This well-focused collection of essays emerged from a seminar and corridor conversations at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (IASC), University of Virginia, which at one time housed nearly all of its contributors. It is concerned with what its editors call ‘the recurrent, and recurrently wrong, predictions of America's coming loss of faith: the history of America's prophesies of godlessness’ (p. 5). Such predictions have abounded through the history of America, from its inception to the present, within all sectors of society. The editors claim, in fact, that ‘[i]n American history, prophesies of godlessness are as American as American godliness itself’, a ‘curious fact’ that ‘prompted’ this project (p. 6). Why is such a religious nation so obsessed with the threat of godlessness? This is the central question answered in finely crafted essays treating many of the contexts in which these prophecies emerged (ordered chronologically). The recurrent misspelling of the nominal forms of ‘prophecy’ (even in the title), and the editors' bold claim that ‘[n]o one [else] has noticed that people have been predicting religion's demise in America since America's beginnings’ (p. 7) will annoy fastidious readers. (‘Prophesy’ is a verbal, not a nominal, word form; and numerous other scholars, at least from the time of Perry Miller, have noted America's longstanding jeremiadic tendencies.) Nevertheless, this collection offers an erudite treatment of a chronic (though not exceptional) American irony.