Belief

Some Americans who have lost faith in traditional institutions are finding spirituality in this Denver church—and in themselves.

The path to winning the Black vote no longer runs through the church door.

Anti-war politics has a rich historical tradition, one that seems to be in desperate need of revival.

Today, the international feminist group FEMEN uses nudity as part of its protests. But appearing naked in public was also a tactic used by early dissenters.

In the 1970s, some athletes began questioning the alliance between sports, conservative Christianity, and politics.

But unlike today's white Christian nationalism, Black church leaders called for healing internal divisions through engagement.

Exploring the role mainline Protestants have played in promoting the idea of America as a Christian country.

Any attempt to understand the complexities of American economic thought without considering the significant role of religious beliefs is incomplete.

The surprising influence of premillennial eschatology on American culture.

It was no coincidence that public school secularization and desegregation were happening, and failing, simultaneously.

"Between the Temples" tackles the anxieties around cultural assimilation—and finds continuity among very different generations.

Less about morality than about rights, the Mormon War of 1858 hinged on the issue of polygamy, pitting a Utah community against federal authorities.

When religion became the veil for racial violence in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

A new book argues that we misunderstand the forces that drove the notorious slave rebel.

Chronicling the emergence of a unique blend of counterculture and Christianity.

A new book blames institutional Protestantism for undermining a vibrant strain of Christian radicalism that swirled through the Gilded Age.

The evangelical psychologist gained influence with millions of families through decades of parenting advice focused on strict discipline.

In 1964, he toured Africa and the Middle East on a journey that would both transform his outlook and reveal the limits of transnational solidarity.

The Civil War cut short many lives, and a new a book that blends the genres of history and memoir sets out the resurrect the memory of one of those lives.

Christian and Jewish themes influenced the world of art around one of jazz’s greatest singers.

A controversial historical claim grounds MAGA evangelicalism's embrace of the "Appeal to Heaven" flag.

Most ministers were silent about Watergate. Why was one evangelical pastor different?

A new book conveys in dramatic detail what America’s Moses did to help abolish slavery. Another addresses the love of God and country that helped her do so.

Panic about Catholics, Freemasons, and, later, Jews, is deeply woven into American history, and forms the basis of our fertile culture of conspiracy theorizing.

How a Hollywood marketing campaign was responsible for the Ten Commandments being displayed in public all across the country.

Childhood trauma led Minty Ross (Harriet Tubman) to seek divine intervention.

A long Euro-American tradition of genocide and ethnic cleansing imagined freeing a barren Palestine from Palestinian barbarity and heathenism.

Why did so many American Jewish women find Christian Science appealing?

In trying to freeze reality into a cudgel that can be used to assault political opponents, the New Atheists deny the observable evidence in front of them.

After the apocalypse that wasn’t.