America Religions Religion

America's Favorite Holidays explores how five of America's culturally important holidays - Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, and Thanksgiving - came to be what they are today, seasonal and religious celebrations heavily influenced by modern popular culture.

In the best-selling tradition of The Devil in the White City, award-winning author Brian Hicks tells the explosive story of the Morro Castle, the elegant luxury liner that burned off the coast of New Jersey on September 7, 1934. The captain died under mysterious circumstances seven hours before his ship caught fire off the New Jersey coast.

On Palm Sunday 1964, at the Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis, a group of black and white students began a "kneel-in" to protest the church's policy of segregation, a protest that would continue in one form or another for more than a year and eventually force the church to open its doors to black worshippers. In The Last Segregated Hour, Stephen Haynes tells the story of this dramatic yet little studied tactic which was the strategy of choice for bringing attention to segregationist policies in Southern churches.

How should Christians think and act with respect to guns and gun ownership? God and Guns in America provides a thoughtful, measured, robust, and articulate biblical treatment of an issue that is too often treated with more heat than light. Ethicist Michael Austin ultimately defends the view - from a Christian but non-pacifist perspective - that (1) the right to own and use a gun is a conditional right, (2) using a gun to harm another person is only morally permissible as a last resort, and (3) more legal restrictions are needed in the United States.

In Chicken Soup for the Soul of America, everyday heroes are celebrated. Heroes have always been in our midst, but the recent terrorist attacks on American soil have revealed many more heroes who have given their lives, love, time and strength to those in great need. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 events, Americans have found courage and inspiration from so many heroes, and this book pays tribute to them all, as well as those who appear every day in our lives.

On a hot and dusty December day in 1980, the bodies of four American women - three of them Catholic nuns - were pulled from a hastily dug grave in a field outside San Salvador. They had been murdered two nights before by the US-trained El Salvadoran military. News of the killing shocked the American public and set off a decade of debate over Cold War policy in Latin America. The women themselves became symbols and martyrs, shorn of context and background.

In the history of the Moody Bible Institute, founded in 1886 by shoe salesman turned revivalist Dwight Lyman Moody, Timothy Gloege finds an answer to why Christian ethics seem to go hand in hand with free-market capitalism.

In the early 19th century, many Americans were looking for an alternative to the Puritanism that had been the foundation of the new country. Amid the fervor of the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening, John Humphrey Noyes, a spirited but socially awkward young man, attracted a group of devoted followers with his fiery sermons about creating Jesus' millennial kingdom here on Earth.

The struggle within American Christianity, Garry Wills argues, now and throughout our country's history, is between the head and the heart: between reason and emotion, Enlightenment and Evangelism. Why has this been so? How has the tension between the two poles played out, and with what consequences, over the past 400 years? How "Christian" is America, after all? Wills brings a lifetime's worth of thought about these questions to bear on a magnificent historical reckoning.

During the mid-19th century, a quarter of a million travelers - men, women, and children - followed the "road across the plains" to gold rush California. This magnificent chronicle - the second installment of Will Bagley's sweeping Overland West series - captures the danger, excitement, and heartbreak of America's first great rush for riches and its enduring consequences.

Turning to the Old Testament, John MacArthur presents the simple truth of God's word: his blessing has always had conditions. MacArthur calls the Nation to turn back to God by showing us how we can become a nation that is once again blessed by God.

In Battleground America, author Kyle Walker speaks to the current state of our country, the spiritual warfare surrounding us, what the word of God offers regarding the matter, and steps we can take to address it.

The Dalai Lama explores the three levels of understanding. Understanding derived through listening or study, understanding derived through reception and thinking, and understanding derived through meditation and practice. Through meditation, we can generate genuine compassion and by clearing away attachment and aversion, we can better practice compassion in our daily life.

As a reminder of God's role in the history and future of America, Newt and Callista Gingrich give listeners a look into the architecture and beauty of the nation's capital in Rediscovering God in America. Listeners will take a walk through Washington, DC, to view the nation's monuments and memorials, including the National Archives, where Thomas Jefferson's immortal words jump off the page. But this is not simply a walking tour of the city; this is a tour of American history.

The Dalai Lama explains the basic Buddhist system and lays out a foundation for practice. Through daily practice, we pay homage to Buddha for his great kindness as teacher, we contemplate the impermanence of life, and dedicate our positive activities to the benefit of all in order to build a better world.

The Tibet Center and Gere Foundation present one of the world's great spiritual leaders and author of The New York Times best sellers An Open Heart and The Art of Happiness. In Mindful Enlightenment, The Dalai Lama explains how we can obtain tranquility abiding - the single cultivation of the mind.

If talking about racism makes you anxious, afraid, or even angry, you're not alone. In Anxious to Talk About It, pastor and professor Carolyn B. Helsel draws on her success with White congregations to offer insight and tools to embrace, explore, and work through the anxious feelings that often arise in these hard conversations. Through powerful personal stories, new observations on racial identity development, and spiritual practices to help engage issues of racial justice prayerfully, you'll gain a deeper understanding of race in America and your place in it.

Ron Sinclair believes that we are seeing the fulfillment of Ronald Reagan's prophecy that: "if we do not fight for our freedoms, We will be telling our children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." Ron wants his children to be able to raise their children in a free society as was envisioned by our Founding Fathers. This book explores the extraordinary events that happened during, before, and after the Revolutionary War Where God intervened to save, protect, or build America!

Those people. Their issues. The day's news and the ways we treat each other, overtly or subliminally, prove we are not yet living in post-racial America. It's hard to talk about race in America without everyone very quickly becoming defensive and shutting down. Sandhya Jha addresses the hot topic in a way that is grounded in real people's stories and that offers solid biblical grounding for thinking about race relations in America, reminding us that God calls us to build Beloved Community.

The soul of America is far more than a concept—it is a people. Even the most sacred principles mean very little unless lived out passionately by an informed citizenry. In The Portable Patriot, you’ll find a carefully assembled sampling of American history’s most formative words, written by the people who made that extraordinary history. Speeches and sermons, essays and extracts, poems and proclamations illumine such values as independence, virtue, humility, bravery, thrift, prayer, liberty, and reliance on God.