In colorful detail, Calvin Lane explores the dynamic intersection between reform movements and everyday Christian practice from ca. 1000 to ca. 1800. Lowering the artificial boundaries between “the Middle Ages,” “the Reformation,” and “the Enlightenment,” Lane brings to life a series of reform programs each of which developed new sensibilities about what it meant to live the Christian life. Along this tour, Lane discusses music, art, pilgrimage, relics, architecture, heresy, martyrdom, patterns of personal prayer, changes in marriage and family life, connections between church bodies and governing authorities, and certainly worship. The thread that he finds running from the Benedictine revival in the eleventh century to the pietistic movements of the eighteenth is a passionate desire to return to a primitive era of Christianity, a time of imagined apostolic authenticity, even purity. In accessible language, he introduces readers to Cistercians and Calvinists, Franciscans and Jesuits, Lutherans and Jansenists, Moravians and Methodists to name but a few of the many reform movements studied in this book. Although Lane highlights their diversity, he argues that each movement rooted its characteristic practice – their spirituality – in an imaginative recovery of the apostolic life.

Carson calls believers to revolt against superficiality and find again the deeper knowledge of God at Paul's school of prayer. Strong expositional study.

Author note: Ronald C. White, Jr. is Chaplain and Assistant Professor of Religion at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington. >P>C. Howard Hopkins is Professor of History Emeritus at Rider College and Director of the John R. Mott Biography Project. He is the author of The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism.

Laypeople have a special mission in the church the way they have a special mission in society. In popular devotions the laity created a form of spirituality that lasted for over a millennium. Popular religiosity is alive in Latin America and in US ethnic subcultures. Vatican II redirected lay spirituality toward the liturgy as “the source and summit.” We will visit a parish where this ideal is put into practice, but in the wider church the role of the laity came to be restricted to ecclesial ministries. There are at least four new forms of spirituality in the making. I will first describe a vibrant evangelical church attended by many former Catholics. Next, we will visit a Guatemalan parish where over a thousand parishioners meet weekly in homes and witness to the gospel in their neighborhoods. The charismatic renewal is a major force of renewal in Latin America and among US Latinos. Finally, the spirituality of social justice is alive and well in south Chicago. In sum, this book will introduce you to six or seven major forms of spirituality alive today. Each of them defines a special place and mission for the laity in the church.

Calvin Lane explores the intersection between reform movements and everyday Christian practice from c.1000 to c.1800. Providing colorful details, Lane lowers the artificial boundaries between "the Middle Ages" and "the Reformation" to show a series of reform programs each of which hoped to revive an imagined primitive Golden Age.

In Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, McLoughlin draws on psychohistory, sociology, and anthropology to examine the relationship between America's five great religious awakenings and their influence on five great movements for social reform in the United States. He finds that awakenings (and the revivals that are part of them) are periods of revitalization born in times of cultural stress and eventuating in drastic social reform. Awakenings are thus the means by which a people or nation creates and sustains its identity in a changing world. "This book is sensitive, thought-provoking and stimulating. It is 'must' reading for those interested in awakenings, and even though some may not revise their views as a result of McLoughlin's suggestive outline, none can remain unmoved by the insights he has provided on the subject."—Christian Century "This is one of the best books I have read all year. Professor McLoughlin has again given us a profound analysis of our culture in the midst of revivalistic trends."—Review and Expositor

Others offered programs of physiological and spiritual self-reform: phrenology, vegetarianism, the water-cure, spiritualism, and miscellaneous others. "Even the insect world was to be defended," Emerson mused, "and a society for the protection of ground-worms, slugs, and mosquitoes was to be incorporated without delay.".