Exploring the dynamic interplay between religion and revolution in the founding eraReligion lies at the heart of how many Americans understand the birth of their nation, giving rise to passionate calls for national unity and principled struggles for religious freedom. For the first time in thirty years, scholars of the founding era have joined together to reassess this central topic for our present moment. From fast-day proclamations to wartime crises of conscience...

**Winner of the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for General NonfictionShortlisted for the 2014 Cundill Prize in Historical Literature**From the revered historian, the long-awaited conclusion of the magisterial history of slavery and emancipation in Western culture that has been nearly fifty years in the making.David Brion Davis is one of the foremost historians of the twentieth century, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Priz...

Viewing the Civil War as a major turning point in American religious thought, Mark A. Noll examines writings about slavery and race from Americans both white and black, northern and southern, and includes commentary from Protestants and Catholics in Europe and Canada. Though the Christians on all sides agreed that the Bible was authoritative, their interpretations of slavery in Scripture led to a full-blown theological crisis.

This in-depth study examines the social structures and religious beliefs that helped shape Southern history from colonization to the twenty-first century.The history of race and religion in the American South is infused with tragedy, survival, resistance, and even transcendence. In Christianity and Race in the American South, Paul Harvey provides an enlightening narrative history that fundamentally transforms our understanding of American Christianity and r...

Religious life in early America is often equated with the fire-and-brimstone Puritanism best embodied by the theology of Cotton Mather. Yet, by the nineteenth century, American theology had shifted dramatically away from the severe European traditions directly descended from the Protestant Reformation, of which Puritanism was in the United States the most influential. In its place arose a singularly American set of beliefs. In America's God, Mark Noll has written a biography of this new Am...

A best-selling text thoroughly updated, including new chapters on the last 30 years"An excellent study that will help historians appreciate the importance of Christianity in the history of the United States and Canada." – The Journal of American History"Scholars and general readers alike will gain unique insights into the multifaceted character of Christianity in its New World environment. Nothing short of brilliant." – Harry S. Stout, Yale University"A new standard...

A fresh, original history of America's national narratives, told through the loss, recovery, and rise of one influential Puritan sermon from 1630 to the present day."Van Engen is an elegant, accessible writer, and this is a truly illuminating study of America." — Washington PostIn this illuminating book, Abram Van Engen shows how the phrase "City on a Hill," from a 1630 sermon by Massachusetts Bay governor John Win...

Sam Haselby offers a new and persuasive account of the role of religion in the formation of American nationality, showing how a contest within Protestantism reshaped American political culture and led to the creation of an enduring religious nationalism. Following U.S. independence, the new republic faced vital challenges, including a vast and unique continental colonization project undertaken without, in the centuries-old European senses of the terms, either "a church" or "a state." Amid ...

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 of religion and politics, explo...

How is a free faith expressed, organised and governed? How are diverse spiritualities and theologies made compatible? What might a religion based in reason and democracy offer today's world? This book will help the reader to understand the contemporary liberal religion of Unitarian Universalism in a historical and global context. Andrea Greenwood and Mark W. Harris challenge the view that the Unitarianism of New England is indigenous and the point from which the religion spread. Relationsh...

In this revelatory and genuinely groundbreaking study, François Furstenberg sheds new light on the genesis of American identity. Immersing us in the publishing culture of the early nineteenth century, he shows us how the words of George Washington and others of his generation became America's sacred scripture and provided the foundation for a new civic culture, one whose reconciliation with slavery unleashed consequences that haunt us still. A dazzling work of scholarship from a brilliant ...

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...