What is happening in Evangelical land? 60% of evangelicals want America to be declared a Christian nation. Theological heresies evangelicals believe. Evangelicals and Catholicism. A forum on evangelicals and voting in Brazil. Tim Tebow auctions-off his Heisman Trophy. When the […]
Archives for September 2022
Seeing New Things, Asking New Questions
What I learned about the evangelical embrace of Trump from watching old news clips
The seven deadly sins of writing
Thomas C. Foster teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Michigan-Flint. In a recent piece at LitHub he offers his seven deadly sins. They are: worry, self-doubt, overconfidence, muddiness, vagueness, poor structure, and dishonesty. Here’s a taste: Dishonesty in […]
Trump’s desperate appeal to QAnon
Here is Juliette Kayyem at The Atlantic: For a man who believes in nothing, has no coherent ideology or value system except his own continuing relevance, obsesses over conspiracies, and subsists on grievance and anger, Donald Trump took a long […]
Safety in Numbers
A survival guide for middle schoolers—and their parents, too
Gen Z can’t read cursive
Historian and former Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust wonders how they will interpret the past. Here is a taste of her piece at The Atlantic: Given a current generation of students in which so few can read or write cursive, one […]
Remembering Rich Mullins
Back in 1988 I won a college talent show with my roommates singing Rich Mullins‘s “Screen Door.” We dedicated our performance to all the non-music/vocal majors at our small Christian college. We were a bunch of jocks who thought we […]
The global Catholic church
Notre Dame historian John McGreevy: Quick: Name the countries with the most baptized Catholics. You might guess Brazil (172.2 million) or the United States (72.3 million). You might miss Mexico (110.9 million) and the Philippines (83.6 million). You might be […]
BOOK MARKS: The Self-Conscious Air of the Reproduced
“There are men still living who can recall the days when it was considered necessary and even delightful to write letters to one’s friends.”
Eric Foner: “We can’t accept the principle that the way to judge a course of study is by how much money you will make.”
Eric Foner reflects on his life as a historian in this interview with Nawal Arjini at New York Review of Books. A taste: Nawal Arjini: How did you come to specialize in Civil War history? Eric Foner: When I was in college in […]
The Author’s Corner with Holly A. Mayer
Holly A. Mayer is Professor Emerita of History at Duquesne University. This interview is based on her new book, Women Waging War in the American Revolution (University of Virginia Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Women Waging War […]
Evangelical roundup for September 19, 2022
What is happening in Evangelical land? Philip Yancey tells his story. Bolsonaro rallies Brazilian evangelicals. The Olasky-less World magazine take on the matter. As evangelicals continue to prop-up the MAGA movement, people are exiting the pews. Shane remembers the 1963 […]
Biden’s Philadelphia Speech: Theoretically Coherent, Constitutionally Important
The president’s case against “MAGA Republicans” is strong
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: Queen Elizabeth II and white evangelicals John McWhorter makes clear his views on race in America What do National Conservatives want? Michael Bobelian reviews Nicole Hemmer’s Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries […]
Where’s the praying Bremerton football coach?
Back in June the U.S. Supreme Court said Joseph Kennedy, an assistant football coach at Bremerton High School in the state of Washington, could pray with his team on the field. Kennedy was on paid leave until, I presume, the […]
When “Heil Hitler!” meets a Christian worship service and the preacher is Jim Jones
Watch this from last night’s Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio. From what I understand the music you hear was played in the arena as Trump spoke. Sociologist Sam Perry gets it right:
Larry Schweikart: activist historian
Back in 2002 I met Larry Schweikart. He was a professor of history at the University of Dayton. I was interviewing for a job in the history department at the University of Dayton. He may have even been on the […]
Arizona State University hosts “Humanities Week”
I love this! We do something similar at Messiah University, but not to this extent. Here is the ASU press release: This fall, The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University will host a collection of inspiring and high-impact […]
“That’s September baseball when you’re in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization right now.”
I’ve been watching baseball for half a century and have never seen anything like this. It happened in the Mets-Pirates game last night. I watched the entire game and never noticed this. The Pirates are 55-90 and are currently in […]
Bill Maher defends AHA president James Sweet and it is hilarious
“Being woke is like a magic moral time machine where you judge everybody against what you would have done in 1066 and you always win.”–Bill Maher Yes, of course the past informs the present. But that is only part of […]