Get up to speed on the Tulsa Race Massacre here. The image at the top of this post is the front page of the Tulsa World on June 1, 1921: There was another edition from that day. The above addition […]
Archives for May 2021
Some resources on the Tulsa Race Massacre
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the Tulsa Race Massacre. If you are unfamiliar with this tragic event in American history, start here. If you want to go deeper, here are some pieces from the last few […]
B.J. Thomas’s uneasy relationship with Christian music
Singer B.J. Thomas died on Saturday. After I posted two songs by the late B.J. Thomas, I received a Facebook comment from John Haas: BJ was a hot commodity on the emerging CCM scene, though he was more in it […]
Song of the Day
“The Wall”:
Frederick Douglass: “We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to the republic”
150 years ago yesterday, Douglass delivered this Decoration Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery. Decoration Day was the predecessor of Memorial Day. Learn more about it here. Here is Douglass: The Unknown Loyal Dead Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, on Decoration […]
Evangelical roundup: Memorial Day 2021 edition
What is going on in Evangelicalland? Paige Patterson is back. He preached yesterday at Robert Jeffress’s church. I guess Jeffress didn’t heed the advice of the Southern Baptist president. Can good Bill Hybels and bad Bill Hybels exist at the […]
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: Historical illiteracy New York’s hyphenation debate Tea at the gas station Anyone who takes an honest look at American history should be “woke” Memorial Day cartoons Gordon Wood reviews Alan […]
Last week at Current
It was a good week at Current. What did we publish? Daniel K. Williams began the week with a piece on abortion and COVID-19 that could have easily been published on the op-ed page of The New York Times. Williams […]
Songs of the Day
RIP And for the slightly “younger generation“:
Only six Republican senators voted for a commission to study the worst attack on the U.S. Capitol since the War of 1812
It looks like American historians will need to do the work. John Hope Franklin once called historians “the conscience of the nation.” A Senate vote on a bill to create an independent commission to study the January 6, 2021 insurrection […]
Happy Memorial Day Weekend and some logistics
Dear Patrons of Current, I hope you can see we are working hard to bring you some great premium content. (Check out Jay Green’s piece today on “Lee Greenwood Christianity.” It’s excellent). As always, thanks for your support. Just a […]
The Midtown Scholar’s Grand-Reopening!
I am very excited about this weekend’s re-opening of the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg! Back in April 2020, I joined Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, for the bookstore’s first pandemic […]
Lee Greenwood Christianity
This September, coinciding with the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Washington D.C. and New York City, a marketing agency in Nashville called Elite Source Pro will release the God Bless the USA Bible. In addition to a large-print […]
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn on Bridgerton
If you like Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn’s writing at Current, you will also enjoy her recent piece at Zocalo Public Square. Here is a taste: “Everything is broken,” repeated the chorus of a Bob Dylan song from his 1989 album Oh Mercy—strings (guitar, […]
What is going on at Southwest Baptist University?
From Inside Higher Ed: When Dwayne Walker went up for tenure this past academic year at Southwest Baptist University in Missouri, he was invited to a luncheon with members of the Board of Trustees. There, he says, trustees questioned him […]
Are you listening to the “A History of Evangelicals and Politics” podcast?
We will drop Episode 7 on Tuesday. You can listen to the first three episodes here. After seven “background” episodes, we are ready to take a deep and prolonged dive into the history of evangelicals and politics in what I […]
William F. Buckley: “…I, for one, would not willingly die for ‘democracy'”
Historian Joshua Tait writes, “…the democracy-denying beliefs and actions of today’s conservative Republican party–rejecting the results of the 2020 presidential election and seeking to manipulate voting laws nationwide in a cynical assault on the democratic process–have plentiful precedent in conservative […]
When it comes to the Second Amendment, Matt Gaetz has no clue
Watch the Florida congressman in action at a recent rally: Actually… no. Here is Saul Cornell, our best historian of the Second Amendment, writing in 2012: The founders had a word for a bunch of farmers marching with guns without […]
What is popular at Current?
Here are the most popular Current features of the last week: An Open Letter to American History Teachers: Stop Teaching “Critical Race Theory” Texas and Massachusetts: A Tale of Two States American Amnesia Holocausts I’ve Never Heard Of NPR Insults […]
I’ve been watching baseball for nearly half a century and I’ve never seen such a bad play
I don’t know what happened to Pittsburgh Pirates’s first baseman Will Craig’s brain on this play. THERE WERE TWO OUTS! JUST STEP ON FIRST BASE!! Watch: Did I mention that the Mets were in first place in the NL East?