Americans have long evinced a fascination with the end of time and the role that they would play in such an apocalypse. More often, apocalyptic ideas have issued in the expectation that human history might screech to a halt at any moment and dissolve into some kind of apocalyptic judgment. Protestant Christians have been especially … Continued
Although the Church of England (also known as the Anglican Church, and, today, as the Protestant Episcopal Church) commanded the loyalties of a great many churchgoers in early America, its history has received relatively little treatment from historians—especially compared with the attention lavished on the Puritans. True, the Church of England in the colonies suffered … Continued
If the American experiment in pluralism at times suggests the metaphor of a pressure cooker rather than a melting pot, this should come as no suprise to observers of the Middle Colonies. The Middle Colonies of British North America—comprised of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware—became a stage for the western world’s most complex … Continued
Today, many American Indians live on the same lands occupied by their ancestors centuries ago, even if the lands often represent a fraction of the original territory. Increasingly in the twentieth century, industry together with paternalistic and bureaucratic governmental caretakers lacking or not interested in, or not applying or enforcing, environmental controls, have exploited these … Continued
When students think of Islam—if they do at all—they might summon an image of Denzel Washington playing a stern and passionate Malcolm X in Spike Lee’s 1992 film, or maybe they imagine Louis Farrakhan on the speaker’s platform at the Million Man March in 1995. Some might have encountered Middle Eastern Muslims on the nightly … Continued
The story of African American religion between Emancipation and the northern migration that began just prior to World War I is a tale of regionally distinctive communities that found several areas of common cause, not the least of which were the advent of Jim Crow and lynching as ominous new forms of racism. But an … Continued
The story of African-American religion is a tale of variety and creative fusion. Enslaved Africans transported to the New World beginning in the fifteenth century brought with them a wide range of local religious beliefs and practices. This diversity reflected the many cultures and linguistic groups from which they had come. The majority came from … Continued
At the end of the 1980s, it was commonly assumed that the Christian Right consisted entirely of evangelical Protestants. More precisely, the Christian Right drew support from politically conservative Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and occasionally secularists. At the same time, many evangelical Protestants showed little interest in the Christian Right’s political goals. It may be helpful, … Continued
Historians who know nothing else about American religion often know one thing for sure: in July of 1925 fundamentalists got their noses rubbed in the dirt at the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee. That building, of course, housed the famous Monkey Trial, the place where rural traditionalism met and finally bowed to the forces … Continued
A discernible current of religious liberalism ripples through all periods of American history, but between 1870 and 1970 that current overflowed its banks and exerted a powerful influence upon American culture as a whole. Although religious liberalism affected all three of the main confessional groups in the United States—Protestants, Catholics, and Jews—Protestants undoubtedly experienced the … Continued