Presents the history of religion in Indiana, surveying the history of more than 50 denominations and religious groups in Indiana from pioneer days. This book includes sections on Jews, Muslims, Shakers, Rappites, Mennonites, Pentecostals, Mormons, Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses and others, who contributed to Indiana's religious heritage.

The story of this Midwestern state and its people, past and present: “An entertaining and fast read.” ―Indianapolis Star Who are the people called Hoosiers? What are their stories? Two centuries ago, on the Indiana frontier, they were settlers who created a way of life they passed to later generations. They came to value individual freedom and distrusted government, even as they demanded that government remove Indians, sell them land, and bring democracy. Down to the present, Hoosiers have remained wary of government power and have taken care to guard their tax dollars and their personal independence. Yet the people of Indiana have always accommodated change, exchanging log cabins and spinning wheels for railroads, cities, and factories in the nineteenth century, automobiles, suburbs, and foreign investment in the twentieth. The present has brought new issues and challenges, as Indiana’s citizens respond to a rapidly changing world. James H. Madison’s sparkling new history tells the stories of these Hoosiers, offering an invigorating view of one of America’s distinctive states and the long and fascinating journey of its people.

The first in-depth history of philanthropy in Indiana. Philanthropy has been central to the development of public life in Indiana over the past two centuries. Hoosier Philanthropy explores the role of philanthropy in the Hoosier state, showing how voluntary action within Indiana has created and supported multiple visions of societal good. Featuring 15 articles, Hoosier Philanthropy charts the influence of different types of nonprofit Hoosier organizations and people, including foundations, service providers, volunteers, and individual donors.

Between 1790 and 1850, waves of Anglo-Americans, African Americans, and European immigrants flooded the Old Northwest (modern-day Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin). They brought with them a mosaic of Christian religious belief. Stephen T. Kissel draws on a wealth of primary sources to examine the foundational role that organized religion played in shaping the social, cultural, and civic infrastructure of the region. As he shows, believers from both traditional denominations and religious utopian societies found fertile ground for religious unity and fervor. Able to influence settlement from the earliest days, organized religion integrated faith into local townscapes and civic identity while facilitating many of the Old Northwest's earliest advances in literacy, charitable public outreach, formal education, and social reform. Kissel also unearths fascinating stories of how faith influenced the bonds, networks, and relationships that allowed isolated western settlements to grow and evolve a distinct regional identity. Perceptive and broad in scope, America’s Religious Crossroads illuminates the integral relationship between communal and spiritual growth in early Midwestern history.

Five NCAA Championships, 22 Big Ten Conference Championships—this is the candy-striped legacy of the Indiana University men's basketball team. In its 120-year history, Indiana basketball has become a giant in college basketball and earned a legion of fans. In Heart of a Hoosier: A Year of Inspiration from IU Men's Basketball, authors Del Duduit and Michelle Medlock Adams show readers how the famous moments and personalities of the Indiana Hoosiers can inspire them to reach for success, overcome adversity, be a great team member, and more. Readers will be inspired by a year's worth of stories featuring fierce rivalries with Purdue and Kentucky and legendary players and coaches such as Steve Alford, Isiah Thomas, Calbert Cheaney, George McGinnis, Branch McCracken, and Bobby Knight. Heart of a Hoosier will entertain and motivate every fan who bleeds Cream & Crimson. Relive the triumphs, groan at the losses, and revel in great traditions!

Each video in this 11 volume series describes an aspect of the modern religious landscape by using Indianapolis, IN as a microcosm of American society.

A supplemental textbook for middle and high school students, Hoosiers and the American Story provides intimate views of individuals and places in Indiana set within themes from American history. During the frontier days when Americans battled with and exiled native peoples from the East, Indiana was on the leading edge of America’s westward expansion. As waves of immigrants swept across the Appalachians and eastern waterways, Indiana became established as both a crossroads and as a vital part of Middle America. Indiana’s stories illuminate the history of American agriculture, wars, industrialization, ethnic conflicts, technological improvements, political battles, transportation networks, economic shifts, social welfare initiatives, and more. In so doing, they elucidate large national issues so that students can relate personally to the ideas and events that comprise American history. At the same time, the stories shed light on what it means to be a Hoosier, today and in the past.

"Who is an American?" asked the Ku Klux Klan. It is a question that echoes as loudly today as it did in the early twentieth century. But who really joined the Klan? Were they "hillbillies, the Great Unteachables" as one journalist put it? It would be comforting to think so, but how then did they become one of the most powerful political forces in our nation's history? In The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland, renowned historian James H. Madison details the creation and reign of the infamous organization. Through the prism of their operations in Indiana and the Midwest, Madison explores the Klan's roots in respectable white protestant society. Convinced that America was heading in the wrong direction because of undesirable "un-American" elements, Klan members did not see themselves as bigoted racist extremists but as good Christian patriots joining proudly together in a righteous moral crusade. The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland offers a detailed history of this powerful organization and examines how, through its use of intimidation, religious belief, and the ballot box, the ideals of Klan in the 1920s have on-going implications for America today.

Rebel Bulldog tells the story of Preston Davidson, a Northerner who fought for the Confederacy, and his family who lived in Indiana and Virginia. It is a story that examines antebellum religion, education, reform, and politics, and how they affected the identity of not just one young man, but of a nation caught up in a civil war. Furthermore, it discusses how a native-born Hoosier reached the decision to fight for the South, while detailing a unique war experience and the postwar life of a proud Rebel who returned to the North after the guns fell silent and tried to remake his life in a very different state and nation than the ones he had left in 1860. Using the lives of Preston and his family as a lens to help us glimpse the past, Rebel Bulldog delves into the human experience on multiple levels, asks us to reconsider what we think we know of the Civil War, and complicates, while it complements the existing literature. It is a story that perhaps could only have happened in Indiana.

This is a book about Methodists in Indiana between 1880 and 1930, searching for the larger transformation of American culture, particularly the development of a new nexus of institutions that would become known as the social mainstream. Corn shows how forces of upward social mobility, evangelistic religion, and optimism for progress converged in these Midwestern Methodists with darker forces such as racism, nativism, and a grim commitment to the use of legal coercion.