Belief

Former followers of an evangelical “purity” movement that promoted a strict view of abstinence are grappling with aftershocks.

Its embrace of an ignominious president is forcing a long-overdue reckoning with the movement’s embrace of white supremacy and illiberal politics.

The peculiarities of how American Christianity took shape help explain believers’ vulnerability to conspiratorial thinking and misinformation.

Are the evangelicals who voted for Trump and stormed the Capitol in his defense part of the fringe of evangelicalism, or the core?

What they can teach us about what to expect.

In the 19th century, Purim became an occasion to hold parties to raise money for charities. These parties helped American Jews gain a standing among the elite.

White evangelicals have long been attracted to the conservative media's militant politics and regressive gender roles.

Nostalgia is not merely reductive; it is also productive.

How 150 years of apocalyptic agitation culminated in an insurrection.

Historian John Turner tells the story of Plymouth Colony with nuance and care.

Kevin Dann on the spiritualists of New York City and beyond.

A brief history of the Yuletide in America.

Jefferson revised the Gospels to make Jesus more reasonable, and lost the power of his story.

It was less about their asceticism and more about rejecting the world they had fled.

Perpetual outsiders, Mormons spent 200 years assimilating to a certain national ideal—only to find their country in an identity crisis.

A review of "Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America."

Despite extensive historiography, most people are not aware that the Society of Jesus owned people.

Any effective soul-searching must take into account the history of white American Christian support for white supremacist power.

The fight between Biden and conservative Catholics will be about more than policy.

Power, plague and Christianity were closely intertwined in 17th-century New England.

In the 1960s, youth counterculture spawned Christian rock.

How a long-abandoned practice became a way for undocumented immigrants to seek protection.

The president's "1776 Commission" marks a turning point in his rhetoric.

How the ancient, antisemitic nocturnal ritual fantasy expresses itself through the ages—and explains the right’s fascination with fringe conspiracy theories.

How an Illuminati conspiracy theory captured American imaginations in the nation’s earliest days.

No, Trump can’t rewrite school curriculums himself, but a thousand mini-Trumps on the nation’s school boards can.

Calling QAnon a "cult" or "religion" hides how its practices are born of deeply American social and political traditions.

Why the Exodus must remain central to the African American church.

The role of Black churches in the Reconstruction of the United States.

For most of American history, the light-skinned Jesus conjured up by white congregations demanded the preservation of inequality as part of the divine order.