Divided Houses

Divided Houses is the first book to show how the Civil War transformed gender roles and attitudes toward sexuality among Americans. This unique volume brings together a wide spectrum of critical viewpoints by newly emerging scholars as well as distinguished authors in the field to show how gender became a prism through which the political tensions of antebellum America were filtered and focused. Through the course of the book, many fascinating subjects are explored, from new "manly" responsibilities both black and white men had thrust upon them as soldiers, to women's roles in the guerrilla fighting, to the wartime dialogue on interracial sex. In addition, an incisive introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson helps place these various subjects within an overall historical context. Divided House sheds new light on the entire Civil War experience, demonstrating how themes of gender, class, race, and sexuality interacted to forge the beginnings of a new society.

In Divided Houses, Caroline Ford examines how the so-called feminization of religion in France from the French Revolution to the First World War contributed to the formation of a distinctive secular (laïc) republican political culture in France. She also reveals the effect of women's close association with religion on their civil and social status, which gave rise in France to heated debates about the limits of female agency, women's property rights, and women's role in the family and in society. She argues that religious women were often far more than the passive instruments of a male ecclesiastical hierarchy. In showing that these women could dispose of their bodies, souls, and properties in ways that were unimaginable to their secular counterparts, Ford's book obliges one to rethink the categories of tradition and modernity that have structured most thinking about this subject.Ford's book is centered on a set of microhistories and causes célèbres whose narratives are fascinating in and of themselves. They include conflicts within religious orders, the cults of some latter-day female saints, and riveting legal disputes involving women who converted to Catholicism. Perhaps most intriguingly, Ford brings current debates concerning pluralism and cultural difference in France into sharp historical focus. The fact that women have been portrayed as the quintessential carriers of religion ever since France embraced laïcité sheds light on problems faced by the secular French state today as it attempts to regulate religious expression--including emblems of Islam--in the public sphere.

Houses Divided provides new insights into the significance of the nineteenth-century evangelical schisms that arose initially over the moral question of African American bondage. Volkman examines such fractures in the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches of the slaveholding border state of Missouri. He maintains that congregational and local denominational ruptures before, during, and after the Civil War were central to the crisis of the Union in that state from 1837 to 1876. The schisms were interlinked religious, legal, constitutional, and political developments rife with implications for the transformation of evangelicalism and the United States from the late 1830s to the end of Reconstruction. The evangelical disruptions in Missouri were grounded in divergent moral and political understandings of slavery, abolitionism, secession, and disloyalty. Publicly articulated by factional litigation over church property and a combative evangelical print culture, the schisms were complicated by the race, class, and gender dynamics that marked the contending interests of white middle-class women and men, rural church-goers, and African American congregants. These ruptures forged antagonistic northern and southern evangelical worldviews that increased antebellum sectarian strife and violence, energized the notorious guerilla conflict that gripped Missouri through the Civil War, and fueled post-war vigilantism between opponents and proponents of emancipation. The schisms produced the interrelated religious, legal and constitutional controversies that shaped pro-and anti-slavery evangelical contention before 1861, wartime Radical rule, and the rise and fall of Reconstruction.

Housing is increasingly unattainable in successful global cities, and Toronto is no exception -- in part because of zoning that protects “stable” residential neighborhoods with high property values. House Divided is a citizen’s guide for changing the way housing can work in big cities. Using Toronto as a case study, this anthology unpacks the affordability crisis and offers innovative ideas for creating housing for all ages and demographic groups. With charts, maps, data, and policy prescriptions, House Divided poses tough questions about the issue that will make or break the global city of the future.

Twenty-first-century Christians face a host of complex, divisive issues that threaten the unity of the church. In Houses Divided, author Marilynn Knott challenges the members of churches in the United States to put aside their differences and start conversations that can bring them together as the active and functioning Body of Christ in the world today. Knott connects the struggles facing modern society on social issues with those faced by Christians trying to apply biblical values to modern life. In Houses Divided, she first sketches the basic tenets of Christianity and responds to the tenets as they relate to society. She then provides a discussion of sin and looks at greed in our culture—how it impacts society, and how individuals and the body of Christ are called to turn away from its enticements. She discusses the place and role of government within the United States. Finally, she suggests a continuum of caring that brings entities together to address providing for the common good and explores some of the sticky-wicket issues—abortion, guns, immigration, and homosexuality—that currently divide Christians. Sharing personal experiences to help illustrate her vision of a more caring world, Knott makes a clear argument for the importance of applying the broad principles of Jesus’s teachings to helping the less fortunate.

Just as Jesus Christ promised, a book that simplifies and clarifies the End Times prophecies, is finally here. A House Divided chronicles, in easy-to-understand terms, the ENTIRE End Times scenario, including SEVEN easy-to-remember End Events. After years of scouring numerous passages and gathering all the prophecies scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments of The Bible, the author has been able to piece together the prophecies to form a single, coherent picture of the End Times. During the process of gathering together the prophecies, the Author also discovered a profound prophecy concerning the emergence of a book in the End Times that outlines seven events. In The Revelation, Chapter 10, John witnesses a powerful Angel descending from Heaven who holds open a book while he utters seven thunders. Although John heard the thunders and was about to write them down, he was told to conceal them. The author of A House Divided feels that he has uncovered what those "seven thunders" are. By themselves, the seven End Events only scratch the surface of all the new prophetic interpretations that are presented in this book. There are at least twenty COMPLETELY NEW interpretations of prophecy, never before presented, that are detailed in the book. Many of the author's interpretations are as bold in its assertions as The Revelation is mysterious. Jews also, will find this work especially intriguing. In rather blunt terms, the author exalts Jews while diminishing the importance of many religious, social and political organizations of our day, including organized Christian hierarchy and the Catholic Church. The book uses a minimum of scriptural quotes and explains, in everyday language and terms, what Christians must know to prepare themselves for a terrible Christian holocaust in the future. And the book has been formatted to appeal to the "less-educated" Christian. Formerly, most prophecy authors have ignored the larger portion of Christians who are not "schooled" in ancient text, translations and scholarly jargon. A House Divided dispenses with the scholarly chitchat that has inhibited understanding in past prophecy works. It omits diplomacy and gets straight to the point. Without a doubt, A House Divided is as profound in fresh and new End Times understanding, in this day, as The Revelation was in the day of John. Do not miss this opportunity to know, understand and REMEMBER what has eluded all of us to this day: the final revealing of the mystery of God and the WHOLE End Times Truth.

The Civil War is one of the most defining eras of American history, and much has been written on every aspect of the war. The volume of material available is daunting, especially when a student is trying to grasp the overall themes of the period. Jonathan Wells has distilled the war down into understandable, easy-to-read sections, with plenty of maps and illustrations, to help make sense of the battles and social, political, and cultural changes of the era. Presented here is information on: the home front the battles, both in the East and the West the status of slaves women’s role in the war and its aftermath literature and public life international aspects of the war and much more! Students will also find helpful study aids on the companion website for the book. A House Divided provides a short, readable survey of the Civil War and the Reconstruction period afterward, focusing not only on the battles, but on how Americans lived during a time of great upheaval in the country’s history, and what that legacy has meant to the country today.

Consolidating one of the most complex and multi-faceted eras in American History, this new edition of Jonathan Wells’s A House Divided unifies the broad and varied scholarship on the American Civil War. Amassing a variety of research, this accessible and readable text introduces readers to both the war and the Reconstruction period, and how Americans lived during this time of great upheaval in the country's history. Designed for a variety of subjects and teaching styles, this text not only looks at the Civil War from a historical perspective, but also analyzes its ramifications on the United States and American identities through the present day. This second edition has been updated throughout, incorporating new scholarship from recent studies on the Civil War era, and includes additional photographs and maps (now incorporated throughout the text), updated bibliographies, and a supplementary companion website.