Religion Episodes

The American Revolution dismembered a protestant empire. In the years during and after the war, states disestablished their churches, old and new denominations flourished, and Americans enshrined religious freedom into their state and federal constitutions. But claiming religious freedom in a democracy was not the same as enjoying it. In the republic’s early years, Joseph Smith, who founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and his Mormon brethren learned all too well the differen...

Plymouth Plantation occupies a powerful place in American national memory. Think of the First Thanksgiving in 1621; Englishmen escaping religious persecution; the rock marking the alleged spot where settlers first landed; and of course the Mayflower Compact. In the wake of the American Revolution, citizens of the new nation looked to the Compact for the origins of American Democracy. In Plymouth’s history, many Americans saw the history of the United States itself. But Plymouth has become shroud...

In this season of religious renewal, we bring you a story of religious dissent. In 1638, many of King Charles I’s Presbyterian subjects gathered at Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh to sign the National Covenant . By renewing their own covenant with the Almighty, they also pledged to resist encroachments on church government by the king, and the innovations in doctrine he sought to make for the Church of Scotland. As we’ve discovered in previous episodes, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries w...

The Prince of Darkness wrought havoc on the souls of seventeenth-century Christians living throughout the Atlantic world. Whether they called him Satan, the Devil, Beelzebub, or by any other name, Lucifer tempted men and women to break their covenant with God in Heaven and do his dark bidding on Earth. At a time of great religious upheaval, when the Protestant Reformation swept through Europe and across the ocean to England’s American colonies, fears of Satan’s malevolent influence and the searc...

In November 1800, President John Adams composed a letter to his wife, Abigail, just after he moved into the new White House. He concluded his letter to his “dearest friend” this way: “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.” As the quote suggests, God was an ever present force in the life of John Adams and his family, and while they hoped that providence would smile on the Uni...

If you know anything about Rachel Jackson, chances are you know her best as Andrew Jackson’s wife. You might also know that Rachel died in late 1828, just before Andrew became president. During Andrew’s presidential campaigns in 1824 and 1828, his political enemies attacked Rachel as an adulterer. Legally speaking, she was. In the early 1790s, Rachel and Andrew learned that her first husband, Lewis Robards, had never finalized their divorce. The Jacksons’ marriage was seemingly illegitimate. Aft...