Here are the most popular posts of the last week at The Way of Improvement Leads Home: It is time for prominent evangelicals to get their acts together or stop speaking on behalf of Christianity More on evangelicals and the […]
Archives for April 2021
Dispatch from the Field
What happens when Evangelicals and Nones gather at the Post-Post-Modern River?
Liberty University campus pastor David Nasser is out. Jonathan Falwell will replace him.
Nasser will work for a Christian non-profit organization in Nashville. Nasser has had some high points and low points at Liberty. He had a history of defending some of former Liberty president Jerry Falwell Jr.’s outrageous claims. He also sought […]
Why is “President Biden making such a sharp break with Joe Biden?”
Here is Ezra Klein at The New York Times: Joe Biden didn’t wake up one day and realize he’d been wrong for 30 years. I covered him in the Senate, in the Obama White House, in the Democratic Party’s post-Trump […]
Beth Moore apologizes for her past views on complementarianism
Here is Yonat Shimron and Bob Smietana at Religion News Service: In a Twitter thread Wednesday (April 7), Moore took aim at complementarianism, the 20th century theological framework that argues men and women were created for different roles and that […]
Lasch-Quinn will lecture “On the Importance of a Philosophy of Life.”
It is not too late to catch Current contributor and Syracuse University historian Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn this afternoon via Zoom. Here is more about her 4:30pm (CT) lecture at Roosevelt University: The Montesquieu Forum for the Study of Civic Life welcomes […]
Local journalism and infrastructure spending
Can infrastructure spending save local journalism in the United States? I sure hope so. Check out Osita Nwanevu’s piece at The New Republic: …the administration’s push for a more capacious definition of infrastructure should encourage us to think even more […]
Kentucky expands access to voting
While Georgia and other states are restricting the right to vote, Kentucky is expanding it. Here is Tim Elfrink at The Washington Post: As Republicans in more than 40 states have pushed bills to restrict voting after former president Donald Trump’s November […]
“A History of Evangelicals and Politics in America” podcast will drop Wednesday, April 14, 2021
As part of the rollout for Current, I will be hosting a weekly podcast on the history of evangelicals and politics in America. Our first series of episodes will focus on the Obama era. We recorded Episode 0: “Introduction” today […]
Fannie Lou Hamer webinar for teachers
Current‘s Managing Editor Jay Green, will join Chris Burkett and Sarah Beth Kitch on Saturday, April 10, 2021 for a webinar on civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. The webinar readings include: Testimony Before Congress, Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964 Voting […]
Amtrak will expand routes if Biden’s American Jobs Plan passes
Joe Biden spent most of his senate career commuting to Wilmington, Delaware to Washington D.C. via Amtrak. His new infrastructure plan will give $80 billion to the rail line. Here is Joseph Spector and Joey Garrison at USA Today: How […]
The Author’s Corner with Crawford Gribben
Crawford Gribben is Professor of History at Queen’s University Belfast. This interview is based on his new book, Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford University Press, 2021). JF: What led you to write […]
The Redundant Royal
When Harry met Meghan, he didn’t just find a partner—he found a guide
Racism and interstate highways
Joe Biden’s new infrastructure plan singled out the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans as a “racist highway. The plan sets aside $20 billion to “reconnect” neighborhoods that were racially divided by highway construction. Over at NPR, Noel King interviews New […]
Interpreting Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago office
Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s nativist speechwriter and adviser, recently shared a picture of himself with Donald Trump after a meeting in Mar-a-Lago: Over at Politico, Daniel Lippman interprets the picture in a masterful piece titled “What a photo of Trump’s […]
“CARTERLAND”
Earlier this year I wrote a short post about the CNN documentary “Jimmy Carter: Rock and Roll President.” Here is a taste of that post: This is a great documentary, but I wish Wharton would have said more about how […]
The Western Klan
When we think of the Ku Klux Klan we think about the American South during Reconstruction and the 1920s. But as Kevin Waite informs us in his recent piece at The Atlantic, the Klan also targeted Chinese immigrants in California. […]
Robert Middlekauff, RIP
Middlekauff is best known as the author of The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. It was the first book to appear in the Oxford History of the United States series, which also includes James McPherson’s Battle Cry for Freedom: […]
Former House speaker blames the January 6 insurrection on Trump
In his forthcoming memoir, former Speaker of the House John Boehner has some choice words for Donald Trump. Maggie Haberman reports at The New York Times: John Boehner, the Republican former House speaker, issues a stinging denunciation in his new […]
Out of the Zoo: “Operation Varsity Blues”
Annie Thorn is senior history major from Kalamazoo, Michigan and our intern here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. As part of her internship she is writing a weekly column titled “Out of the Zoo.” It focuses on life as a […]