Religion United States

Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution.

The history of America cannot be told without the history of religion, the history of American religion cannot be told without the history of Catholicism, and the history of Catholicism in America cannot be told without the history of Jesuits in America. Jesuits in the United States offers a panoramic overview of the Jesuit order in the United States from the colonial era to the present. David J. Collins, SJ, describes the development of the Jesuit order in the US against the background of American religious, cultural, and social history.

In 1991, when he was 13 years old, Lenny Duncan stepped out of his house in West Philadelphia, walked to the Greyhound station, and bought a ticket - the start of his great American adventure. Today Duncan, who inspired and challenged audiences with his breakout first book, Dear Church, brings us a deeply personal story about growing up Black and queer in the US. In his characteristically powerful voice, he recounts hitchhiking across the country, spending time in solitary confinement, battling for sobriety, and discovering a deep faith.

Charles Colcock Jones, Sr. (1804-1863) was a Presbyterian clergyman, educator, missionary, and planter of Liberty County, Georgia. Jones’ book The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States (1842) is an extended plea to White ministers and slave owners to attend to the spiritual needs of slaves and free Blacks. Part one provides a history of slavery and religion in the United States from 1620 to 1842. Part two discusses the moral and religious conditions of slaves and free blacks, while Part three calls on the Christian church to address these conditions.

Bible Nation tells the story of the Greens' rapid acquisition of an unparalleled collection of biblical antiquities; their creation of a closely controlled group of scholars to study and promote their collection; their efforts to place a Bible curriculum in public schools; and their construction of a $500 million Museum of the Bible near the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Bible Nation reveals how these seemingly disparate initiatives promote a very particular set of beliefs about the Bible - and raise serious ethical questions.

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.

Taking America Back for God points to the phenomenon of "Christian nationalism," the belief that the United States is - and should be - a Christian nation. At its heart, Christian nationalism demands that we must preserve a particular kind of social order, an order in which everyone - Christians and non-Christians, native-born and immigrants, whites and minorities, men and women - recognizes their "proper" place in society.

Muslim Cool is a way of being an American Muslim-displayed in ideas, dress, social activism in the 'hood, and in complex relationships to state power. Constructed through hip hop and the performance of Blackness, Muslim Cool is a way of engaging with the Black American experience by both Black and non-Black young Muslims that challenges racist norms in the U.S., as well as dominant ethnic and religious structures within American Muslim communities.

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!

They immigrated to America from Germany in the nineteenth century with names like Loeb, Sachs, Seligman, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of "the 400," a register of New York's most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds.

This magisterial work (winner of the National Jewish Book Award and other honors) chronicles the 350-year history of the Jewish religion in America. Tracing American Judaism from its origins in the colonial era through the present day, Jonathan Sarna explores the ways in which Judaism adapted in this new context. How did American culture - predominantly Protestant and overwhelmingly capitalist - affect Jewish religion and culture?

This comprehensive survey of Catholic history in what became the United States spans nearly 500 years, from the arrival of the first Spanish missionaries to the present. Distinguished historian Leslie Tentler explores lay religious practice and the impact of clergy on Catholic life and culture as she seeks to answer the question, What did it mean to be a "good Catholic" at particular times and in particular places?

Written in an accessible, conversational style that incorporates numerous stories and questions, this book exposes the weaknesses of a Western worldview through a personal engagement with Indigenous theology. Randy Woodley critiques the worldview that undergirds the North American church by dismantling assumptions regarding early North American histories and civilizations. Woodley explains that Western theology has settled for a particular view of God and has perpetuated that basic view for hundreds of years, but Indigenous theology originates from a completely different DNA.

On July 2, 1822, Denmark Vesey, a formerly enslaved man, was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina. He was convicted of plotting what might have been the largest insurrection against slaveholders in US history. Witnesses claimed that Vesey appealed to numerous biblical texts to promote and justify the revolt.

Francis J. Bremer focuses on the role of religion in the settlement of the Plymouth Colony and how those values influenced political, intellectual, and cultural aspects of New England life 150 years before the American Revolution. He traces the Puritans' persecution in early 17th-century England for challenging the established national church and the difficulties they faced as refugees in the Netherlands in the 1610s.

John Fea offers a thoroughly researched, evenhanded primer on whether America was founded to be a Christian nation, as many evangelicals assert, or a secular state, as others contend. He approaches the title's question from a historical perspective, helping listeners see past the emotional rhetoric of today to the recorded facts of our past. This updated edition reports on the many issues that have arisen in recent years concerning religion's place in American society.

In 1620, separatists from the Church of England set sail across the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. Understanding themselves as spiritual pilgrims, they left to preserve their liberty to worship God in accordance with their understanding of the Bible. There exists, however, an alternative, more dispiriting version of their story. In it, the Pilgrims are religious zealots who persecuted dissenters and decimated the Native peoples through warfare and by stealing their land. The Pilgrims' definition of liberty was, in practice, very narrow.

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.

From colonial times into the 20th century, our laws and court cases ignored atheism, assuming that all good Americans were religious. Only in the 20th century, with the passage of laws allowing for conscientious objection to war, did nonbelief enter debates about religious liberty. Still, today every one of the 20 states has God written into its constitution. God is everywhere in American public life. R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick explore both God's omnipresence and the dramatic rise in nonbelievers that has led to an "atheist awakening" intent on holding the country to its secular principles.

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.