American Soul

Yoga. Humanistic Psychology. Meditation. Holistic Healing. These practices are commonplace today. Yet before the early 1960s they were atypical options for most people outside of the upper class or small groups of educated spiritual seekers. Esalen Institute, a retreat for spiritual and personal growth in Big Sur, California, played a pioneering role in popularizing quests for self-transformation and personalized spirituality. This “soul rush” spread quickly throughout the United States as the Institute made ordinary people aware of hundreds of ways to select, combine, and revise their beliefs about the sacred and to explore diverse mystical experiences. Millions of Americans now identify themselves as spiritual, not religious, because Esalen paved the way for them to explore spirituality without affiliating with established denominations The American Soul Rush explores the concept of spiritual privilege and Esalen’s foundational influence on the growth and spread of diverse spiritual practices that affirm individuals’ self-worth and possibilities for positive personal change. The book also describes the people, narratives, and relationships at the Institute that produced persistent, almost accidental inequalities in order to illuminate the ways that gender is central to religion and spirituality in most contexts.

Looking at the lives of America's founders-including Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin-scholar and bestselling author Jacob Needleman explores their core of inner beliefs; their religious and spiritual sensibilities; and their individual conception of the purpose of life. The founders, Needleman argues, conceived of an "inner democracy": a continual pursuit of wisdom and self-improvement that would undergird the outer democracy in which we live today. Any understanding of America as a nation of spiritual values will in the years ahead require Needleman's work as a point of reference.

It's time to take back what the devil has stolen and bring God back into our culture. Phil Robertson, patriarch of A&E's Duck Dynasty and one of the most recognized voices of conservative Christianity in America, believes that little by little, generation by generation, America has allowed the lines of morality, decency, and virtue to be erased. Our values have disappeared as we began to believe lies that have only sown discord and division. But, most importantly, Phil also believes that things can change. Written with captivating storytelling and unflinching honesty, The Theft of America's Soul shows us how to make America a God-honoring nation once more by dropping the ten central lies that rule our day and replacing them with timeless, biblical truths, including: God's people represent his voice in the world True unity comes from a God-centered culture God's standard for all time is the standard of virtue The Theft of America's Soul is a prophetic wake-up call for anyone who wants to see our nation thrive, challenging us to exchange lies for truths that will bring peace of mind, harmony, and prosperity back to our country--an invitation to experience the life-giving, peace-filling, wholly-transforming love of God. Praise for The Theft of America's Soul: "The moral clarity in this book is so powerful and so refreshing I wish I could give it to everyone I know. Incidentally, the only way something could be this full of truth and wisdom is if its author is a prophet. That he is. Hear him." --Eric Metaxas, author of Bonhoeffer "In The Theft of America's Soul, the Duck Commander has set his sights on something higher, taking aim at the ten lies that have led our culture astray and put our faith, our families, and our freedom at risk. I am grateful for the direct, nonpolitically correct way my friend Phil Robertson lays out the truth. My prayer is that this book finds its way into the hands and hearts of many Americans." --Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council and president of Council for National Policy

The Declaration of Independence has been the subject of competing interpretations since its adoption by the Continental Congress on the Fourth of July 1776, and for nearly two and a half centuries the political ideas expressed in its preamble have inspired reform movements both at home and abroad. From the early debates on the nature of the American Republic to abolitionism, progressivism, the civil rights movement, and contemporary debates about American economic and foreign policy, the Declaration is, as it has been, a vibrant and dynamic, though perennially disputed, source of American ideals. The present volume brings together a variety of speeches and writings related to the contested meaning and legacy of the Declaration of Independence, and the various documents assembled together demonstrate how competing interpretations of the Declaration have shaped, and been shaped by, political conflict in America. The Declaration is perhaps our "national soul," as Charles Sumner wrote in 1860, but Americans have rarely spoken of it with one voice. American Soul: The Contested Legacy of the Declaration of Independence paints, with broad strokes, a picture of the debates that have shaped a nation.

A revelatory look at the separation of church and state in America—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Great Influenza For four hundred years, Americans have fought over the proper relationships between church and state and between a free individual and the state. This is the story of the first battle in that war of ideas, a battle that led to the writing of the First Amendment and that continues to define the issue of the separation of church and state today. It began with religious persecution and ended in revolution, and along the way it defined the nature of America and of individual liberty. Acclaimed historian John M. Barry explores the development of these fundamental ideas through the story of Roger Williams, who was the first to link religious freedom to individual liberty, and who created in America the first government and society on earth informed by those beliefs. This book is essential to understanding the continuing debate over the role of religion and political power in modern life.

During the initial days of Desert Storm Army Reservist Private Anita Harvey had a horrible nightmare. A year after the 1998 bombing of U.S. Embassies then Sergeant Harvey warned some Ft. Hood soldiers that Americans would be attacked on U.S. soil within the next five years. It was a feeling she couldn't shake since that horrible dream years earlier. She did not realize that her dream was a vision foreseeing that horrible day in American history known as 9-11 some ten years later. After years of battling disabilities U. S. Army veteran Anita Harvey has come forth with the novel every soldier and veteran must have; 'Fight For The American Soul'

What do Joyce Brothers and Sigmund Freud, Rabbi Harold Kushner and philosopher Martin Buber have in common? They belong to a group of pivotal and highly influential Jewish thinkers who altered the face of modern America in ways few people recognize. So argues Andrew Heinze, who reveals in rich and unprecedented detail the extent to which Jewish values, often in tense interaction with an established Christian consensus, shaped the country's psychological and spiritual vocabulary. Jews and the American Soul is the first book to recognize the central role Jews and Jewish values have played in shaping American ideas of the inner life. It overturns the widely shared assumption that modern ideas of human nature derived simply from the nation's Protestant heritage. Heinze marshals a rich array of evidence to show how individuals ranging from Erich Fromm to Ann Landers changed the way Americans think about mind and soul. The book shows us the many ways that Jewish thinkers influenced everything from the human potential movement and pop psychology to secular spirituality. It also provides fascinating new interpretations of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Western views of the psyche; the clash among Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish moral sensibilities in America; the origins and evolution of America's psychological and therapeutic culture; the role of Jewish women as American public moralists, and more. A must-read for anyone interested in the contribution of Jews and Jewish culture to modern America.

Rewriting the American Soul focuses on the political implications of psychoanalytic and neurocognitive approaches to trauma in literature, their impact on cultural representations of collective trauma in the United States, and their subversive appropriation in pre- and post-9/11 fiction. Anna Thiemann connects cutting edge trauma theory with the historical context from which it emerged and shows that contemporary novels encourage us to reflect critically on the cultural meanings and political uses of trauma. In doing so, it contributes to a new generation of trauma scholarship that challenges the dominant paradigm in literary and cultural studies. Moreover, the book intervenes in current debates about the relationship between literature and neuroscience insisting that the so-called neuronovel scrutinizes scientific developments and their political ramifications rather than adopting and translating them into aesthetic practices.