Randall Balmer

It was one of the few times that I agreed to a condition prior to an interview; it may, in fact, be the only time. After a tour of Lighthouse Publishing's warehouse south of San Francisco, I was given directions to Thomas Kinkade's home and studio in the hills outside...

I must have seen the expression a hundred times, a look of utter, bewildered incomprehension when someone even raises the question of whether or not Mormons are really Christians. Why of course we're Christians, is the standard response. We are, after all, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints....

In the summer of 2006, my book tour for Thy Kingdom Come took me to Atlanta the weekend before the state's Republican primary. Ralph Reed was running for the nomination to be lieutenant governor of Georgia, and everyone I asked that weekend was utterly confident that he would...

Nothing demonstrates the internal diversity of evangelicalism in America better than an important new book by Richard T. Hughes, "Christian America and the Kingdom of God." Hughes takes on -- and takes apart -- the toxic, and increasingly popular, myth that America is and always has been a "Christian nation."

The death of Oral Roberts brings to a close one of the more colorful chapters in American religious history. Born into rural poverty in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, Granville Oral Roberts became one of the best-known televangelists of the twentieth century. He translated pentecostalism from the sweaty tents of the revival...

With Rush Limbaugh having asserted his claim to be the true and rightful leader of the Republican Party, it's tempting to argue that he is, in fact, the perfect embodiment for Republicans at this historical moment: loud, boorish, corpulent...

I have a great deal of respect for Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. I would even go so far as to count him as a friend, and I suspect that he might say...

I suppose you've got to give the Republicans of the Rove era credit for their inventiveness, if not their chutzpah. In 2004 their nominee, who had essentially been a draft dodger, was pitted against a genuine Vietnam...