Belief

The neglected Catholic overtones of an American classic.

Establishing freedom of religion was a hard-fought success of the American Founding. Today we are still fighting.

The disgraced televangelist built his career on an undeniable talent. His downfall contributed to a major shift in how Americans viewed religious leaders.

Jimmy Swaggart utilized his charisma to overcome not one, but two sex scandals.

If we imagine religion as a technology, argues Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith, we can better see the cause of its decline: obsolescence.

How William F. Buckley Jr. turned his father’s private convictions and prejudices into a major political movement.

Jack Hanson on the new pope and his namesake.

Before Leo XIV, the weird, century-long history of Americans claiming to be pope.

Aimee Semple McPherson created a wildly popular personal brand as a preacher—then suddenly disappeared.

Intelligence agencies have long gathered information to help their governments get a sense of who the next pope might be.

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

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.

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.

The Founders had disagreements about the role of religion in America’s public schools, but there was always one line they would not cross.

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 took to the radio to spread the Gospel, but her mysterious disappearance cast a shadow on her reputation.

This Passover, American Jews should embrace the fight for “emancipation of all kinds.”

Religious leaders hid behind the separation of church and state to uphold the institution of slavery and the forcible removal of Native Americans.

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.

We are told that we are a Calvinist culture, which means very little, and none of that good.

Much of the rhetoric surrounding immigration debates is steeped in the language of Revelation, argues New Testament professor Yii-Jan Lin.

Henrietta Szold devoted her life to building a Jewish society in Palestine. But how useful is her ’cultural’ Zionism for Jewish Americans today?

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

American law says schools must honor the Pledge of Allegiance. Schools may have other plans.

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

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

The Catholic order has branches all over the world, and a deep history of unethical and illegal behavior.

What does the Jewish experience in the Revolutionary War say about America?

Her long-unpublished novel was the culmination of a years-long fascination. What does it reveal about her fraught views on civil rights?

For all of his personal Christian devotion, he could not capture the hearts of white evangelicals.