Here are the most popular features of the week at Current: Jonathan Den Hartog, “What Happened When Jon Meacham Went to Samford?“ John Fea, “Matthew McConaughey Goes Home“ Christopher Shannon, “Losing Their Religion“ Daniel K. Williams, “Pro-Life and Pro-Guns?“ John Fea, […]
Archives for June 2022
Top Gun: The Joys We Can Imagine. The Joys We (Still) Can’t.
Becoming fully alive requires a better story
Bob Woodward and the copy machine
Last Sunday night we watched the first two episodes of CNN’s documentary on John Dean and Watergate. I am looking forward to the last two episodes this weekend. It’s good. So needless to say, a recent Washington Post piece on […]
Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey on guns
Over at The Washington Post, the Pennsylvania senator writes about how he changed his mind about guns after Sandy Hook. Here is a taste: I’m a U.S. senator who has done something rare in today’s politics: I’ve changed my position […]
The Author’s Corner with Janet Moore Lindman
Janet Moore Lindman is Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Rowan University. This interview is based on her new book, A Vivifying Spirit: Quaker Practice and Reform in Antebellum America (Penn State University Press, 2022). JF: […]
Evangelical roundup for June 9, 2022
What is happening in Evangelical land? Some Southern Baptists are trying to discredit the investigators hired to conduct the denomination’s sexual abuse study. Do conservative evangelicals have better sex lives? Shane Claiborne celebrates Pentecost: “Christians leading communities plagued by cartels […]
Matthew McConaughey Goes Home
The Uvalde native bears witness to the children who died there
Toronto megachurch pastor Bruxy Cavey is arrested and charged with sexual assault
We have covered this story here and here and here. On Monday Cavey was arrested. Here is Yonat Shimron at Religion News Service: Police in the Canadian city of Hamilton have charged the disgraced former pastor of one of the […]
The Catholic Fox News
I used to occasionally watch EWTN. As a former Catholic (I am confirmed in the church and a friend who is a priest tells me that all I need to do is go to confession and I’m back in), I […]
Fox News will not air the January 6 committee hearings
Here is Philip Bump at The Washington Post: The Republican Party made a decision early last year that it would rather use the attack at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as a cudgel against Democrats than engage in […]
Is fusion voting the answer to our political partisanship?
Here is Blake Hounshell at The New York Times: When Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for the Supreme Court majority in a landmark 1997 case, rejected a minor party’s demand that it be allowed to nominate candidates who were already […]
The Author’s Corner with Paul Escott
Paul Escott is Reynolds Professor of History Emeritus at Wake Forest University. This interview is based on his new book, Black Suffrage: Lincoln’s Last Goal (University of Virginia Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Black Suffrage? PE: My two […]
What Happened When Jon Meacham Went to Samford?
At least one university thinks political discourse can be both civil and free
Former Texas GOP congressman Will Hurd: “I want more than thoughts and prayers”
Hurd represented Uvalde, Texas from 2014-2021. Here is a taste of his piece at The New York Times: We are not helpless, and if the people we elect to address our country’s tough challenges think nothing can or should be […]
Gerson: The GOP spin on guns is “wrong–morally and legally”
Here is Michael Gerson’s recent Washington Post column: Is the slaughter of innocents the unavoidable price of freedom? A significant group of Americans believe it is. In a recent CBS-YouGov poll, 44 percent of Republicans agreed that mass shootings are […]
Springsteen plays with Coldplay at the Meadowlands
Watch:
The Author’s Corner with Elizabeth Leonard
Elizabeth Leonard is Gibson Professor of History, Emerita at Colby College. This interview is based on her new book, Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life (The University of North Carolina Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Benjamin Franklin […]
Losing Their Religion
If politics is in and evangelism out among American evangelicals, are they really evangelicals?
More on Pennsylvania governor candidate Doug Mastriano’s affiliation with a Conservative Mennonite Church
We reported on this on May 19, 2022. Apparently Doug Mastriano and his family attends Pond Bank Mennonite Church in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Now Tim Huber, a writer at Anabaptist World, reports on it: CMC executive director Brian Hershberger told Anabaptist World by […]
The International African American Museum will open in Charleston
It was one of the busiest slave trading posts in early America. Here is CNN: The International African American Museum will open the weekend of January 21, 2023, the museum announced Wednesday. The 150,000-square-foot facility will be at the former site […]