The latest installment in Brill’s A New History of the Sermon series offers innovative studies of sacred rhetoric in the nineteenth century. The three sections—Theory and Theology, Sermon and Society in the British Empire, and Sermon and Society in America—contain a total of sixteen essays on such topics as biblical criticism, Charles Darwin, the Oxford Movement, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), English Catholicism, sermon-novels, and the slave trade on both sides of the Atlantic. Multiple traditions are represented, including the Anglican and Presbyterian churches, English nonconformity, Judaism, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, making this a compilation that will appeal to a wide range of preachers, historians, literary scholars, and students of the rhetorical tradition. Contributors are Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, Thomas J. Carmody, Dawn Coleman, Robert H. Ellison, Joseph Evans, Keith A. Francis, Brian Jackson, Dorothy Lander, Thomas H. Olbricht, Carol Poster, Mirela Saim, Jessica Sheetz-Nguyen, Bob Tennant, David M. Timmerman, Tamara S. Wagner, and John Wolffe.

Debates over the proper relationship between church and state in America tend to focus either on the founding period or the twentieth century. Left undiscussed is the long period between the ratification of the Constitution and the 1947 Supreme Court ruling in Everson v. Board of Education, which mandated that the Establishment Clause applied to state and local governments. Steven Green illuminates this neglected period, arguing that during the 19th century there was a "second disestablishment." By the early 1800s, formal political disestablishment was the rule at the national level, and almost universal among the states. Yet the United States remained a Christian nation, and Protestant beliefs and values dominated American culture and institutions. Evangelical Protestantism rose to cultural dominance through moral reform societies and behavioral laws that were undergirded by a maxim that Christianity formed part of the law. Simultaneously, law became secularized, religious pluralism increased, and the Protestant-oriented public education system was transformed. This latter impulse set the stage for the constitutional disestablishment of the twentieth century. The Second Disestablishment examines competing ideologies: of evangelical Protestants who sought to create a "Christian nation," and of those who advocated broader notions of separation of church and state. Green shows that the second disestablishment is the missing link between the Establishment Clause and the modern Supreme Court's church-state decisions.

The idea of America's special place in history has been a guiding light for centuries. With thoughtful insight, John D. Wilsey traces the concept of exceptionalism, including its theological meaning and implications for civil religion. This careful history considers not only the abuses of the idea but how it can also point to constructive civil engagement and human flourishing.

This sesquicentennial project of Presbyterian College tells the stories of thirteen individuals, chosen from among its graduates, faculty and benefactors, whose still voices represent in unique ways the history and influence of the college over the past 150 years. Each chapter presents a biography, a sermon, address, letter or report, followed by a commentary showing how this still voice spoke to the issues of the time and why it still should be heard. The themes remind us of the college's continuing mission to provide the Church with strong and visionary leaders. The book concludes with useful lists of Presbyterian College's students, scholars, supporters and societies down through the years.