America Religions Religion

The Nolanville church of Christ Encampment was born during a time of spiritual revival in America, and eventually grew to be one of the most well-known and enduring annual camp meetings in Central Texas. Encamped Toward Heaven tells the story of the pioneer families who established the Lord's church on the banks of Nolan Creek, and follows their descendants through more than a century of faith, floods, famine, and fire.

The old adage, "never discuss religion and politics", is roundly rejected in this incisive exploration of presidential history and religious faith. This newly updated 2016 edition of The Presidents & Their Faith is a fascinating and informative look at how all US presidents exercised their personal faith, exerted presidential power, and led a religiously diverse nation.

Some elections really are huge turning points—and 2024 is one of them. A must-listen for every Catholic American, For God, Country, & Sanity: How Catholics Can Save America offers 13 insightful chapters that take a deep dive into different aspects of the cultural, political, and religious landscapes of our rapidly declining country. Look no further to find exactly what you need to prepare you to take your place in the battle for America this election year.

America is in crisis and we face many challenges, including racial unrest, immigration concerns, and political division, and many Christians are asking what they can do to make a difference in the midst of this confusion. Standing for God in America presents biblical answers to the issues affecting America today

No Justice is the harrowing story of Robbie Tolan, who early on one New Year's Eve morning, found himself being rushed to the hospital. A White police officer had shot him in the chest after mistakenly accusing him of stealing his own car...while in his own driveway.

The institution of American Freemasonry is approaching a fateful time in its history. Far from a carbon copy of what was envisioned at the beginning of the 18th century by those who formally organized the genius system of Freemasonry, particular situations and events make it clear as to why a reckoning is at hand. The Reckoning identifies and explores the reasons found in 10 major turning points that weakened and fundamentally transformed the course of the fraternity in America.

In this illuminating audiobook, Thomas Kidd draws on his expertise in American religious history to retrace the arc of this spiritual movement, illustrating just how historically peculiar that political and ethnic definition (white Republican) of evangelicals is. He examines distortions in the public understanding of evangelicals and shows how a group of “Republican insider evangelicals” aided the politicization of the movement. This book will be a must-listen for those trying to better understand the shifting religious and political landscape of America today.

In this compact audiobook, David L. Holmes offers a clear, concise and illuminating look at the spiritual beliefs of our founding fathers. He begins with an informative account of the religious culture of the late colonial era, surveying the religious groups in each colony. In particular, he sheds light on the various forms of deism that flourished in America, highlighting the profound influence this intellectual movement had on the founding generation.

In this powerful and passionate memoir - his final work - Cone describes the obstacles he overcame to find his voice, to respond to the signs of the times, and to offer a voice for those - like the parents who raised him in Bearden, Arkansas, in the era of lynching and Jim Crow - who had no voice. Recounting lessons learned both from critics and students, and the ongoing challenge of his models King, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, he describes his efforts to use theology as a tool in the struggle against oppression and for a better world.

In Sacred Scripture, Sacred War, James Byrd offers the first comprehensive analysis of how American revolutionaries defended their patriotic convictions through scripture. Byrd shows that the Bible was a key text of the American Revolution. Indeed, many colonists saw the Bible as primarily a book about war. They viewed God as not merely sanctioning violence but actively participating in combat, playing a decisive role on the battlefield.

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.

Based on the innovative premise that addiction is not limited to drugs or alcohol, but is truly about the over-the-top, out-of-control lifestyles that have detached Americans from each other and their spiritual Connections (with a capital “C”), Dr. Carol Clark looks at addiction as something in and of itself, a condition rather than a substance abuse or behavioral problem.

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.

A noted biblical scholar explores how the claim of divine choice has been used from ancient times to the present to justify territorial expansion and prejudice.

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.

The Aztecs believed offerings of human blood and human lives were necessary to the continued running of the universe. Indeed, in Aztec myths, the gods themselves make sacrifices of their own blood and even of their entire bodies in order to create a universe humans can live in and, in one story, to create humans themselves. To the ancient Aztecs, these practices seemed fitting, necessary, and honorable, helping to connect the world of humans to the divine world of the gods, a universe that in Aztec myth took shape in cycles of creation, destruction, and rebirth.

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.