America Religions Religion

The hour is critical. The American republic is suffering its gravest crisis since the Civil War. Conflicts, hostility, and incivility now threaten to tear the country apart. Competing visions have led to a dangerous moment of cultural self-destruction. This is no longer politics as usual, but an era of political warfare where our enemies are not foreign adversaries, but our fellow citizens. Yet the roots of the crisis are deeper than many realize. Os Guinness argues that we face a fundamental crisis of freedom, as America's genius for freedom has become her Achilles' heel.

Still unsolved, still baffling, still claiming new victims. Here are the untold stories. A pilot reports a strange haze enveloping his plane, then disappears; 11 hours after fuel starvation, as if calling from a void, he is heard 600 miles away. He requests permission to land, then vanishes forever. A freighter steaming over placid seas disappears without a trace. A pleasure yacht ghosts past without a soul on board. A pilot calls for help because a "weird object" is harassing his plane. A jet collides with an "unknown" and is never found.

This fascinating audiobook is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time.

In this groundbreaking new book, acclaimed researcher and author George Barna identifies, describes, and analyzes seven major "faith tribes" in America - documenting who they are, what they believe, how they vote, and what they are passionate about. Barna provides helpful insight into how these groups influence our economy, politics, and values - and what their potential is to change America.

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.

Charles Coffin's The Story of Liberty, originally published in 1879, is not America's story alone. It belongs to all those who are enjoying freedom and liberty in any part of the world. And it belongs to all nations that will yet serve Him. As we reach back into the records of history to observe the hand of the Great Author of all liberty, we will find direction for the days ahead and discover the keys we need to understand and interpret the future.

From the author of the landmark Secret Teachings of All Ages comes two classic works on the mysterious origins and unique mission of America: The Secret Destiny of America and America’s Assignment with Destiny. Focusing on often-forgotten moments in history, Manley P. Hall proposes that there was a Great Plan put forth 1,000 years before our nation’s founding: Humanistic and mystical organizations wished for the continent to be the location for an experiment in self-government and religious freedom.

Many scholars have come to think of the European Christian mission to the Americas as an inevitable success. But in its early period it was very much on the brink of failure. In 1576, Indigenous Mexican communities suffered a catastrophic epidemic that took almost two million lives and simultaneously left the colonial church in ruins. In the crisis and its immediate aftermath, Spanish missionaries and surviving pueblos de indios held radically different visions for the future of Christianity in the Americas.

On September 11, 2001, Lisa Beamer was thrust into the national spotlight after her husband, Todd, became an American hero by preventing terrorist hijackers from almost certainly flying United Flight 93 into the White House or the United States Capitol. Instead, Todd led a group of passengers to resist the hijackers, forcing the plane to crash into a Pennsylvania field. Todd and the other heroes of Flight 93 gave their lives so that untold others would be spared. Nothing could be more heroic. Lisa is now telling that story, and much more.

A self-proclaimed skeptic, the food writer dismissed rumors of a mischievous resident poltergeist named Lucy when he moved in, but he quickly found himself at a loss to explain the disembodied footsteps and mysterious odors that seemed to plague the old house. Soon, he was talking to neighbors and fellow homeowners, and it seemed that everyone had stories of strange events and supernatural occurrences in their own dwellings. As a result, David set out to document and research these reports...

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.

Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the 20 who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been "afflicted", 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn't include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders.

Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr's masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue.

Everett and Courtney Carroll have survived the Seven Seal Judgments which devastated the planet through a global earthquake and a massive bombardment of meteors. The cities of the earth lie in ruin, and much of the globe's forests have been destroyed by widespread forest fires.

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.

If talking about racism makes you anxious, afraid, or even angry, you're not alone. In Anxious to Talk About It, pastor and professor Carolyn B. Helsel draws on her success with White congregations to offer insight and tools to embrace, explore, and work through the anxious feelings that often arise in these hard conversations. Through powerful personal stories, new observations on racial identity development, and spiritual practices to help engage issues of racial justice prayerfully, you'll gain a deeper understanding of race in America and your place in it.

First Nations peoples and Native Americans in North America have long believed in the power of spirit animals or totems. They believed that these animals had lessons to teach and healing or inspirational powers. Wayne Arthurson delves into the world of spirit animals and shows the meanings of these animals to Native peoples and how nature has made its mark on their world.

The Chosen Wars tells the dramatic story of how Judaism redefined itself in America in the 18th and 19th centuries - the personalities that fought each other and shaped its evolution and, importantly, the force of the American dynamic that prevailed over an ancient religion. Determined to take their places as equals in the young nation, American Jews rejected identity as a separate nation and embraced a secular America. Judaism became an American religion.

Saints, Book two: No Unhallowed Hand covers Church history from 1846 through 1893. Volume two narrates the Saints’ expulsion from Nauvoo, their challenges in gathering to the western United States and their efforts to settle Utah's Wasatch Front. The second volume concludes with the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple.

In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill became available and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, opened its doors in New York City. Its founders wanted to start a revolution, one grounded in ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from societal norms, and the revolution needed to begin at home.