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Giveaway- Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination Volume 1

This is only open to those with a USA mailing address. There is absolutely no cost to enter. (Be sure to read to the bottom of this post to discover five other books we are giving away this year.)

This is your chance to receive a new copy of Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination Volume 1: The Modern Redefinition of Tongues by Philip E. Blosser & Charles A. Sullivan. In March we will be giving away Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination Volume 2: Tongues through Church History by these authors.

“In three carefully researched volumes, this ground-breaking study examines the gift of tongues through 2,000 years of church history. Starting in the present and working back in time, these volumes consider (1) the modern redefinition of ‘tongues’ as a private prayer language…

“In the first volume, the authors establish that modern glossolalia, far from being a supernatural gift enjoyed by certain believers since the time of Pentecost and undergoing a resurgence in modern times, has no precedent in church life prior to the nineteenth century. They discuss why German theologians, responding to the Irvingite revival, coined the term ‘glossolalia’ in the 1830s; why Pentecostals between 1906–8 quietly began redefining ‘tongues’ to mean a heavenly language unintelligible to human beings but pleasing to God, instead of foreign languages useful for evangelism; why Protestant cessationists believed miraculous tongues had ceased; and why interpolated idioms like ‘unknown tongues’ in Protestant Bibles were aimed originally at Rome’s use of Latin.”

One of the authors, Charles Sullivan, has a website where much information about speaking in tongues is posted. I am unsure how much is included in the book.

This giveaway is a drawing. To enter, just leave a comment to show you wish to be included. The drawing will close on February 3, 2026 at 6pm (eastern time), after which I will draw a winner.

Be sure to check back to see if you have won as in the past some people have not responded after winning and so a new winner had to be drawn. You will then need to email me your mailing address if I do not already have it, so be sure to watch your email and check the spam folder. If I know your Facebook profile, I will message you there.

Don’t be alarmed if your comment does not immediately show as it may require approval.

You may want to subscribe to the email notifications of new blog posts in order to not miss these. While we try to share about our giveaways on social media, those platforms often do not show the posts to many people.

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Giveaway- The God I Was Given by Scot Loyd

This is only open to those with a USA mailing address. There is absolutely no cost to enter. (Be sure to read to the bottom of this post to discover seven other books we are giving away this year.)

This is your chance to receive a new copy of the memoir, The God I Was Given: Looking for Faith After Losing My Religion by former United Pentecostal Church minister Scot Loyd. This copy was donated to us by Scot and is signed by him.

Below is an exert from the prologue:

Now imagine that you also had a talent for cooking. You were able to prepare and present these dishes in ways that made your family proud. They were all convinced you were destined for greatness in the culinary arts.

Then, one day you discovered something about these recipes.. something not so wonderful.

You discovered that the recipes you’d spent your entire life learning, preparing, and perfecting were actually recipes that were used to abuse, poison, and, in some instances, kill others. You learned that generations of people grew up in homes where they were force-fed these dishes, the same dishes that were the signature dishes of your family kitchen.

For so long, you and your family believed these dishes to be good, but in reality, so many others suffered because of them. After learning all this overwhelming information, you decided that you no longer wanted to cook these meals, nor eat any of the food that was produced by your traditional family recipes.

So you just stopped.

Your family and friends were, of course, concerned. They protested, insisting that you were turning your back on your calling and talents, and on the traditional recipes that nourished your family for generations. They dismissed the information you obtained as “lies.”

They suggested that those who were hurt by the dishes prepared by your family simply didn’t follow the original recipe, or that they never actually even tasted any of the food. Then, when you presented plenty of evidence showing that many were harmed by eating the food, they’d say, “Nonsense! The food isn’t the problem. There must have been something wrong with how they ate it!”

Or, “They should have tried harder at preparing their palette to be worthy of such delicacies. Obviously, their systems weren’t ready for such delights. There isn’t anything wrong with the food… others have eaten it and haven’t died!”

Now, what if this wasn’t actually about a family of chefs sticking closely to generational recipes? Imagine this was really about religion and a family of well-intentioned people who truly believed they had the equivalent of a recipe that would send people to heaven in the afterlife. That this recipe for religion, if followed closely, would help them avoid the literal burning lake of fire for all of eternity.

These good people were so convinced of their faith in the recipe given to them that they lived every aspect of their lives by this refined recipe. Any deviation from the instructions was frowned upon, with the person who deviated shamed and often ostracized by their community.

This is the challenge faced by so many of us who have come to recognize the dangers of rigid religious systems. Yet many of us still have an appetite for the sacred and spiritual.

This giveaway is a drawing. To enter, just leave a comment to show you wish to be included. The drawing will close on January 9, 2026 at 6pm (eastern time), after which I will draw a winner.

Don’t be alarmed if your comment does not immediately show as it may require approval.

In 2026, we’ll be giving away one copy of each of Thomas Fudge’s books on the UPCI/Oneness Pentecostalism (Christianity without the Cross: A History of Salvation in Oneness Pentecostalism, Heretics & Politics: Theology, Power, and Perception in the Last Days of CBC and C.H. Yadon and the Vanishing Theological Past in Oneness Pentecostalism), plus Women and Worship at Corinth: Paul’s Rhetorical Arguments in 1 Corinthians and Unveiling Paul’s Women: Making Sense of 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 by Lucy Peppiatt, as well as Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination: Volume 1: The Modern Redefinition of Tongues and Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination, Volume 2: Tongues through Church History by Philip E. Blosser & Charles A. Sullivan.

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Giveaway: Take Back Your Life 3rd Edition by Janja Lalich

As promised, though at the last moment, I am posting the final three giveaways for 2025. More are planned for 2026, so you may want to subscribe for notifications of new posts. There will hopefully be one each month.

As with all of our giveaways, this is only open to those with a USA mailing address. There is absolutely no cost to enter.

This is your chance to receive a new copy of Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich. This is the third edition, which is the latest. The original edition was titled Captive Hearts, Captive Minds and we gave away several dozen copies of that through the years.

“Cult victims and those who have experienced abusive relationships often suffer from fear, confusion, low self-esteem, and post-traumatic stress. Take Back Your Life explains the seductive draw that leads people into such situations, provides insightful information for assessing what happened, and hands-on tools for getting back on track.”

Jana Lalich is an international authority on cults and coercion and has a website, which is found here. (At the time of this post, it was not available, so a link is shared to an archived version.) She is the founder of the Lalich Center on Cults & Coercion. If you watch documentaries on unhealthy groups, you have probably seen her.

We have a playlist of many interviews and talks she has given here.

This giveaway is a drawing. To enter, just leave a comment to show you wish to be included. The drawing will close on January 3, 2026 at 6pm (eastern time), after which I will draw a winner.

Don’t be alarmed if your comment does not immediately show as it may require approval.

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Giveaway- Becoming The Pastor’s Wife by Beth Allison Barr

As with all of our giveaways, this is only open to those with a USA mailing address. There is absolutely no cost to enter.

This is your chance to receive a new copy of Becoming The Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination As A Woman’s Path To Ministry by Beth Allison Barr.

“As a pastor’s wife for twenty-five years, Beth Allison Barr has lived with assumptions about what she should do and who she should be.

“In Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, Barr draws on that experience and her academic expertise to trace the history of the role of the pastor’s wife, showing how it both helped and hurt women in conservative Protestant traditions. While they gained an important leadership role, it came at a deep cost: losing independent church leadership opportunities that existed throughout most of church history and strengthening a gender hierarchy that prioritized male careers.

“Barr examines the connection between the decline of female ordination and the rise of the role of pastor’s wife in the evangelical church, tracing its patterns in the larger history (ancient, medieval, Reformation, and modern) of Christian women’s leadership.”

Beth has a website, which is found here.

This giveaway is a drawing. To enter, just leave a comment to show you wish to be included. The drawing will close on January 3, 2026 at 6pm (eastern time), after which I will draw a winner.

Don’t be alarmed if your comment does not immediately show as it may require approval.

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Giveaway: In Jesus Name – The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals

As with all of our giveaways, this is only open to those with a USA mailing address. There is absolutely no cost to enter.

This is your chance to receive a new copy of In Jesus Name – The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals by David Reed. This is United Pentecostal and other Oneness Pentecostal related. It is one of those more expensive books, selling for over $40.

This is a revision and expansion of Reed’s thesis from 1978 and it includes many footnotes. Reed used to be Oneness Pentecostal and this book is said to be sympathetic to the teachings. Though Thomas Fudge’s Christianity Without The Cross came out before Reed’s, Reed touts his book as “the first comprehensive study of the origins, history and theology of Oneness Pentecostalism.”

Thomas Robinson wrote a lengthy review of Reed’s book: “There is much to criticize about Oneness Pentecostalism, at least from the perspective of contemporary evangelicalism and even of the somewhat more tolerant larger Christian communion. And much of what can be criticized in Oneness Pentecostalism comes in its starkest and best known form, in the UPCI. Oneness pastors are often autocratic. Fellow Christians—even fellow Pentecostals and sometimes even fellow Oneness Pentecostals, and, as Fudge bears witness, even fellow UPCIs—are routinely and often nastily dismissed. Members are isolated from the larger society and often from their own families. A stark legalism guides moral conduct and social behaviour.

“Reed could have written an equally long book on the practices and lifestyle of Oneness Pentecostals, and this, I think, would have made Oneness Pentecostals (or at least the UPCI extreme) a much less attractive group and a considerably harder sell to the wider Christian community. That is not to say, of course, that there are no groups within Christian orthodoxy that demonstrate an equally isolationist mentality and tightly controlled and closed fellowship.

“Reed sets aside the matters of behaviour and attitude. It is the theology of Oneness Pentecostals that is Reed’s concern, and in that regard Reed does as effective a job as is likely to be done for long years to come. . . .

“Reed’s detailed work on Oneness Pentecostalism will stand as the definitive work on the subject for years to come. My review here hardly begins to mine the full nuances and insights of Reed’s meticulous and comprehensive presentation. As an apologist, Reed is as thorough and as effective an advocate as one can find. That is not to say that every point he makes is compelling, but he is trying to save his client from the chair, and, given that reality, he can hardly be faulted for holding nothing back. As a critic, Reed is considerably more restrained, but, then, why would he not be? He believes that he is dealing with a theological orphan whose language is still mere baby-talk and whose ideas are quite understandably yet immature and largely undeveloped—an orphan who has been cast out, but an orphan with sufficient ancestry and genetic makeup to have a valid claim for membership in the family.”

This giveaway is a drawing. To enter, just leave a comment to show you wish to be included. The drawing will close on January 3, 2026 at 6pm (eastern time), after which I will draw a winner.

Don’t be alarmed if your comment does not immediately show as it may require approval.

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Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.