Civil Religion

The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals plays a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. These evangelicals raise a starkly consequential question for electoral politics: Why do they claim morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian measures? In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler answers that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power.

Sincere religious reflection was a hallmark of soldiers in both armies in the Civil War, and it was generally an authentic religiosity rather than a battlefield conversion to spirituality. This is not surprising, as these characteristics had been common in the general population since the founding of the United States. Americans, despite their politics and prejudices, had always been and continued to be a strongly religious and highly moral people throughout the Antebellum Period (c. 1820-1860). Although there may have been a large number of battlefield conversions, in the average community, a person's attitude toward devotion was strongly shaped by the dominant religious beliefs of his neighbors or the local population as a whole.

Raised on Charles Baudelaire, A Clockwork Orange, and fine Bordeaux in 1970s Lebanon, Darina Al-Joundi was encouraged by her unconventional father to defy all taboos. As the bombs fell, she lived an adolescence of excess and transgression, defying death in nightclubs. The more oppressive the country became, the more drugs and anonymous sex she had, fueling the resentment by day of the same men who would spend the night with her. As the war dies down, she begins to incur the consequences of her lifestyle. On his deathbed, her father's last wish is for his favorite song, "Sinnerman" by Nina Simone, to be played at his funeral.

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.

What does the Bible say about making a creation of almighty God's illegal or immoral? This book uncovers the ugly truth about America's "drug war", while disproving all the myths and government propaganda about medical marijuana.

Adam Russell Taylor reimagines a contemporary version of the beloved community that will inspire and unite Americans across generations, geographic and class divides, racial and gender differences, faith traditions, and ideological leanings. In the beloved community, neither privilege nor punishment is tied to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or economic status, and everyone is able to realize their full potential and thrive.

Deep Conviction features four ordinary Americans who put their reputations and livelihoods at risk as they fought to protect their first amendment right to live their personal beliefs. Though these individuals couldn’t be more different, they share a similar conviction and determination, and the principles of religious freedom apply equally to all of them.

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.

For the majority of Southern Catholics, religion and politics were not a point of tension. Devout Catholics were also devoted Confederates, including nuns who served as nurses; their deep involvement in the Confederate cause as medics confirms the all-encompassing nature of Catholic involvement in the Confederacy, a fact greatly underplayed by scholars of Civil war religion and American Catholicism.

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.”

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove grew up in the Bible Belt in the American South as a faithful church-going Christian. But he gradually came to realize that the gospel his Christianity proclaimed was not good news for everybody. The same Christianity that sang, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound" also perpetuated racial injustice and white supremacy in the name of Jesus. His Christianity, he discovered, was the religion of the slaveholder. Just as Reconstruction after the Civil War worked to repair a desperately broken society, compromised Christianity requires a spiritual reconstruction.

In Seven Statist Sins, Chris Hume provides seven indictments against the civil government of the United States. In so doing, he provides the path for repentance necessary to see blessing in the land. Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Seven Statist Sins today.

Too often, all oppressed people in America are lumped together under the moniker people of color, as if each group's experience under the yoke of systemic racism has the same repercussions. But the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) hold a unique claim: ADOS, after all, is the only group whose ancestors were forcibly brought to America, enslaved, built much of the wealth of the country, yet continue to be excluded from the same social, political, and economic rights of other Americans. To that end, Rev. Dr. Kevin W. Cosby lays out the first theology of the ADOS movement.

Just a thought... Few things are more powerful than a thought. Everything that was ever created began with the conception of a thought. Every hero who accepted the challenge to save the day, all came to the stage of history by a mere thought. Every partnership, business, invention, innovation, discovery and scientific breakthrough all began with a thought. Each of these life Rules began as a thought, sparked by an experience and I believe this collection of principles can serve you as a guide to thrive on your path.

This provocative audiobook addresses one of the most enduring puzzles in political philosophy and constitutional theory - why is religion singled out for preferential treatment in both law and public discourse? Why, for example, can a religious soup kitchen get an exemption from zoning laws in order to expand its facilities to better serve the needy, while a secular soup kitchen with the same goal cannot?

Award-winning storyteller and Methodist pastor, Tom Letchworth, retells some of the most fascinating stories from the American Civil War. War Ain't No Picnic is an entertaining and easy-to-understand collection of Civil War stories. Here are some of the interesting stories Tom Letchworth discovered in his research of the American Civil War. And since he's a United Methodist minister, it's only natural that he saw the spiritual analogies.

Fifteen-year-old Carolyn Maull McKinstry was just a few feet away when the Klan - planted bomb that killed four of her friends exploded in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history…and the turning point in a young girl's life.

In the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Fuller Seminary theologian William Pannell decried the then-popular sentiment among White evangelicals that racism was no longer an urgent matter. In The Coming Race Wars? he meticulously unpacked reasons why our nation - and the church - needed to come to terms with our complicity in America's racial transgressions before we face a more dire reckoning. Critics in 1993 dismissed him as alarmist. Here, Pannell revisits his provocative message with an expanded edition that connects its message to current events.

In Rome, on February 24, 1530, Pope Clement VII placed the ancient crown of the Holy Roman Empire on the head of the 29-year-old Charles V of Habsburg. Born in Flanders, he became Duke of Burgundy and Lord of the Netherlands at the age of six, King of Castile and Aragon at 15, Archduke of Austria at 17, and, finally, King of the Romans three months after that. The last title belonged to the ruler of Germany before he was solemnly crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope.

The Bishops’ Wars: The History of the Religious Conflicts that Engulfed Britain and Led to the First English Civil War examines one of the most tumultuous periods in England’s history. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Bishops’ Wars like never before.