American Church History

The intriguing story told in this audiobook, recounted in everyday language, deals head-on with some of the most divisive ideas in humanity’s history. For it is religion that is at the heart of secular society’s organization today, whether it is to separate church and state or to combine the two.

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.

Before September 11, 2001, one terrorist group had killed more Americans than any other: Hezbollah, the “Party of God.” Today it remains potentially more dangerous than even al Qaeda. Yet little has been known about its inner workings, past successes, and future plans–until now.

Every day of the week in contemporary America (and especially on Sundays) people raise money for their religious enterprises - for clergy, educators, buildings, charity, youth-oriented work, and more. In a fascinating look into the economics of American Protestantism, James Hudnut-Beumler examines how churches have raised and spent money from colonial times to the present and considers what these practices say about both religion and American culture.

In This Earthly Frame, David Sehat describes the making of American secularism through its most prominent proponents and most significant detractors. He shows how its foundations were laid in the US Constitution and how it fully emerged only in the 20th century.

What happens when a prophet dies and forgets to leave a forwarding address? After the Prophet Fell is a blistering, unapologetic, and darkly hilarious dive into the holy mess that followed the death of Joseph Smith—the founder of the Mormon Church, self-declared prophet, and the man who left behind a movement with no plan, no instructions, and way too many people claiming to be his successor. Told with biting wit and backed by historical receipts, this book pulls back the sacramental curtain to expose the succession crisis that tore the Latter-day Saints apart. From Brigham Young’s ...

This book explores how polarized interpretations of America's past influence the present and vice versa. A focus on competing Protestant reactions to President Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan evidences a fundamental divide over how America should remember historical racism, sexism, and exploitation. Additionally, these Protestants disagree over how the past influences present injustice and equality. Rowley proposes that recovering a complex view of the past, confessing the bad and embracing the good, might help Americans have a shared memory that can bridge polarization.

The Battle of Ezra Church was one of the deadliest engagements in the Atlanta Campaign of the Civil War and continues to be one of the least understood. Both official and unofficial reports failed to illuminate the true bloodshed of the conflict: one of every three engaged Confederates was killed or wounded, including four generals.

This meditation is directed toward those who are marginalized in our society. The Spirit has a word for those who feel they are on edge or outside the chosen ones. Many are suffering paranoia. I will focus on those who were discriminated against as outsiders and undesirables. We will look at those who were blessed in the presence of their undesirable situations by G.O.D. We often see the ones we see as undesirable as those that G.O.D. has chosen, and we see them in reverse order. According to Isaiah 55:8, My (G.O.D.'S) thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not MY ways, says the ...