With over four million members, the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA) is one of the major denominations in Kenya. It was established in 1946 after the Gospel Missionary Society (GMS) from the United States of America and the Church of Scotland Mission (CSM) from Scotland merged. The two missionary societies had been working independently in central Kenya since 1898. Consequently the GMS became the only mission in Kenya that failed to leave behind its own functioning self-propagating, self-governing, and self-supporting church with links to its American mother church. The Presbyterian Church of East Africa is, therefore, a study of the missionary work of the GMS from its inception in 1895 to 1946 when it merged with the CSM in order to establish why the mission gave up the struggle to establish its own church when victory seemed imminent. The book also uses the GMS as a case study to analyze not only how Christian missions in colonial Africa struggled to win souls for Jesus Christ, but also some of the major problems that they encountered and how they tried to solve them.

The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church is a multivolume study by Hughes Oliphant Old that canvasses the history of preaching from the words of Moses at Mount Sinai through modern times. In Volume 1, The Biblical Period, Old begins his survey by discussing the roots of the Christian ministry of the Word in the worship of Israel. He then examines the preaching of Christ and the Apostles. Finally, Old looks at the development and practice of Christian preaching in the second and third centuries, concluding with the ministry of Origen.

In 1905, Westminster Press published History of the Presbyterian Churches of the World by church historian Richard Clark Reed (1851–1925). Reed’s book, intended as a textbook for college and seminary students, covered the history of churches that subscribed to Presbyterian polity from the New Testament era to the beginning of the twentieth century. Based on Reed’s original work as well as an unpublished manuscript by Presbyterian historian Thomas Hugh Spence Jr. (1899–1986), Presbyterian and Reformed Churches: A Global History picks up the story of Presbyterian and Reformed churches where the earlier works left off. In this volume, James McGoldrick revises and updates Reed’s and Spence’s original, historically relevant works, continuing the survey to the twenty-first century. Each chapter traces the history of Presbyterian and Reformed churches in individual nations and regions around the globe. The author covers the major events, leaders, and institutions influencing Presbyterian and Reformed church history in a readable style that is ideally suited for classroom study as well as for independent reading. A list of suggested additional readings concludes each chapter. Nations/regions covered: Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and other European nations Scotland, Ireland, England, and Wales United States Mexico and Central America Caribbean Basin South America Africa Middle East India Indochina and Southeast Asia China Korea, Japan, and lesser Pacific Islands

This book shows how cosmopolitan Christian converts and east African patriots struggled to define political community in the mid-twentieth century. Derek Peterson traces the history of the East African Revival, an evangelical movement that challenged patriots' effort to root people in place as inheritors of a cultural heritage.

"This book consists of autobiographic essays of Helen H. Gentry, an African American octogenarian, and the genealogy of the Gentry family. Helen's essays are extracted from a 25 year personal and family collection of documents and photographs housed in the the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library. The subjects cover: family, social, economic life; political, civil rights, cultural activities; religious participation, continuing education and travel, recreation and skiing engagements."

This volume offers a debate on the role of Christianity in post-colonial Kenya, charting the role of the church, state and society in the transformation of Kenya and the relationship between the three. It shows how the church initiated health, education, and economic activities, showing it to be a major instrument of transformation.

As its name implies, the Reformed tradition grew out of the 16th century Protestant Reformation. The Reformed churches consider themselves to be the Catholic Church reformed. The movement originated in the reform efforts of Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) of Zurich and John Calvin (1509-1564) of Geneva. Although the Reformed movement was dependent upon many Protestant leaders, it was Calvin's tireless work as a writer, preacher, teacher, and social and ecclesiastical reformer that provided a substantial body of literature and an ethos from which the Reformed tradition grew. Today, the Reformed churches are a multicultural, multiethnic, and multinational phenomenon. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Reformed Churches contains information on the major personalities, events, facts, movements, and beliefs of the Reformed churches. This is done through a list of acronyms and abbreviations, a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, a bibliography, and over 800 cross-referenced dictionary entries on leaders, personalities, events, facts, movements, and beliefs of the Reformed churches.

DIVThis briskly told history of Reformed Protestantism takes these churches through their entire 500-year history—from sixteenth-century Zurich and Geneva to modern locations as far flung as Seoul and São Paulo. D. G. Hart explores specifically the social and political developments that enabled Calvinism to establish a global presence./divDIV /divDIVHart’s approach features significant episodes in the institutional history of Calvinism that are responsible for its contemporary profile. He traces the political and religious circumstances that first created space for Reformed churches in Europe and later contributed to Calvinism’s expansion around the world. He discusses the effects of the American and French Revolutions on ecclesiastical establishments as well as nineteenth- and twentieth-century communions, particularly in Scotland, the Netherlands, the United States, and Germany, that directly challenged church dependence on the state. Raising important questions about secularization, religious freedom, privatization of faith, and the place of religion in public life, this book will appeal not only to readers with interests in the history of religion but also in the role of religion in political and social life today./div

Presbyterianism emerged during the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. It spread from the British Isles to North America in the early eighteenth century. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Presbyterian denominations grew throughout the world. Today, there are an estimated 35 million Presbyterians in dozens of countries. The Oxford Handbook of Presbyterianism provides a state of the art reference tool written by leading scholars in the fields of religious studies and history. These thirty five articles cover major facets of Presbyterian history, theological beliefs, worship practices, ecclesiastical forms and structures, as well as important ethical, political, and educational issues. Eschewing parochial and sectarian triumphalism, prominent scholars address their particular topics objectively and judiciously.