America Religions Religion

JOUR 1. 30 juillet 2018. Moscou. Je rejoins les quais nocturnes de la gare Jaroslaw, mon sac à dos bien accroché et mon enregistreur à la main. Direction la Mongolie. C’est l’heure, il est minuit, comme dans les contes. Il y a deux ans à Paris, j’ai rencontré un Böö, un chamane Mongol. Il m’a donné un conseil : « Écoute le son du vent. Va au contact de la nature et laisse-la te soigner. Il te faut retrouver la Terre Mère. » Aujourd'hui, je pars en quête de son et de sens. » C'est le début du carnet de voyage sonore de Vincent Guiot.

Jezebel was the most wicked woman in the Bible, a powerful seductress who killed the prophets, led Israel into idolatry and immorality, and emasculated men. She was seductive and determined to snuff out the voices coming against her In 21st-century America, Jezebel is not a person. But it’s as if the spirit of Jezebel is alive again today. The influence of the same demonic force is being felt in the massive increase of pornography and sexual temptation, the militant spirit of abortion, the rise of radical feminism, and most importantly, in the attempt to silence prophetic voices.

They immigrated to America from Germany in the nineteenth century with names like Loeb, Sachs, Seligman, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of "the 400," a register of New York's most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds.

Teenager Lucas Leonard made shocking admissions in front of the altar - he'd practiced witchcraft, conspired to murder his parents, and committed unspeakable crimes. The confessions earned him a brutal beating by a gang of angry church members, including his parents and sister. Lucas was brought to the hospital dead, awakening the sleepy community of Chadwicks, New York, to the horror that had been lurking next door. Nine members of Lucas' church would eventually find themselves facing murder-related charges. But how did they get to that point? And what made Lucas confess?

The 1920s are famous as the golden age of jazz and glamour, but it was also an era of fevered yearning for communion with the spirit world, after the loss of tens of millions in the First World War and the Spanish-flu epidemic. A desperate search for reunion with dead loved ones precipitated a tidal wave of self-proclaimed psychics - and, as reputable media sought stories on occult phenomena, mediums became celebrities.

In this taut inquiry, Posner digs deep into the radical history of the religious right to reveal how issues of race and xenophobia have always been at the movement’s core, and how religion often cloaked anxieties about perceived threats to a white, Christian America. Fueled by an antidemocratic impulse, and united by this narrative of reverse victimization, the religious right and the alt-right support a common agenda.

In The American Puritans, Dustin Benge and Nate Pickowicz tell the story of the first hundred years of Reformed Protestantism in New England through the lives of nine key figures: William Bradford, John Winthrop, John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, Anne Bradstreet, John Eliot, Samuel Willard, and Cotton Mather. Here is sympathetic yet informed history, a book that corrects many myths and half-truths told about the American Puritans while inspiring a current generation of Christians to let their light shine before men.

The true nature of what actually crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 remains classified. Only a select few have ever had access to the truth about what became known as Area 51. But what happened to the remnants of that crash is shrouded in even greater mystery. What began in the high desert of New Mexico ended at Wright-Patterson, an ultra top-secret Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio. The physical evidence of extraterrestrial visitation was buried deep within this nuclear stronghold.

Beginning with contemporary efforts to reckon with the legacy of white supremacy in America, Jones returns to the fateful year when a little-known church doctrine emerged that shaped the way five centuries of European Christians would understand the “discovered” world and the people who populated it. From this vantage point, Jones illuminates how the enslavement of Africans was not America’s original sin but, rather, the continuation of acts of genocide and dispossession flowing from the first European contact with Native Americans.

Does America no longer feel like home? Widespread divorce rates, the erosion of traditional marriage, the popular rise of radical ideologies, attacks on faith, and government interference are only a few of the factors contributing to the struggles of families in our culture. But it doesn't have to be this way. Like many of us, Dr. Ben Carson fears we are losing the country we love. In this provocative and ultimately hopeful book, he gives us the facts, inspiration, and theory-to-action answers we need to restore a key foundation of America: the family.

Fundamentalism and American Culture has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most influential religious movements.

The majority of Jewish immigrants who made their way to the United States between 1820 and 1924 arrived nearly penniless; yet today their descendants stand out as exceptionally successful. How can we explain their dramatic economic ascent? Have Jews been successful because of cultural factors distinct to them as a group, or because of the particular circumstances that they encountered in America?

Dr. John Dee and his polymath protégé Sir Francis Bacon were the most influential men in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, part of an elite group with invisible control throughout Europe. And, as Steven Sora reveals, not only were they key members of the Rosicrucians, they were the driving force behind England’s colonization of the New World and the eventual establishment of the United States. From Avalon in Newfoundland to New England to Pennsylvania and Virginia, Sora shows how Bacon and Dee’s Rosicrucian impact is felt throughout North America.

Brilliantly wresting meaning from the historical, social and religious strands of his story, Carroll illuminates the Church's transformation from reactionary monolith to an institution in which the deepest aspects of faith are being called into question. Carroll reveals his own story--as a Catholic boy in the 1940s and '50s, as a seminarian and priest in the crucible of the 1960s and early '70s, and as a committed but questioning Catholic today--with an emotional impact reminiscent of his An American Requiem.

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.

In Shoutin’ in the Fire, Danté Stewart gives breathtaking language to his reckoning with the legacy of white supremacy - both the kind that hangs over our country and the kind that is internalized on a molecular level. Stewart uses his personal experiences as a vehicle to reclaim and reimagine spiritual virtues like rage, resilience, and remembrance - and explores how these virtues might function as a work of love against an unjust, unloving world.

Randall Balmer's Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory is an insightful and engaging journey into the world of conservative Christians in America. Originally published 25 years ago and the basis for an award-winning PBS documentary, this timely new edition arrives just as recent elections have left an ever-growing number of secular Americans wondering exactly how the other half thinks.

We live in a fractured country, a country in which identity politics, creeping socialist policies, toxic social media, and the vast partisan divide threaten the very fabric of America. After decades of political decay and of losing sight of our first principles, the American people are suffering from runaway debt, increased rates of depression, broken families, moral decay, and more. In Jesus Politics, Phil Robertson provides an alternate path: a radical call for Christians to use their freedoms to advance the agenda of the King and win back the divided soul of America.

The way most people think about religion and politics is only loosely linked to empirical reality, argues Ryan P. Burge in 20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America. Instead, our thinking is based on anecdotes, a quick scan of news headlines, or worse, flat-out lies told by voices trying to push a religious or political agenda on a distracted public.

Although Christian believers agreed with one another that the Bible was authoritative and that it should be interpreted through commonsense principles, there was rampant disagreement about what Scripture taught about slavery. Furthermore, most Americans continued to believe that God ruled over the affairs of people and nations, but they were radically divided in their interpretations of what God was doing in and through the war.