The image of a rough frontier – where working men were tempted away from church on Sundays by more profane concerns – was perpetuated by postwar church leaders, who decried the decline of religious involvement. In this pioneering book, Tina Block debunks the myth of a godless frontier, revealing a Pacific Northwest that consciously rejected the trappings of organized religion but not necessarily spirituality – and not necessarily God. Secularism was not only the domain of the working man: women, families, and middle-class communities all helped to shape the region’s secular identity. But rejection of religion led to family, gender, and class tensions. Drawing on oral histories, census data, newspapers, and archival sources, Block explores the dynamics of Northwest secularity, grounded in the cultural permeability of the Canada–United States border, the independent spirit of those who called the region home, and their openness to secular ways of experiencing the world.

The image of a rough frontier – where working men were tempted away from church on Sundays by more profane concerns – was perpetuated by postwar religious leaders troubled by the decline in church involvement. Tina Block debunks the myth of a godless frontier, revealing a Pacific Northwest that rejected organized religion – but not necessarily God. Not just working men but also women, families, and middle-class communities helped to shape the region’s secular identity. Drawing on oral histories, census data, newspapers, and archival sources, Block launches this exploration of Northwest secularity and the independent spirit of those who chose to live irreligiously.

Over the last thirty years, conservative evangelicals have been moving to the Northwest of the United States, where they hope to resist the impact of secular modernity and to survive the breakdown of society that they anticipate. These believers have often given up on the politics of the Christian Right, adopting strategies of hibernation while developing the communities and institutions from which a new America might one day emerge. Their activity coincides with the promotion by prominent survivalist authors of a program of migration to the "American Redoubt," a region encompassing Idaho, Montana, parts of eastern Washington and Oregon, and Wyoming, as a haven in which to endure hostile social change or natural disaster and in which to build a new social order. These migration movements have independent origins, but they overlap in their influences and aspirations, working in tandem to offer a vision of the present in which Christian values must be defended as American society is rebuilt according to biblical law. This book examines the origins, evolution, and cultural reach of this little-noted migration and considers what it might tell us about the future of American evangelicalism. Drawing on Calvinist theology, the social theory of Christian Reconstruction, and libertarian politics, these believers are projecting significant soft power. Their books are promoted by leading mainstream publishers and listed as New York Times bestsellers. Their strategy is gaining momentum, making an impact in local political and economic life, while being repackaged for a wider audience in publications by a broader coalition of conservative commentators and in American mass culture. This survivalist evangelical subculture recognizes that they have lost the culture war - but another kind of conflict is beginning.

When asked their religious identification, more people answer 'none' in the Pacific Northwest than in any other region of the United States. But this does not mean that the region's religious institutions are without power or that Northwesterners who do attend no place of worship are without spiritual commitments. With no dominant denomination, Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, Catholics, Jews, adherents of Pacific Rim religious traditions, indigenous groups, spiritual environmentalists, and secularists must vie or sometimes must cooperate with each other to address the regions' pressing economic, environmental, and social issues. One cannot understand this complex region without understanding the fluid religious commitments of its inhabitants. And one cannot understand religion in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska without Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest.

An expert study of church planting in the most secular part of contemporary Europe In this book Stefan Paas offers thoughtful analysis of reasons and motives for missionary church planting in Europe, and he explores successful and unsuccessful strategies in that post-Christian secularized context. Drawing in part on his own involvement with planting two churches in the Netherlands, Paas explores confessional motives, growth motives, and innovation motives for church planting in Europe, tracing them back to different traditions and reflecting on them from theological and empirical perspectives. He presents examples from the European context and offers sound advice for improving existing missional practices. Paas also draws out lessons for North America in a chapter coauthored with Darrell Guder and John Franke. Finally, Paas weaves together the various threads in the book with a theological defense of church planting. Presenting new research as it does, this critical missiological perspective will add significantly to a fuller understanding of church planting in our contemporary context.

Mixed Blessings transforms our understanding of the relationship between Indigenous people and Christianity in what is now Canada. While acknowledging the harm of colonialism, including the trauma inflicted by church-run residential schools, this book challenges the portrayal of Indigenous people as passive victims of malevolent missionaries who experienced a uniformly dark history. Instead, it illuminates the diverse and multifaceted ways that Indigenous communities and individuals across Canada have interacted, and continue to interact, meaningfully with Christianity from the early 1600s to the present. Ranging widely across time and place, these insightful case studies explore how and why some Indigenous people – including Louis Riel and Edward Ahenakew – historically aligned themselves with Christianity while others did not. It also plumbs the processes and politics involved in combining spiritual traditions and reflects on the role of Christianity in Indigenous communities today.

What does “missional” mean for small Christian communities in a deeply secular society? Leading missiologist Stefan Paas asks what missional spirituality could possibly mean for today’s local church. This fully revised new international edition will make this an important introduction to contemporary thinking on mission and the church.