Religious Scandals brings together real-life controversies involving men and women of faith, from the decades-long media frenzy over the affair between Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton exposed in the 1840s to the 1993 conflagration in Waco that killed David Koresh and his Branch Davidian followers.

Religious Scandals focuses on two types of subjects: religious figures whose lapses put them at the center of scandals involving sex, money, or crime; and those who scandalized their fellow citizens by acting out according to their own religious beliefs. Together, these stories—some familiar, some little known—offer a fascinating portrait of American religious culture, as well insights into the role of the media in religious scandals, constitutional protections of religious freedom, and the overriding issue of public curiosity versus individual privacy.