Sunday Best

‘A magisterial piece of social history’ — The Anglican

‘This is a big book in every respect. Its pages are profusely and helpfully illustrated, the work of a scholar and a communicator … You will understand yourself the better for reading this book.’ — Touchstone

‘If the age is over of the printed book as an intellectual and cultural object that can engage us by its physical presence and aesthetic form, someone has fortunately forgotten to tell Massey University Press.’ — Douglas Hynd, Adjunct Research Fellow, Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture

‘Using church minute books, church histories, pamphlets, contemporary newspaper accounts and his own personal notes, Lineham has produced a highly readable book, well-illustrated and entertaining in style’. — Waiapu News

Professor Peter Lineham has for many years written and lectured extensively on the religious history of New Zealand, although his earliest work, still continuing, was on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history of British Protestant sects. His recent work has focused on broader trends in contemporary religion, although he has not lost his fascination with the nineteenth-century adjustment of religion within New Zealand. His most recent book is Destiny: the Life and Times of a Self-made Apostle (Penguin, 2013). He is currently engaged in various projects on new religious movements in New Zealand, and on Brethren, Protestant, Evangelical and Anglican history.