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This chapter details the history of the Paisley family, clarifies the distinctive elements of Paisley's evangelical Protestant faith, describes the rural roots of his movement, and charts the slow growth of his ministry from 1945 to 1965.

This chapter details the growth of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster in Northern Ireland (and its international expansion) and its development of schools, missionary work, and theological training. It considers whether success and increasing public acceptance has moderated the Church's distinctive separatism and its puritanism, and concludes that growth has not resulted in much change yet.

This chapter documents the links between Paisley's church and his party. It discusses church reservations about involvement in politics and party attempts to reconcile religious preferences with vote-winning. It also considers the impact of electoral success and generational succession on the party's principles. It concludes that contrary to popular images of a party divided in young secular and older religious wings, the DUP remains firmly united.

From 1776 until approximately 1970, American Protestant clergy and academics argued that Calvinism was crucial to their nation’s political institutions and ideals. It was common among the mainstream Presbyterian groups (termed "libertarian Calvinists") to aver that Calvinism provided the only adequate basis for the American experiment of a republic based on limited government and civil liberty. This chapter examines the contortions necessary for these arguments. Then, the chapter examines the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (termed "authoritarian Calvinists"). It holds closely to the language in the original Westminster Confession, which calls upon the state to protect and foster Christian faith. Given these differing perspectives, the chapter concludes, agreeing with Philip Benedict, that Calvinism’s importance has less to do with its contributions to political theory and more to do with its role as a religion that shapes the personal and familial identities of its adherents.

The distinctive characteristics of Paisleyism are identified, accompanied by discussion of how Paisleyite ideology interacts with nationalism. Contrary to influential interpreters such as Steve Bruce, and taking into account Paisleyism’s strong fundamentalist associations, it is argued that Paisleyism’s primary appeal derives from the emotional power of a mythological nationalist narrative organized around a theological core of deeply held evangelical beliefs. This potent mixture functions both to define a closed evangelical identity and to sustain its members’ divine sense of calling in their task of saving Ulster from the corrupt forces of apostate Protestantism, idolatrous Romanism, evil republicanism, and duplicitous British and Irish governments.

This chapter discusses the Israeli-Palestinian dispute's invasion of the Jewish Christian dialogue. Topics covered include the Presbyterian Church's (in the USA) issuance of “A Theological Understanding of the Relationship between Christians and Jews” in 1987, the General Assembly of the church's resolution to investigate divestment of the church's $8 billion portfolio in companies doing business with Israel, particularly those aiding in the occupation of the West Bank, in 2004; and the national assembly of 2006.

This chapter has highlights the central importance of Nelson to Belfast anti-slavery in the 1840s and early 1850s. Nelson’s emergence as a leading anti-slavery campaigner took place against the backdrop of the Free Church of Scotland receiving money from and engaging in fellowship with the proslavery American churches. In the subsequent ‘Send Back the Money’ controversy, the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society joined the chorus of abolitionist voices calling on the Free Church to break its ties with their proslavery American brethren. Nelson joined with leading American abolitionists such as Henry C. Wright, Frederick Douglass, and William Lloyd Garrison as part of the ‘Send Back the Money’ campaign in Belfast. This bore some positive fruit as the American Old School Presbyterian, Thomas Smyth was excluded from sitting with the Irish General Assembly in 1846. Nelson also defended the radical abolitionist principle of no fellowship with slaveholders at the inaugural meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in London, 1846. This chapter also explains the causes for the eventual demise of the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society, notwithstanding its late revival with the visits of Henry Highland Garnet to Ulster in 1851.

This chapter explores Southern Presbyterian reactions to the Memphis kneel-ins in 1964 and 1965—including those of overseas missionaries—which were driven in part by concerns that the 1965 General Assembly, which was schedule to meet at Second Presbyterian, should be relocated. Race relations within the Presbyterian Church in the United States are described to establish a context for viewing the controversy between mainline Presbyterians in the South and congregations that were alienated from the denomination's theological and social positions.

Whitefield began his missionary career believing that he was a reformer in conversation with the Church of England about religious toleration. By the time Whitefield died in September 1770, he was for most unrecognizable as an Anglican minister. The itinerant and expansive nature of his career meant that he left no permanent ties to any locality or denomination. This made him a powerful religious icon that could be “claimed” by a number of causes.

This chapter narrates the story of “defiance, intervention and schism” that followed in the wake of the kneel-in crisis at Second Presbyterian Church. It details the church session's resistance to outside efforts to bring its practices into line with denominational policy. It describes the role of Felix Gear, former minister at Second Presbyterian, who as Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (US) in 1964–65 intervened to strip the church of the right to host the upcoming meeting of the Church's General Assembly. The chapter then details the efforts of senior minister Henry E. “Jeb” Russell, who sought to rally the congregation against the session's segregationist stance, and the role of an organized group of church members who successfully put an end to the crisis by forcing a vote to limit the session's governing power. The chapter concludes with a description of the departure of several hundred church members to form a new congregation.

Chapter 7 investigates Hutchison's published essays on slavery and the division of the Presbyterian Church. Her essays and journal entries provide glimpses of her thoughts about the abolition movement, southern benevolence, the division of her church, and the moral dilemmas of slavery. The tension between her long-held beliefs about gradual emancipation and the actual practice of slaveholding created a moral quandary during her later years. Eventually, she risked everything and began secretly to teach slaves to read, which was in violation of North Carolina's slave codes. By 1845, all of her sons had joined her in the South, but after 30 years in the region, she ultimately returned to the North. This chapter explores the influences that led to that decision.

The aim of this chapter is to describe the institutional context of the two megachurches where a significant portion of author's fieldwork was based and to situate it in relation to the larger cultural context of the church-growth movement as a whole. A megachurch is typically defined as a Protestant congregation with an average of two thousand or more worshippers attending weekly services. The author refers to Marble Valley Presbyterian Church, which is one of the oldest and most venerated churches in Knoxville. The physical complex of the megachurch is located near a busy intersection on the edge of the county. It features a central facility composed of two adjoining red-brick buildings with white church spires and neoclassical facades. The self-conscious fusing of modern and traditional elements at Marble Valley Presbyterian Church is a common feature among North American megachurches. The urgency of the moral ambitions pertaining to various issues has an air of millennialist anticipation, fueled by the belief that the very existence of megachurches in Knoxville, and the fact that a few churches were growing and expanding at unprecedented rates, heralded a new period of religious awakening in the region.

This chapter sets the background for the Memphis kneel-in campaign of 1964 in meetings of the city's intercollegiate NAACP chapter. Kneel-ins at Second Presbyterian Church in the spring of 1964 are detailed, with attention given to the reluctant and spotty coverage by local media, church representatives' attempts to apply pressure on student protestors and on responses by the administration of Southwestern College, where many of the protesting students were enrolled. Finally, the chapter describes attempts by representatives of the Presbyterian Church in the United States—at the presbytery, synod and general assembly levels—to intervene in the crisis and bring Second Presbyterian Church into line with Church policy before the 1965 meeting of the PCUS General Assembly, which was scheduled to take place at the embattled Memphis church.

This chapter describes the origins and development of Memphis's Independent Presbyterian Church, which emerged in 1965 from the kneel-in crisis at Second Presbyterian with leaders determined to ensure that members and visitors would be “compatible with the congregation.” The chapter describes the development of this congregation during the 1970s and 80s into a vibrant church with an increasing number of younger families unfamiliar with the church's origins. It tells the story of an ill-fated pastorate in which it was revealed that the ghost of racism still haunted the church, and the church's response to this revelation, which has included embarking on a “season of prayer and corporate repentance.”

The chapter compares the response of the Catholic Church in the South to desegregation with that of the region’s larger white denominations: the Southern Baptist Convention, the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. It also makes comparisons with Catholics outside the South and with southern Jews, a minority, like Catholics, subject to suspicion and even hostility from the Protestant majority, and with the Northern (later American) Baptist Convention and the Disciples of Christ, both of which had a substantial African American membership. The comparison suggests that white lay sensibilities, more than polity or theology, influenced the implementation of desegregation in the South by the major white religious bodies. Like the major white Protestant denominations, Catholic prelates and clergy took a more progressive approach to desegregation in the peripheral than the Deep South.

Presbyterians and Congregationalists arrived in colonial America as Dissenters; however, they soon exercised a religious and cultural dominance that extended well into the first half of the nineteenth century. The multi-faceted Second Great Awakening led within the Reformed camp by the Presbyterian James McGready in Kentucky, a host of New Divinity ministers in New England, and Congregationalist Charles Finney in New York energized Christians to improve society (Congregational and Presbyterian women were crucial to the three most important reform movements of the nineteenth century—antislavery, temperance, and missions) and extend the evangelical message around the world. Although outnumbered by other Protestant denominations by mid-century, Presbyterians and Congregationalists nevertheless expanded geographically, increased in absolute numbers, spread the Gospel at home and abroad, created enduring institutions, and continued to dominate formal religious thought. The overall trajectory of nineteenth-century Presbyterianism and Congregationalism in the United States is one that tracks from convergence to divergence, from cooperative endeavours and mutual interests in the first half the nineteenth century to an increasingly self-conscious denominational awareness that became firmly established in both denominations by the 1850s. With regional distribution of Congregationalists in the North and Presbyterians in the mid-Atlantic region and South, the Civil War intensified their differences (and also divided Presbyterians into antislavery northern and pro-slavery southern parties). By the post-Civil War period these denominations had for the most part gone their separate ways. However, apart from the southern Presbyterians, who remained consciously committed to conservatism, they faced a similar host of social and intellectual challenges, including higher criticism of the Bible and Darwinian evolutionary theory, to which they responded in varying ways. In general, Presbyterians maintained a conservative theological posture whereas Congregationalists accommodated to the challenges of modernity. At the turn of the century Congregationalists and Presbyterians continued to influence sectors of American life but their days of cultural hegemony were long past. In contrast to the nineteenth-century history of Presbyterian and Congregational churches in the United States, the Canadian story witnessed divergence evolving towards convergence and self-conscious denominationalism to ecclesiastical cooperation. During the very years when American Presbyterians were fragmenting over first theology, then slavery, and finally sectional conflict, political leaders in all regions of Canada entered negotiations aimed at establishing the Dominion of Canada, which were finalized in 1867. The new Dominion enjoyed the strong support of leading Canadian Presbyterians who saw in political confederation a model for uniting the many Presbyterian churches that Scotland’s fractious history had bequeathed to British North America. In 1875, the four largest Presbyterian denominations joined together as the Presbyterian Church in Canada. The unifying and mediating instincts of nineteenth-century Canadian Presbyterianism contributed to forces that in 1925 led two-thirds of Canadian Presbyterians (and almost 90 per cent of their ministers) into the United Church, Canada’s grand experiment in institutional ecumenism. By the end of the nineteenth century, Congregationalism had only a slight presence, whereas Presbyterians, by contrast, became increasingly more important until they stood at the centre of Canada’s Protestant history.

Chapter Two explores the Presbyterian heritage of the Hodges. The Hodges were linked to George Whitefield’s American revival activity, as well as in the forming of Philadelphia’s Second Presbyterian Church. Benjamin Franklin was even impressed by Whitefield’s oratorical ability. The Hodges were New Side in their Presbyterian affiliations and helped bring Gilbert Tennent to Philadelphia to be their Church’s pastor.

Chapter forty-six examines Hodge’s relationship with James Henley Thornwell, perhaps the most influential southern Presbyterian of his generation. The two men seldom agreed. As conservative as Hodge was in his theological views, Thornwell was even more conservative. Thornwell approached the Bible as a strict constructionist. If the Bible did not actually say it, then it could not be true. The effects of Thornwell’s approach included his opposition to voluntary societies and boards being used by the American Presbyterian Church. Hodge supported the use of such boards and societies. Thornwell also believed in a higher status for the Ruling Elder than did Hodge. Ultimately, Thornwell lost faith in his northern Old School brethren and became a founding member of the Presbyterian Church of the Confederate States of America. He also helped found The Southern Presbyterian Review.

The chapter tells the story of the kneel-ins at Memphis's Second Presbyterian Church from the perspective of members and staff of the targeted congregation. It examines in detail the segregation policy adopted by the church in 1957 and its regional and denominational contexts. The chapter also tells the stories of the men and women who were younger church members at the time, many of whom were opposed to the stand taken by ruling elders on the session (the church's governing body) and some of whom refused instructions to “guard” the church's doors. Condemnation of the church's segregation policy by the pastoral staff is described, as is the process through which a group of lay leaders ultimately broke the power of racial hardliners on the session. Finally, the dissenting views of active church women are inferred from annual narratives published by the Women of the Church.