America Religions Religion

In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America's imagination. A "spirit photographer", William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation.

For much of American history, evangelicalism was aligned with progressive political causes: nineteenth-century evangelicals fought for the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, and public education. But contemporary conservative activists have defaulted on this majestic legacy, embracing instead an agenda virtually indistinguishable from the Republican Party platform.

Fifteen-year-old Carolyn Maull McKinstry was just a few feet away when the Klan - planted bomb that killed four of her friends exploded in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history…and the turning point in a young girl's life.

A sweeping history of Christianity in America, from the arrival of the first Europeans to the political triumphs of evangelicalism, showing the powerful, singular role the faith has always played in American public life. In the United States today, there is no faith more dominant than...

Despite the staggering moral freefall and societal chaos heralded from the highest offices and courts in our land, there is a higher Court yet—and it is decreeing a divine design for America. Which court do your prayers align with? In this dynamic and deeply prophetic hands-on prayer manual, bestselling authors and frontline prophetic voices Dutch Sheets, Chuck Pierce, and Tim Sheets shift your concern for our country into prevailing prayers and Heaven-sent declarations that break our nation's strongholds, shift the spiritual balances of power, and reshape the course of America’s destiny.

Many scholars have come to think of the European Christian mission to the Americas as an inevitable success. But in its early period it was very much on the brink of failure. In 1576, Indigenous Mexican communities suffered a catastrophic epidemic that took almost two million lives and simultaneously left the colonial church in ruins. In the crisis and its immediate aftermath, Spanish missionaries and surviving pueblos de indios held radically different visions for the future of Christianity in the Americas.

The United States is recognized as the most religiously diverse country in the world, and yet its laws and customs, which many have come to see as normal features of American life, actually keep the constitutional ideal of “religious freedom for all” from becoming a reality. Christian beliefs, norms, and practices infuse our society; they are embedded in our institutions, creating the structures and expectations that define the idea of “Americanness.”

High on God gives the first robust and plausible explanation for why megachurches have conquered the churchgoing market of America. Without condescension or exaggeration, the authors show the genius of megachurches: the power of charisma, the design of facilities, the training of leaders, the emotional dynamics, and the strategies that bring people together and lead them to serve and help others.

How have Christian theologies of religious superiority underwritten ideologies of white supremacy in the United States? According to author Hill Fletcher, the tendency of Christians to view themselves as the "chosen ones" has often been translated into racial categories as well. In other words, Christian supremacy has historically lent itself to white supremacy, with disastrous consequences. Fletcher proposes strategies that will help foster racial healing in America.

As Christian: The Politics of a Word in America shows, for many American Christians, concepts like liberty and equality are rooted in the transcendent claims about human nature that Christianity offers. Democracy, equality under the law, and other basic principles of American government are seen as depending on the Christian faith's sustenance and support. Yet despite this presumed consensus, differing Christian beliefs have led to dispute and disagreement about what American society and government should look like.

In the autumn of 1834, New York City was awash with rumors of a strange religious cult operating nearby, centered around a mysterious, self-styled prophet named Matthias. It was said that Matthias the Prophet was stealing money from one of his followers; then came reports of lascivious sexual relations, based on odd teachings of matched spirits, apostolic priesthoods, and the inferiority of women. At its climax, the rumors transformed into legal charges, as the Prophet was arrested for the murder of a once highly regarded Christian gentleman who had fallen under his sway.

Christianity takes an astonishing variety of forms in America, from churches that cherish traditional modes of worship to evangelical churches and fellowships, Pentecostal churches, social-action churches, megachurches, and apocalyptic churches - congregations ministering to believers of diverse ethnicities, social classes, and sexual orientations. Nor is this diversity a recent phenomenon, despite many Americans' nostalgia for an undeviating “faith of our fathers” in the days of yore.

The culture wars have distorted the dramatic story of how Americans came to worship freely. Many activists on the right maintain that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation". Many on the left contend that the Founders were secular or Deist and that the First Amendment was designed to boldly separate church and state throughout the land. None of these claims are true, argues Beliefnet.com editor in chief Steven Waldman.

As Asian Americans are rising in terms of number and influence, the need for understanding their identity becomes important on academic, social, political, economic, and intellectual levels. This book is a very important book to meet the rising need that has been largely neglected in academia and in the publishing industry thus far. This book is an essential addition to all serious university libraries, public libraries, and private personal libraries of educated individuals.

Focusing on the lived experience of campers and camp counselors, The Jews of Summer demonstrates how a cultural crisis birthed a rite of passage that remains a significant influence in American Jewish life.

Author Eleanor Wagner first took listeners on a tour through Sussex County, New Jersey. Now, she invites you to take a step into new territory: with its rolling hills and rich natural resources, Warren County’s history is vast. Hear actual paranormal accounts from residents and the Lady Ghostbusters team founded by the author. Learn about the famed ghost Tillie Smith at Centenary University and other notorious hauntings. Delve into the past of the Oxford Furnace, Shippen Manor, and other landmarks.

Many of us have the same questions and thoughts. This book shares some of those questions and answers. It is my prayer that the answers provided in this book by Pastor Franklin, through God’s word, will open your eyes as they did mine. I pray that you never stop having a desire to completely please God and that you always have an everlasting thirst to make it to heaven.

What is America’s culture war all about? What are the motives that underlie and underwrite the agenda of the conservative right? What are the motives that underlie and underwrite the agenda of the liberal left? You can find answers in this book. Whence the source, origin, and provenance of man’s inhumanity to man? Do atrocities, genocides, pogroms, holocausts, ethnic cleansings, random shootings, transpire arbitrarily, or is there some underlying imperative, order, or principle directing them?

The traditional family was central to the American story. Only recently has it fallen into neglect. The American Way is the narrative of how this happened. Many history books emphasize American individualism and enterprise, but in The American Way, Allan C. Carlson shows that Americans saw the family as central to their national identity.

Everyone is upset about something - from fake news to political correctness and everything in between. In Make America Good Again, Joe Battaglia offers alternative perspectives on today's hot-button issues, such as gun legislation, immigration policy, and climate change initiatives, and frames them within biblical principles. Learn to cut through toxic political rhetoric, return to faith-based morality, and lead the charge in restoring our nation's true greatness.