This book studies the interaction of the European, Turkish, and Palestinian natives for a forty-two year period, just prior to when the great Jewish immigration to Palestine began. It examines the interplay between the native Palestinian population, the essentially foreign Turkish government imposed on them, and the aggressive ambitions of Christian nations represented by their consuls. Most important of all, 1838 marks the first year in which the Turks recognized the right of foreign non-Moslems to lease property for permanent residence in a city sacred to Islam. It was to be another twelve years before the purchase of property by foreign infidels became possible at the Holy City. It was to be a full twenty years before the Turks codified a Land Registry Law in 1858. Nevertheless, the mere beginning of permanent residence at Jerusalem for foreign Jews and Christians makes 1838 a milestone year. It is, therefore, important for any study of what is today modern Israel to examine the years 1838-1880. Those crucial forty-two years form the unique and essential incubative time period without which Zionism could never have prospered in Zion.

From the late nineteenth century through the post-Holocaust era, the world was divided between countries that tried to expel their Jewish populations and those that refused to let them in. The plight of these traumatized refugees inspired numerous proposals for Jewish states. Jews and Christians, authors and adventurers, politicians and playwrights, and rabbis and revolutionaries all worked to carve out autonomous Jewish territories in remote and often hostile locations across the globe. The would-be founding fathers of these imaginary Zions dispatched scientific expeditions to far-flung regions and filed reports on the dream states they planned to create. But only Israel emerged from dream to reality. Israel’s successful foundation has long obscured the fact that eminent Jewish figures, including Zionism’s prophet, Theodor Herzl, seriously considered establishing enclaves beyond the Middle East. In the Shadow of Zion brings to life the amazing true stories of six exotic visions of a Jewish national home outside of the biblical land of Israel. It is the only book to detail the connections between these schemes, which in turn explain the trajectory of modern Zionism. A gripping narrative drawn from archives the world over, In the Shadow of Zion recovers the mostly forgotten history of the Jewish territorialist movement, and the stories of the fascinating but now obscure figures who championed it. Provocative, thoroughly researched, and written to appeal to a broad audience, In the Shadow of Zion offers a timely perspective on Jewish power and powerlessness. Visit the author's website: http://www.adamrovner.com/.

Explores the roots of evangelical Christian support for Israel through an examination of the Southern Baptist Convention One week after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) repeatedly and overwhelmingly voted down resolutions congratulating fellow Southern Baptist Harry Truman on his role in Israel’s creation. From today’s perspective, this seems like a shocking result. After all, Christians—particularly the white evangelical Protestants who populate the SBC—are now the largest pro-Israel constituency in the United States. How could conservative evangelicals have been so hesitant in celebrating Israel’s birth in 1948? How did they then come to be so supportive? Between Dixie and Zion: Southern Baptists and Palestine before Israel addresses these issues by exploring how Southern Baptists engaged what was called the “Palestine question”: whether Jews or Arabs would, or should, control the Holy Land after World War I. Walker Robins argues that, in the decades leading up to the creation of Israel, most Southern Baptists did not directly engage the Palestine question politically. Rather, they engaged it indirectly through a variety of encounters with the land, the peoples, and the politics of Palestine. Among the instrumental figures featured by Robins are tourists, foreign missionaries, Arab pastors, converts from Judaism, biblical interpreters, fundamentalist rebels, editorialists, and, of course, even a president. While all revered Palestine as the Holy Land, each approached and encountered the region according to their own priorities. Nevertheless, Robins shows that Baptists consistently looked at the region through an Orientalist framework, broadly associating the Zionist movement with Western civilization, modernity, and progress over and against the Arabs, whom they viewed as uncivilized, premodern, and backward. He argues that such impressions were not idle—they suggested that the Zionists were bringing to fruition Baptists’ long-expressed hopes that Israel would regain the prosperity it had held in the biblical era, the Holy Land would one day be revived, and biblical prophecies preceding the return of Christ would be fulfilled.

The conversion of African-born slaves and their descendants to Protestant Christianity marked one of the most important social and intellectual transformations in American history. Come Shouting to Zion is the first comprehensive exploration of the processes by which this remarkable transition occurred. Using an extraordinary array of archival sources, Sylvia Frey and Betty Wood chart the course of religious conversion from the transference of traditional African religions to the New World through the growth of Protestant Christianity in the American South and British Caribbean up to 1830. Come Shouting to Zion depicts religious transformation as a complex reciprocal movement involving black and white Christians. It highlights the role of African American preachers in the conversion process and demonstrates the extent to which African American women were responsible for developing distinctive ritual patterns of worship and divergent moral values within the black spiritual community. Finally, the book sheds light on the ways in which, by serving as a channel for the assimilation of Western culture into the slave quarters, Protestant Christianity helped transform Africans into African Americans.

Though young in the Church, the Scandinavian Saints of the seventh handcart company left their farms and shops to follow the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. They taught His gospel throughout Denmark, Norway, and Sweden where they were beaten by mobs, jailed, and survived on diets of bread and water; they, like Peter and John, were grateful to be counted worthy to suffer in Jesus' name. But the trek west would stretch this group of farmers and artisans further still, as they placed their all on the altar of sacrifice in their quest for Zion. the members of the 7th Company were ordinary people who by virtue of their faith in the gospel became remarkable people who accomplished extraordinary things. This is their story.

DIV A wide-ranging exploration of early Americans’ use of the Old Testament for political purposes /div

Just South of Zion assembles new scholarship on the first century of Mormon history in Mexico, from 1847 to 1947.