One question I have been thinking about is whether contested political theologies can coexist with collective governance, which would have…
American history
Changing the frame: American evangelicalism in global perspective
Rather than continuing to conjecture about Trump’s most faithful constituency, what if observers of contemporary American Christianity asked a different…
Comparison and classification in American religious history
The Centennial Exhibition of 1876 and, even more spectacularly, the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 reveal the power of the…
Constructing Indian religion in Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu
Michael Altman’s contribution to our historical understandings of American ideas about foreign religions is to note the ways in which…
America’s music
On December 4, 1987 both chambers of the 100th United States Congress passed a “resolution expressing the sense of Congress…
The American tradition of tolerance and free speech
Much has happened since Denise Spellberg’s Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an came out in 2013. When I first read it, I treasured…
Secularism and the invention of American evangelicalism
Few books in the field of American religious history has received more attention over the few years than John Modern’s Secularism…
Spiritualism and visual romanticism
TIF editor at large, John Lardas Modern, reviews Charles Colbert's recent publication, Haunted Visions: Spiritualism and American Art.
Was antebellum America secular?
The question “Was Antebellum America Secular?” obviously depends on what one means by secular. Because the term is dialectical by…
Ghosts in Antebellum America
At Religion in American History, John Turner, Professor of History at the University of Southern Alabama, reviews two books that…