Filter by:

Filter by published date

A senior quote from Bookter T. Washington High School 1921 yearbook.

The Myth of the Christian State

When religion became the veil for racial violence in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Michael Knott playing guitar

Michael Knott, Who Changed The Course of Christian Rock, Dies at 61

An entire industry wouldn't exist without him, yet few know his name. In his songs, Knott challenged the faithful to examine their faults and hypocrisies.
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.
A man in a t-shirt reading "Wanted: Jesus Christ"

The Protest Reformation

In the 1960s, youth counterculture spawned Christian rock.
Colonial men holding a copy of the 1649 Maryland Toleration Act.

Five Ways We Misunderstand American Religious History

From religious liberty to religious violence, it helps to get our facts straight.
Colorful illustration of Larry Norman, haloed by yellow.

The Unlikely Endurance of Christian Rock

The genre has been disdained by the church and mocked by secular culture. That just reassured practitioners that they were rebels on a righteous path.
Elvis Presley performing to a crowd of fans reaching toward him

How Christianity Created Rock ’n’ Roll

Rock music owes much of its claim to coolness to the Christian faith.

Our Trouble with Sex: A Christian Story?

"Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century" by Geoffrey R. Stone.
Lakewood megachurch.

Supersized Christianity: Protestant Megachurches in America

Megachurches represent an enduring model of ecclesial organization in Protestantism.

Prior Convictions

Did the Founders want us to be faithful to their faith?
The Battle for the Mind (Tim LaHaye, 1980); from Creationism to Christian Nationalism

The Battle for the Mind (Tim LaHaye, 1980); from Creationism to Christian Nationalism

Tim LaHaye bridged Reagan-era anti-Communism to today’s Christian Nationalism, opposing humanism, evolution, and secularism, emphasizing biblical morality.

Pete Hegseth’s Tattoos and the Crusading Obsession of the Far Right

The symbols sported by Trump’s defense pick show how the medieval past is being reimagined by Christian nationalists, behind a shield of plausible deniability.
The Fallen Angels on the Wing by Gustave Doré, a dark painting of angels falling from heaven.

The Political Afterlife of Paradise Lost

From white supremacists to black activists, readers have sought moral legitimacy in Milton’s epic poem.
A black and white photo of an American soldier on patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan, 2005.

God’s Directive

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, evangelical American missionaries followed military tanks into Afghanistan and Iraq to convert Muslims.
Senator J.D. Vance and Patrick Deneen at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Toward a Christian Postliberal Left

A truly Christian postliberalism would imagine and enact an alternative modernity with a different standard of progress.
A crowd of people in court during the Salem Witch Trials.

How Dogs Were Implicated During the Salem Witch Trials

Sometimes an accused witch was believed to have had a dog who would do her bidding; to others, the devil appeared in the form of a dog.
Co-founder of Moms for Liberty Tina Descovich speaks during the 2024 Joyful Warriors National Summit.

From the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s ‘Body of Liberties’ to Today’s ‘Moms for Liberty’

The "parental rights" movement, rooted in colonial theocracy, has evolved into a political force resisting racial, gender, and educational equality.
Headlights on the road and a forest fire on the horizon.

Meaning in Decline

The surprising influence of premillennial eschatology on American culture.
Illustration by Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic. Sources: Bettmann / Getty; Heritage Art / Getty; NY Daily News Archive / Getty.

What a 100-Year-Old Trial Reveals About America

A new book on the famed 1920s court case traces a long-simmering culture war—and the fear that often drives both sides.
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.
Eugene V. Debs giving a speech on an American flag themed stage.

Did ‘Churchianity’ Sink American Socialism?

A new book blames institutional Protestantism for undermining a vibrant strain of Christian radicalism that swirled through the Gilded Age.
Yellow amaryllis flower in its bulb.

The American Colony of Jerusalem’s “Wild Flowers of Palestine” (ca. 1900–20)

Photographs of wild flowers taken by photographers from a Christian utopian community that settled in East Jerusalem at the turn of the 20th century.
A homeless man eating a meal in a park.

Good Deeds Unpunished

American law should protect the right of individuals to engage in charitable acts.
Richard Nixon.

He Told Richard Nixon to Confess

Most ministers were silent about Watergate. Why was one evangelical pastor different?
People swimming and standing in water.

On the Time Benjamin Franklin, American Show-Off, Jumped Naked Into the Thames

On our millennia-long love-hate relationship with getting in the water.
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.
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.
A drawing of a bust of Abraham Lincoln sitting on philosophy books.

From Königsberg to Gettysburg

How German Enlightenment thought influenced Abraham Lincoln.
Detail from "the Book of Negroes," listing Arthur Bowler and his family, 1783.

Eight Clues

Recovering a life in fragments, Arthur Bowler in slavery and freedom.
A painting of a lively sermon in a Black church.

Respectability Be Damned: How the Harlem Renaissance Paved the Way for Art by Black Nonbelievers

How James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and others embraced a new Black humanism.

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person