During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the global Mennonite church developed an uneasy relationship with Germany. Despite the religion's origins in the Swiss and Dutch Reformation, as well as its longstanding pacifism, tens of thousands of members embraced militarist German nationalism. Chosen Nation is a sweeping history of this encounter and the debates it sparked among parliaments, dictatorships, and congregations across Eurasia and the Americas. Offering a multifaceted perspective on nationalism's emergence in Europe and around the world, Benjamin Goossen demonstrates how Mennonites' nationalization reflected and reshaped their faith convictions. While some church leaders modified German identity along Mennonite lines, others appropriated nationalism wholesale, advocating a specifically Mennonite version of nationhood. Examining sources from Poland to Paraguay, Goossen shows how patriotic loyalties rose and fell with religious affiliation. Individuals might claim to be German at one moment but Mennonite the next. Some external parties encouraged separatism, as when the Weimar Republic helped establish an autonomous "Mennonite State" in Latin America. Still others treated Mennonites as quintessentially German; under Hitler's Third Reich, entire colonies benefited from racial warfare and genocide in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. Whether choosing Germany as a national homeland or identifying as a chosen people, called and elected by God, Mennonites committed to collective action in ways that were intricate, fluid, and always surprising. The first book to place Christianity and diaspora at the heart of nationality studies, Chosen Nation illuminates the rising religious nationalism of our own age.

Six myths lie at the heart of the American experience. Taken as aspirational, four of those myths remind us of our noblest ideals, challenging us to realize our nation's promise while galvanizing the sense of hope and unity we need to reach our goals. Misused, these myths allow for illusions of innocence that fly in the face of white supremacy, the primal American myth that stands at the heart of all the others.

An exploration of how American Jewish thinkers grapple with the notion of being the isolated “Chosen People” in a nation that is a melting pot. What does it mean to be a Jew in America? What opportunities and what threats does the great melting pot represent for a group that has traditionally defined itself as “a people that must dwell alone?” Although for centuries the notion of “The Chosen People” sustained Jewish identity, America, by offering Jewish immigrants an unprecedented degree of participation in the larger society, threatened to erode their Jewish identity and sense of separateness. Arnold M. Eisen charts the attempts of American Jewish thinkers to adapt the notion of chosenness to an American context. Through an examination of sermons, essays, debates, prayer-book revisions, and theological literature, Eisen traces the ways in which American rabbis and theologians—Reconstructionist, Conservative, and Orthodox thinkers—effected a compromise between exclusivity and participation that allowed Jews to adapt to American life while simultaneously enhancing Jewish tradition and identity. “This is a book of extraordinary quality and importance. In tracing the encounter of Jews (the chosen people) and America (the chosen nation) . . . Eisen has given the American Jewish community a new understanding of itself.” —American Jewish Archives “One of the most significant books on American Jewish thought written in recent years.” —Choice

Given unprecedented access to those participating in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a journalist reveals how politics and uncompromising religious belief divided communities.

What is predestination? How does predestination conform to YAHUAH ELOHIYM's sovereign will? Who are the predestined elect people of Scripture said to rule and reign from the foundation of the earth? Where are these people now? The answers to these questions are explained in this book in accordance to Hebrew Texts, including the Torah, Tanakh, the New Testament, the deuteron-canonical works of Enoch and Jubilees, and the apocryphal writings. The research proves that the Negroes are the hidden predestined people known in scripture as Israelites who have been scattered to the four corners of the earth. They are indeed the people of the book and the evidence can be found in in the pages of Hebrew Scriptures, writings that Edom-Rome has attempted to discredit and destroy.

Americans and Israelis have often thought that their nations were chosen, in perpetuity, to do God’s work. This belief in divine election is a potent, living force, one that has guided and shaped both peoples and nations throughout their history and continues to do so to this day. Through great adversity and despite serious challenges, Americans and Jews, leaders and followers, have repeatedly faced the world fortified by a sense that their nation has a providential destiny. As Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz argue in this original and provocative book, what unites the two allies in a “special friendship” is less common strategic interests than this deep-seated and lasting theological belief that they were chosen by God. The United States and Israel each has understood itself as a nation placed on earth to deliver a singular message of enlightenment to a benighted world. Each has stumbled through history wrestling with this strange concept of chosenness, trying both to grasp the meaning of divine election and to bear the burden it placed them under. It was this idea that provided an indispensable justification when the Americans made a revolution against Britain, went to war with and expelled the Indians, expanded westward, built an overseas empire, and most recently waged war in Iraq. The equivalent idea gave rise to the Jewish people in the first place, sustained them in exodus and exile, and later animated the Zionist movement, inspiring the Israelis to vanquish their enemies and conquer the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Everywhere you look in American and Israeli history, the idea of chosenness is there. The Chosen Peoples delivers a bold new take on both nations’ histories. It shows how deeply the idea of chosenness has affected not only their enthusiasts but also their antagonists. It digs deeply beneath the superficialities of headlines, the details of negotiations, the excuses and justifications that keep cropping up for both nations’ successes and failures. It shows how deeply ingrained is the idea of a chosen people in both nations’ histories—and yet how complicated that idea really is. And it offers interpretations of chosenness that both nations dearly need in confronting their present-day quandaries. Weaving together history, theology, and politics, The Chosen Peoples vividly retells the dramatic story of two nations bound together by a wild and sacred idea, takes unorthodox perspectives on some of our time’s most searing conflicts, and offers an unexpected conclusion: only by taking the idea of chosenness seriously, wrestling with its meaning, and assuming its responsibilities can both nations thrive.

We are engaged in the conflict of the ages and for the first time in this generation, the sons of the Kingdom are awakening to the reality that the Kingdom has, is and will continue to come. It is not limited to a lifetime, generation or millennium. The defeated-one has been stripped of his rank power and authority. He is an interloper and usurper who no longer has a right to rule and reign. He is using deception and division to advance his anti-messianic message, and strong delusion, hatred, and intimidation to forward his agenda. He knows that we are not waiting to win. We won 2000 years ago. We are THE CHOSEN. This is our day and VICTORY is ours for the taking."As long as one son is alive on planet earth, the defeated-one will never again rise to power."His sons are awakening to the reality that WHAT we are doing is not working very well and they are also becoming aware that we have been sorely misinformed about a great many things.The order and government of Yahweh is both uncomfortable and disconcerting to the orphan of our soul, but then the son in us begins to surrender by the Spirit to the Sovereign will and authority of the King and His Domain.It is my hope that the revelatory knowledge contained in this book will provide a workable solution that produces Kingdom results."The gospel of the Kingdom is good news. Beware of those who make it about coming events."It is my prayer that this book will challenge all of us to continue to think outside of the box when it comes to our quest for TRUTH.