Religion History United States

Willie Johnson. Granddaughter of a slave. Rejected by her father. Sold by her mother. Abused by her husband. How did a biracial woman become accepted to preach revivals in the Deep South and coast to coast during segregation and the Civil Rights movement. Listen to Through the Waters and learn how to rise above your obstacles from the inspiring life and ministry of Willie Johnson.

Ex-British Army Soldier, John Carney, ran a close protection operation in Iraq for oil executives when he was asked by the family of a young Dutch woman to extract her from the collapsing Islamic State in Syria. Hearing first-hand of the shocking living hell of tricked naive young girls, many from the West, trapped, sexually abused and enslaved by ISIS, he knew only one thing - he had to get them out. Armed with AK-47s and 9mm Glocks, he launched a daring, dangerous and deadly operation to free as many as he could.

In 1654, 23 Jewish families arrived in New Amsterdam (now New York) aboard a French privateer. They were the Sephardim, members of a proud orthodox sect that had served as royal advisors and honored professionals under Moorish rule in Spain and Portugal but were then exiled by intolerant monarchs. A small, closed, and intensely private community, the Sephardim soon established themselves as businessmen and financiers. They became powerful forces in society, with some, like banker Haym Salomon, even providing financial support to George Washington's army during the American Revolution.

Now updated with a new introduction by number-one New York Times best-selling author Marianne Williamson, the 20th anniversary edition of Healing the Soul of America shares her timeless, visionary message of political healing. This is a time, according to Williamson, for Americans to return once again to our first principles, both politically and spiritually. Here, Williamson draws plans to transform the American political consciousness and encourage powerful citizen involvement to heal our society.

An expansive, substantive history of the Wesleyan tradition in the United States, Doctrine, Spirit, and Discipline offers a broad survey of the Methodist movement as it developed and spread throughout America, from the colonial era to the present day. It also provides an theological appraisal of these developments in light of John Wesley's foundational vision. Beginning with Wesley himself, Watson describes the distinctiveness of the tradition at the outset.

Bestselling author and ghost historian MJ Wayland explores America's haunted heritage. As well as visiting some of the most famous ghost cases of the time, the author also uncovers ghost stories that have never seen print in over a hundred and fifty years!

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.

According to Williamson, we need a new paradigm of political understanding, a moral commitment to express it, and a new kind of activism to bring it forth. The Healing of America is a blueprint for all three.

The history of African American Christianity is one of the determined faith of a people driven to pursue spiritual and social uplift for themselves and others to God's glory. Yet stories of faithful Black Christians have often been forgotten or minimized. The dynamic witness of the Black church in the United States is an essential part of Christian history that must be heard and dependably retold. In this book, Walter R. Strickland II does just that through a theological-intellectual history highlighting the ways theology has formed and motivated Black Christianity across the centuries.

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.

Our Forefathers Truly Appealed to Heaven is a wonderfully quick view of the influence God played in the founding of America and our principles. The men who sat in Independence Hall, debated, and formed our exceptional nation would not consider themselves heroes but men placed in extraordinary circumstances that required extraordinary cooperation with what God was calling them to accomplish. Today in America, we need an army of such men and women willing to submit (cooperate) with the founding principles, not the present-day diluting and erasing taking place.

The story of five best-selling novels beloved by evangelicals, the book industry they built, and the collective imagination they shaped. Who are evangelicals? And what is evangelicalism? Those attempting to answer these questions usually speak in terms of political and theological stances. But those stances emerge from an evangelical world with its own institutions - institutions that shape imagination as much as they shape ideology.

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.

At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby traces more than 200 years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution.

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.

New England has always had a special place in the national memory. Its rich folklore and colorful history is woven into the national identity, and destinations such as Plymouth Rock, the lighthouses of Maine, and Vermont's autumn leaves are quintessential symbols of the United States. But New England has always had a dark side, a strange side. Monsters and ghosts lurk in its woods and old houses, and strange monuments that may be from a forgotten civilization puzzle local investigators.

Back in the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation took Europe by storm. The havoc wreaked saw the split of churches and the emergence of the Amish, led by Jakob Ammann. By the 18th century, a group of Amish had crossed the seas to the United States, where they made their home, and today the Amish are now one of the fastest-growing populations in the world.

In this highly original approach to the history of the US, James Moore focuses on the extraordinary role that prayer has played in every area of American life, from the time of the first settlers to the present day and beyond.

God in the White House explores the paradox of Americans' expectation that presidents should simultaneously trumpet their religious views and relationship to God while supporting the separation of church and state. Balmer tells the story of the politicization of religion in the last half of the 20th century, as well as the "religionization" of our politics. He reflects on the implications of this shift, which have reverberated in both our religious and political worlds, and offers a new lens through which to see not only these extraordinary individuals, but also our current political situation.

This dissertation is an effort to think through the complexities of how African American literature interacts with what I am terming the notion of uncalling made visible by the heterodox Christianities that fall out of the scope of the Black. In other words, I analyze Black religiosity as an enactment of radical Black collectivity in counterdistinction to a politics of recognition. I argue it is this figure of the uncalled, operating out of heterodox Black religiosities, that can offer an alternative model for liberation and healing that is not bound up in outward cries for recognition.