God & Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America

With an introduction by J. Gordon Melton (Distinguished Professor of American Religious History, Baylor University), God & Apple Pie (Religious Myths and Visions of America, revised edition), by Christopher Buck, is about an unusual religious topic: the United States of America ( America ).

America is, at once, nation and notion, country and creed, republic and rhetoric. This book is about Providence and principle--the relationship of the supernatural world to the world's superpower. America is not in the Bible, nor in the Qur'an. Yet America today pulsates with religious significance. America is a word that has taken on mythic proportions.

Eleven religions have been selected for their distinctive perspectives on America: (1) Native American religion (Iroquois); (2) Protestant Christianity (the Puritans); (3) the Christian Right; (4) Roman Catholicism; (5) Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist); (6) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons); (7) Christian Identity (White nationalists); (8) Nation of Islam (Black nationalists); (9) Islam (especially Radical Islamists and Progressive Muslims); (10) Buddhism (Tibetan and Soka Gakkai); and (11) the Baha'i Faith.

Over the course of American history, religious myths and visions of America tend to reflect an ever-changing American civil society, whether as a function of its social evolution or as a catalyst of it. The result is: Religions re-mythologize America. And: Religions re-envision America.

God & Apple Pie invites serious reflection on what it means to be an American, particularly from a religious perspective.