Across Gods Frontiers

Roman Catholic sisters first traveled to the American West as providers of social services, education, and medical assistance. In Across God's Frontiers, Anne M. Butler traces the ways in which sisters challenged and reconfigured contemporary ideas about women, work, religion, and the West; moreover, she demonstrates how religious life became a vehicle for increasing women's agency and power. Moving to the West introduced significant changes for these women, including public employment and thoroughly unconventional monastic lives. As nuns and sisters adjusted to new circumstances and immersed themselves in rugged environments, Butler argues, the West shaped them; and through their labors and charities, the sisters in turn shaped the West. These female religious pioneers built institutions, brokered relationships between Indigenous peoples and encroaching settlers, and undertook varied occupations, often without organized funding or direct support from the church hierarchy. A comprehensive history of Roman Catholic nuns and sisters in the American West, Across God's Frontiers reveals Catholic sisters as dynamic and creative architects of civic and religious institutions in western communities.

To a lively cast of international players that shaped Manchuria during the early twentieth century, At the Frontier of God's Empire adds the remarkable story of Alfred Marie Caubrière (1876-1948). A French Catholic missionary, Caubrière arrived in Manchuria on the eve of the Boxer Uprising in 1899 and was murdered on the eve of the birth of the People's Republic of China in 1948. Living with ordinary Chinese people for half a century, Caubrière witnessed the collapse of the Qing empire, the warlord's chaos that followed, the rise and fall of Japanese Manchukuo, and the emergence of communist China. Caubrière's incredible personal archive, on which Ji Li draws extensively, opens a unique window into everyday interaction between Manchuria's grassroots society and international players. His gripping accounts personalize the Catholic Church's expansion in East Asia and the interplay of missions and empire in local society. Through Caubrière's experience, At the Frontier of God's Empire examines Chinese people at social and cultural margins during this period. A wealth of primary sources, family letters, and visual depictions of village scenes illuminate vital issues in modern Chinese history, such as the transformation of local society, mass migration and religion, tensions between church and state, and the importance of cross-cultural exchanges in everyday life in Chinese Catholic communities. This intense transformation of Manchurian society embodies the clash of both domestic and international tensions in the making of modern China.

Foreword: “In this book, i reconstruct in detail for the most part with words my second illegal fleeing attempt from the romanian communist state happened between 30 march and 7 april 1987, as well as my detention between 7 april and 13 november 1987 at the respective authorities and in the respective institutions of the yugoslav and the romanian communist states. Along with my self-sufficient books entitled ‘Towards the Iron Curtain of the Hungarian Communist State’, ‘Across the Barrow of the Romanian-Yugoslav Frontier’ and ‘Through the Soviet Iron Curtain of the Hill Wood’, this book constitutes a tetralogy as its second part.”

'Since the middle of the twentieth century,' writes Elizabeth Johnson, 'there has been a renaissance of new insights into God in the Christian tradition. On different continents, under pressure from historical events and social conditions, people of faith have glimpsed the living God in fresh ways. It is not that a wholly different God is discovered from the One believed in by previous generations. Christian faith does not believe in a new God but, finding itself in new situations, seeks the presence of God there. Aspects long-forgotten are brought into new relationships with current events, and the depths of divine compassion are appreciated in ways not previously imagined.' This book sets out the fruit of these discoveries. The first chapter describes Johnson's point of departure and the rules of engagement, with each succeeding chapter distilling a discrete idea of God. Featured are transcendental, political, liberation, feminist, black, Hispanic, interreligious, and ecological theologies, ending with the particular Christian idea of the one God as Trinity.

Covering more than 200 years of history from pre-contact to the present, this textbook places religion at the center of the history of the American West, examining the relationship between religion and the region and their influence on one another. A comprehensive examination of the relationship between religion and the American West and their influence on each other over the course of more than 200 years Discusses diverse groups of people, places, and events that played an important historical role, from organized religion and easily recognized denominations to unorganized religion and cults Provides straightforward explanations of key religious and theological terms and concepts Weaves discussion of American Indian religion throughout the text and presents it in dialogue with other groups Enriches our understanding of American history by examining key factors outside of traditional political, economic, social, and cultural domains

What would you do if the Lord sent you a dream about a young woman, and then the next day, there she was—standing in front of you in the check-out line at your local gas station? Would you use this opportunity to witness, or would you shy away from following Holy Spirit because you don’t feel adequately trained, or you fear rejection and embarrassment? In Journeys to Unknown Spiritual Frontiers, Helen Pasanen and her husband, Art, focus on Spirit-led experiences in which they have seen the Glory of God manifested as part of the routine of daily life. You will discover examples of how a shy, introverted scientist has been able to share the hope in Jesus in a simple, loving way by sharing His faith story. Included are Helen and Art Pasanen’s testimonies of supernatural experiences as evidence of the Glory of God being manifested in our time, plus an account of Helen’s call to prophetic intercession.

This thoroughly researched and vivid account examines a murderous spree by one of the West’s most notorious outlaw gangs and the consequences for a small Mormon community in Arizona’s White Mountains. On March 27, 1900, Frank LeSueur and Gus Gibbons joined a sheriff’s posse to track and arrest five suspected outlaws. The next day, LeSueur and Gibbons, who had become separated from other posse members, were found brutally murdered. The outlaws belonged to Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch gang. Frank LeSueur was the great uncle of the book’s author, Stephen C. LeSueur. In writing about the Wild Bunch, historians have played up the outlaws’ daring heists and violent confrontations. Their victims serve primarily as extras in the gang’s stories, bit players and forgotten names whose lives merit little attention. Drawing upon journals, reminiscences, newspaper articles, and other source materials, LeSueur examines this episode from the victims’ perspective. Popular culture often portrays outlaws as misunderstood and even honorable men—Robin Hood figures—but as this history makes clear, they were stone-cold killers who preferred ambush over direct confrontation. They had no qualms about shooting people in the back. The LeSueur and Gibbons families that settled St. Johns, Arizona, served as part of a colonizing vanguard for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, popularly known as Mormons. They contended with hostile neighbors, an unforgiving environment, and outlaw bands that took advantage of the large mountain expanses to hide and escape justice. Deprivation and death were no strangers to the St. Johns colonizers, but the LeSueur-Gibbons murders shook the entire community, the act being so vicious and unnecessary, the young men so full of promise. By focusing the historian’s lens on this incident and its aftermath, this exciting Western history offers fresh insights into the Wild Bunch gang, while also shedding new light on the Mormon colonizing experience in a gripping tale of life and death on the Arizona frontier. Praise for Life and Death on the Mormon Frontier: "Stephen LeSueur takes the reader on a ride into the dark, murderous world of the Wild Bunch in the Mormon settlements of the Utah-Arizona frontier. A compelling, deeply researched, and well-written study that will grab the attention of Old West historians." — Daniel Buck, co-author of The End of the Road: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Bolivia "Stephen LeSueur unearths the circumstances that led a gang of outlaws to kill Frank LeSueur (the author’s great-uncle) and Gus Gibbons near St. Johns, Arizona, in 1900. LeSueur punctures popular myths about the Wild Bunch, but the true history of poverty, faithfulness, criminality, and family is more compelling and just as wild. It's a hard book to put down." — John G. Turner, author of Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet "Unlike romanticized versions of Western bandits, Life and Death on the Mormon Frontier portrays a grittier, authentic Old West in a manner that draws the reader into another era. As a descendant of one of the many victims of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, LeSueur thoroughly and compellingly recounts the murder and its devastating effect on the family—something often overlooked. In the current climate of winking at contemporary scofflaws, it is good to be reminded that character still counts—and that its opposite still destroys.” — Gregory A. Prince, author of David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism and Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History

The story of the 9th-century caliphal mission from Baghdad to discover the legendary barrier against the apocalyptic nations of Gog and Magog mentioned in the Quran, has been either dismissed as superstition or treated as historical fact. By exploring the intellectual and literary history surrounding the production and early reception of this adventure, Travis Zadeh traces the conceptualization of frontiers within early 'Abbasid society and re-evaluates the modern treatment of marvels and monsters inhabiting medieval Islamic descriptions of the world. Examining the roles of translation, descriptive geography, and salvation history in the projection of early 'Abbasid imperial power, this book is essential for all those interested in Islamic studies, the 'Abbasid dynasty and its politics, geography, religion, Arabic and Persian literature and European Orientalism.