A sweeping retelling of American religious history, showing how religion has enhanced and hindered human flourishing from the Ice Age to the Information Age. Until now, the standard narrative of American religious history has begun with English set...

A rich and inclusive history of belief, from humanity's earliest days to our own times. Religion is distinctly human. We can't help wondering about where we come from and why we are here. Did some all-powerful being make the universe? When we die,...

An award-winning historian reconstructs the life of Francis of Assisi, uncovering the man behind the myths. One of the most famous figures in Christian history, Francis of Assisi (1181/82-1226) was revered as a miracle worker during his life and qu...

A timely study of the intrinsic connections between Western European nations and their non-Christian minorities in the age of state formation. Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are on the rise in twenty-first-century Europe, but these notions of the...

Why the crisis of Christianity has become a crisis for democracy. What happens to American democracy if Christianity is no longer able, or no longer willing, to perform the functions on which our constitutional order depends? In this provocative bo...

A hard-hitting critique of the Church of England as a social, spiritual and financial driver and beneficiary of the British Empire. This book offers a fresh, bold and unsettling truth: the British Empire and Great Britain are primarily English con...

A revelatory history of the priests, nuncios and missionaries whose "special operations" have served the Holy See and the 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide. "Officially" the Vatican has no espionage service; but does that mean that no one carries ou...

Focusing on Christianity's core practices, a leading theologian imagines Christianity as a way of life oriented toward wisdom. In this book, Kevin W. Hector argues that we can understand Christianity as a set of practices designed to transform one'...

The first volume of a groundbreaking two-part commentary on the book of Genesis by leading biblical scholar Ronald Hendel. The first eleven chapters of Genesis narrate the origin of the universe; the creation of the first human beings; the beginnin...

A major new history of medieval monasticism, from the fourth to the sixteenth century. From the late Roman Empire onwards, monasteries and convents were a common sight throughout Europe. But who were monasteries for? What kind of people founded and...