Religions Of America

Written primarily for undergraduate classes in American religious history and organized chronologically, this new textbook presents the broad scope of the story of religion in the American colonies and the United States. While following certain central narratives, including the long shadow of Puritanism, the competition between revival and reason, and the defining role of racial and ethnic diversity, the book tells the story of American religion in all its historical and moral complexity. To appeal to its broad range of readers, this textbook includes charts, timelines, and suggestions for primary source documents that will lead readers into a deeper engagement with the material. Unlike similar history books, The Story of Religion in America pays careful attention to balancing the story of Christianity with the central contributions of other religions.

Religion in American Today describes how sacred powers and secular religions have overtaken and infiltrated Christianity. Secular religion is now dominant in America: It assumes the forms of personal religion and political religion. Christianity makes its living within the confines of these secular religions. The point of the book is to identify the idolatry in what now passes for Christianity. Technology and the political state are socially constructed as sacred powers. As such they are idols. In its slumber Christianity embraces technology and the political state to the point of becoming subordinate to them. Concurrently technology and the political state give rise to the dominant secular religions. Personal religion acts as a consumer service, a psychological technique, to acquire health and happiness in this life. Political religion is a consequence of politics replacing religion in the quest for collective meaning in a technological society. Political movements become religious revivals and political parties, churches. This book is an attempt to awaken Christians to the idols that beckon.

In a review in the Journal of Religion, the famed Martin Marty characterized Peter Williams as "a productive wonder" and Americas Religions: Traditions and Cultures as "a rich resource for readers who would like a state of the art comment on the abundant religious phenomena which surround them". Writing in Religion and American Culture, Stephen J. Stein said the book is "not a story of religion in isolation from the rest of American life", but a work that has as a major emphasis the theme of Americanization, of the symbiotic relationship between religions and cultures. Williamss book widely considered the best of its kind, is a comprehensive introduction to the religious history of the United States and the traditions out of which it arose, from colonial times through the late twentieth century. Now including an updated bibliography, it presents descriptions of major religious traditions and introduces distinctive American innovations. Included are not only Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, but African American, Native American, and Asian American traditions. The peace churches, "liberal" churches, and Mormonism also are discussed.

Written in an engaging and accessible tone, Religion in America probes the dynamics of recent American religious beliefs and behaviors. Charting trends over time using demographic data, this book examines how patterns of religious affiliation, service attendance, and prayer vary by race and ethnicity, social class, and gender. The authors identify demographic processes such as birth, death, and migration, as well as changes in education, employment, and families, as central to why some individuals and congregations experience change in religious practices and beliefs while others hold steady. Religion in America challenges students to examine the demographic data alongside everyday accounts of how religion is experienced differently across social groups to better understand the role that religion plays in the lives of Americans today and how that is changing.

Illustrated, comprehensive, and illuminating, this thoroughly up-to-date work takes the country's religious pulse, covering all of America's most significant organizations and denominations. Readers will find an introduction to the basic tenets and structure of 30 faiths, reviewed by a respected authority on each religion, as well as maps, surveys, and other demographic breakdowns by religious figures and scholars with respect to contemporary American society, culture, and politics. Essays discuss broader, more overarching aspects of worship in the United States. In addition to serving as an encyclopedic reference, the book tackles head-on the most current issues and controversies in American worship.

Religion has played a crucial role in American immigration history as an institutional resource for migrants' social adaptation, as a map of meaning for interpreting immigration experiences, and as a continuous force for expanding the national ideal of pluralism. To explain these processes the editors of this volume brought together the perspectives of leading scholars of migration and religion. The resulting essays present salient patterns in American immigrants' religious lives, past and present. In comparing the religious experiences of Mexicans and Italians, Japanese and Koreans, Eastern European Jews and Arab Muslims, and African Americans and Haitians, the book clarifies how such processes as incorporation into existing religions, introduction of new faiths, conversion, and diversification have contributed to America's extraordinary religious diversity and add a comprehensive religious dimension to our understanding of America as a nation of immigrants.

Religion in America, 7th Edition provides a comprehensive yet concise introduction to the changing religious landscape of the United States. Extensively revised and updated to reflect current events and trends, this new edition continues to engage students in reflection about religious diversity. Julia Corbett-Hemeyer presents the study of religion as a tool for developing appreciation of communities of faith other than one’s own and for understanding the dynamics at work in religion in the United States today.

And buddhists in the United States; other religious and spiritual movements; and religion as an individual and cultural problem. For those interested in American and Western religions.