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Mormon prophet John Taylor’s life is usually recounted as a series of anecdotes: singing hymns in Carthage Jail before a mob assassinated Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Taylor’s life spared when, according to myth, his pocketwatch stopped a bullet; his practice of polygamy, including taking a wife fifty years his junior while on the run as a fugitive from federal marshals; and his 1886 revelation that said God would not revoke the law of plural marriage, “for it is everlasting,” a revelation whose authenticity was questioned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for over a century but became the foundational text for breakaway sects continuing the practice of polygamy. Yet there was more to Taylor than his role in the martyrdom, his plural wives, his clashes with the federal government, and the legacy of fundamentalist Mormonism.

Taylor spent his first two decades in his home country of England before immigrating to Canada. His first wife, Leonora, was initially more interested when missionaries knocked on their door. But once he committed to the church, John Taylor was unflappable in his faith and zealous in his dedication. The Taylors moved from Toronto to Ohio, then to Missouri, and finally to Illinois as they followed their faith and their prophet Joseph Smith. John became an apostle in 1838 and a publisher thereafter, printing church newspapers. He followed Brigham Young to the Salt Lake Valley, where he became a prominent church and political leader for decades before finally ascending to the head of the faith in 1880.

In this timeless biography, Samuel W. Taylor weaves the threads of his grandfather’s life into a rich tapestry. Drawing on letters, speeches, diaries, and reminiscences, a well-rounded and riveting portrait of the third Mormon prophet comes into focus. A professional writer by trade, Samuel Taylor was uniquely suited to tell this story—and what a story it is.

This volume presents a penetrating interview and sixteen essays that explore key intersections of medieval religion and philosophy. With characteristic erudition and insight, RémiBrague focuses less on individual Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers than on their relationships with one another. Their disparate philosophical worlds, Brague shows, were grounded in different models of revelation that engendered divergent interpretations of the ancient Greek sources they held in common. So, despite striking similarities in their solutions for the philosophical problems they all faced, intellectuals in each theological tradition often viewed the others’ ideas with skepticism, if not disdain. Brague’s portrayal of this misunderstood age brings to life not only its philosophical and theological nuances, but also lessons for our own time.

This first biography of Selina Campbell opens a window onto the experience of women in one of the most dynamic religious groups of 19th-century America

Loretta M. Long examines the life and influence of Selina Campbell, one of the most visible women in the 19th-century Disciples of Christ movement. Best known as the wife of Alexander Campbell, founder of the Disciples, Selina Campbell both shaped and exemplified the role of women in this dynamic religious group (also known as the Stone-Campbell movement). Her story demonstrates the importance of faith in the lives of many women during this era and adds a new dimension to the concept of the “separate spheres” of men and women, which women like Campbell interpreted in the context of their religious beliefs.

A household manager, mother, writer, and friend, Campbell held sway primarily in the domestic sphere, but she was not held captive by it. Her relationship with her husband was founded on a deep sense of partnership conditioned by their strong faith in an all-powerful God. Each of them took on complementary roles according to the perceived natural abilities of their genders: Alexander depended on Selina to manage his property and raise the children while he traveled the country preaching. Campbell outlived her husband by 30 years, and during that time published several newspaper articles and supported new causes, such as women in missions.

In the end, as Long amply demonstrates, Selina Campbell was neither her husband’s shadow nor solely a domestic worker. She was, in her husband’s eyes, a full partner and a “fellow soldier” in the cause of Restoration.
 

Pehl embarks on an integrative view of working-class faith that ranges across boundaries of class, race, denomination, and time. As he shows, workers in the 1910s and 1920s practiced beliefs characterized by emotional expressiveness, alliance with supernatural forces, and incorporation of mass culture's secular diversions into the sacred. That gave way to the more pragmatic class-conscious religion cultures of the New Deal era and, from the late Thirties on, a quilt of secular working-class cultures that coexisted in competitive, though creative, tension. Finally, Pehl shows how the ideology of race eclipsed class in the 1950s and 1960s, and in so doing replaced the class-conscious with the race-conscious in religious cultures throughout the city.

An ambitiously inclusive contribution to a burgeoning field, The Making of Working-Class Religion breaks new ground in the study of solidarity and the sacred in the American heartland.

The life of Töhötöm Nagy (1908–1979), Jesuit, Mason, and secret service agent, offers fascinating insights into interwar Hungary, the Catholic Church and Vatican diplomacy, Freemasonry, and the activities of communist state security service.

As a young Jesuit Nagy was one of the leaders of a successful Catholic youth movement in interwar Hungary. After World War II he played an important role acting as an intermediary between the Vatican, the Red Army, and the Hungarian Catholic Church. After being sent to South America, he was attracted by liberation theology, but left the Society of Jesus, joined the Freemasons, and did social and philanthropic work in the slums of Buenos Aires. However, in the late 1960s he agreed to work for the Hungarian state security service in return for his repatriation. This latter period is reconstructed from the files of the Historical Archives of State Security in Budapest. Éva Petrás writes with empathy but with a sense of distance of the courage and restless energy of her subject. Her discussion of the limits of free choice and Nagy’s intense struggle to live a meaningful life make this biography breathtaking.