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Second Great Awakening

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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.
by Richard D. Mahoney via JSTOR Daily on April 30, 2025
An illustration of a solar eclipse next to a portrait of James Fenimore Cooper.

Solar Eclipses in American History

How the spectacle of the 1806 solar eclipse impacted the national consciousness.
by Matthew Smith via Origins on March 14, 2024
Painting of "The County Election" by George Caleb Bingham.

The Myth of American Individualism

How the utopian notion of the U.S. as a meritocracy became so ingrained in the American psyche.
by Eric C. Miller, Alex Zakaras via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on February 21, 2023
People pray outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 27, 2022.

Separation of Church and State Has Always Been Good for Religion

The US Supreme Court's most recent decisions undermine centuries of established secularism within American government.
by Ed Simon via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on June 30, 2022
Erie Canal historical marker

The ‘Psychic Highway’ that Carried the Puritans’ Social Crusade Westward

Elements of the Puritans’ unique worldview were handed down for generations and were carried westward by their descendants, the people we call Yankees.
by Gregory Rodriguez via Contra Mundum on November 22, 2020

A History of the Jerks: Bodily Exercises and the Great Revival

A digital archive of first-person accounts from the turn of the 19th century chronicling an unusual display of religious ecstasy.
by Douglas Winiarski via University of Richmond on April 9, 2018

Two Hundred Years on the Erie Canal

A digital exhibit on the history and legacy of the canal.
by Heidi Zimmer, Dan Ward via Digital Public Library of America on January 1, 2018

Our Trouble with Sex: A Christian Story?

"Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century" by Geoffrey R. Stone.
by Annette Gordon-Reed via New York Review of Books on August 17, 2017
Billboard that reads "God Loves You" above an American flag and doves.

One Nation Under Gods

Despite what Steve King says, the U.S. was never a Christian nation.
by Richard White via Boston Review on March 22, 2017
Pilgrims going to church armed with guns.

God and Guns

Patrick Blanchfield tracks the long-standing entanglement of guns and religion in the United States. Part 1 of 2.
by Patrick Blanchfield via The Revealer on September 25, 2015
Black-and-white image of sun exploding and vaporizing Earth, titled "Five Roads to Doomsday." Caption reads "This panel of drawings reproduces climactic scenes from Hayden Planetarium's sky drama depicting five catastrophes that could wipe out the world. Above, the sun is shown as it explodes into a new star, vaporizing the earth."
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Paradise Lost

Why a hundred thousand Americans were ready to believe that Christ would return to earth in 1843.
via BackStory on December 14, 2012
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Glad to the Brink of Fear

A new biography reveals how Ralph Waldo Emerson gave Americans a vocabulary to understand themselves in an era even more tempestuous than our own.
by Nicole Penn via American Purpose on March 13, 2024
The front cover of Peter Manseau's new book, featuring a photo of Jefferson's bible.

Doubting Thomas

Is Jefferson's Bible evidence that the Founding Fathers engaged with scripture to birth a Christian nation? Or that they sought to foster a new secular order?
by Ed Simon via Los Angeles Review of Books on November 6, 2022
Ancient language symbols or hieroglyphics

Collecting for Salvation: American Antiquarianism and the Natural History of the East

The outlines of “salvation antiquarianism”—with the emphasis on “saving”—appears particularly clearly in the AAS’s inaugural 1813 address.
by Christen Mucher via Commonplace on October 26, 2022
Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell speaking to each other in the White House.

It Wasn’t the Religious Right That Made White Evangelicals Vote Republican

To understand why evangelicals vote Republican, we shouldn’t focus just on Falwell; we need to look at a century or more of evangelical political culture.
by Daniel K. Williams via Anxious Bench on August 23, 2022

The Atlantic Writers Project: Harriet Beecher Stowe

A contemporary Atlantic writer reflects on one of the voices from the magazine's archives who helped shape the publication—and the nation.
by Elizabeth Bruenig via The Atlantic on July 11, 2022
Statue of Jefferson in front of white columns of building facade

The Decline of Church-State Separation

The author of new book explains the fraught and turbulent relationship between religion and government in the U.S.
by Steven Green, Eric C. Miller via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on April 26, 2022
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West Virginia's Founding Politicians Understood Democracy Better than Today's

They believed that wealth should have no bearing on a citizen’s voting power.
by Daniel W. Sunshine via HNN on October 17, 2021
Benjamin Franklin reading

America’s Obsession With Self-Help

From “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” to “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” what do bestselling guides to self-improvement reveal about the United States?
by Chris Lehmann via The New Republic on July 2, 2021
Worshipers at a Pentecostal church, Chicago, 1941

A Praise House of Many Mansions

In a book and documentary series, Henry Louis Gates Jr. offers a wide-ranging tour of Black religion in America.
by Erica Armstrong Dunbar via New York Review of Books on April 29, 2021
Members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

The Secret Feminist History of the Temperance Movement

The radical women behind the original “dump him” discourse.
by Nina Renata Aron via Medium on March 5, 2021
The Oquirrh Mountain Temple in Salt Lake City

The Most American Religion

Perpetual outsiders, Mormons spent 200 years assimilating to a certain national ideal—only to find their country in an identity crisis.
by McKay Coppins via The Atlantic on December 16, 2020
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the Freedom March on Washington in 1963.

How a Heritage of Black Preaching Shaped MLK's Voice in Calling for Justice

A long heritage of black preachers who played an important role for enslaved people shaped Martin Luther King Jr.‘s moral and ethical vision.
by Kenyatta R. Gilbert via The Conversation on January 17, 2020
Colonial men holding a copy of the 1649 Maryland Toleration Act.

Five Ways We Misunderstand American Religious History

From religious liberty to religious violence, it helps to get our facts straight.
by Thomas S. Kidd via Christianity Today on November 21, 2019

Flirting With Fascism

The National Conservatism Conference in Washington had a very 1930s vibe.
by David Austin Walsh via Jewish Currents on July 24, 2019
Political cartoon lampooning Thomas Paine and his beliefs

America and Other Fictions: On Radical Faith and Post-Religion

Thomas Paine, the most radical of American revolutionaries, perhaps most fully understood the millennial potential of the new Republic.
by Ed Simon via The Revealer on December 20, 2018

Where Sunday School Comes From

Sunday school was a major part of nineteenth century reformers’ efforts to improve children’s lives and morals.
by Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on April 22, 2018
Illustration of Laura Bridgman sitting at a desk engaged in writing the manual alphabet on her left hand

Nineteenth-Century Schools for the Deaf and Blind

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
by Melissa Jacobs via Digital Public Library of America on February 28, 2018
Trump speaking at Liberty University.

Is the Term 'Evangelical' Redeemable?

One historian, who also happens to be an evangelical Christian, says no.
by Thomas S. Kidd via The Gospel Coalition on September 8, 2017

The Circus Spectacular That Spawned American Giantism

How the “Greatest Show on Earth” enthralled small-town crowds and inspired shopping malls
by Janet M. Davis via What It Means to Be American on March 17, 2017
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