American Dominion: The Rise of Radicalization of a New Christendom

Keri Ladner. Bloomsbury Academic, Apr. 16 ($35, ISBN 979-8-216-27576-3)

Ladner tracks how conservative evangelicalism grew during the 20th century, radicalizing the Republican Party with its belief that Christians should exert dominance over society.

The Christian Past That Wasn’t: Debunking the Christian Nationalist Myths That Hijack History

Warren Throckmorton. Broadleaf, May 19 ($32.99, ISBN 979-8-88983-582-0)

Getting Jefferson Right coauthor Throckmorton aims to dismantle the belief that America was founded as a Christian nation, framing its true history as one of religious pluralism.

A Nation Wrestles with God: American prophets, philosophers, and firebrands

Edited by Ilan Stavans. Restless, June 2 ($26 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-63206-419-6)

Spanning 400 years, these texts from poets, philosophers, and politicians helped shaped the country’s relationship with faith, according to Restless Books publisher Stavans.

Reality in Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis

Jared Stacy. HarperOne, Mar. 17 ($27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-345375-3)

Stacy, a theologian, traces the deep anxieties that have fueled evangelical Christianity’s attraction to conspiracy theories and shares strategies for individuals to help disentangle it.

sPIRITS OF emPIRE: HOW sETTLER coLONIALISM MADE aMERICAN rELIGION

Tisa Wenger. Univ. of North Carolina, Mar. 17 ($34.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-0)

This “comprehensive” history unpacks “the complex relationship between Indigenous resistance, secular governance, and American Christianity in the 18th and 19th centuries,” per PW’s review.

Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America

Kira Ganga Kieffer. Princeton Univ., May 19 ($29.95, ISBN 978-0-691-22466-4)

Religious studies scholar Kieffer frames the ongoing skepticism about vaccines as an expression of rising anxieties about moral authority being wrested away by the state.

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