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A swamp in Southampton County, Virginia.

An Extraordinary Historical Collaboration Sees Nat Turner's Rebellion in a Prophetic Light

A new book argues that we misunderstand the forces that drove the notorious slave rebel.
Table of illustrations of various diverse human faces from "Ethnographic Tableau."

Baffled by Human Diversity

Confused 17th-century Europeans argued that human groups were separately created, a precursor to racist thought today.
Four men posing with a monument with the Ten Commandments engraved on it.

Thou Shalt Not

How a Hollywood marketing campaign was responsible for the Ten Commandments being displayed in public all across the country.
A presidential portrait of George Washington.

The Enduring Power of Purim

Since colonial times, the Book of Esther has proved a powerful metaphor in American politics.
A Denmark Vesey monument in Hampton Park in Charleston, South Carolina.

Denmark Vesey’s Bible

The leader of a would-be South Carolina slave rebellion was hanged 200 years ago. A new account is a must-read.
A Denmark Vesey monument is seen in Hampton Park in Charleston, S.C., in 2015.
partner

The Formerly Enslaved Man Whose Faith Inspired a Slave Revolt

Denmark Vesey expressed the Bible’s anti-slavery messages.
A collage featuring Thomas Jefferson and passages cut from the Bible.

What Thomas Jefferson Could Never Understand About Jesus

Jefferson revised the Gospels to make Jesus more reasonable, and lost the power of his story.
Camp meeting

The Long Road to White Christians' Trumpism

Any effective soul-searching must take into account the history of white American Christian support for white supremacist power.
The burning bush from Exodus, against a background of Egypt and the American South.

The Roots of the Black Prophetic Voice

Why the Exodus must remain central to the African American church.
Jeff Sessions.

The Fight to Define Romans 13

Jeff Sessions used it to justify his policy of family separation, but he’s not the first to invoke the biblical passage.

The Late Great Hal Lindsey

The ideas he popularized will continue to shape evangelicalism for generations to come.
Church with graveyard.

Divided Providence

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War.

How ‘Left Behind’ Got Left Behind

A changing political mood among evangelicals has many believers imagining the end of the world differently than they used to.
A Christian cross in an open field, with a sunset in the background.

Jesus Freaks: On the Free Spirited Evangelicals of the 1970s and 80s

Chronicling the emergence of a unique blend of counterculture and Christianity.
An image of the "Pine Tree Flag," a revolutionary era flag, waving over a crowd. On the flag is written "An Appeal to Heaven."

Revival and Revolution

A controversial historical claim grounds MAGA evangelicalism's embrace of the "Appeal to Heaven" flag.
Palestinians inspect the ruins of a building destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, October 8, 2023.

The Desire to Annihilate Gaza Wasn’t Born on 10/7 — It’s Part of a Long Tradition

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

How Christianity Influenced America’s Notions of Equality

'All men are created equal' coexisted with the understanding that not all were meant to be treated equally in life.
A drawing of a woman looking inside the door of a church where children are playing.

The Quiet Revolution of the Sabbath

Requiring rest, rather than work, is still a radical idea.
James Baldwin

Reading Baldwin After Kanye

A conversation about James Baldwin’s 1967 essay, “Negroes are Anti-Semitic Because They are Anti-White.”
Artwork of Sojourner Truth, against a background of newspaper articles for women's rights.

The Truth About Sojourner Truth

She was a woman, but she was not the author of the speech attributed to her in popular lore.
The American flag on a black background; underneath the flag the outline of the Christian cross is visible

How Christian Is Christian Nationalism?

Many Americans who advocate it have little interest in religion and an aversion to American culture as it currently exists. What really defines the movement?

The Fight for the Sabbath

The partnership between rabbis and labor that delivered the two-day weekend.
"Sinners In The Hands of an Angry God" title page.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: Annotated

Jonathan Edwards’s sermon reflects the complicated religious culture of eighteenth-century America, influenced not just by Calvinism, but Newtonian physics as well.

America’s Public Bible: A Commentary

An interactive scholarly work that uncovers the history of the Bible in the 19th- and early 20th-century United States.
Black preacher giving an antislavery sermon to an integrated audience.

Baptists, Slavery, and the Road to Civil War

Baptists were never monolithic on the issue of slavery, but Southern Baptists were united in their opposition to Northern Baptists determining their beliefs.
The front cover of Peter Manseau's new book, featuring a photo of Jefferson's bible.

Doubting Thomas

Is Jefferson's Bible evidence that the Founding Fathers engaged with scripture to birth a Christian nation? Or that they sought to foster a new secular order?
Ancient language symbols or hieroglyphics

Collecting for Salvation: American Antiquarianism and the Natural History of the East

The outlines of “salvation antiquarianism”—with the emphasis on “saving”—appears particularly clearly in the AAS’s inaugural 1813 address.
Colorful illustration of gladiator-like figure with sword surrounded by various phrases and people, all relating to the Southern Baptist Convention

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Deal With the Devil

Fifty years ago, zealots preaching misogyny and homophobia—led by an accused sexual predator—took over America’s largest Protestant denomination.
Drawing of enslaved persons harvesting sugarcane.

Wesley, Whitefield, and a Gospel That Disrupts

Two preachers who shaped American Christianity diverged sharply on whether to protest or exploit slavery, with consequences that persist today.
Johnathan Edwards.

How Jonathan Edwards Influenced Southern Baptists

Southern Baptists were seeking a religion of the heart, and in Edwards they discovered a trove of treatises, biographies, and sermons on Christian spirituality.

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