Civil Religion

How can a nation survive if its citizens see each other as enemies? Two out of three Americans consider civility to be a major problem in our country today. Only 7 percent say it is not a problem at all. It seems we are all fighting to be heard, but no ones listening. Has our culture lost the art of civility? In Respectfully, I Disagree: How to Be a Civil Person in an Uncivil Time, Dr. Jim Denison offers a path to becoming a people of civility in a season of conflict.

Can you describe America’s founding principles? Thomas Jefferson said America’s founding principles “should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the service of those we trust.” He added, “should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.” Can you name America’s most influential founders? For many, the first people that come to mind are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. To be sure, ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fact-based research in Elmira, New York, shows it has a long, rich history that is both dark and glowing with the spirits of yesteryear. From being a stop on the Underground Railroad to housing Camp Rathbun–a Union Army barracks turned Civil War Prison Camp–to harboring the various spirits of those lives taken involuntarily and those who took their own lives, Elmira and her surrounding cities offer more than a couple mysterious and haunting locations to explore.

The Dunker Church is one of the most iconic structures of the American Civil War. Surprisingly, few people know much if anything about its fascinating story or the role it played within the community of Sharpsburg and its importance during and after the Battle of Antietam. September Mourn: The Dunker Church of Antietam by Alann D. Schmidt and Terry W. Barkley rectifies this oversight in the first book-length study of its kind. On September 17, 1862, two mighty armies grappled across the rolling hills, fields, and woodlots surrounding Sharpsburg, Maryland.

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.