New Day Begun presents the findings of the first major research project on black churches’ civic involvement since C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya’s landmark study The Black Church in the African American Experience. Since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the scale and scope of African American churches’ civic involvement have changed significantly: the number of African American clergy serving in elective and appointive offi...

After the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004, the "God Gap" became a hotly debated political issue. Religious voters were seen as the key to Bush's victory, and Democrats began scrambling to reach out to them. Four years later, however, with the economy in a tailspin on election day, religion barely seemed to register on people's radar screens. In this book, a team of well-regarded scholars digs deeper to examine the role religion played in the 2008 campaign. They take a long view, placi...

American Grace is a major achievement, a groundbreaking examination of religion in America.Unique among nations, America is deeply religious, religiously diverse, and remarkably tolerant. But in recent decades the nation’s religious landscape has been reshaped.America has experienced three seismic shocks, say Robert Putnam and David Campbell. In the 1960s, religious observance plummeted. Then in the 1970s and 1980s, a conservative reaction produced...

Why is the Atlantic slowly filling with crude petroleum, threatening a millions-of-years-old ecological balance? Why did traders at prominent banks take high-risk gambles with the money entrusted to them by hundreds of thousands of clients around the world, expanding and leveraging their investments to the point that failure led to a global financial crisis that left millions of people jobless and hundreds of cities economically devastated? Why would the world’s most powerful military spen...

“Quite possibly the most illuminating text for this election year” (The New York Times Book Review).*Winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion*Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, spells out the profound political and cultural consequences of a new reality—that America is no longer a majority white Christian nation.For most of our nation’s history, White Christian America (WCA) se...

Critics of President Obama have attacked him as a socialist, an African-American radical, a big government liberal. But somehow the critics have failed to reveal what's truly driving Barack Obama. Now bestselling author Dinesh D’Souza throws out these misplaced attacks in his new book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage. The reason, explains D'Souza, that Obama appears to be working to destroy America from within is found, as Obama himself admits, in "The Dreams of His Father": a deeply-ho...

Angry debate over gay marriage has divided the nation as no other issue since the Vietnam War. Why has marriage suddenly emerged as the most explosive issue in the gay struggle for equality? At times it seems to have come out of nowhere-but in fact it has a history. George Chauncey offers an electrifying analysis of the history of the shifting attitudes of heterosexual Americans toward gay people, from the dramatic growth in acceptance to the many campaigns against gay rights that...

American politics seems to grow more contentious and complicated by the day, and whether American democracy works well is hotly debated. Amidst all this roiling partisan argument and confusing claims and counterclaims, there has never been a greater need for an impartial primer on the basics of the American political system. This Very Short Introduction gives readers a concise, accessible, and sophisticated overview of the vital elements of American democracy, emphasizing both how these el...

Forces are rapidly reshaping America's morals, social policies, and culture—but how do we stop it? Learn how to make your voice heard and reclaim America’s faith and values by reshaping our country’s current trajectory.Cultural elites in the media, academia, and politics are daily deceiving millions of Americans into passively supporting policies that are harmful to the nation and their own best interest. Although some Americans can see through the smokescreen, the...

From the author of Why Americans Hate Politics, the New York Times bestselling and “notably fair-minded” (The New York Times Book Review), story of the GOP’s fracturing—from the 1964 Goldwater takeover to the Trump spectacle.Why the Right Went Wrong offers an “up to the moment” (The Christian Science Monitor) historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republica...

For much of American history, evangelicalism was aligned with progressive political causes. Nineteenth-century evangelicals fought for the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, and public education. But contemporary conservative activists have defaulted on this majestic legacy, embracing instead an agenda virtually indistinguishable from the Republican Party platform. Abortion, gay marriage, intelligent design -- the Religious Right is fighting, and winning, some of the most important ...

"If reconciliation is the takeaway point for the civil rights story we usually tell, then the takeaway point for the more complex, more truthful civil rights story contained in Dear White Christians is reparations." — from the preface to the second editionWith the troubling and painful events of the last several years—from the killing of numerous unarmed Black men and women at the hands of police to the rallying of white supremacists in Charlottesville—it is clearer than e...