Christians have played a vital role in the history of Pittsburgh as community leaders, activists, athletes and more. Their ministries have inspired many worshipers and improved the community. Leading Pirates, Steelers and Penguins who have powerfully promoted Christianity here include Andrew McCutchen, Clint Hurdle, Troy Polamalu, Mike Tomlin and Dan Bylsma. A diversity of parachurch organizations and congregations, from Baptist to Presbyterian and Catholic to nondenominational, have shaped and advanced the faith. Gary Scott Smith tells the exciting story of their quest, as Episcopal rector Samuel Shoemaker put it, "to make Pittsburgh as famous for God as for steel."

"From the founding of the colonies to the declaration of the Supreme Court, America's heritage is built upon the principles of the Christian religion. And yet the secularists are dismantling this foundation brick by brick, attempting to deny the very core of our national life. Gary DeMar presents well-documented facts which will change your perspective about what it means to be a Christian in America; the truth about America's Christian past as it relates to supreme court justices, and presidents; the Christian character of colonial charters, state constitutions, and the US Constitution; the Christian foundation of colleges, the Christian character of Washington, D.C.; the origin of Thanksgiving and so much more."--Publisher's description

"Denova explores how the first followers of Jesus arrived at their faith, the way their sacred texts developed into the New Testament, and how their movement eventually became the religion of Christianity. [Her] volume examines the concepts, beliefs, issues, and events that gave rise to institutional Christianity--providing readers with the historical context of the gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, the Acts of the Apostles, the Book of Revelation, the letters of Paul, and other foundational New Testament documents"--Back cover.

A nuanced portrait of a great historical figure considered everything from a “God-haunted man” to a “stalwart nonbeliever” What did faith mean to Winston Churchill? Churchill was far from transparent about his religious beliefs and never regularly attended church services as an adult, even considering himself “not a pillar of the church but a buttress,” in the sense that he supported it “from the outside.” But Gary Scott Smith assembles pieces of Churchill’s life and words to convey the profound sense of duty and destiny, partly inspired by his religious convictions, that undergirded his outlook. Reflecting on becoming prime minister in 1940, he wrote, “It felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” In a similarly grand fashion, he described opposing the Nazis—and later the Soviets—as a struggle between light and darkness, driven by the duty to preserve “humane, enlightened, Christian society.” Though Churchill harbored intellectual doubts about Christianity throughout his life, he nevertheless valued it greatly and drew on its resources, especially in the crucible of war. In Duty and Destiny, Smith unpacks Churchill’s paradoxical religious views and carefully analyzes the complexities of his legacy. This thorough examination of Churchill’s religious life provides a new narrative structure to make sense of one of the most important figures of the twentieth century.

How should thoughtful Christians—especially historians and missiologists—make sense of global Christianity as an unfolding historical movement? Highlighting both the continuity and the diversity within the Christian movement over the centuries, this comprehensive resource from Scott Sunquist offers a framework for how to read and write church history.

The volume explores the relationship between religion and violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Early modern period, involving European and Japanese scholars. It investigates the ideological foundations of the relationship between violence and religion and their development in a varied corpus of sources (political and theological treatises, correspondence of missionaries, pamphlets, and images).