American Religion

Joan of Arc was born in a small French village during the worst period of the Hundred Years' War. For generations, France had been besieged by the British. At age 11, Joan began to see religious visions telling her to join forces with the King of France. By the time she was a teenager, she was leading troops into battle in the name of her country. Though she was captured and executed for her beliefs, Joan of Arc became a Catholic saint and has since captured the world's imagination.

The American church is at a critical crossroads. Our witness has been compromised, our numbers are down, and our reputation has been sullied, due largely to our own faults and fears. The church's ethnocentrism, consumerism, and syncretism have blurred the lines between discipleship and partisanship. Pastor Eric Costanzo, missiologist Daniel Yang, and nonprofit leader Matthew Soerens find that for the church to return to health, we must decenter ourselves from our American idols and recenter on the undeniable, inalienable core reality of the global, transcultural kingdom of God.

In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson distilled a leading idea in the early American republic and wrote of a wall of separation between church and state. That metaphor has come down from Jefferson to 21st-century Americans through a long history of jurisprudence, political contestation, and cultural influence. This book traces the development of the concept of separation of church and state and the Supreme Court's application of it in the law.

For five hundred years, Latina/o culture and identity have been shaped by their challenges to the religious, socio-economic, and political status quo, whether in opposition to Spanish colonialism, Latin American dictatorships, US imperialism in Central America, the oppression of farmworkers, or the current exploitation of undocumented immigrants. Christianity has played a significant role in that movement at every stage. Robert Chao Romero, the son of a Mexican father and a Chinese immigrant mother, explores the history and theology of what he terms the "Brown Church."

Americans long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term "heathen" fell out of common use by the early 1900s, leading some to imagine that racial categories had replaced religious differences. But the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear. Heathen reveals a key source of American exceptionalism and a prism through which Americans have defined themselves as a progressive and humanitarian nation even as supposed heathens have drawn on the same to counter this national myth.

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Can’t Nothing Bring Me Down is the memoir of 104-year-old world-record-holding runner Ida Keeling. Miss Ida, as she’s known throughout her Bronx community, isn’t your typical runner. Her fierce independence helped her through the Depression and the civil rights movement. But her greatest trials were yet to come.

The Japanese army's brutal occupation of the city of Nanking during the 1937 Sino-Japanese War is known, for good reason, as the rape of Nanking. As they slaughtered an estimated 300,000 people, the invading soldiers raped more than 20,000 women - some estimates run as high as 80,000. Hua-ling Hu presents here the amazing untold story of the American missionary Minnie Vautrin, whose unswerving defiance of the Japanese protected 10,000 Chinese women and children.

Today, we are witnessing the historically powerful American Order experiencing perhaps its greatest peril as it struggles against the tidal wave of new challenges from Covid-19, the rapid rise of Christian Nationalism, large-scale Apostasy, and an increasingly divided nation streaming toward increased violence and possibly even Civil War. Dr. Kelly takes on these growing trends by examining Scripture by Scripture, the Sixth Chapter of the Book of Revelation as a Template to help explain the reasons for the current Crisis, and where America is likely headed.

The Theme is Freedom presents a new reading of the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the constitutional founding, and the religious clauses of the First Amendment. Evans draws the conclusion that our liberties have always been dependent of the religious traditions of the West - directly contrary to accepted theory.

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country's traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country's secular liberalelites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course.

American Leftovers is the story of Heidi, Eric, and Shaun, three children who follow their parents through eastern Europe on Bible-smuggling adventures in the early 1970s. When they return to the States, they face third-culture questions of home and identity. They also deal with sexual situations and abuse, while settling into an evangelical bubble with their parents who pastor a fast-growing church.

Longtime Christian journalist, researcher, and ministry leader Rick Lawrence believes that the driving force propelling the church into irrelevance is its propensity reduce Jesus. Deeply researched and comprehensively sourced, Editing Jesus, explores the 8 ways the Jesus of the contemporary church has been edited to fit the spirit of the age. Lawrence writes on:

All Americans know we are in a state of cultural crisis, but how did we get to this point? It has been said, if we seek an actual legal date for the fall of Judeo-Christian culture in America, it would be June 26, 2015, the day the Supreme Court ruled that homosexual marriage was a constitutionally protected right. But according to William D. Howard, the destruction of our country started well before that when states began changing laws and incorporating changes that had lasting repercussions on the culture as a whole.

Historian Kevin Schmiesing takes you to more than two-dozen sites and events that symbolize and embody America's rich and sometimes tumultuous Catholic past, including the Santa Fe Trail, Gettysburg, and the Bourbon Trail. You'll also meet both famous and infamous Catholics—including Augustus Tolton, Dr. Samuel Mudd, and Frances Cabrini—who impacted our nation's history.

This book explains how Christians engaged the sinful realities of Indigenous land dispossession and Black enslavement, shaping American Christianity in distinctive and enduring ways. It further underscores how white Christians justified land theft and racial oppression against Indigenous and Black persons with scriptural interpretations and theological expositions that remade Christianity into an American religion that bolstered economic, political, and social interests.

Few events have sparked more legends and stories of the supernatural than America's Civil War. The accounts of gallantry and heroism have spread far and wide. Nancy Roberts grew up listening to her father's stories of the War Between the States, and she trekked over many battle sites with him during her childhood. After reading about General Joshua Chamberlain's supernatural experience at the Battle of Gettysburg, Roberts began to collect tales of the blue and gray and write them down.

Grace to Overcome invites you on a spiritual and historical journey, interweaving the rich tapestry of black history with the profound narratives of the Bible. Crafted by Pastor Bryan C. Loritts, an influential voice in multiethnic church movements, Grace to Overcome is a powerful collection of thirty-one devotions that bring to life the stories of both renowned and lesser-known figures who have help shaped society.

Beginning with a sweetly funny, moving account of her arranged marriage, the author undercuts stereotypes and offers the refreshing view of an American life through Muslim eyes. In chapters leavened with humor, hope, and insight, she recounts an immigrant's daily struggles balancing assimilation with preserving heritage, overcoming religious barriers from within and distortions of Islam from without, and confronting issues of raising her children as Muslims - while they lobby for a Christmas tree!

On Faith is an inspiring collection of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's reflections on his own faith, on the challenges that religious believers face in modern America, and on the religious freedoms protected by the Constitution. Featuring a personal introduction by Justice Scalia's son Father Paul Scalia, this volume will enrich every listener's understanding of the legendary justice.