Aimee Semple McPherson addresses a crowd.

An Eerily Familiar 20th-Century Hoax

Aimee Semple McPherson created a wildly popular personal brand as a preacher—then suddenly disappeared.
Cardinals walking through the Vatican.
partner

Why Papal Conclaves Have Drawn the Attention of Spies

Intelligence agencies have long gathered information to help their governments get a sense of who the next pope might be.
Enslaved people crossing a river at night.

The Power of the Dead: BaKongo Inspiration and the Chesapeake Rebellion

Sensitivity to the influence of BaKongo cosmology on Kongo Christianity can help us better understand the choices made by leaders of the rebellion.
Ronald Reagan and his mother.

Ronald Reagan’s Guiding Light

Having inherited his mother’s beliefs, Reagan was ever faithful to the Disciples of Christ, whose tenets were often at odds with those of the GOP.
Two bridges in Grand Island, New York.

Almost Zion: Remembering a Short-lived Jewish State in New York

Ararat, a settlement dreamed up in the 1800s, was meant to offer a refuge to Jews. But after an ornate ceremony, plans never got off the ground.
Collage of school children, church windows, and a map of Oklahoma territory.

Oklahoma Is Asking the Supreme Court to Ignore History

The Founders had disagreements about the role of religion in America’s public schools, but there was always one line they would not cross.
Catholic activists burn draft files to protest the Vietnam War in Catonsville, Maryland, 1968.

Resistance Reexamined

The complex, sometimes romanticized, but ultimately prophetic Catholic peace movement has critical lessons for today's America amid a genocidal war in Gaza.
Aimee Semple McPherson in front of her Gospel Car, painted with the words "Jesus is coming soon - get ready."

The “Lady Preacher” Who Became World-Famous—and Then Vanished

Aimee Semple McPherson took to the radio to spread the Gospel, but her mysterious disappearance cast a shadow on her reputation.
A drawing of cannons being fired at Fort Sumter.

What Can We Learn From the Jewish Debate Over Slavery?

This Passover, American Jews should embrace the fight for “emancipation of all kinds.”
A preacher preaches to Union soldiers in the Civil War.

Confession Eclipsed

On the rise and fall of confession in American Catholicism, and what the demography of today's Catholics says about the future of the faith.

The Sum of Our Wisdom

We are told that we are a Calvinist culture, which means very little, and none of that good.
Cover of the book "Immigration and Apocalypse"

How End Times Theology Shaped U.S. Immigration Policy

Much of the rhetoric surrounding immigration debates is steeped in the language of Revelation, argues New Testament professor Yii-Jan Lin.
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?
New Yorker magazine from November 17, 1962, open to Baldwin's essay.

On James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind”

The essay served as a definitive diagnosis of American race relations. Events soon gave it the force of prophecy.

I Pledge . . . Allegiance?

American law says schools must honor the Pledge of Allegiance. Schools may have other plans.
Jesus blessing two men who are kneeling in prayer.

Lusting for Zion

A new book questions what we think we know about heterosexuality and Latter-day Saints, or Mormons.
Lerone A. Martin

Christian Nationalists Don’t Want Us To Remember the Real MLK

The same Christian ideology that inspired J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to surveil MLK is alive and well in the Trump administration.

Opus Dei, Embezzlement, and Human Trafficking

The Catholic order has branches all over the world, and a deep history of unethical and illegal behavior.
Stamp commemorating "Contributors To The Cause... Haym Salomon, Financial Hero."

Dusting Off the Old Stories

What does the Jewish experience in the Revolutionary War say about America?
Zora Neale Hurston.

Why Zora Neale Hurston Was Obsessed with the Jews

Her long-unpublished novel was the culmination of a years-long fascination. What does it reveal about her fraught views on civil rights?
Former President Jimmy Carter speaking to the congregation at Maranatha Baptist Church before teaching Sunday school in 2019.

Jimmy Carter’s Most Perplexing Legacy

For all of his personal Christian devotion, he could not capture the hearts of white evangelicals.
Jimmy, Rosalynn, and Amy Carter at the Baptist church in Plains, Georgia, 1976.

How Jimmy Carter Lost Evangelical Christians to the Right

The Baptist Georgia governor won evangelical Christian voters in the 1976 presidential election. Next time around, those voters changed sides—for the long haul.
The Battle for the Mind (Tim LaHaye, 1980); from Creationism to Christian Nationalism

The Battle for the Mind (Tim LaHaye, 1980); from Creationism to Christian Nationalism

Tim LaHaye bridged Reagan-era anti-Communism to today’s Christian Nationalism, opposing humanism, evolution, and secularism, emphasizing biblical morality.
‘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.
A row of nuclear missiles aimed at a cloudy sky.

The Forgotten Epidemic

The bishops once used their influence to encourage nuclear disarmament. Can they do so again now?
Painting of the archangel Michael, holding shield, defeating Satan and other angels.

Extremist Pop Culture and the American Evangelical Right

Jack Chick and the origins of the 1980s “Satanic Panic."
A mural depicting John Brown amid Bleeding Kansas.

John Brown, Christian Nationalist

To understand discourse around “Christian nationalism,” look no further than the abolitionist hailed by many on the left.

The Late Great Hal Lindsey

The ideas he popularized will continue to shape evangelicalism for generations to come.
Church with graveyard.

Divided Providence

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War.
Image by Hans Glaser depicting a blood rain that supposedly occurred near Dinkelsbühl in Germany’s Franconia region in 1554.

Strange Gods: Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned

Rains of blood and frogs, mysterious disappearances, objects in the sky: these were the anomalies that fascinated Charles Fort in his Book of the Damned.