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...

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...

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...

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...

Barack Obama and his radical team of self-professed socialists, fringe activists, and others are trying to remake the American way of life. They have used their new Democratic majority to launch an alarming assault on our capitalist system—while abandoning the war on terror, undermining our national security, and weakening our position in the eyes of our enemies. The "candidate of change" is threatening to change our country irreparably, and for the worse—if we don't act to stop him now.

From an esteemed scholar of American religion and sexuality, a sweeping account of the century of religious conflict that produced our culture warsGay marriage, transgender rights, birth control -- sex is at the heart of many of the most divisive political issues of our age. The origins of these conflicts, historian R. Marie Griffith argues, lie in sharp disagreements that emerged among American Christians a century ago. From the 1920s onward, a once-solid Christia...

The scam of supply-side economics is clearly and convincingly explained in "a classic of political journalism" (Michael Lewis).Jonathan Chait has written for a range of publications, from the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post, and considers himself a moderate. But he's convinced that American politics has been hijacked.Over the past three decades, a fringe group of economic hucksters has corrupted and perverted our nation's policies...

Gay Marriage. That single phrase is enough to spark a passionate debate from either side. It’s hard to form a view one way or another when there is so much heated opinion for or against it. The ViewCaps Pros and Cons series takes a step back and looks at the issue objectively. It lays out only the facts and let’s you decide what opinion to take. ViewCaps is an imprint of BookCaps™ Study Guides. With each book, a issue is objectively analyzed. We publish a wide array of t...