Elesha J. Coffman – författare

For 50 years, Margaret Mead told Americans how cultures worked, and Americans listened. While serving as a curator at the American Museum of Natural History and as a professor of anthropology at Columbia University, she published dozens of books and hundreds of articles, scholarly and popular, on topics ranging from adolescence to atomic energy, Polynesian kinship networks to kindergarten, national morale to marijuana. At her death in 1978, she was the most famous anthropologist in the world and one of the best-known women in America. She had amply achieved her goal, as she described it to an interviewer in 1975, "To have lived long enough to be of some use."As befits her prominence, Mead has had many biographers, but there is a curious hole at the center of these accounts: Mead's faith. Margaret Mead: A Twentieth-Century Faith introduces a side of its subject that few people know. It re-narrates her life and reinterprets her work, highlighting religious concerns. Following Mead's lead, it ranges across areas that are typically kept academically distinct: anthropology, gender studies, intellectual history, church history, and theology. It is a portrait of a mind at work, pursuing a unique vision of the good of the world.

Since the 1972 publication of Dean M. Kelley's Why Conservative Churches Are Growing--which, as one reviewer pointed out, was ''really a book about why the liberal churches have stopped growing''--discussion of the Protestant mainline has focused on the tradition's decline. The Christian Century and the Rise of Mainline Protestantism tells a different story, using the lens of the influential periodical The Christian Century to examine the rise of the mainline to a position of cultural prominence in the first half of the twentieth century. Elesha J. Coffman argues that liberal Protestants used cultural capital and persuasive rhetoric to make a strong case for their own status as shepherds of the American soul, but their influence on American culture was ultimately more a social construct than a demographic reality. The tradition's leaders were so identified because they espoused forward-looking ideas and affiliated with ''leading'' institutions, not because they actually had many followers. Consequently, the tradition's decline resulted less from a theological sea change than from a shift in the roster of religious spokespersons after World War II, coupled with growing doubt about the legitimacy of any kind of cultural establishment. In short, the mainline was never mainstream, and its alliance with genteel philosophy rather than popular culture led to both its early successes and its eventual crises.

Christianity Today 2025 Book Award Finalist (History/Biography)"An excellent resource for those eager to learn more about the evolution of American Christianity."--Publishers Weekly"Well-informed and highly readable."--Christianity Today (5-star review)American history has profoundly shaped, and been shaped by, Christianity. This engaging introduction provides a brisk and lively yet deeply researched survey of these intertwined forces from the colonial period to the present.Elesha Coffman tells the story of Christianity in the United States by focusing on 13 key events over four centuries of history. The turning points are as varied as the movements they track, including a naval battle, a revival, a schism, a court case, an outpouring of the Spirit, an act of terrorism, the election of a bishop, and the election of a president. Coffman highlights women and men from a range of traditions and shows how, throughout these events, Christians endeavored to discern what it meant to live faithfully in the diverse and rapidly changing place that became the United States. This book helps readers understand their own faith and the landscape of American religion. Each chapter includes a hymn, a prayer, relevant historical images, excerpts from primary sources, and resources for further reading. Foreword by Mark A. Noll.