American Religion

In 1981, ambitious young Ma Anand Sheela transported the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to the United States to fulfill his dream of creating a utopia for his thousands of disciples. Four years later, the incendiary Rajneeshpuram commune in Oregon collapsed under the weight of audacious criminal conspiracies hatched in its inner sanctum, including the largest bioterrorism attack in US history, an unprecedented election fraud scheme, and multiple attempted murders. Rajneeshpuram explores how this extraordinary spiritual community went so wrong.

Until now, the standard narrative of American religious history has begun with English settlers in Jamestown or Plymouth and remained predominantly Protestant and Atlantic. Driven by his strong sense of the historical and moral shortcomings of the usual story, Thomas A. Tweed offers a very different narrative in this ambitious new history.

When G. Willow Wilson - already an accomplished writer on modern religion and the Middle East at just 27 - leaves her atheist parents in Denver to study at Boston University, she enrolls in an Islamic Studies course that leads to her shocking conversion to Islam and sends her on a fated journey across continents and into an uncertain future. She settles in Cairo, where she teaches English and submerges herself in a culture based on her adopted religion.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) was an inner-city pastor, ethics professor, and author of the famous Serenity Prayer. Time magazine's March 8, 1948, cover story called him "the greatest Protestant theologian in America since Jonathan Edwards". Cited as an influence by public figures ranging from Billy Graham to Barack Obama, Niebuhr was described by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as "the most influential American theologian of the 20th century".

This is a story of power, set against Puritan America and the English Civil War. Williams's interactions with King James, Francis Bacon, Oliver Cromwell, and his mentor Edward Coke set his course, but his fundamental ideas came to fruition in America, as Williams, though a Puritan, collided with John Winthrop's vision of his "City upon a Hill."

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi set out to describe the nature of George Bush's America in the post-9/11 era and ended up vomiting demons in an evangelical church in Texas, riding the streets of Baghdad in an American convoy to nowhere, searching for phantom fighter jets in Congress, and falling into the rabbit hole of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

For twenty centuries, the Catholic Church has radically shaped world history—and survived it. In the decades following the Second Vatican Council, three popes have carried forward this legacy, striving to lead the Church and its governing body—the last absolute monarchy of the West—into the modern world. With In the Courts of Three Popes, accomplished diplomat, international lawyer, and Harvard professor Mary Ann Glendon gives listeners a rare inside look at the papacies of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis.

Mission at Nuremberg is Tim Townsend's gripping story of the American Army chaplain sent to save the souls of the Nazis incarcerated at Nuremberg, a compelling and thought-provoking tale that raises questions of faith, guilt, morality, vengeance, forgiveness, salvation, and the essence of humanity.

What is the true nature and mission of the church? Is its proper Christian purpose to save souls, or to transform the social order? This question is especially fraught when the church is one built by an enslaved people and formed, from its beginning, at the center of an oppressed community's fight for personhood and freedom. Such is the central tension in the identity and mission of the Black church in the United States.

Grace to Overcome invites you on a spiritual and historical journey, interweaving the rich tapestry of black history with the profound narratives of the Bible. Crafted by Pastor Bryan C. Loritts, an influential voice in multiethnic church movements, Grace to Overcome is a powerful collection of thirty-one devotions that bring to life the stories of both renowned and lesser-known figures who have help shaped society.

In a world where success is predominately measured by how much money we have in the bank, the size of our financial portfolio, and how prestigious our lives are, there have been great American Entrepreneurs who have chosen to take the path less traveled–to be truly compassionate and giving. They risked judgement, ridicule, and their fortunes; but in doing so they realized they could never out give God.

On September 11, 1857, a band of Mormon militia, under a flag of truce, lured unarmed members of a party of emigrants from their fortified encampment and, with their Paiute allies, killed them. More than 120 men, women, and children perished in the slaughter.

The Evangelical Church in the United States and other parts of the world, in general, is in a crisis of identity and stuck at a pivotal crossroads of history, conflicted about its God-given role and direction. This paralysis has been exposed and magnified by a renewed and raging debate about the role and relevance of Christianity in the governance and destiny of nations.

Two manuscripts in one audiobook! In Native American Shamanism, you will learn the core shamanic beliefs of different Native American tribes, know the shaman’s toolkit and how to perform shamanic rituals, discover the Native American dreamwork, and learn about animal medicine, guides, and totems. In Animal Spirit Guides, find out all you need to know about Animism in Shamanism, understand the difference between spirit guides and totem animals, explore the world of healing with animal medicine, and uncover a list of animal spirit guides and find out their meanings.

For decades the accepted wisdom has been that America's mainline Protestant churches are in decline, eclipsed by evangelical mega-churches. Church and religion expert Diana Butler Bass wondered if this was true, and this book is the result of her extensive, three-year study of centrist and...

The mysteries of melanin reach back into ancient times and extend into every aspect of our universe. Long mistaken has melanin simply been referenced as "darker skin pigmentation"; however, we know the ancient Kemetic sciences prove melanin is much more. Raise your awareness and gain knowledge of self as we explore the cosmos and discover the divine relationship of melanated beings and the galaxy. Inside, you will discover the vast array of stimulating facts and case studies regarding melanated beings.

Shamanism’s ancient spirituality is as relevant today as it was 100,000 years ago. We focus here on the traditions of a spirituality that has existed for as long as 100,000 years.

Exactly what has public education been trying to accomplish? Before the 1830s and Horace Mann, no schools in the US were state-supported or state-controlled. They were local, parent-teacher enterprises, supported without taxes, and taking care of all children. They were remarkably high in standard and were Christian. From Mann to the present, the state has used education to socialize the child. Public education became the means of creating a social order of the educators' design. Such men saw themselves and the school in messianic terms.

The religious right taught America to misread the Bible. Christians have misused Scripture to consolidate power, stoke fears, and defend against enemies. But people who have been hurt by the attacks of Christian nationalism can help us rediscover God's vision for faith in public life. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove explores how religious culture wars have misrepresented Christianity at the expense of the poor, and how listening to marginalized communities can help us hear God's call to love and justice in the world.

In 1830, a young seer and sometime treasure hunter named Joseph Smith began organizing adherents into a new religious community that would come to be called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (and known informally as the Mormons). One of the nascent faith’s early initiates was a twenty-three-year-old Ohio farmer named Parley Pratt, the distant grandfather of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In The Mormon People, religious historian Matthew Bowman peels back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine.