American Religion

Each year across the United States, there are mysterious and unexplainable firsthand encounters by average people. These encounters beg the question, do monsters exist? From east to west across the US, professionals are actively researching these encounters to prove once and for all that these creatures do exist. American Cryptids takes you on a journey across the country, visiting each state along the way.

In spontaneous, intimate terms, Archbishop Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, covers topics as wide-ranging as his childhood, family life, and the importance of his first job, to discovering his calling and his early days in the seminary. Through his own words, we come to know a man whose actions and words reflect his deeply-rooted humility. The audiobook concludes with the Pope’s own writings and reflections, full of wisdom and inspiration.

In the 1840s, the Fox Sisters—and the legions of mediums they inspired—ignited the Spiritualist movement that swept through Victorian parlors and presidential campaigns alike. Contacting the dead wasn't merely a parlor trick: It was a political statement, a declaration of self that still echoes. Séances attracted suffragists and scientists, skeptics and charlatans, giving women a voice in a society that often refused to hear them. But as Spiritualism surged, it also blurred the lines between faith, fraud, feminism, and financial opportunity.

Feminism and atheism are “dirty words” that Americans across the political spectrum love to debate - and hate. Throw them into a blender and you have a toxic brew that supposedly defies decency, respectability, and Americana. Putting gender at the center of the equation, progressive “Religious Nones” of color are spearheading an anti-racist, social justice humanism that disrupts the “colorblind” ethos of European American atheist and humanist agendas, which focus principally on church-state separation.

We are but a few generations removed from millennia spent living in intimate contact with the natural world and in close commune with ancestral spirits. Who we are and who we think we are is rooted in historical connections with those who came before us and in our relationships with the land and the sentient natural world. When we wander too far from our roots, our ancestors and kin in the natural world call us home, sometimes with gentle whispers and sometimes in loud voices sounding alarms.

For those praying about building a family through adoption, this easy-to-listen, straight-forward guide is a valuable insight. Called to Adoption offers tips, and up-to-date, relevant information every parent considering adoption should know. Listeners will identify with author Mardie Caldwell's personal and professional experiences, making this resource a vital handbook as parents take steps to adopt.

The American Midwest is often thought of as uniformly white, and shaped exclusively by Christian values. However, this view of the region as an unvarying landscape fails to consider a significant community at its very heart. Muslims of the Heartland uncovers the long history of Muslims in a part of the country where many readers would not expect to find them.

Mainstream perceptions about what it means to be Buddhist in America often whitewash and invisibilize the diverse, inclusive, and intersectional communities that lie at the heart of American Buddhism. Be the Refuge is both critique and celebration, calling out the erasure of Asian-American Buddhists while uplifting the complexity and nuance of their authentic stories and vital, thriving communities. Drawn from in-depth interviews with a pan-ethnic, pan-Buddhist group, Be the Refuge is the first book to center young Asian-American Buddhists' own voices.

Josephine can never afford the one thing she wants most—redemption. Josephine Thorebourne hoped to make her family proud…and disgraced them instead. Now she’ll do anything to make amends, even if it means keeping up her ruse with the confidence man she’s entangled with. His new plan is the only way out. Except the more time they’re aboard ship, the more Josephine suspects she just might be in for a double cross. As steward on a steamship, Owen Kelly can’t fraternize with the passengers, and that’s never been a problem…until he meets Josephine Thorebourne. Even as her grace ...

One in eight Americans struggles with hunger, and more than 13 million children live in food-insecure homes. As Christians we are called to address the suffering of the hungry and poor: "For I was hungry, and you gave me food..." (Matthew 25:35). However, the problems of hunger and poverty are too large and too complex for any one of us to resolve individually. I Was Hungry offers not only an assessment of the current crisis but also a strategy for addressing it. Jeremy Everett, a noted advocate for the hungry and poor, calls Christians to work across ideological divides....

In Letters to an American Christian, Bruce Riley Ashford, author of One Nation Under God, addresses overarching issues of the relationship of Christianity and politics, speaks to the way historic Christian belief informs specific hot-button political issues, and challenges listeners to take seriously both our heavenly and earthly citizenships. Written as a series of letters to "Christian" - a young college student who is a new believer - Letters to an American Christian will help every listener think about how Christianity informs what it means to be an American.

On the street, every ballplayer has a story. Onaje X. O. Woodbine, a former streetball player who became an all-star Ivy Leaguer, brings the sights and sounds, hopes and dreams of street basketball to life. He shows that big games have a trickster figure and a master of Black talk whose commentary interprets the game for audiences. The beats of hip-hop and reggae make up the soundtrack, and the ballplayers are half men, half heroes, defying the ghetto's limitations with their flights to the basket.

The New American Standard Bible is one of the most accurate translations of the Scriptures, and the book of 1st Corinthians is one of the most fundamental books in the New Testament. Let professional voice artist Dale McConachie, narrator of over one hundred audiobooks, take you on a journey through 1st Corinthians, where you will discover how God deals with issues in His Church. Dale’s goal in this recording was to make a simple but reverent audio copy of God’s Word that you can take with you everywhere you go.

Excavating her Catholic family’s entanglements with race and racism from the time they immigrated to America to the present, Maureen O’Connell traces, by implication, how the larger Catholic population became White and why, despite the tenets of their faith, so many White Catholics have lukewarm commitments to racial justice.

Using the Bible as the foundational source and guide, while also bringing contemporary sociological data to the conversation, seven biblical scholars and theologians construct a powerful dialogue about gun violence in America, concluding that guns are incompatible with the God of Christian Scripture.

Empty Shelves is your weapon to guide you, the average American, through a national crisis situation. There are those who believe this is already on the agenda and it’s only a matter of time. One day it will happen. If your worst nightmare were to come true - and things that you’ve only ever seen on TV became your new reality - you are going to need some help. There will be some difficult decisions to make in the next 48 hours that will change your life forever. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. You are about to become an 'armchair survivalist'.

All Americans, liberal or conservative, religious or not, can agree that religious freedom, anchored in conscience rights, is foundational to the US democratic experiment. But what freedom of conscience means, what its scope and limits are, according to the Constitution - these are matters for heated debate.

Segundo Villanueva was born in 1927 in a tiny farming village perched in the Andes; when he was seventeen, his father was murdered and Segundo was left with little more than a Bible as his inheritance. This Bible launched Segundo on a lifelong obsession to find the true message of God contained in its pages. He found himself looking for answers outside the Catholic Church, whose hierarchy and colonial roots embodied the gaping social and racial inequities of Peruvian society.

In today's fast-paced world where self-reliance is prized, the concept of surrender can seem counter-cultural. However, this book makes a compelling case that surrendering to God lies at the heart of an authentic Christian faith. It begins by examining the biblical portrayal of God—His holiness, power, wisdom and unfailing love.

While there have been many biographies of Dwight D. Eisenhower that focus on his military career or the time of his presidency, none clearly explores the important role faith played both in his personal life and in his public policy. This despite the fact that he is the only US president to be baptized as a Christian while in office. Alan Sears and Craig Osten invite you on a journey that is unique in American history and is essential to understanding one of the most consequential, admired, and complex Americans of the 20th century.