Luther and the Evangelicals made excellent use of propaganda. Two examples of this propaganda are woodcuts entitled Two Kinds of Sermons and Christ in the Sheep Shed. Propaganda is not meant in its common negative sense, but in the sense that the woodcuts were effective at communicating the Evangelical’s message. Woodcuts were meant to be hung in public places, such as a tavern. Woodcuts had two primary features, the image and accompanying text. These woodcuts were primarily directed towards illiterate peasants, most of whom would only base their judgment solely off of the image portion of the woodcut. The text below the image was based around one or more Bible verses and was meant to be read out loud to crowds. This only happened on certain occasions, however, most people would have seen it in passing and not during a reading.

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Without Sin is an attempt by the late Spencer Klaw to chart the development and downfall of the Oneida community in northern New York. The book, published in 1993 succeeds in several respects. The book follows the life and times of John Noyes, charting out his spiritual journey and that of the communities he founded. Klaw drew off of many sources for his book. In the afterword, he discusses the sources he used. He focused primarily on the primary sources that the Oneida community left behind. However, he also considered resent scholarship on the community. Written for a more popular level and containing no footnotes, the work by Columbia University’s professor of journalism, engages its readers and challenges them to figure out what was going on in Oneida without resorting to sensationalism.

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Nancy F. Cott in The Bonds of Womanhood tries to develop a picture of Puritan femininity in New England at the end of the 18^th and beginning of the 19^th centuries. The Women’s Sphere was the idea that the domestic side of life was meant to be run by women. This was the sole place for women in a functioning society. It is her contention that the development of the “Woman’s Sphere” was a necessary part of “shattering the hierarchy of sex.” (200) This is a contentious claim because the development of the Women’s Sphere is often considered to be a reincarnation of prior formations of sexual hierarchy. While on the surface, this criticism seems to be valid, it neglects to take into account a proper grounding and understanding of the Women’s Sphere. The work is invaluable because of this nuanced look at the development of external and internal views of women during this period. This nuanced stance has lead to its importance in feminine scholarship.

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The origins of the Mormon religion are a topic of great interest. On one hand, Mormonism is an outworking of the democratization thesis in its purest form, hence, the designation as the quintessential American Religion. On the other, many Mormon beliefs are completely different from its immediate predecessors. There have been a number of works that have explained the social origin of Mormonism, but not its unique theological development. (xv) Stepping into this void, John L. Brooke’s The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 attempts to account for the development of core Mormon beliefs that substantially differentiate it from mainstream Protestantism. Among these beliefs are the celestial marriage, equality of matter and spirit, and the ultimate goal of godhood amongst believers. For Brooke, these beliefs originated from traditions of alchemy and hermeticism. Brooke locates this trajectory as originating in the traditions of the Radical Reformation. Despite the prime facie connections made by Brooke, there remain questions that significantly question his thesis.

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In dishonor of the God Debate between Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron vs. Brian Sapient and “Kelly,” read the following debate: Fr. Copleston vs. Bertrand Russell: The Famous 1948 BBC Radio Debate on the Existence of God.

It is a classic and shows the civility and good reasoning that should be employed in any debate. Favorite Russell quote:

C: Take the proposition “if there is a contingent being then there is a necessary being.” I consider that that proposition hypothetically expressed is a necessary proposition. If you are going to call every necessary proposition an analytic proposition, then — in order to avoid a dispute in terminology — I would agree to call it analytic, though I don’t consider it a tautological proposition. But the proposition is a necessary proposition only on the supposition that there is a contingent being. That there is a contingent being actually existing has to be discovered by experience, and the proposition that there is a contingent being is certainly not an analytic proposition, though once you know, I should maintain, that there is a contingent being, it follows of necessity that there is a necessary being.

R: The difficulty of this argument is that I don’t admit the idea of a necessary being and I don’t admit that there is any particular meaning in calling other beings “contingent.” These phrases don’t for me have a significance except within a logic that I reject.

While I am a Christian, I have never bought the argument from necessity.