From the urbanization of the Gilded Age to the upheavals of the Haight-Ashbury era, this encyclopedic work by Glenn Miller takes readers on a sweeping journey through the landscape of American theological education, highlighting such landmarks as Princeton, Andover, and Chicago, and such fault lines as denominationalism, science, and dispensationalism. The first such exhaustive treatment of this time period in religious education, Piety and Profession is a valuable tool for unearthing the key trends from the Civil War well into the twentieth century. All those involved in theological education will be well served by this study of how the changing world changed educational patterns.

I began studying American theological education in the 1970s, and Piety and Plurality is the third of three studies. In Piety and Intellect, I examined the colonial and nineteenth-century search for a form of theological education that was true to the church's confessional traditions and responsible to the intellectual demands of the age. In Piety and Profession, I described how that model was modified under the impact of the new biblical criticism and by the American belief in professionalism. In this volume, I have tried to bring the story up to date. Unfortunately, I did not find one unifying theme for the period. Rather, theological education seemed to move forward on a number of different levels, each with its own story. Here I have tried to capture some of the dynamics of this movement and to indicate how theological educators have struggled with the plurality in their midst. In the process, theological education has learned to live with its contradictions and problems. As important as the stories are, however, there is also the story of the schools' struggles to live in the midst of a constant financial crisis that checked development at every stage.

Ten papers selected from the 1987 Winchester Conference explore the rise of new professionals and the accumulation of wealth that eventually allowed the competent upstarts to join the peerage. No subject index. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

For Christians who are struggling to understand what it means to be pious and how to embrace the classic Christian practices of piety, Thank, Praise, Serve, and Obey shows that acts of piety are not simply rules to keep in order to be a "good" Christian, but how the new life in Christ is lived out in day-to-day life.