It is winter, somewhere in the United Kingdom, and an eight-year-old boy is removed from his home and family in the middle of the night. He learns that he is the victim of an extraordinary experiment. In an attempt to reform society, the government has divided the population into four groups, each representing a different personality type. The land, too, has been divided into quarters. Borders have been established, reinforced by concrete walls, armed guards and rolls of razor wire. Plunged headlong into this brave new world, the boy tries to make the best of things, unaware that ahead of him lies a truly explosive moment, a revelation that will challenge everything he believes in and will, in the end, put his very life in jeopardy ...

A Kingdom Divided uncovers how evangelical Christians in the border states influenced debates about slavery, morality, and politics from the 1830s to the 1890s. Using little-studied events and surprising incidents from the region, April E. Holm argues that evangelicals on the border powerfully shaped the regional structure of American religion in the Civil War era. In the decades before the Civil War, the three largest evangelical denominations diverged sharply over the sinfulness of slavery. This division generated tremendous local conflict in the border region, where individual churches had to define themselves as being either northern or southern. In response, many border evangelicals drew upon the “doctrine of spirituality,” which dictated that churches should abstain from all political debate. Proponents of this doctrine defined slavery as a purely political issue, rather than a moral one, and the wartime arrival of secular authorities who demanded loyalty to the Union only intensified this commitment to “spirituality.” Holm contends that these churches’ insistence that politics and religion were separate spheres was instrumental in the development of the ideal of the nonpolitical southern church. After the Civil War, southern churches adopted both the disaffected churches from border states and their doctrine of spirituality, claiming it as their own and using it to supply a theological basis for remaining divided after the abolition of slavery. By the late nineteenth century, evangelicals were more sectionally divided than they had been at war’s end. In A Kingdom Divided, Holm provides the first analysis of the crucial role of churches in border states in shaping antebellum divisions in the major evangelical denominations, in navigating the relationship between church and the federal government, and in rewriting denominational histories to forestall reunion in the churches. Offering a new perspective on nineteenth-century sectionalism, it highlights how religion, morality, and politics interacted—often in unexpected ways—in a time of political crisis and war.

“In his detailed study of Daniel 11, the author seeks to extend the thematic parallelism between Daniel 2, 7, 8 and 9 to Daniel 10–12. Drawing on well-established Adventist principles of interpretation and insights on Daniel 11 from the Spirit of Prophecy, the author proposes that Daniel 11 follows the well-established sequence of historical powers outlined in Daniel 2, 7 & 8. He argues that the common Adventist interpretation in which the narrative moves forward in time to the crucifixion in v. 22, only to then move back in time to the Maccabean alliance is without exegetical basis nor interpretive precedent within Daniel. “The author then provides a new interpretation of Daniel 11.23–29, arguing that this particular passage with its confrontation between the Kings of the North and the South represents the conflicts between the two competing and persecuting unions of church and state that followed imperial Rome, i.e. Papal Rome and Byzantium. This transition from imperial to papal Rome, and to a persecuting union of church and state in Daniel 11.23–29 mirrors the same sequencing of powers found in Daniel 2, 7 & 8. The author then moves to a commonly-held Adventist interpretation (particularly from the time of Louis Were onwards) for vv. 36–39, arguing that these verses represent the full flowering of papal arrogance and supremacy prior to the ending of the 1,260 year prophecy. Particularly insightful is how the author sequences verses 23–39 against the flow of chapters in The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan by Ellen G. White. “The author arrives at v. 40, interpreting (as do many Adventist interpreters) the time of the end as beginning at the end of the 1,260 year prophecy, i.e. in AD 1798, but the author does not provide a detailed analysis of the conflict between the Kings of the North or the South in vv. 40–45. While the identity of the KON is clear (papal Rome, backed by the military might of the West in general and the USA in particular), the identity of the KOS remains more obscure, although the author does indicate provisional backing for the atheism interpretation held commonly among Adventists since the writings of Louis Were and Dr. Hans LaRondelle. Detailed appendices provide helpful interpretive information to guide the reader in further study. “Throughout the book, the author seeks to follow well-established Adventist principles of interpretation (which he helpfully outlines early on) and a brief but detailed analysis of the commentary found in the Spirit of Prophecy. He builds his case on the well-established portrayal of a persecuting union of church and state that would arise after pagan Rome in Daniel 2, 7 & 8. This approach lends credibility to the conclusions relating to the identities of the KON and the KOS in 11.23–39. Further work is required however to identify how and if the KOS in vv.40–45 is also a persecuting union of church of state, or a secular equivalent, if the well-established patterns found earlier in Daniel are to be continued throughout Daniel 11. This book is a welcome and insightful addition to the ongoing prayerful reflection on this critical portion of eschatological prophecy within the wider SDA community.” —Dr. Conrad Vine, President, Adventist Frontier Missions, Inc.

A clear, comprehensive survey of British history from 1900 to the present, integrating political, economic, social and cultural history.

For Ireland the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were an era marked by war, economic transformation, and the making and remaking of identities. By the 1630s the era of wars of conquest seemed firmly in the past. But the British civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century fractured both Protestant and Catholic Ireland along lines defined by different combinations of religious and political allegiance. Later, after 1688, Ireland became the battlefield for what was otherwise Britain's bloodless (and so Glorious) Revolution. The eighteenth century, by contrast, was a period of peace, permitting Ireland to emerge, first as a dynamic actor in the growing Atlantic economy, then as the breadbasket for industrialising Britain. But at the end of the century, against a background of international revolution, new forms of religious and political conflict came together to produce another period of multi-sided conflict. The Act of Union, hastily introduced in the aftermath of civil war, ensured that Ireland entered the nineteenth century still divided, but no longer a kingdom.

Sir Martin Gilbert, renowned author of many authoritative works of history and biography, speaks in a charming, personal voice in this fascinating volume, the saga of five thousand years of Jewish life laid out in a series of intimate, storytelling letters to a lifelong friend. Sir Martin first met “Auntie Fori” in 1958,when he arrived in New Delhi with a letter of introduction from her son, a fellow Oxford student. Their friendship flourished for forty years through correspondence and visits to the capitals where her husband, the diplomat B. K. Nehru, was posted. Then, at her ninetieth birthday celebration in 1998, Auntie Fori told her “adopted nephew” that she was not of Indian birth but was actually Hungarian–and Jewish. She did not know what this Jewish identity involved–historically or spiritually–and she asked him to enlighten her. In response, Sir Martin embarked on the series of letters that have been gathered to form this book, shaping each one as a concise, individually formed story. He presents Jewish history as the narrative expression–the timeline–of the Jewish faith, and the faith as it is informed by the history. Starting with Adam and Eve, he then brings us to Abraham and his descendants, who worshiped a God who repeatedly, and often dramatically, intervened in their lives. The stories of Genesis and Exodus lead seamlessly on to those of the eras when the land was ruled by the Israelite kings and then by Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome–the Biblical and post-Biblical periods. In Sir Martin’s hands, these stories are rich in incident and achievement. He then traces the long history of the Jews in the Diaspora, ending with an unexpected visit to an outpost of Jewry in Anchorage, Alaska. Ranging through almost every country in the world–including China and India–he maintains a chronological structure, weaving in the history of other peoples and faiths, to give Auntie Fori–and us–a sense of the larger stage on which Jewish history has played out. The last fifty letters are devoted to an explanation of Jewish faith and worship, intertwined with the history and observance of holy days and festivals. These letters are fascinating in their objectivity and at the same time infused with a deep personal warmth. Written for one beloved friend,Letters to Auntie Foribrings to life the events and sequence of Jewish history with a special charm that will endear this volume to readers old and young.