"Michael W. Austin argues that nationalism contradicts both American values and Christian virtues"-- "Michael W. Austin shows how nationalism is contrary to American values and Christian virtues-and offers us a better form of civic engagement. Michael W. Austin turns his keen mind for ethics toward the crisis currently facing our democracy: the rise of American Christian nationalism. Austin first accessibly explains the meaning and history behind...

In God of Liberty, historian Thomas S. Kidd argues that the improbable partnership of evangelicals and Deists saw America through the Revolutionary War, the ratification of the Constitution, and the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800. --from publisher description

"Tracing the rise of evangelicalism and the decline of mainline Protestantism in American religious and cultural life. How did American Christianity become synonymous with conservative white evangelicalism? This sweeping work by a leading historian of modern America traces the rise of the evangelical movement and the decline of mainline Protestantism's influence on American life. In Christianity's American Fate, David Hollinger shows how the Protestant...

Draws on the author's experiences living undercover within the ranks of "the Family" theocratic group in Arlington, Virginia, to explore fundamentalism in America and its role in influencing democracy.

Many Americans have been taught a distorted, inaccurate account of our nation's founding, one that claims that the founders were deists who desired the strict separation of church and state and that the country's founding political ideas developed without reference to Christianity. In this revelatory, rigorously argued new book, Mark David Hall thoroughly debunks that modern myth and shows instead that the founders' political ideas were profoundly...

When Pope Francis recently answered "Who am I to judge?" when asked about homosexuality, he ushered in a new era for the Catholic church. A decade ago, it would have been unthinkable for a pope to express tolerance for homosexuality. Yet shifts of this kind are actually common in the history of Christian groups. Within the United States, Christian leaders have regularly revised their teachings to match the beliefs and opinions gaining support among...

"A study of Paul's engagement with the Roman Empire in his New Testament letters, in which Christoph Heilig argues that Paul hid criticism of Rome in the subtext of his letters but also openly denounced it in passages that scholars have previously overlooked"-- "Was Paul silent on the injustices of the Roman Empire? Or have his letters just been misread? The existence of anti-imperial rhetoric in the writing of the apostle Paul has come under greater...

Between 1865 and 1920, Congress passed laws to regulate obscenity, sexuality, divorce, gambling, and prizefighting. It forced Mormons to abandon polygamy, attacked interstate prostitution, made narcotics contraband, and stopped the manufacture and sale of alcohol. Gaines Foster explores the force behind this unprecedented federal regulation of personal morality--a combined Christian lobby.Foster analyzes the fears of appetite and avarice that led...

"Among the most enduring themes in American history is the idea that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. A pervasive narrative in everything from school textbooks to political commentary, it is central to the way in which many Americans perceive the historical legacy of their nation. Yet, as Steven K. Green shows in this illuminating new book, it is little more than a myth. In Inventing a Christian America, Green, a leading historian...