Mormonism: A Guide for the Perplexed explains central facets of the Mormon faith and way of life for those wishing to gain a clearer understanding of this rapidly growing world religion. As The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to grow in the United States and especially in other countries (with a total membership of over 15 million, more than 50% of which is outside the US), and as theologians and church leaders wrestle with whether Mormonism is in fact a valid expression of modern Christianity, this distinctive religious tradition has become increasingly an object of interest and inquiry. This book is the ideal companion to the study of this perplexing and often misunderstood religion. Covering historical aspects, this guide takes a careful look at the whole of Mormonism, its tenets and practices, as well as providing an insight into a Mormon life.

Vols. for 1975/76-Jan./June 1977 also include abstracts.

This new casebook fills the need for an interdisciplinary approach to law and religion. It combines a thorough academic review of religion with broad legal coverage that extends beyond the Supreme Court's First Amendment cases to other federal and state cases about a range of religious topics. In addition to chapters on Free Exercise and Establishment, the book's topics include: Individual Conscience and the State (examining conscientious objection and civil disobedience in the military, medical and legal professions); Religion and Politics; Teaching About Religion and Science (including materials about religious studies and theology as well as evolution, creation-science and intelligent design); Comparative Religious Freedom (studying the protection of religious freedom in international law as well as the recognition of religious freedom by the world¿s religious traditions); and Church Autonomy (legal disputes about torts, property and employment law). This casebook's distinguishing feature is that it addresses religion as well as law, giving students more resources to learn about the world¿s religious traditions. Just as law and economics includes economics, and law and literature studies literature, this casebook takes a similar interdisciplinary approach to show how a thorough examination of religion is vital to understanding how courts confront the wide array of issues associated with religion.

"Why," an exasperated Jonathan Edwards asked, "can't we be contented with. . . the canon of Scripture?" Edwards posed this query to the religious enthusiasts of his own generation, but he could have just as appropriately put it to people across the full expanse of early American history. In the minds of her critics, Anne Hutchinson's heresies threatened to produce "a new Bible." Ethan Allen insisted that a revelation which spoke to every circumstance of life would require "a Bible of monstrous size." When the African-American prophetess Rebecca Jackson embarked on a spiritual journey toward Shakerism, she dreamt of a home in which she could find multiple books of scripture. Orestes Brownson explained to his skeptical contemporaries that the idea drawing him to Catholicism was the prospect of an "ever enlarging volume" of inspiration. Early Americans of every color and creed repeatedly confronted the boundaries of scripture. Some fought to open the canon. Some worked to keep it closed. Sacred Borders vividly depicts the boundaries of the biblical canon as a battleground on which a diverse group of early Americans contended over their differing versions of divine truth. Puritans, deists, evangelicals, liberals, Shakers, Mormons, Catholics, Seventh-day Adventists, and Transcendentalists defended widely varying positions on how to define the borders of scripture. Carefully exploring the history of these scriptural boundary wars, Holland offers an important new take on the religious cultures of early America. He presents a colorful cast of characters-including the likes of Franklin and Emerson along with more obscure figures--who confronted the intellectual tensions surrounding the canon question, such as that between cultural authority and democratic freedom, and between timeless truth and historical change. To reconstruct these sacred borders is to gain a new understanding of the mental world in which early Americans went about their lives and created their nation.

A journal of Mormon thought.