"This work 'is a chronological record of American life, events, and thought ... It is a comprehensive general compendium of source material containing laws, speeches, stories, transcriptions of dialogues, on-the-scene reports, reminiscences, and other primary sources." Wynar Guide to Ref Books for Sch Media Cent. 3d edition.

Conversion narratives were one of the earliest forms of public expression for American women writers, sanctioned—and indeed welcomed—for their personal, first-hand testimonies about seasons of religious grace. Two eighteenth-century women, Sarah Pierpont Edwards and Sarah Prince Gill, wrote conversion narratives of remarkable craft and insight. These pieces, collected for the first time in The Silent and Soft Communion, represent two generations of Calvinist evangelism, addressing the social implications of spiritual regeneration and presenting full, fascinating accounts of Calvinist religious life.Sarah Pierpont Edwards is best known as the wife of Jonathan Edwards, one of the most renowned theologians in eighteenth-century New England. Asked by her husband to “draw up an exact statement” of her rebirth in Christ, she complied, creating in 1742 a work that was of considerable interest to both her husband’s constituency and now to modern scholars. A rich and revealing document, her narrative expresses her immense joy in the presence of God and the intimacy of her relationship with God. Both a private and public statement, her testimony is remarkable for its position on the social imperative of spiritual regeneration and speaks to the social and political issues facing her Northampton community.The companion conversion narrative by Sarah Prince Gill, never before published, offers the perspective of the next generation of Calvinist women, whose religious orientation was inflected by Enlightenment values. Gill, an educated Bostonian and close friend of the Edwards family, documents in her 1742 narrative the dramatic story of her struggle for spiritual enlightenment. A private document, Gill’s journal offers a striking contrast to Edwards’s more public writings.Featuring scholarly annotations and an extensive introductory essay, The Silent and Soft Communion is an invaluable historical and theological resource.

In 1970 Earth Day was first celebrated marking the dawn of worldwide environmental consciousness and the passing of many environmental laws. In part, these events were the result of the maturing of the science of ecology which recognized the interdependence of the web and cycles of nature. This volume explores the relationship between ecology and environmental law, beginning with a description of the two very different disciplines. This description is followed by a history of their episodic interactions: the early period of origin, the mid-century formative period from 1950 to 1970, the initial serious period of interaction after Earth Day in 1970 and the testing of the relationship during the next two decades. Utilizing a number of case studies, examinations of the key 'linkage persons', legal instruments and the migration of ecological concepts and frameworks, this book analyzes the final flowering of an ecosystem regime which embraces the connections between the two disciplines of ecology and environmental law. Concluding with an inventory of the problems posed by the relationship between the two disciplines and an agenda for future research, this clearly structured, comprehensive and stringent book is an essential resource for all serious scholars and students of ecology and environmental law.

Society rarely acknowledges the many and varied gifts that disbelievers give to the world. This insightful, witty collection sets the record straight by profiling dozens of famous people who were skeptical of conventional religious beliefs. Included, among others, are Isaac Asimov, W.E.B. DuBois, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, Omar Khayyam, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, John Stuart Mill, Ayn Rand, Gene Roddenberry, Margaret Sanger, George Bernard Shaw, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Voltaire, with many quotes that reveal their rejection of the supernatural.