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This book examines how Catholics in the early nineteenth-century Ohio Valley—despite the evangelical success of the Protestant faith during the Second Great Awakening —expanded their church, strengthened their connections to Rome, and sought fellowship with their non-Catholic neighbors. Using extensive correspondence, reports, diaries, court documents, apologetical works, and other records of Catholic clergy, the book shows how Catholic leadership successfully pursued strategies of growth in frontier regions while continually weighing major decisions against established Protestant doctrine. This book helps restore Catholicism to the story of religious development in the Early Republic and emphasizes the importance of clerical and lay efforts to make sacred the landscape of the New West.

How can women find strength, courage, and motivation in a religious denomination that believes in the necessity of a wife's submission to her husband? This book shows that Southern Baptist women are surprisingly more complex and rebellious than outside observers might think they are. It presents the views of more than 150 women, often using their own words, and finds in them an unshakable belief that God speaks as directly to them as to any pastor or denominational leader. Although these women respect their leaders and are influenced by them, ultimately they recognize that their beliefs and practices are determined by their own choices, and with God's guidance.