America Religions Religion

Has God withdrawn his special blessing from the United States? Americans ponder that painful question in troubled times, as we did during the devastation of the Civil War and after the assassinations of the '60s, and as we do in our present polarization. Yet, somehow - on battlefields, across western wilderness, and in raucous convention halls - astounding events have reliably advanced America, restoring faith in the Republic’s providential protection. In this provocative historical narrative, Michael Medved brings to life 10 haunting tales that reveal this purposeful pattern.

As the daily news points to growing spiritual darkness over the nations, many Christians are tempted to believe that America is a lost cause. But is this true? Many Christian prophetic leaders agree that there is hope for America and the nations! Apostle John Benefiel has witnessed tremendous spiritual breakthrough, both in his home state of Oklahoma and across the nation.

Archaeological evidence in the Lost City of Kyphiz shows the Greek gods in South America near the end of the Minoan-Mycenaean era of Greece - an era which ended with the mysterious disappearance of the Mycenaean civilization in Europe triggering a Dark Age, sometime around 1100 BC. The Minoan-Mycenaean elites were the Greek gods themselves.

America’s Choice asks, “What is the greatest challenge facing our society today?” The economy, national security, immigration, gun control, poverty, racism, crime, national pandemics, climate change? While each of these is a valid concern and deserves attention, none of them strikes at the heart of our greatest challenge, namely, finding a way to build stronger homes and in the process bringing about a return to family, God, and moral values. To put our prime focus on challenges other than these is to strike at the leaves, not the root of the problem.

What does it mean to be a Jewish woman in America? In a gripping historical narrative, Pamela S. Nadell weaves together the stories of a diverse group of extraordinary people - from the colonial-era matriarch Grace Nathan and her great-granddaughter, poet Emma Lazarus, to labor organizer Bessie Hillman and the great justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to scores of other activists, workers, wives, and mothers who helped carve out a Jewish American identity.

“When the odds were stacked against us - and there have been many times when the great experiment we call America could have and should have failed - did God intervene to save us?” That question, posed by authors Chris and Ted Stewart, is the foundation for this remarkable book. And the examples they cite provide compelling evidence that the hand of Providence has indeed preserved the United States of America on multiple occasions.

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.

Goddess of the Americas is a brilliant essay collection and an impassioned, unorthodox celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe: mother goddess, patron saint of Mexico, protector of the downtrodden, who made her first appearance on American soil in 1531. Through a variety of forms—original essays, historical writings, short fiction, drama, and poetry—the illustrious contributors to this literary anthology examine the impact this potent deity, the Lady of Guadalupe, has had on the people and culture of Mexico, and her influence beyond that country, in Latin America, North America, and Europe.

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.

In Inventing a Christian America, Green, a leading historian of religion and politics, explores the historical record that is purported to support the popular belief in America's religious founding and status as a Christian nation.

Pay attention, people of faith. Dark clouds are gathering. The winds of intolerance are blowing. There’s a great storm approaching. American Christians are facing uncertain times. Our nation’s values are under assault. Religious liberty has been undermined. We live in a day when right is now wrong and wrong is now right. The vicious left-wing attack against the recent traditional marriage stance of Chick-fil-A should serve as a wake-up call to people of faith. It’s not about a chicken sandwich. It’s about religious liberty. It’s about free speech. It’s about the future of our nation.

God Bless America lifts the veil on strange and unusual religious beliefs and practices in the modern-day United States. Do Satanists really sacrifice babies? Do exorcisms involve swearing and spinning heads? Are the Amish allowed to drive cars and use computers? Offering a close look at snake handling, new age spirituality, Santeria spells, and satanic rituals, this book offers more than mere armchair research.

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.

Missionary Diplomacy illuminates the crucial place of religion in nineteenth-century American diplomacy. From the 1810s through the 1920s, Protestant missionaries positioned themselves as key experts in the development of American relations in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Middle East. Missionaries served as consuls, translators, and occasional trouble-makers who forced the State Department to take actions it otherwise would have avoided. Yet as decades passed, more Americans began to question the propriety of missionaries' power.

View of the Hebrews; or the Tribes of Israel in America is an 1823 book by Ethan Smith, a Congregationalist minister, who argued that Native Americans were descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The lost 10 tribes were believed to have disappeared after being taken captive by the Assyrians in the eighth century BCE. Smith's speculation was inspired by the apocryphal book II Esdras 13:41, which claims that the ten tribes settled in a far country, "where never mankind dwelt."

One day in 1917, while cooking dinner at home in Manhattan, Margaret Reilly felt a sharp pain over her heart and claimed to see a crucifix emerging in blood on her skin. Four years later Reilly entered the convent ofthe Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Peekskill, New York, where, known as SisterMary of the Crown of Thorns, she spent most of her life gravely ill andpossibly exhibiting Christ's wounds.

Among the pressing concerns of Americans in the first century of nationhood were day-to-day survival, political harmony, exploration of the continent, foreign policy, and - fixed deeply in the collective consciousness - hell and eternal damnation. The fear of fire and brimstone and the worm that never dies exerted a profound and lasting influence on Americans' ideas about themselves, their neighbors, and the rest of the world.

An intimate account of the American Revolution as seen through the eyes of a Quaker pacifist couple living in Philadelphia. Spanning a half-century before, during, and after the war, this gripping narrative illuminates the Revolution’s darker side as patriots vilified, threatened, and in some cases killed pacifist Quakers as alleged enemies of the revolutionary cause. Amid chaos and danger, the Drinkers tried as best they could to keep their family and faith intact. A master storyteller takes his listeners on a moving journey they will never forget.

The best example of a country, from beginning to end, is Israel's history as told in the Bible. Because they did not follow God's commandments, they eventually lost their country for over two thousand years. This book examines Israel's history and compares it to what we are doing in America today. There are several sins we are practicing today in America that are the same as Israel's. I list some of the sins we are practicing today and the Bible's condemnation of those sins.

An obsessive genealogist and descendent of one of the most prominent Jewish families since the American Revolution, Blanche Moses firmly believed her maternal ancestors were Sephardic grandees. Yet she found herself at a dead end when it came to her grandmother's maternal line. Using family heirlooms to unlock the mystery of Moses's ancestors, Once We Were Slaves overturns the reclusive heiress's assumptions about her family history to reveal that her grandmother and great-uncle, Sarah and Isaac Brandon, actually began their lives as poor Christian slaves in Barbados.