This went out today:
Introducing CURRENT, an online journal of commentary and opinion
New Journal Provides Daily Reflection on Contemporary Culture, Politics and Ideas. Features Original Works from Influential Thinkers and Writers including Tony Norman, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Katherine Lucky, Susan McWilliams Barndt, Timothy Larsen, Agnes Howard, Mark Schwehn, and Susan Wise Bauer.
MECHANICSBURG, PA, April 7, 2021: Current is an online journal of commentary and opinion that provides daily reflection on contemporary culture, politics, and ideas. The founding editors are grounded in the broad tradition of American democracy–a tradition whose practices and institutions they believe are moving through a period of great stress and testing.
“We confess that we once took for granted many of the basic assumptions of our democracy, including a shared core of American values,” says Executive Editor John Fea. “We no longer do.”
Editor Eric Miller adds, “The cultural warfare that now dominates our civic life undermines bonds of family, friendship, and neighborhood.”
Like American democracy at its best, the editors aspire to a free, dynamic, divergent, and civil exchange of ideas. Current will always be bound by a common regard for liberty of conscience and free inquiry, and moderated by shared commitments to humility, charity, and mutual respect.
“We are demoralized by the quasi-religious authoritarianism growing on both the right and the left,” said Managing Editor Jay Green. “Current will provide commentary that clarifies and explains this political and cultural moment, summoning readers to intelligent, constructive responses.”
On April 5, 2021, Current launched with six essays at currentpub.com and will publish a new original essay every weekday thereafter. Supporters of Current at patreon.com receive additional articles, premium features, and access to Fea’s new narrative history podcast, “A History of Evangelicals and Politics.”
Current is built upon Fea’s widely read blog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home, which continues at the site. While Fea, Green, and Miller are Christians, they are dedicated to engaging a diverse audience and to publishing diverse voices who share a vibrant commitment to free and open inquiry.
Current‘s inaugural contributors include the following:
- Susan McWilliams Barndt: Chair and Professor of Politics at Pomona College. She is the author of numerous books including A Political Companion to James Baldwin and The American Road Trip and American Political Thought.
- Susan Wise Bauer: Writer and author of multiple books including The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, The Art of Public Grovel: Sexual Sin and Confession in America, and W.W. Norton’s History of the World series.
- John Fea: Distinguished Professor of History at Messiah University, award-winning historian, and author of six books, including Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. He is Executive Editor of Current.
- Alexandre Brasil Fonseca: Professor of sociology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the author of Evangelicals and the Media in Brazil. From 2012-2016 he was special adviser to the President of Brazil on religious affairs.
- Jay Green: Professor of History at Covenant College, past president of the Conference on Faith and History, among other publications, author of Christian Historiography: Five Rival Versions. He is the Managing Editor of Current.
- Agnes Howard: Professor of Humanities at Christ College, the honors college of Valparaiso University and the author of Showing: What Pregnancy Tells Us About Being Human.
- Sarah Imboden: Grants Officer at Bard Early College, former Red Hook, NY councilperson and managing editor of the The Red Hook Observer. She was recently featured in the American Enterprise Institute documentary For Love of Neighbor: Politics for the Common Good.
- Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn: Professor of History at Syracuse University and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. She is an award-winning historian of several books, including, most recently, Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living.
- Katherine Lucky: Engagement editor for the Bay Area News Group and former managing editor of Commonweal.
- Eric Miller, Professor of History at Geneva College and author of the award-winning Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch. He is editor of Current.
- Shirley Mullen: President of Houghton College and article on multiple books, articles and essays on higher education, intellectual history, and faith in public life.
- Tony Norman: Columnist with The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and current president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. He is the recipient of awards from the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors and the National Association of Black Journalists.
- Tom Okie: Professor of history at Kennesaw State University. His book The Georgia Peach: Culture, Agriculture, and the Environment in the American South is based on his University of Georgia Ph.D. thesis, which won the Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians and the C. Vann Woodward Award from the Southern Historical Association.
- Mark Schwehn: Professor of Humanities in Christ College, the Honors College of Valparaiso University. He is the author of Exiles from Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America and (with Dorothy Bass) Leading Lives That Matter. Schwehn is the founding director of the Lilly Fellows Program at Valparaiso.
- Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt: Professor of Art at Covenant College. She has curated multiple exhibits and is the author of Through the Body: Corporeality, Subjectivity, and Empathy in Contemporary American Art.
- Daniel K. Williams: Professor of History at the University of West Georgia. He is the author of several books, including God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right and Defenders of Life: The Pro-Life Movement before and after Roe v. Wade.
Visit currentpub.com for more information. Follow Current on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Patreon) for updates.
