Peter W. Williams

This concise guide helps educators understand the diverse religious practices that shape students’ school and home lives. Using an encyclopedia-like structure, the authors provide short histories and other essential information on a wide variety of religions as well as atheist practices.Each chapter covers origins, beliefs, practices, and common misunderstandings and stereotypes, as well as key holidays, religious dress, and dietary restrictions that can be accommodated in school. This book will help educators avoid stumbling over stereotypes so they can better engage students and their families and foster culturally responsive classrooms. Teachers of all grade levels will come away feeling more confident about identifying areas of cultural and religious practice where support for your students may be needed.You will also have the tools to recognize the diversity of religious and cultural practices that students bring to the classroom, and to see that unfamiliar religious and cultural practices are assets to be cultivated and not signs of deficiency.

This concise guide helps educators understand the diverse religious practices that shape students’ school and home lives. Using an encyclopedia-like structure, the authors provide short histories and other essential information on a wide variety of religions as well as atheist practices.Each chapter covers origins, beliefs, practices, and common misunderstandings and stereotypes, as well as key holidays, religious dress, and dietary restrictions that can be accommodated in school. This book will help educators avoid stumbling over stereotypes so they can better engage students and their families and foster culturally responsive classrooms. Teachers of all grade levels will come away feeling more confident about identifying areas of cultural and religious practice where support for your students may be needed.You will also have the tools to recognize the diversity of religious and cultural practices that students bring to the classroom, and to see that unfamiliar religious and cultural practices are assets to be cultivated and not signs of deficiency.

A classroom perennial and comprehensive guide, America's Religions lays out the background, beliefs, practices, and leaders of the nation's religious movements and denominations. The fourth edition, thoroughly revised and updated by Peter W. Williams, draws on the latest scholarship. In addition to reconsidering the history of America's mainline faiths, it delves into contemporary issues like religion's impact on politics and commerce; the increasingly high profile of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam; Mormonism's entry into the mainstream; and battles over gay marriage and ordination.

Houses of God is the first broad survey of American religious architecture, a cultural cross-country expedition that will benefit travelers as much as scholars. Beautifully illustrated with over 100 photographs — some by well-known photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange — this handsome book provides a highly accessible look at how Americans shape their places of worship into multifaceted reflections of their culture, beliefs, and times.

"Williams provides a thought-provoking overview of popular religion in America that will intrigue specialist and student alike. . . . He has both answered many questions and raised important new ones on the nature and development of American popular religion." --Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion "Pioneering. . . . I for one am glad he combined scholarship and chutzpah for this modestly immodest first word." --Catholic Historical Review