The former Obama administration "ambassador to America's believers" gives an inside account of living with faith in the White House and argues that Christians have a responsibility to be a hopeful and faithful presence in public life. As a young Christian in his early twenties, Michael Wear found himself deep inside the halls of power in the Obama administration as one of the youngest ever White House staffers. Throwing himself wholeheartedly into...

Was the United States founded as a Christian nation or a secular democracy? Neither, argues Philip Gorski in American Covenant. What the founders actually envisioned was a prophetic republic that would weave together the ethical vision of the Hebrew prophets and the Western political heritage of civic republicanism. In this ambitious book, Gorski shows why this civil religious tradition is now in peril--and with it the American experiment. Gorski...

Meet "the Nones"-In this thought-provoking exploration of secular America, celebrated journalist Katherine Ozment takes readers on a quest to understand the trends and ramifications of a nation in flight from organized religion. Studies show that religion makes us happier, healthier and more giving, connecting us to our past and creating tight communal bonds. Most Americans are raised in a religious tradition, but in recent decades many have begun...

"In this book, the author has written a history of not only the National Cathedral but also the idea that animates it, arguing that it is a touchstone site for the American civil religion - the idea that the American nation functions much like a religion, with its own rituals, sacred texts, holy days, and so on. Moreover, he shows, it is the National Cathedral that most embodies the various tug-of-wars that have quietly defined the American civil...

"This book explores America's history of using the Bible in politics, highlighting moments of proper practice and examples of deep misuse, and helps us apply the Scriptures in our political participation"--

"In Strange Rites, Tara Isabella Burton takes a tour through contemporary American religiosity. As traditional churches continue to sink into obsolescence, people are looking elsewhere for the intensity and unity that religion once provided. We're carrying on a longstanding American tradition of religious eclecticism, DIY-innovation and "unchurched" piety (and highly effective capitalism)"-- While rejecting traditional worship in unprecedented numbers,...

As the culture changes all around us, it is no longer possible to pretend that we are a Moral Majority. That may be bad news for America, but it can be good news for the church. What's needed now, in shifting times, is neither a doubling-down on the status quo nor a pullback into isolation. Instead, we need a church that speaks to social and political issues with a bigger vision in mind: that of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Christianity seems increasingly...

"Lincoln's wartime spiritual journey from heretic son and cold skeptic to America's first evangelical Christian president, the role his conversion played in the Civil War, and the way it in turn transformed Protestantism. Abraham Lincoln, unlike most of his political brethren, kept organized Christianity at arm's length. He never joined a church and only sometimes attended Sunday services with his wife. But as he came to appreciate the growing political...