Throughout her history America has possessed a rich religious component largely comprised of different traditions of the Christian faith. This tide of personal religious devotion connected to government observances and policies has ebbed and flowed through time, but it has always been a part of American identity—one that is full of social and political debate. As such, Christian America? presents a hearty point-counterpoint discussion about the nature of the relationship Christian...

This book examines the debate over the connection between religion and public life in society during the fifty years following the American Revolution. Sassi challenges the conventional wisdom, finding an essential continuity to the period's public Christianity, whereas most previous studies have seen this period as one in which the nation's cultural paradigm shifted from republicanism to liberal individualism. Focusing on the Congregational clergy of New England, he demonstrates that thro...

"Witham's highly readable history of the American sermon strongly bolsters the contention that words change minds and alter the course of events." — BooklistPivotal moments in U.S. history are indelibly marked by the sermons of the nation's greatest orators . From colonial times to the present, the sermon has motivated Americans to fight wars as well as fight for peace. Sermons have provoked the mob mentality of witch hunts and blacklists, but they...

A bestselling chronicler of the sea turns to a trio of his own ancestors to see what memory and the selective plundering of history has made of the truth in Northern Ireland.The name “Lundy” is synonymous with traitor in Ulster. Derek Lundy’s first ancestral subject was the Protestant governor of Derry in 1688, just before it came under siege by the Catholic Irish army of James II. For reasons that remain ambiguous, Robert ordered the gates of the city opened in surrender. Protesta...

During its 2,500-year life, the book of Genesis has been the keystone to almost every important claim about reality, humanity, and God in Judaism and Christianity. And it continues to play a central role in debates about science, politics, and human rights. With clarity and skill, acclaimed biblical scholar Ronald Hendel provides a panoramic history of this iconic book, exploring its impact on Western religion, philosophy, science, politics, literature, and more.Hendel traces how G...

Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What the Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017.Gary Wills has won significant acclaim for his bestselling works of religion and history. Here, for the first time, he combines both disciplines in a sweeping examination of Christianity in America throughout the last 400 years. Wills argues that the struggle now, as throughout our nation's history, is between the head and the heart, reason and emotion, enlightenment and Evan...

"What if God has his own ways that are not always our ways? What if God acts in public affairs in ways that can, of course, be ignored from day to day but at a price for individuals and whole societies? If God is an actor, how is it possible to trace his action? . . . Can we discover God’s actions in the part of human experience that is public in our day?" —Francis Cardinal GeorgeIn this bracing manifesto, His Eminence Francis Cardinal George, one of the leading Ca...

People need a creed and a cause, and today millions of patriotic Americans are finding their voices.They say the best indicator of the future is history. How things have been can be a powerful signal of how they will be. But what will be our role in shaping the future for this country?In The Coming Revolution Dr Richard G. Lee powerfully explains that a new revolution is coming. It may be in the streets of our nation’s capitol—as we saw in Europe l...

Andrew Murray's classic "THE KEY TO THE MISSIONARY PROBLEM" was written in response to the 1900 Ecumenical Missionary Conference in New York. Murray had been invited by D. L. Moody to attend, but was unable to. This book is his response to their conclusions and reports - it is a very challenging and powerful statement on what is holding back missions and evangelism and the way forward. He focuses in on the underlying necessity of passion for Jesus and dependence on the Hol...

On the morning of the 10th of May, 1893, in response to a telegram from Ottawa, I took train at Hamilton for Toronto, to meet my brother, J. Burr Tyrrell, of the Canadian Geological Survey, and make final arrangements for a trip to the North. He had been authorized by the Director of that most important department of the Canadian Government to conduct, in company with myself, an exploration survey through the great mysterious region of terra incognitacommonly known as the Barren Lands, mor...

he Secret History of Procopius Richard Atwater - Procopius, who lived from 500 to 565 C.E., was a Byzantine historian. His writings are a primary source about the reign of the Emperor Justinian. Writing in Greek, Procopius was the last major ancient historian. The original title of this work was Anecdota, which means 'things not given over, withheld.' Procopius speculates that Justinian might have been something . . . not even human, perhaps vampiric. He soberly quotes eyewitness accounts ...