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Image by Hans Glaser depicting a blood rain that supposedly occurred near Dinkelsbühl in Germany’s Franconia region in 1554.

Strange Gods: Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned

Rains of blood and frogs, mysterious disappearances, objects in the sky: these were the anomalies that fascinated Charles Fort in his Book of the Damned.
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.
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.

Jonathan Edwards, Mentor

When we think of Jonathan Edwards, most probably think first of him as a theologian or preacher. But a new book also shows him as a mentor.
Abolitionist political cartoon depicting the devil telling a slaveholder he is sinning.

How Antebellum Christians Justified Slavery

In the minds of some Southern Protestants, slavery had been divinely sanctioned.
The Mount Carmel Center in Waco, Texas engulfed in flames

How Religious Literacy Might Have Changed the Waco Tragedy

Religious scholars argue that the Waco raid was not justified and that with more understanding of theology, the loss of life could have been avoided.

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.
Black churchgoers attending a sermon.

Democrats Can’t Rely on the Black Church Anymore

The path to winning the Black vote no longer runs through the church door.
Headlights on the road and a forest fire on the horizon.

Meaning in Decline

The surprising influence of premillennial eschatology on American culture.
A drawing of a bust of Abraham Lincoln sitting on philosophy books.

From Königsberg to Gettysburg

How German Enlightenment thought influenced Abraham Lincoln.
A burning candle in front of the American flag.

The Origins of Conservatism’s ‘Gnostic’ Meme

You can thank Eric Voegelin for the right’s clichéd catchall critique for the left.
Black and white portrait of Jones Very

The Voice of Unfiltered Spirit

In the poetry of Jones Very, whom his contemporaries considered “eccentric” and “mad," the self is detached from everything by an intoxicated egoism.
A gem tintype album of Elizabeth (Almy) Cobb Hall, with portraits of the Almy family and friends

Past Lives

Who wants to watch a show whose characters never make real moral choices?
Engraving of Christopher Columbus and a friar on their knees in prayer on the shore of the New World

The Roots of Christian Nationalism Go Back Further Than You Think

To fully understand the deep roots of today’s white Christian nationalism, we need to go back at least to 1493.
"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.
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.
A lithograph depicting the burning of copies of William Pynchon’s 'The Meritous Price of Our Redemption' by early colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who saw his book as heresy.

He Wasn’t Like the Other New England “Witches.” His Story Explains a Lot.

The little-told tale of the 1651 trial of Hugh and Mary Parsons.
Illustration of Martin Luther holding an American flag.

America’s Mythology of Martin Luther

Luther is part myth, mascot, and mantle, symbolizing the hopes and sanctifying the heroes of American evangelicalism.
The ‘Grizzly Giant’ sequoia tree in Mariposa Grove, Yosemite, California.

Emerson & His ‘Big Brethren’

A new book explores the final days of Ralph Waldo Emerson - traveling from Concord to California, and beyond.
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.
Illustration of a Christian church cracking into two pieces.

A Religious Movement Divided Against Itself (Probably) Cannot Stand

Liberal Protestants built a global elite in the 20th century. Its fracturing holds a caution for evangelicals today.
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.
The First Presbyterian Church at 48 Fifth Avenue, Greenwich Village, New York City.

The Sermon That Divided America

Harry Emerson Fosdick's ‘Shall the Fundamentalists Win?’
In 1992, a fire burns out of control at 67th Street and West Boulevard in South Central Los Angeles. (Paul Sakuma/AP)
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The L.A. Uprisings Sparked an Evangelical Racial Reckoning

But it remains unfinished.
Watercolor portrait of Bronson Alcott, a 19th century American philosopher and educator.

New England Ecstasies

The transcendentalists thought all human inspiration was divine, all nature a miracle.
Illustration of bishops titled "The Mitred Minuet"

No Bishops, No Kings: Religious Iconography and Popular Memory of the American Revolution

Popular religious iconography and art in the decades preceding the Revolution offer a fuller narrative arc of the development of revolutionary ideas within American society.
Illustration of Jesus Christ showing anger at money changers in the temple

When Did Jesus Become a Capitalist?

How did a radical social activist, killed for his politics, become the figurehead of capitalist and imperial power?
A newspaper drawing of the Nat Turner Rebellion.

Looking for Nat Turner

A new creative history comes closer than ever to giving us access to Turner’s visionary life.
Lightning bolt above a city at night.

The Human Nature of Disaster

A storm is never just wind or rain. Our natural problems are social problems. The solutions to them must be social, too.
A man standing at a crossroads holding an American flag.

The Wasting of the Evangelical Mind

The peculiarities of how American Christianity took shape help explain believers’ vulnerability to conspiratorial thinking and misinformation.

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