Over the past fifteen years, associations throughout the U.S. have organized citizens around issues of equality and social justice, often through local churches. But in contrast to President Bush's vision of faith-based activism, in which groups deliver social services to the needy, these associations do something greater. Drawing on institutions of faith, they reshape public policies that neglect the disadvantaged. To find out how this faith-based form of community organizing succeeds, Richard L. Wood spent several years working with two local groups in Oakland, California—the faith-based Pacific Institute for Community Organization and the race-based Center for Third World Organizing. Comparing their activist techniques and achievements, Wood argues that the alternative cultures and strategies of these two groups give them radically different access to community ties and social capital. Creative and insightful, Faith in Action shows how community activism and religious organizations can help build a more just and democratic future for all Americans.

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.

Through a nationwide survey, the authors of this study conclude that US Evangelicals may actually be preserving the racial chasm, not through active racism, but because their theology hinders their ability to recognise systematic injustice.

A broad view of the relationship between religion and politics in the US, accepting the mercurial nature of both as they are experienced and described rather than trying to pinpoint any essential inner truths or hair-fine distinctions. Emphasizes how and why political and religious actors choose to participate in the interplay, in the voting booth, Congress, state legislatures, the presidency, the courts, interest groups, and the larger culture. Also provides a historical perspective. Paper edition (unseen), $18.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

this book focuses on religion and politics and the dynamic interactions between them. It helps to understand the politics of religion in the United States and to appreciate the strategic choices that politicians and religious participants make when they participate in politics.

In The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going, Second Edition, Ryan P. Burge details a comprehensive picture of an increasingly significant group--Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. The growth of the nones in American society has been dramatic. In 1972, just 5 percent of Americans claimed "no religion" on the General Social Survey. In 2018, that number rose to 23.7 percent, making the nones as numerous as both evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics. Every indication is that the nones will be the largest religious group in the United States in the next decade. Burge illustrates his precise but accessible descriptions with charts and graphs drawn from more than a dozen carefully curated datasets, some tracking changes in American religion over a long period of time, others large enough to allow a statistical deep dive on subgroups such as atheists or agnostics. Burge also draws on data that tracks how individuals move in and out of religion over time, helping readers to understand what type of people become nones and what factors lead an individual to return to religion. This second edition includes substantial updates with new chapters and current statistical and demographic information. The Nones gives readers a nuanced, accurate, and meaningful picture of the growing number of Americans who say that they have no religious affiliation. Burge explains how this rise happened, who the nones are, and what they mean for the future of American religion.

Readers will learn the religious beliefs of each president of the United States and how those beliefs influenced the decisions and actions of their lives and their presidencies.