An inside look at how religious diversity came to Princeton In 1981, Frederick Houk Borsch returned to Princeton University, his alma mater, to serve as dean of the chapel at the Ivy League school. In Keeping Faith at Princeton, Borsch tells the story of Princeton's journey from its founding in 1746 as a college for Presbyterian ministers to the religiously diverse institution it is today. He sets this landmark narrative history against the backdrop of his own quest for spiritual illumination, first as a student at Princeton in the 1950s and later as campus minister amid the turmoil and uncertainty of 1980s America. Borsch traces how the trauma of the Depression and two world wars challenged the idea of progress through education and religion—the very idea on which Princeton was founded. Even as the numbers of students gaining access to higher education grew exponentially after World War II, student demographics at Princeton and other elite schools remained all male, predominantly white, and Protestant. Then came the 1960s. Campuses across America became battlegrounds for the antiwar movement, civil rights, and gender equality. By the dawn of the Reagan era, women and blacks were being admitted to Princeton. So were greater numbers of Jews, Catholics, and others. Borsch gives an electrifying insider's account of this era of upheaval and great promise. With warmth, clarity, and penetrating firsthand insights, Keeping Faith at Princeton demonstrates how Princeton and other major American universities learned to promote religious diversity among their students, teachers, and administrators.

In Keeping Faith at Princeton, Borsch tells the story of Princeton's journey from its founding in 1746 as a college for Presbyterian ministers to the religiously diverse institution it is today.

This book presents an overview of the ministry of women associated with Princeton Theological Seminary over the last two hundred years. Beginning with a historical overview of early pioneering women at the seminary and a chapter highlighting selected trailblazers in ministry, it goes on to showcase twenty-eight first-person narratives by women from diverse racial-ethnic, geographical, and denominational backgrounds in a variety of ministry settings. It concludes by developing new understandings and directions for Christian ministry and theological education to challenge the twenty-first-century church. The book includes the newly commissioned hymn "Faith of Our Mothers, Living Still," along with several appendixes that feature time lines and highlight Princeton Seminary faculty and alumnae. Faith of Our Mothers, Living Still celebrates the diverse ministries in which women are called to serve God and others, which inspire a holistic vision for theological education that can benefit seminaries, the church, and the world.

"Based on his 1993-94 Gifford Lectures, Polkinghorne's task here is to ask challenging questions of the contemporary scientific worldview and to show how the range of possible answers carries beyond biology to spirit and beyond physics to God. . . . The single most important work of his theological corpus".-- First Things.

A compelling portrait of a group of boys as they navigate the complexities of being both American teenagers and good Muslims This book provides a uniquely personal look at the social worlds of a group of young male friends as they navigate the complexities of growing up Muslim in America. Drawing on three and a half years of intensive fieldwork in and around a large urban mosque, John O’Brien offers a compelling portrait of typical Muslim American teenage boys concerned with typical teenage issues—girlfriends, school, parents, being cool—yet who are also expected to be good, practicing Muslims who don’t date before marriage, who avoid vulgar popular culture, and who never miss their prayers. Many Americans unfamiliar with Islam or Muslims see young men like these as potential ISIS recruits. But neither militant Islamism nor Islamophobia is the main concern of these boys, who are focused instead on juggling the competing cultural demands that frame their everyday lives. O’Brien illuminates how they work together to manage their “culturally contested lives” through subtle and innovative strategies—such as listening to profane hip-hop music in acceptably “Islamic” ways, professing individualism to cast their participation in communal religious obligations as more acceptably American, dating young Muslim women in ambiguous ways that intentionally complicate adjudications of Islamic permissibility, and presenting a “low-key Islam” in public in order to project a Muslim identity without drawing unwanted attention. Closely following these boys as they move through their teen years together, Keeping It Halal sheds light on their strategic efforts to manage their day-to-day cultural dilemmas as they devise novel and dynamic modes of Muslim American identity in a new and changing America.

A compelling history of atheism in American public life A much-maligned minority throughout American history, atheists have been cast as a threat to the nation’s moral fabric, barred from holding public office, and branded as irreligious misfits in a nation chosen by God. Yet village atheists—as these godless freethinkers came to be known by the close of the nineteenth century—were also hailed for their gutsy dissent from stultifying pieties and for posing a necessary secularist challenge to the entanglements of church and state. In Village Atheists, Leigh Eric Schmidt explores the complex cultural terrain that unbelievers have long had to navigate in their fight to secure equal rights and liberties in American public life. He rebuilds the history of American secularism from the ground up, giving flesh and blood to these outspoken infidels. Village Atheists demonstrates that the secularist vision for the United States proved to be anything but triumphant in a country where faith and citizenship were—and still are—closely interwoven.