-PDF Download- American Faith EBOOK

American Faith

Author: Maya C. Popa

Publisher: Sarabande Books

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 73

ISBN-13: 1946448478

The ultimate subject of Maya Catherine’s stunning debut collection is violence. American Faith begins with its manifestation in our country: a destructive administration, a history of cruelty and extermination, and a love of firearms. “He owns a gun farm in Florida/they grow in swamps like chestnuts.” The poet introduces a suite of poems that precisely imagines the consequences, a series of “cancellations”—of government, bees, the color wheel, the return to nature, and the end of the world. The violence naturally extends to the personal. The speaker’s Romanian grandfather keeps wild dogs in case a man tries to steal his daughters. A godmother is psychologically erased by her tempestuous husband, who is nevertheless generous to flowers. “It’s what happened inside her/that slouched.” And what for some is routine can feel like an assault: a TSA agent wipes down a bra tucked in a traveler’s suitcase, adding, “prettiest terrorist I’ve seen all day.” Tentatively, the title poem casts light on the unexplored future, a solution that includes faith: “...the days, impatient, fresh beasts, appeal to me—You are here. You must believe in something.”

Acts of Faith

Author: Eboo Patel

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2020-09-15

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0807050822

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

With a new afterword Acts of Faith is a remarkable account of growing up Muslim in America and coming to believe in religious pluralism, from one of the most prominent faith leaders in the United States. Eboo Patel’s story is a hopeful and moving testament to the power and passion of young people—and of the world-changing potential of an interfaith youth movement.

Awash in a Sea of Faith

Author: Jon Butler

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780674056015

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Challenging the formidable tradition that places early New England Puritanism at the center of the American religious experience, Yale historian Jon Butler offers a new interpretation of three hundred years of religious and cultural development. Butler stresses the instability of religion in Europe where state churches battled dissenters, magic, and astonishingly low church participation. He charts the transfer of these difficulties to America, including the failure of Puritan religious models, and describes the surprising advance of religious commitment there between 1700 and 1865. Through the assertion of authority and coercion, a remarkable sacralization of the prerevolutionary countryside, advancing religious pluralism, the folklorization of magic, and an eclectic, syncretistic emphasis on supernatural interventionism, including miracles, America emerged after 1800 as an extraordinary spiritual hothouse that far eclipsed the Puritan achievement--even as secularism triumphed in Europe. Awash in a Sea of Faith ranges from popular piety to magic, from anxious revolutionary war chaplains to the cool rationalism of James Madison, from divining rods and seer stones to Anglican and Unitarian elites, and from Virginia Anglican occultists and Presbyterians raised from the dead to Jonathan Edwards, Joseph Smith, and Abraham Lincoln. Butler deftly comes to terms with conventional themes such as Puritanism, witchcraft, religion and revolution, revivalism, millenarianism, and Mormonism. His elucidation of Christianity's powerful role in shaping slavery and of a subsequent African spiritual "holocaust," with its ironic result in African Christianization, is an especially fresh and incisive account. Awash in a Sea of Faith reveals the proliferation of American religious expression--not its decline--and stresses the creative tensions between pulpit and pew across three hundred years of social maturation. Striking in its breadth and deeply rooted in primary sources, this seminal book recasts the landscape of American religious and cultural history.

Skepticism and American Faith

Author: Christopher Grasso

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 662

ISBN-13: 0190494379

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Between the Revolution and the Civil War, the dialogue of religious skepticism and faith profoundly shaped America. Although usually rendered nearly invisible, skepticism touched-and sometimes transformed-more lives than might be expected from standard accounts. This book examines Americans wrestling with faith and doubt as they tried to make sense of their world.

American Grace

Author: Robert D. Putnam

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-02-21

Total Pages: 720

ISBN-13: 1416566732

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Draws on three national surveys on religion, as well as research conducted by congregations across the United States, to examine the profound impact it has had on American life and how religious attitudes have changed in recent decades.

Faith in Freedom

Author: Andrew R. Polk

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-12-15

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 150175923X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In Faith in Freedom, Andrew R. Polk argues that the American civil religion so many have identified as indigenous to the founding ideology was, in fact, the result of a strategic campaign of religious propaganda. Far from being the natural result of the nation's religious underpinning or the later spiritual machinations of conservative Protestants, American civil religion and the resultant "Christian nationalism" of today were crafted by secular elites in the middle of the twentieth century. Polk's genealogy of the national motto, "In God We Trust," revises the very meaning of the contemporary American nation. Polk shows how Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, working with politicians, advertising executives, and military public relations experts, exploited denominational religious affiliations and beliefs in order to unite Americans during the Second World War and, then, the early Cold War. Armed opposition to the Soviet Union was coupled with militant support for free economic markets, local control of education and housing, and liberties of speech and worship. These preferences were cultivated by state actors so as to support a set of right-wing positions including anti-communism, the Jim Crow status quo, and limited taxation and regulation. Faith in Freedom is a pioneering work of American religious history. By assessing the ideas, policies, and actions of three US Presidents and their White House staff, Polk sheds light on the origins of the ideological, religious, and partisan divides that describe the American polity today.

Almost Christian

Author: Kenda Creasy Dean

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-07-16

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780199758661

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Based on the National Study of Youth and Religion--the same invaluable data as its predecessor, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers--Kenda Creasy Dean's compelling new book, Almost Christian, investigates why American teenagers are at once so positive about Christianity and at the same time so apathetic about genuine religious practice. In Soul Searching, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton found that American teenagers have embraced a "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism"--a hodgepodge of banal, self-serving, feel-good beliefs that bears little resemblance to traditional Christianity. But far from faulting teens, Dean places the blame for this theological watering down squarely on the churches themselves. Instead of proclaiming a God who calls believers to lives of love, service and sacrifice, churches offer instead a bargain religion, easy to use, easy to forget, offering little and demanding less. But what is to be done? In order to produce ardent young Christians, Dean argues, churches must rediscover their sense of mission and model an understanding of being Christian as not something you do for yourself, but something that calls you to share God's love, in word and deed, with others. Dean found that the most committed young Christians shared four important traits: they could tell a personal and powerful story about God; they belonged to a significant faith community; they exhibited a sense of vocation; and they possessed a profound sense of hope. Based on these findings, Dean proposes an approach to Christian education that places the idea of mission at its core and offers a wealth of concrete suggestions for inspiring teens to live more authentically engaged Christian lives. Persuasively and accessibly written, Almost Christian is a wake up call no one concerned about the future of Christianity in America can afford to ignore.

The Mormon People

Author: Matthew Bowman

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2012-01-24

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0679644911

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

“From one of the brightest of the new generation of Mormon-studies scholars comes a crisp, engaging account of the religion’s history.”—The Wall Street Journal With Mormonism on the nation’s radar as never before, religious historian Matthew Bowman has written an essential book that pulls back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine. He recounts the church’s origins and explains how the Mormon vision has evolved—and with it the esteem in which Mormons have been held in the eyes of their countrymen. Admired on the one hand as hardworking paragons of family values, Mormons have also been derided as oddballs and persecuted as polygamists, heretics, and zealots. The place of Mormonism in public life continues to generate heated debate, yet the faith has never been more popular. One of the fastest-growing religions in the world, it retains an uneasy sense of its relationship with the main line of American culture. Mormons will surely play an even greater role in American civic life in the years ahead. The Mormon People comes as a vital addition to the corpus of American religious history—a frank and balanced demystification of a faith that remains a mystery for many. With a new afterword by the author. “Fascinating and fair-minded . . . a sweeping soup-to-nuts primer on Mormonism.”—The Boston Globe “A cogent, judicious, and important account of a faith that has been an important element in American history but remained surprisingly misunderstood.”—Michael Beschloss “A thorough, stimulating rendering of the Mormon past and present.”—Kirkus Reviews “[A] smart, lucid history.”—Tom Brokaw

Faith in American Public Life

Author: Melissa Rogers

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781481309707

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Introduction: Religion's Role in American Public Life -- Religion and the Constitution : Historical Origins -- Religion and the Constitution : Some Key Concepts and Cases -- Faith and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue : The Role of Religion in the White House -- Religion, Policy, and Politics : Barring Religious Texts--Protecting Rights to Engage in Policy and Politics -- Religious Expression on Government Property : Prohibiting Government Speech Endorsing Religion--Protecting Nongovernmental Religious Speech -- Government Partnerships with Faith-Based Organizations : Creating Partnerships to Serve People in Need -- Faith and Federal Funds : Supporting Secular, Not Religious, Activities -- Religious Exemptions and Accommodations : Balancing Claims of Conscience with Other Interests -- Faith and the Workplace : Respecting Religious Freedom in Employment -- Religious Discrimination and Hate Crimes : Fighting Hatred and Bias--Protecting Freedom and Pluralism -- Conclusion: A Crossroads for Faith in American Public Life.

The Mormon People

Author: Matthew Burton Bowman

Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0679644903

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A religious historian explores the 180-year history of Mormonism, discussing the church's origins and development, its position as one of the fastest growing religions in the world, and its connection to American life.