If America has a claim to exceptionalism, American Credo locates it in a little understood ability to engage in deep conflicts over political ideas, while at the same time reducing adversarial positions to legitimate derivatives of American history and development.

Confessions of an American None: A Credo of Sorts is part memoir, part credo, and part romp in pop culture, spotlighting the largest, fastest-growing spiritual demographic in our country- the religiously unaffiliated, aka Nones.A swashbuckling narrative upends conventional thinking about God and religion. Some doctrinal alligators are wrestled into compliance. Some walk the plank. What is the fate of Original Sin, virgin births, and sexuality? It's probably not what you expect.Rachel Roberts shares personal tales of growing up in a cult (Praise Jesus and pass the snakes!), battling an adult relationship with Christianity (Jesus would get drunk with her over this one), and finding relief in becoming a None (phew). She unearths a spirituality that balances the affirmation of reason and science with compassion and inclusivity while abandoning antiquated notions of superstition and tribalism.Seemingly quirky or random cultural references punctuate profundity with levity and reprieve. Think Spock meets the Dali Lama meets Bart Simpson. Each chapter contains a recipe and a well-known song that culminates in a meal and an accompanying playlist. This unique feature inspires the reader to experience everyday spirituality the way many Nones do, by meaningfully connecting with others.Amidst the fun, Confessions aims to instigate a voice for Nones, revolutionize spirituality based on 21st-century values, and reorient our collective consciousness toward that which unifies all people: Love.

Offering inspiring words on issues ranging from charity and justice, politics, economic issues, the environment, nuclear disarmament, and mortality to the meaning of faith, the church, and a pastor's responsibility.

The American Credo is a satirical criticism of the American culture, co-authored with George Jean Nathan. Menken describes the weaknesses in the American system of views and beliefs, criticizing the government, literature and philosophy ideas, religion. Although the book was published about one hundred years ago, it remains incredibly topical today since society didn't get rid of its flaws. Excerpt: "Moreover, this gradual (and, of late, rapidly progressive) decay of freedom goes almost without challenge; the American has grown so accustomed to the denial of his constitutional rights and to the minute regulation of his conduct by swarms of spies, letter-openers, informers and agents provocateurs that he no longer makes any serious protest."

Credo provides a unique basis for personal daily meditations, while opening the way for the church to explain the basic significance of the creed it so often recites. Williams takes the classic Nicene Creed of the church and examines the meaning and modern application of each of its words and phrases. He shows the historical setting of the creedal statement, historical disputes that gave rise to the precise wording of the creed, and current situations that call for affirmation of the creed amid a multitude of ecclesiastical differences. Williams even provides a way to sing the creed.

The Faith and Fire Within Us was first published in 1944."All in all, the more I study the democratic tradition, the greater cause I see for faith and hope."However American are the faith and fire within us, however vital to America in time of war, they are also a part of the great tradition of the past, of all English-speaking nations. It is the importance of this continuity from age to age that gives strength to Elizabeth Jackson's treatment of American ideas. That Raymond Clapper is a direct descendant of Sir Francis Bacon, Leslie Howard of Sir Philip Sidney, Henry Wallace of Milton and Cromwell is soon apparent.The book speaks for today as well as for yesterday. Its ideas are the ideas of America at any time, now given new impetus by the war. Miss Jackson's is a very personal credo, but it is unmistakably American.Elizabeth Jackson thoroughly enjoyed her teaching at the University of Minnesota, and from her background in English and American literature she drew the many quotations of her book. Ranging in time from the Bible to Benet; prose, poetry, epic, radio talk, all contribute to the interpretation of modern America. While Miss Jackson's own experiences with people and places provide the personal anecdotes, it is her intense feeling about American ideas and ideals that strengthen The Faith and Fire Within Us.

The U.S. military has historically believed itself to be the institution best suited to develop the character, spiritual values, and patriotism of American youth. In Strategy for Survival, Lori Bogle investigates how the armed forces assigned itself the role of guardian and interpreter of national values and why it sought to create “ideologically sound Americans capable of defeating communism and assuring the victory of democracy at home and abroad.” Bogle shows that a tendency by some in the armed forces to diffuse their view of America’s civil religion among the general population predated tension with the Soviet Union. Bogle traces this trend from the Progressive Era though the early Cold War, when the Truman and Eisenhower administrations took seriously the battle of ideologies of that era and formulated plans that promised not only to meet the armed forces’ manpower needs but also to prepare the American public morally and spiritually for confrontation with the evils of communism. Both Truman’s plan for Universal Military Training and Eisenhower’s psychological warfare programs promoted an evangelical democracy and sought to inculcate a secular civil-military religion in the general public. During the early 1960s, joint military-civilian anticommunist conferences, organized by the authority of the Department of Defense, were exploited by ultra-conservative civilians advancing their own political and religious agendas. Bogle’s analysis suggests that cooperation among evangelicals, the military, and government was considered both necessary and normal. The Boy Scouts pushed a narrow vision of American democracy, and Joe McCarthy’s chauvinism was less an aberration than a particularly noxious manifestation of a widespread attitude. To combat communism, American society and its armed forces embraced brainwashing—narrow moral education that attacked everyone and everything not consonant with their view of the world and how it ought to be ordered. Exposure of this alliance ultimately dissolved it. However, the cult of toughness and the blinkered view of reality that characterized the armed forces and American society during the Cold War are still valued by many, and are thus still worthy of consideration.