This is the first significant book-length biography in over 50 years of Washington Gladden, a minister, journalist, and reformer whose message of religious liberalism came to define modern Protestantism in the United States. Although largely forgotten today, Gladden was one of the most well-known pastors of his time and a leader of the social gospel and progressive movement. Mislin chronicles Gladden’s early years bristling against the culture of a pious small town in upstate New York, his...

In Saving Faith**, David Mislin chronicles the transformative historical moment when Americans began to reimagine their nation as one strengthened by the diverse faiths of its peoples.** Between 1875 and 1925, liberal Protestant leaders abandoned religious exclusivism and leveraged their considerable cultural influence to push others to do the same. This reorientation came about as an ever-growing group of Americans found their religious faith und...

Three hundred and fifty years ago, Roger Williams launched one of the world’s first great experiments in religious toleration. Insisting that religion be separated from civil power, he founded Rhode Island, a colony that welcomed people of many faiths. Though stark forms of intolerance persisted, Williams’ commitments to faith and liberty of conscience came to define the nation and its conception of itself. Through crisp essays that show how Americans demolished old prejudices while invent...

A powerful, thought-provoking and always lively examination of how American Christianity has badly lost its way—with most of what goes by the name of Christianity today being one or another type of heresy—by the youngest writer ever appointed as editorial columnist for The New York Times.In a world populated by “pray and grow rich” gospels and Christian cults of self-esteem, Ross Douthat argues that America’s problem isn’t too much religion; nor is it into...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham presents “a nimble examination of how American leaders . . . have wrestled with God personally and publicly” (USA Today)—now featuring a new Afterword by the author“A revealing and useful primer on an important, timely, and often volatile topic.”—Chicago TribuneAt a time when our country seems divided by extremism, American Gospel draws...

“It would be difficult to imagine anyone reading this book without finding some new insight or inspiration, some new and unexpected testimony to the astonishing breadth of Christianity through the centuries.” — Philip Jenkins, author of The Lost History of Christianity“Interesting, insightful, illuminating, and remarkably relevant.” — Marcus Borg, author of The Heart of ChristianityIn the tradition of Howard Zinn comes a new kind of church history that rev...

An authoritative history of the vital role of secularist thinkers and activists in the United States, from a writer of "fierce intelligence and nimble, unfettered imagination" ( The New York Times)At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock o...

One powerful truth is undeniable: if Christ had never been born, nearly every facet of human life would be worse. Discover what the world would have been like without Jesus, and how some of the world’s greatest accomplishments exist only because he lived.We live in a cynical age in which only one prejudice is tolerated: anti-Christian bigotry. Yet despite the near constant and attacks against the faith, one powerful truth is undeniable: if Christ had never been bor...

How is it that in America the image of Jesus Christ has been used both to justify the atrocities of white supremacy and to inspire the righteousness of civil rights crusades? In The Color of Christ, Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey weave a tapestry of American dreams and visions — from witch hunts to web pages, Harlem to Hollywood, slave cabins to South Park, Mormon revelations to Indian reservations — to show how Americans remade the Son of God visually time and again into a sacred...

Satan in America tells the story of America's complicated relationship with the devil. "New light" evangelists of the eighteenth century, enslaved African Americans, demagogic politicians, and modern American film-makers have used the devil to damn their enemies, explain the nature of evil and injustice, mount social crusades, construct a national identity, and express anxiety about matters as diverse as the threat of war to the dangers of deviant sexuality. The idea of the monstrous and t...

We live in a profoundly spiritual age, but not in any good way. Huge swaths of American culture are driven by manic spiritual anxiety and relentless supernatural worry. Radicals and traditionalists, liberals and conservatives, together with politicians, artists, environmentalists, followers of food fads, and the chattering classes of television commentators: America is filled with people frantically seeking confirmation of their own essential goodness. We are a nation desperate to stand of...

Anti-Catholicism has a long history in America. And as Philip Jenkins argues in The New Anti-Catholicism, this virulent strain of hatred--once thought dead--is alive and well in our nation, but few people seem to notice, or care. A statement that is seen as racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, or homophobic can haunt a speaker for years, writes Jenkins, but it is still possible to make hostile and vituperative public statements about Roman Catholicism without fear of serious reperc...