Menu
Category

Belief

On ritual, the supernatural, and religious community.

Featured Resource

Driving along the border wall, May 2025.

A Theology of Smuggling

In the early 1980s Tucson, activists and religious leaders joined forces to protect refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border, galvanizing the Sanctuary Movement.
by Caroline Tracey via Places Journal on November 13, 2025
Collage art featuring Dorothy Martin

It’s One of the Most Influential Social Psychology Studies Ever. Was It All a Lie?

A classic book on UFO believers and their “cognitive dissonance” after aliens failed to land is called into question.
by Anna Merlan via Mother Jones on November 25, 2025
an organ player and his wife and dog drawing from 1495.

The Real Housewives of Church History

How pastors’ wives use power and submission.
by Meagan Saliashvili, Beth Allison Barr via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on September 2, 2025
Cloverlick Freewill Baptist Church in Harlan County, KY.

For Many Miners, Religion and Labor Rights Have Long Been Connected in Coal Country

The retirement of United Mine Workers of America’s longtime president is a reminder that labor and religion have always been entangled in coal country.
by Richard J. Callahan, Jr. via The Conversation on October 7, 2025

Exhibits

NYC street preacher <loc.gov/pictures/item/2020636204/>
Exhibit

Religious Freedom

Tracing the long and contested history of religious freedom in the U.S., from colonial times to recent skirmishes over school prayer, abortion rights, and religious displays.

Exhibit

Higher Callings

A survey of American religious movements, from the Puritans to today's Christian Right.

A Country Between

In 1782, American revolutionaries massacred 96 indigenous Moravian Christians. The victims had attempted to avoid taking sides in the war.
by Peter Manseau via Under Gods on July 4, 2026
Photo illustration of George Washington and mystics in horoscope and galaxy background.

The American Revolution Was So Much Weirder Than You Think

Alongside the Enlightenment reason we associate with the founding there were mystics, occultists, and conspiracy theorists.
by Nicole Penn via The Bulwark on June 30, 2026
A folded paper church with American flags printed all over it.

How Did American Christianity End Up Like This?

History helps explain the particular faith that now rules our religious marketplace.
by Michael Luo via The New Yorker
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on June 14, 2026
A rustic sign advertises Marywood Spirituality Center. Trees, flowers, and a view of the lake lie in the background.

The Way You Let Go

After a startling discovery about the historic conditions of its American Indian Boarding School, one Catholic Sisterhood moved to make reparations.
by Regina Munch via Commonweal on May 26, 2026
Mordecai Kaplan

Preacher Man

Mordecai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, took his sermons very, very seriously.
by Jenna Weissman Joselit via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on May 19, 2026
A cross over the American Flag.

Rededicate* 250

Trump’s “Rededicate 250” event reframes America as a Christian nation, despite the Constitution’s secular roots and “under God” being a 1950s addition.
by Kevin M. Kruse via Campaign Trails on May 11, 2026
A bottle of patent medicine.
partner

A Trusted Name in a Dubious Drug Market

Amid the fraud and flimflam of early drug markets, Shakers stood for purity, creating a brand others were eager to exploit.
by Matthew Wills, J. Worth Estes via JSTOR Daily on May 4, 2026
White people close their eyes in prayer while laying hands on Donald Trump at his desk in the Oval Office.

White America’s Republican Drift

White Christians didn't get replaced—they changed their minds.
by Ryan Burge via Arc Digital on April 22, 2026
Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms

A Short, Strange Trip

Psychedelics and religious revival.
by John O’Connor via History On Drugs on April 16, 2026
Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day’s Complicated Cause for Sainthood

Dorothy Day’s path to sainthood is marked by tension between her heroic service and her rejection of violence.
by S. V. Arbogast via First Things on April 9, 2026
The John Gast painting “American Progress” depicting an angel over westward migration.

The Settler Colonial Roots of American Religion

Religion in the U.S. the was formed through the violent structures of settler rule, Indigenous displacement, and the remaking of sovereignty, land, and belief.
by Tisa Wenger, Mark Oppenheimer via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on April 7, 2026
Painting of a battle during the American Civil War.

A Plague on Both Your Houses

Exodus and the American Civil War.
by Stuart Halpern via Arc Digital on March 30, 2026
A photo of a mid-twentieth century family superimposed over a schoolyard full of children.

Mass at the Drive-In Theater

With the fluctuating popularity of suburbia in the latter half of the 20th-Century, the Catholic Church had to constantly adapt.
by Aaron M. Renn via The Hedgehog Review on March 18, 2026
The Way of Improvement Leads Home
Podcast
The Way of Improvement Leads Home

Suburbanization of American Catholicism

How did the suburbs shape American Catholicism? Stephen M. Koeth, argues that postwar suburbanization revolutionized the Catholic parish, the relationship between clergy and laity, conceptions of parochial education, and Catholic participation in US politics, and thereby was a significant factor in the religious disaffiliation that only accelerated in subsequent decades.
March 10, 2026
An American flag waving overtop a small rural church building.

Americans Should Stop Using the Term Christian Nationalism

Religious beliefs have driven political change for centuries. The question today is which Christian values will prevail.
by Heath W. Carter via The Atlantic
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on March 9, 2026
Church steeple.

How Christianity Was Used By the Powerful and the Marginalized to Shape Post-Civil War America

On the role of religion in Reconstruction.
by Matthew Avery Sutton via Literary Hub on March 4, 2026
Clergy members kneel as they take part in the general strike in Minneapolis to protest ICE.

Christian Abolitionists Have Always Disobeyed Laws

Have you heard the story about a Christian abolitionist “de-arresting” someone?
by Michael Woolf via Sojourners on February 27, 2026
Illustration of Plains Indians meeting a wagon train.

The European Myth of Indigenous “Savages”

On race and religion in the colonization of Native Americans.
by David Silverman via Literary Hub on February 25, 2026
Vintage photo of Solomon Schechter

If Slavery is Not Wrong, Nothing is Wrong

A petition accusing Palestinians’ advocates of committing a “blood libel” occasions a reflection on Solomon Schecter‘s 1909 speech about Abraham Lincoln.
by Shaul Magid via Shaul's Substack on February 16, 2026
Dr. Washington Gladden.

Why the Lower Criticism of the Bible Matters

The subversive insights that a 19th-century Social Gospel crusader came to through efforts to reconstruct the earliest version of the sacred text.
by Philip Jenkins via Anxious Bench on February 12, 2026
Ludwig von Mises.

Champions of Apathy

The first neoliberals distrusted Christianity. Their heirs have tried to revise it.
by Henry Snow via Commonweal on January 27, 2026
Pro-choice rally outside the Supreme Court.

The Theology of Roe

Far from the bastion of secularism many people today assume it to be, the landmark abortion ruling enacted the values of liberal mainline Protestantism.
by Matthew Schmitz via First Things on January 22, 2026
Larry Norman

How the First Ever Christian Rock Album Led to the “Jesus Movement”

Exploring the intersection of family history with the rise of the religious right.
by Josiah Hesse via Literary Hub on January 12, 2026
Po'pay’s statue in the U.S. Capitol.

The 17th-Century Pueblo Leader Who Fought for Independence from Colonial Rule

Po'pay, a Tewa religious leader, led the Pueblo Revolt, the most successful Indigenous rebellion in what’s now the United States.
by Peter C. Mancall via The Conversation on January 9, 2026
Shakers dancing during worship.

Once Seen as a Threat to Society, Shakers Are Now Part of the Sound of America

A new film depicts part of the long history of Shaker worship.
by Christian Goodwillie via The Conversation on December 22, 2025
The "Lead Me, Guide Me" hymnal sitting on a map of Colorado.

Why a Denver Priest was Wrong to Treat Black Catholic Hymnals Like Garbage

On the racist errors that caused a significantly Black parish in Colorado to lose a hallmark of African-American liturgy.
by M. Roger Holland II via Black Catholic Messenger on December 22, 2025
American Flag in front of a church steeple.

Religious Freedom and the Founding

Religious liberty owes much to Jefferson and Madison, but the "impregnable wall" doesn't do justice to the founders vision.
by Mark David Hall via Law & Liberty on December 18, 2025
A Catholic church.

Crabgrass Catholicism

A discussion with Father Stephen M. Koeth about religion and suburbanization.
by Colin Woodard, Stephen M. Koeth via The Metropole on December 3, 2025
The Founding of Maryland by Emmanuel Leutze (1634).

Bejesuited: America’s First Catholics

A history of Catholic immigration and activity in colonial North America.
by Malcolm Gaskill via London Review of Books
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on November 28, 2025
The First Thanksgiving, 1621, by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930). (Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The Pilgrims Were Doomsday Cultists

The settlers who arrived in Plymouth were not escaping religious persecution. They left on the Mayflower to establish a theocracy in the Americas.
by Jane Borden via The Nation
This publication restricts nonsubscriber access to some or all of its articles.
on November 26, 2025
brought to you by
© Bunk History