Tracing a series of political crises in Anglo-American history from the sixteenth-century Reformation to the Civil Rights Movement, Coffey excavates the history of deliverance politics testifying to the powerful political appeal of the Exodus, the Jubilee and the biblical language of liberty.

Acknowledgments ; Introduction: "Biblical Traditions that Call for Liberation" ; Part I: Reformations, Revolutions, and Political Slavery ; 1. "The Only Parallel": The Puritan Revolution as England's Exodus ; 2. "God's Favourite People": The Revolutions of 1688 and 1776 ; Part II: Abolitionists, African Americans, and Racial Slavery ; 3. "Pretended Votaries of Freedom": The Rise of Protestant Antislavery to 1807 ; 4. "Yours for the Jubilee": The Abolitionists' Scriptural Imagination, 1808-1865 ; 5. "When Israel was in Egyptland": Black Exodus Politics, 1808-1865 ; Part III: Exodus after Slavery ; 6. "I Have Seen the Promised Land": The Persistence of Deliverance Politics, 1865-2008 ; Conclusion: Sacred Texts, Godly Readers, and Historical Change ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index

"[A] distinctive and important book....A project of this kind would, one suspects, have been impossible in pre-digital days, but Coffey is consistently alert to historical context and avoids the potential pitfalls of over-systematic citation of the results of a word search. The result is a book that draws together the strengths of traditional and digital modes of scholarship. A related impressive feature is the effective weaving together of theology and politics, blending a sure-footed awareness of the religious background with a sensitivity to the processes by which texts and narratives were used to legitimate rebellion and motivate followers....Both in its content and its methodology, this is a pathbreaking book that sets important agendas for future research and writing."--John Wolffe, English Historical Review "[A] fascinating...thoroughly-researched and very well-written book."--Reformation 21 "This book, a tour de force of historical research and cultural analysis, demonstrates that a rhetoric of 'deliverance' grounded in several key biblical texts has been an under-appreciated but vitally important theme of political mobilization in Britain and American from the 16th century to the present. The argument is built on careful analysis of these texts from the Book of Exodus and elsewhere in Scripture, and of their surprisingly broad effect in different historical periods and national circumstances. The effect adds significantly to political understanding of religious history and religious understanding of the political. It is a noteworthy, but also surprisingly timely work."--Mark Noll, author of Protestantism: A Very Short Introduction "Coffey's book is a significant contribution to the work of intellectual historians seeking to discover the roots of Western ideals of liberty, who have sometimes overlooked their origins in Judeo-Christian thought. It is exhaustively researched and rich with data supporting the author's contention that even contemporary references to Exodus have been shaped by a long intertextual tradition of deliverance rhetoric. But its greatest contribution may simply be the rich insight it offers into the power of a big idea and into the potent role that narrative plays in shaping political and social movements."--American Historical Review "A fascinating, original, and thought-provoking book. In a riveting analysis that crosses centuries and continents, John Coffey explores how a wide range of intellectuals and activists, from American Presidents to African slaves, have been inspired by--and taken advantage of--the biblical ideals of exodus and liberation. This is global, religious, intellectual and social history at its best, raising important questions about the practical power of theology in pursuit of freedom and equality."--Stephen Tuck, author of We Ain't What We Ought To Be: The Black Freedom Struggle from Emancipation to Obama "With Exodus and Liberation John Coffey makes an original contribution to the literature in this well-written, insightful, and cogently argued text by extending the discussion back to the Reformed Protestant use of Exodus in the English Puritan and Revolutionary movements of the 16th and 17th centuries."--Albert J. Raboteau, Princeton University "In this study, John Coffey shows that the Exodus narrative has deep roots within Western political discourse going back to the sixteenth century. He meticulously draws out the long tradition of using the narrative in Western political dialogue, specifically with regard to slavery...It is intended as a high compliment that this fascinating and exhaustive work at times reads like a novel."--The Historian

Selling point: A new account of how the Bible's liberationist texts were deployed and contested in a series of political crises in British and American history. It argues that Exodus and Jubilee carried one of the big ideas in Anglophone political culture - the idea of deliverance Selling point: Traces a series of political crises in Anglo-American history from the sixteenth-century Reformation to the Civil Rights Movement

John Coffey is Professor of Early Modern History, University of Leicester. He is the author of Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558-1689 and the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism and Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion, among other works.

Selling point: A new account of how the Bible's liberationist texts were deployed and contested in a series of political crises in British and American history. It argues that Exodus and Jubilee carried one of the big ideas in Anglophone political culture - the idea of deliverance Selling point: Traces a series of political crises in Anglo-American history from the sixteenth-century Reformation to the Civil Rights Movement