christian Century ran a series of articles on twelve churches, some large, some small, each representing a strand of American mainline Protestantism. Now, nearly fifty years later, Randall Balmer--author and host of Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, the acclaimed book and PBS series on American evangelicism--has revisited each of these twelve churches to take the pulse of Protestantism today. The result is a remarkable narrative, graced with touches of local color and memorable portraits of the people involved, and filled with deft observations and carefully nuanced insights about Protestantism at century's end. Much as he did in Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, Balmer crisscrosses America to give us a first-hand look at how Christianity has fared in the last half-century. What emerges is a church challenged by diminished influence, but with signs of hope for the future. For instance, he takes us to West Hartford, Connecticut, where we learn how a gregarious pastor, Bob Heppenstall, rekindled the spirit of the First Church of Christ Congregational--still housed in its stately, classic New England meetinghouse--that had suffered from inept management until recent years. And in Ames, Iowa, at the Collegiate United Methodist Church, we watch George White struggle to regain his church's once dominant voice in the religious life of the town, a voice now dimmed by the growth of fundamentalism. Some churches have held steadfastly to long-established roles, such as the Washington Prairie Lutheran Church, in Decorah, Iowa, which has been a model of continuity, serving its Norwegian-American community in much the same way since it was founded in 1851. And Balmer also visits some thriving churches, such as Hollywood's First Presbyterian Church, led by the great preacher John Lloyd Ogilvie, who was recently appointed chaplain of the U.S. Senate. In Minneapolis, Balmer encounters Mount Olivet Lutheran Church, a congregation that has not only increased its membership, but can now call itself the biggest Lutheran church in the world. In Grant Us Courage, one of our most thoughtful chroniclers of the American scene offers an intimate look at mainline Protestantism at the close of the century. 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Originally published twenty-five years ago and the basis for an award-winning PBS documentary, this timely new edition arrives just as recent elections have left an ever-growing number of secular Americans wondering exactly how the other half thinks. From Oregon to Florida, and from Texas to North Dakota, Balmer offers an immensely readable tour of the highways and byways of American evangelicalism. We visit a revival meeting in Florida, an Indian reservation in the Dakotas, a trade show for Christian booksellers, and a fundamentalist Bible camp in the Adirondacks. For this 25th-Anniversary edition, Balmer adds a new chapter and an Afterword. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory offers readers a genuine insight into the appeal that the evangelicals movement holds for thousands of Americans.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50056225325329,"sku":"CIN0199360464G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50183659454737,"sku":"CIN0199360464VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51000206426385,"sku":"NIN9780199360468","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52654724120849,"sku":"NLS9780199360468","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0199360464.jpg?v=1751290840"},{"product_id":"evangelicals-and-presidential-politics-book-randall-balmer-9780807174340","title":"Evangelicals and Presidential Politics","description":"Using as their starting point a 1976 Newsweek cover story on the emerging politicization of evangelical Christians, contributors to this collection engage the scholarly literature on evangelicalism from a variety of angles to offer new answers to persisting questions about the movement. The standard historical narrative describes the period between the 1925 Scopes Trial and the early 1970s as a silent one for evangelicals, and when they did re-engage in the political arena, it was over abortion. Randall J. Stephens and Randall Balmer challenge that narrative. Stephens moves the starting point earlier in the twentieth century, and Balmer concludes that race, not abortion, initially motivated activists. In his examination of the relationship between African Americans and evangelicalism, Dan Wells uses the Newsweek story's sidebar on black activist and born-again Christian Eldridge Cleaver to illuminate the former Black Panther's uneasy association with white evangelicals.    Daniel K. Williams, Allison Vander Broek, and J. Brooks Flippen explore the tie between evangelicals and the anti-abortion movement as well as the political ramifications of their anti-abortion stance. The election of 1976 helped to politicize abortion, which both encouraged a realignment of alliances and altered evangelicals' expectations for candidates, developments that continue into the twenty-first century. Also in 1976, Foy Valentine, leader of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, endeavored to distinguish the South's brand of Protestant Christianity from the evangelicalism described by Newsweek. Nevertheless, Southern Baptists quickly became associated with the evangelicalism of the Religious Right and the South's shift to the Republican Party.   Jeff Frederick discusses evangelicals' politicization from the 1970s into the twenty-first century, suggesting that southern religiosity has suffered as southern evangelicals surrendered their authenticity and adopted a moral relativism that they criticized in others. R. Ward Holder and Hannah Dick examine political evangelicalism in the wake of Donald Trump's election. Holder lays bare the compromises that many Southern Baptists had to make to justify their support for Trump, who did not share their religious or moral values. Hannah Dick focuses on media coverage of Trump's 2016 campaign and contends that major news outlets misunderstood the relationship between Trump and evangelicals, and between evangelicals and politics in general. 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Jon Butler begins by describing the state of religious affairs in both the Old and New Worlds on the eve of colonization. He traces the progress of religion in the colonies through the time of the American Revolution, covering all the religious groups in the colonies: Protestants, Jews, Catholics, as well as the unique religious experiences of Native Americans and African Americans Grant Wacker continues the story with a fascinating look at the ever-shifting religious landscape of 19th-century America. He focuses on the rapid growth of evangelical Protestants-Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and others-and their competition for dominance over religions such as Catholicism and Judaism, which continued to increase with large immigrant arrivals from Ireland, Eastern Europe, and other countries. The 20th century saw massive cultural changes. Randall Balmer discusses the effects industrialization, modernization, and secularization had on new and established religions. He examines Protestants, Hindus, Jews, New Age believers, Mormons, Buddhists, Roman Catholics, and many more, providing a clear look into the kaleidoscope of religious belief in modern-day America","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50061441532177,"sku":"CIN0195158245A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50627448013073,"sku":"CIN0195158245VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50796862275857,"sku":"CIN0195158245G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195158245.jpg?v=1776766953"},{"product_id":"passion-plays-book-randall-balmer-9781469670065","title":"Passion Plays","description":"Randall Balmer was a late convert to sports talk radio, but he quickly became addicted, just like millions of other devoted American sports fans. As a historian of religion, the more he listened, Balmer couldn't help but wonder how the fervor he heard related to religious practice. Houses of worship once railed against Sabbath-busting sports events, but today most willingly accommodate Super Bowl Sunday. On the other hand, basketball's inventor, James Naismith, was an ardent follower of Muscular Christianity and believed the game would help develop religious character. But today those religious roots are largely forgotten.  Here one of our most insightful writers on American religion trains his focus on that other great passion—team sports—to reveal their surprising connections. From baseball to basketball and football to ice hockey, Balmer explores the origins and histories of big-time sports from the late nineteenth century to the present, with entertaining anecdotes and fresh insights into their ties to religious life. Referring to Notre Dame football, The Catholic Sun called its fandom \"a kind of sacramental.\" Legions of sports fans reading Passion Plays will recognize exactly what that means.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50096089891089,"sku":"CIN1469670062G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50096095232273,"sku":"CIN1469670062VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51028067975441,"sku":"NIN9781469670065","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1469670062.jpg?v=1763482033"},{"product_id":"god-in-the-white-house-book-randall-balmer-9780060872588","title":"God In The White House","description":"\u003cp\u003eAmericans were once content to disregard religion as a criterion for voting. But today's voters have come to expect candidates to fully reveal their personal relationship to the Almighty. In God in the White House, Historian Randall Balmer takes us on a tour of presidential religiosity in the last half of the twentieth century - from Kennedy's 1960 speech that proposed an almost absolute wall between American political and religious life to George W. Bush's overt Christian messages. God in the White House explores the paradox of Americans' expectation that presidents should simultaneously trumpet their religious views and relationship to God while supporting the separation of church and state.\u003c\/p\u003e Randall Balmer is professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University, and visiting professor at Yale University Divinity School. He is editor-at-large for Christianity Today, and his commentaries on religion in America have appeared in Sojourners, The Nation, the New York Times, and in newspapers across the country. He regularly appears on television and radio to discuss contemporary religious issues in America. His books include Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical's Lament and Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, which was made into a three-part documentary for PBS. 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