America Religions Religion

From drugstores in Sydney, Iowa, to skeet shooting in rural Illinois, to the mega churches of Minneapolis, Lenz set out to discover the changing forces of faith and tradition in God's country. Part journalism, part memoir, God Land is a journey into the heart of a deeply divided America. Lenz visits places of worship across the heartland and speaks to the everyday people who often struggle to keep their churches afloat and to cope in a land of instability.

Stephen Mansfield, the acclaimed New York Times best-selling author, has highlighted the growing popularity of Mormonism—a belief system with cultic roots—and the implications of its critical rise. Mormons are moving into the spotlight in pop culture, politics, sports, and entertainment via presidential candidates like Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, media personality Glenn Beck, mega-bestselling Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, and The Book of Mormon, the hottest show on Broadway.

Discover delightfully ghostly locations in all 50 states and plan your next haunted holiday. Do you believe in ghosts? Do you love learning about hauntings? Have you ever wanted to experience a close encounter with the paranormal? Then Haunted Hotels in America is for you! You've watched stories about hauntings on popular TV shows and Netflix documentaries and heard about them on true-crime podcasts. And now it is your chance to learn more about some of America's most frightening destinations.

Religious-liberty lawyer Asma Uddin has long considered her work defending people of all faiths to be a calling more than a job. Yet even as she seeks equal protection for Evangelicals, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Native Americans, Jews, and Catholics alike, she has seen an ominous increase in attempts to criminalize Islam and exclude American Muslims from their inalienable rights. Somehow, the view that Muslims aren’t human enough for human rights or constitutional protections is moving from the fringe to the mainstream - along with the claim “Islam is not a religion.”

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 Detestable and Wicked Arts, Paul B. Moyer places early New England's battle against black magic in a transatlantic perspective. Moyer provides an accessible and comprehensive examination of witch prosecutions in the Puritan colonies that discusses how their English inhabitants understood the crime of witchcraft, why some people ran a greater risk of being accused of occult misdeeds, and how gender intersected with witch-hunting.

In Revelation, Resistance, and Mormon Polygamy, historian Merina Smith explores the introduction of polygamy in Nauvoo, a development that unfolded amid scandal and resistance. Smith considers the ideological, historical, and even psychological elements of the process and captures the emotional and cultural detail of this exciting and volatile period in Mormon history.

Before the Revolutionary War, America was a nation divided by different faiths. But when the war for independence sparked in 1776, colonists united under the banner of religious freedom. Evangelical frontiersmen and Deist intellectuals set aside their differences to defend a belief they shared, the right to worship freely. Inspiring an unlikely but powerful alliance, it was the idea of religious liberty that brought the colonists together in the battle against British tyranny.

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.

A History of Evangelism in North America guides listeners on a tour through circuit riders and tent meetings to campus evangelism and online ministries. Academic research combines with gospel faithfulness and love for the lost in this historical survey. Encountering these prominent evangelism movements will inspire innovation and courage in the call to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Many Americans feel like their religious freedom is under attack. They see the culture changing around them, and they fear that their beliefs will soon be punished as a form of bigotry. Others think these fears are overblown and say Christians should stop complaining about imaginary persecution. In Free to Believe, leading religious freedom attorney Luke Goodrich challenges both sides of this debate, offering a fresh perspective on the most controversial religious freedom conflicts today.

In Stop the Islamization of America, the renowned activist Pamela Geller lays bare the chilling details of the Muslim Brotherhood's strategy of steady subversion and erosion of our freedoms, while offering a practical guide for how to fight back.

Venezuelan practitioner Elhoim Leafar presents more than seventy spells, charms, folk remedies, and exercises to help you understand the world of dreams. Written from the perspective of South American magical culture, this must-have compendium demonstrates what dream witchery is, why it's important, and how to practice it. You'll also learn from over fifteen contributors that specialize in Wicca, Hoodoo, Brazilian, and Cuban folk traditions, and more

Acclaimed biographer John Loughery tells the story of John Hughes, son of Ireland, friend of William Seward and James Buchanan, founder of St. John's College (now Fordham University), builder of Saint Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, pioneer of parochial school education, and American diplomat. As archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York in the 1840 and 1850s and the most famous Roman Catholic in America, Hughes defended Catholic institutions in a time of nativist bigotry and church burnings and worked tirelessly to help Irish Catholic immigrants find acceptance.

The Princess and the Prophet tells the story of the Black Broadway performer who, among the world of Arabian acrobats and equestrians, Muslim fakirs, and Wild West shows, discovered in Islam a greater measure of freedom and dignity, and a rebuttal to the racism and parochialism of white America.

This fascinating history, based on meticulous research into the correspondence and documentation of the Founding Fathers, from the crafting of the Declaration of Independence to the signing of the peace treaty with Britain, sheds light on how the Judeo-Christian worldview motivated the Founding Fathers, influenced national independence, inspired our foundational documents, and established the American nation.

In American Gospel (literally meaning the "good news about America"), New York Times best-selling author Jon Meacham sets the record straight on the history of religion in American public life. As Meacham shows, faith, meaning a belief in a higher power, and the sense that we are God's chosen, has always been at the heart of our national experience, from Jamestown to the Constitutional Convention to the Civil Rights Movement to September 11th.

The cult image, female divine being, and folk saint Nuestra Seora de la Santa Muerte (Spanish meaning: Our woman of the holy death) is a cult image, female divine being, and folk saint in Mexican Neopaganism and folk Catholicism. Her worshippers relate her with healing, security, and safe delivery to the afterlife simply because she's a personification of death. In spite of condemnation from Catholic Church leaders and, more just recently, evangelical movements, her following has grown substantially since the start of the 21st century.

The most patriotic thing you can do for America is pray for America. In times of division and disaster, our country has a long history of turning to God. Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor of a 14,000-member church in Dallas, Texas, and a Fox News contributor, believes it should be no different today. "When we seek God's help and pray about the issues that affect our lives," writes Jeffress, "we influence the fate of our families, our churches, and our nation. It has happened before in history, and it can happen again."

Ghosts have been the entertaining subject of many works of fiction, but they're even more intriguing (and perhaps even scarier) when they are the focus of real-life hauntings in our own backyard. An employee of the St. James Hotel in New Mexico watches in shock as a fair-haired toddler with a terribly disfigured face disappears into the floor. This is just one of the paranormal mysteries Leslie Rule shares with us—a result of extensive interviews and research uncovering the reasons behind ghost sightings across the country.