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St. Francis on the Brazos church.

How a Mediterranean Spiritual Movement Went Global

From the ruins of the Spanish Civil War to air force bases in Texas.
by Philip Jenkins via Anxious Bench on October 17, 2024
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.
by Obbie Tyler Todd via The Gospel Coalition on July 29, 2022
A lithograph of a Shaker congregation worshipping by performing a step dance.

The Sects That Rejected 19th-Century Sex

Why three religious groups traded monogamy for celibacy, polygamy, and complex marriage.
by Stewart Davenport via Zócalo Public Square on February 14, 2022
Two men holding picture of alien toward camera

Making Sense of Heaven’s Gate

An excerpt from the new anthology, “American Cult.”
by Robyn Chapman via The Nib on August 2, 2021
Exhibit

Higher Callings

A survey of American religious movements, from the Puritans to today's Christian Right.
Portrait of Jemima Wilkinson/Public Universal Friend in male robes

A Genderless Prophet Drew Hundreds of Followers Long Before the Age of Nonbinary Pronouns

The story of Jemima Wilkinson, otherwise known as the Public Universal Friend.
by Samantha Schmidt via Washington Post on January 5, 2020

How Cults Made America

A new book argues that, politically, messianic movements were often light-years ahead of their time. But at what cost?
by Tom Bissell via The New Yorker on April 24, 2019
Jemima Wilkison.

The Person Formerly Known as Jemima Wilkinson

Awakening from illness, the newly risen patient announced that Jemima had died and that her body had been requisitioned by God for the salvation of humankind.
by Adam Morris via Los Angeles Review of Books on March 26, 2019
A painting of George Whitefield preaching to a crowd.

Darkness Falls on the Land of Light

Divisions in society and religion that still exist today resulted from the "Great Awakenings" of the 18th Century.
by Douglas Winiarski via American Heritage on February 1, 2018
Henrietta Szold welcoming Jewish refugees from Poland to Palestine, February 1943.

Henrietta Szold & the Return to Zion

Henrietta Szold devoted her life to building a Jewish society in Palestine. But how useful is her ’cultural’ Zionism for Jewish Americans today?
by Nicholas Lemann via New York Review of Books on February 20, 2025

Opus Dei, Embezzlement, and Human Trafficking

The Catholic order has branches all over the world, and a deep history of unethical and illegal behavior.
by Mark Oppenheimer, Gareth Gore via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on January 21, 2025
‘Two girls at Bamberg led to the stake, 1550’; etching by Jan Luyken from the 1685 edition of Thieleman van Braght’s The Bloody Theater, or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians.

Dispirited Away

The rise and fall of an evangelical church, founded with progressive intentions and undone by dissension and bad faith.
by Caroline Fraser via New York Review of Books on December 26, 2024

Ralph Waldo Emerson Meets His Spirit Animal

Some Americans who have lost faith in traditional institutions are finding spirituality in this Denver church—and in themselves.
by Molly Worthen via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on September 19, 2024
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.
by Eliza Griswold via Literary Hub on August 8, 2024

A Modest Proposal

More importantly, our misappropriation of “puritan” has allowed scholars to ignore and the public to misunderstand religion.
by Carla Gardina Pestana via Commonplace on May 21, 2024
Demonstrator holding a Christian nationalist sign with a cross painted like the American flag.

The Peril Radicalizing Some Evangelicals Goes Beyond Christian Nationalism

Christian supremacists are plotting the end of America as we know it.
by Matthew D. Taylor via Religion News Service on April 4, 2024
An illustration of a solar eclipse next to a portrait of James Fenimore Cooper.

Solar Eclipses in American History

How the spectacle of the 1806 solar eclipse impacted the national consciousness.
by Matthew Smith via Origins on March 14, 2024
Carl McIntire reading the Christian Manifesto outside Riverside Church in New York City and on the right, McIntire leaves Riverside Church, where the Christian Manifesto hangs above the doorway.

The U.S. Culture Wars Abroad: Liberal-Evangelical Rivalry and Decolonization in Southern Africa

As evangelicals worked to gain public legitimacy during the Cold War, historians of evangelicalism search for a usable past for their fellow believers.
by Gene Zubovich via Process: A Blog for American History on January 23, 2024
The Jewish Catalog

When Judaism Went à la Carte

On the 50th anniversary of "The Jewish Catalog."
by Jane Eisner via The Atlantic on July 28, 2023
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.
by Ramsha Zubairi, Diana L. Eck, Andrea R. Jain, Gwilym Beckerlegge via JSTOR Daily on July 26, 2023
Photo of Marion "Pat" Robertson

How Pat Robertson Shepherded His Flock Into Politics

Farewell to the senator's son who pioneered a TV genre, helped create the Christian right, ran for president, and earned the grudging respect of Abbie Hoffman.
by Jesse Walker via Reason on June 9, 2023
The women of the Source Family pose on a Rolls-Royce for an ad for the release of a recording of the cult's band, Ya Ho Wha 13.

The Cult Roots of Health Food in America

How the Source Family, a radical 1970s utopian commune, still impacts what we eat today.
by Diana Hubbell via Atlas Obscura on April 19, 2023
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?
by Kelefa Sanneh via The New Yorker on March 27, 2023
The angel Moroni delivering the plates of the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith.
original

Sacred Places

A visit to the site of Joseph Smith’s divine revelation makes for a different kind of public history experience.
by Ed Ayers on February 27, 2023
Illustration of Q-Anon vigilantes climbing an electrified letter Q.

QAnon Is the Latest American Conspiracy Theory

The rise of the right-wing paranoid fantasy, egged on by Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene, reflects deep currents in American politics.
by Chris Lehmann via The Nation on February 6, 2023
Texas investigators and medical examiners stand on top of the ruins of the Mount Carmel compound.

How the Right Got Waco Wrong

Militia groups have long used Waco as a rallying cry. But it was never the example of whiteness under siege that they invoke.
by Paul M. Renfro via The New Republic on January 31, 2023
Black-and-white photograph of Jacob Schiff, banker and philanthropist, from a side profile

The Sanitizing of Conservative Judaism

Conservative Judaism’s origins lie in a donor plan to neutralize and refine the radical Jewish immigrant masses.
by Allen Lipson via Jewish Currents on October 19, 2022
Painting of pilgrims on a boat embarking towards the New World

One Manner of Law

The religious origins of American liberalism.
by Marilynne Robinson via Harper’s on July 1, 2022
People pray outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 27, 2022.

Separation of Church and State Has Always Been Good for Religion

The US Supreme Court's most recent decisions undermine centuries of established secularism within American government.
by Ed Simon via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on June 30, 2022
Abortion rights demonstrators confront an antiabortion protester on May 14 outside the Supreme Court.
partner

What Everyone Gets Wrong About Evangelicals and Abortion

Evangelicals started speaking out against legal abortion long before the late 1970s.
by Gillian Frank, Neil J. Young via Made By History on May 16, 2022
Man holding bible outside Capitol with Trump supporters
partner

Christian Nationalism Is Surging. It Wasn’t Inevitable.

How the decline of liberal religion transformed American Christianity — and politics.
by Gene Zubovich via Made By History on May 6, 2022
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