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Volunteers at Big Creek Missions in Leslie County, Kentucky

Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood

I’ve been going back to eastern Kentucky for over a decade. Since 2016, something there has changed.
Henry Ward Beecher.

When Preachers Were Rock Stars

A classic New Yorker account of the Henry Ward Beecher adultery trial recalls a time in America that seems both incomprehensible and familiar.
Keith Haring standing shirtless in front of one of his paintings.

Angels with Dirty Faces

How Keith Haring got his halo.
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.
Statute of Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, with construction hook ready to remove it.
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History Shows the Danger of Comparing Trump to Jesus

It’s important to remember why analogies to Jesus should stay out of the political realm. The results are always ugly.
Donald Trump speaks to the Pastors Leadership Conference at New Spirit Revival Center on September 21, 2016, in Cleveland, Ohio.

Spreading the Bad News

Right-wing evangelicalism’s moral and religious descent into Trumpism has been near-total. Is there a way out?
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.
Etching of friends playing a game of chess, dated to the nineteenth century.

Get Capitalists’ Grubby Hands Off Our Hobbies

Christian moralists long promoted hobbies as a way to occupy idle hands, bringing the work ethic into free time. Today hobbies risk turning into side hustles.
The Branch Davidian compound, Mount Carmel, Waco, Texas.

I Will Give Thee Madonna

Kevin Cook and Jeff Guinn on David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and the 1993 siege of Waco.
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.”
A hotel under construction.

What Really Makes Cities Global?

The Bonaventure Hotel was a battleground in the war between transnational real estate capital and the city’s multiracial working class.
Woman in yoga pose

Religion of the Devil, Philosophy of the Coiled Serpent

In yoga’s early days in the United States, skeptics warned it would lead people (e.g., women) of good faith and standing into paganism and ill repute.
An illustration of Anthony Comstock, published in Puck magazine in 1906.

The 150-Year-Old Comstock Act Could Transform the Abortion Debate

Once considered a relic of moral panics past, the 1873 law criminalized sending "obscene, lewd or lascivious" materials through the mail.
Martin Luther King Jr. with other activists and children.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Perilous Power of Respectability

We revere the man and revile the strategy, but King knew what he was doing.
A painting of Mother Cabrini.

Mother Cabrini, the First American Saint of the Catholic Church

Remembering Mother Cabrini's humanitarian work for Italian immigrants.
A sign in Alabama reading "Thank God We Are Deplorable", 2018.

Christianity's Place in the Left and the Right

A conversation with historian David Hollinger about the rise of evangelicalism, the decline of mainline Protestantism, and the nature of America's secularism.
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?
J. Edgar Hoover and two other men pose with guns.

The Cult of J. Edgar Hoover

A zealot through and through, he ran the FBI like a religious sect.
Eugene Debs Presidential Campaign flyer from 1912, featuring his running mate Emil Seidel.

“American Democratic Socialism” Has a Proud, Diverse, and Inspiring History

A sweeping new history weaves personal, intellectual, and spiritual narratives into a book that reminds us of the potential of the socialist movement.
Swami Vivekananda (centre right) at the World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893.

Against Boiled Cabbage

The story of Swami Vivekananda and his time in America.
Cover page of "Cotton Mather's Spanish Lessons." Beige cover with a small red image of a tonsured monastic scribe with a book in front of him, evidentally engaged in scholarship.

Structures of Belonging and Nonbelonging

A Spanish-language pamphlet by Cotton Mather explodes the Black-versus-white binary that dominates most discussions of race in our time.
Billy Graham leading a prayer at the Republican National Convention, Miami, Florida, August 1968; Richard Nixon is at right.

Victimhood and Vengeance

The contemporary rise of Christian nationalism in the US is a reactionary response to the country’s liberalization over the past half-century.
Sculpture of Olaudah Equiano, the Queen’s House, London

Olaudah Equiano’s Transnational Insights

A brief look into Equiano's life reveals that many Black figures were considerably more transnational in their movements and critiques than commonly assumed.
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?
Jackie Robinson wearing his baseball uniform.

Revisiting the Legacy of Jackie Robinson

The Christian, the athlete, and the activist.
A group of anti-gay activists protests a parade during a Pride event in support of LGBTQ rights in Seoul on July 16.
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The White Christian Understanding of the U.S. Has a Global History

Missionaries spread the idea that Christianity accounts for American success throughout the world.
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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