Holy Jumpers: Evangelicals and Radicals in Progressive Era America (Religion in America)

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This Cambridge Companion offers a general, comprehensive introduction to various forms of American Methodism, including the African-American, German Evangelical Pietist, holiness and Methodist Episcopal traditions.

The first person he encountered was a young woman who made her opinion known to him by raising her arm as she drove by in her truck and gesturing confidently with the middle finger on her left hand. Kostlevy wonders if the speaking had actually plateaued at that time and if, in effect, the addition of the new MCA worshipers rekindled the fire that would not stop until the whole world was ablaze with Pentecostalism.In this groundbreaking book, William Kostlevy presents a fascinating study of the Metropolitan Church Association (MCA), a religious community founded in Chicago in the early 1890s. I want to mention also after last week that God's Bible School is alive and well, probably doing better than it ever has. At 6:30 on a cold Sunday morning in November 1989, Mike Sawyer, a Master of Divinity student at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, set out to walk the twelve miles that lay between the room he shared with his wife and two sons and the church he had been assigned to serve in the Bowling Green District of the United Methodist Church. They come across as the sane holiness denomination and one of the fastest growing Protestant churches of the day. Through a close reading of the Herskovitses’ field notes, rather than indifference to connections with Africa, this article tries to flesh out what people were interested in, and what was at stake in emphasizing or marginalizing differences, similarities, or connections between religions (African or otherwise) given who was speaking to whom in what context.

Known as "Burning Bushers," its members objected to capitalism, confronted "elite" denominations, and offered an alternative, radical vision of Christianity.This insightful, carefully-crafted volume significantly enhances our understanding of American religion, as it has been and as it is, as well as its influences around the world. He patiently recorded the events and presents them as a tribute to the men and women who were instruments of God as He carried out His pre-determined plan. When the Iranian Revolution erupted in 1978, few analysts suspected that it would become the first mass-based, religiously motivated revolution to succeed since the English Revolution of the seventeenth century.

Uniforms and slumwear allowed members, especially women, access to otherwise off-limits urban environments, prompting critics to question members’ motivations. Thus, while radical religionists like Robert Ingersoll, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Eugene Debs were secular-minded thinkers who sought to purge Christianity of its supernatural dimensions, they believed the religious imagination that enabled modern-day radicals to make common cause with an ancient peasant from Galilee was something wonderful.Interestingly enough, both the holiness movement and the MCA intersect with its beginnings (see also Don Dayton's work here). But family members saw these evangelists as preying on old people and trying to take their farms away from them. Knapp's own son, along with other donors, would take the school to court over financial misappropriation.