If you read our mission statement you will learn that:
Current is an online journal of commentary and opinion that provides daily reflection on contemporary culture, politics, and ideas. We seek to ground ourselves in the broad tradition of American democracy—a tradition whose practices and institutions we 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. We no longer do.
We are exhausted by the cultural warfare that now dominates our civic life, threatening to undermine bonds of family, friendship, and neighborhood. We are demoralized by the quasi-religious authoritarianism we see growing on both the right and the left. We endeavor here to provide commentary that clarifies and explains our political and cultural moment, summoning readers to intelligent, constructive responses.
Like American democracy at its best, we aspire for Current to be free, dynamic, divergent, and civil. If spirited, even profound disagreements arise on this platform, we hope they will always be bounded by common regard for liberty of conscience and free inquiry, and moderated by shared commitments to humility, charity, and mutual respect. (See Eric Miller’s opening essay, “In the Arena: It’s Time to Play”).
You can read our masthead here, but I thought I’d use this post to tell you a little bit more about our team in the hopes that you might consider becoming a subscriber or patron of Current in this season of giving.
John Fea (Executive Editor) is Distinguished Professor of American History at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He is the author of six books, including the award-winning Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction; Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump; Why Study History: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past; and The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in America.
Jay Green (Managing Editor) is Professor of History at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. He is the author of several books, including Christian Historiography: Five Rival Versions and (co-editor) Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian’s Vocation.
Eric Miller (Editor) is Professor of History at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, where he directs the honors program. His book Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch won the 2011 Christianity Today book award for History/Biography. He is also the author of Glimpses of Another Land: Political Hopes, Spiritual Longings and co-editor of Brazilian Evangelicalism in Twenty-First Century: An Insider and Outside Look and Confession History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian’s Vocation. His essays have appeared at Commonweal, The Cresset, First Things, Comment, and Books and Culture.
Robert Erle Barham (Deputy Editor) is Associate Professor of English at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. His writing has appeared in The Baltimore Review, Touchstone, River Teeth Journal, Plough, Fourth Genre, Appalachian Heritage, and Reformed Journal.
Nadya Williams (Book Review Editor) is Professor of Ancient History at the University of West Georgia. She was born in Russia, and grew up in Israel. In addition to her scholarly work, Nadya has written for Anxious Bench, Plough, Front Porch Republic, The Conversation, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Education. Her current project, Cultural Christians in the Early Church, is under with contract with Zondervan Publishers.
Sarah Huffines (Associate Editor) is Associate Professor of English at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia where she directs the writing center.
Felicia Wu Song (Associate Editor) is Professor of Sociology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. She is the author of Virtual Communities; Bowling Alone, Online Together and Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in a Digital Age. Her work has appeared at Christianity Today, Contexts, Local Culture, and The Hedgehog Review.
Vincent Bacote (Contributing Editor) is Professor of Theology and Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. His books include Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News: In Search of a Better Evangelical Theology, The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life, and The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper.
M. Elizabeth Carter (Contributing Editor) is a writer and counselor living in Alabama.
Agnes Howard (Contributing Editor) teaches history and humanities in Christ College, the honors college of Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. She is the author of Showing: What Pregnancy Tells Us about Being Human. Her work has appeared at Commonweal, First Things, and The Cresset.
Adam Jortner (Contributing Editor) is the Goowin-Philpott Professor of History at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. He is the author of several books, including The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier, Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic; and No Place for Saints: Mobs and Mormons in Jacksonian America.
Christina Bieber-Lake (Contributing Editor) is the Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. She is the author of four books: The Incarnational Art of Flannery O’Connor, Prophets of the Posthuman: American Fiction and the Ethics of Personhood, Beyond the Story: American Literary Fiction and the Limits of Materialism, and The Flourishing Teacher: Vocational Renewal for a Sacred Profession. Her essays for general audiences have appeared in The Cresset, Christianity Today, and Books & Culture.
Timothy Larsen (Contributing Editor) is the Carolyn and Fred McManis Professor of Christian Thought and Professor of History at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois and an Honorary Fellow at Edinburgh University. He is the author of several books, including John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life, The Oxford Handbook of Christmas (ed.), Contested Christianity: The Political and Social Context of Victorian Theology, and A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians.
Elisabeth Lasch Quinn (Contributing Editor) is Professor of History at Syracuse University and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. She is the author of numerous essays and books including, Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living, Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensitivity Training, and New Age Therapy Hijacked the Civil Rights Revolution, and Black Neighbors: Race and the Limits of Reform in the American Settlement House Movement (winner of the Annual Book Award, Berkshire Conference of Women’s Historians).
Shirley Mullen (Contributing Editor) is President Emeritus of Houghton College in Houghton, New York. She is the author of Organized Freethought: The Religion of Unbelief in Victorian England and numerous essays on history teaching and historical method.
Jeremy Sabella (Contributing Editor) lectures at Dartmouth College. He is the author of An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story. His essays and reviews have appeared in Syndicate, The Christian Century, Religions, and Christianity Today.
Christopher Shannon (Contributing Editor) is Associate Professor of History at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. He is the author of several works of cultural history and American Catholic history, including American Pilgrimage: A Historical Journey through Catholic Life in a New World, A World Made Safe for Differences: Cold War Intellectuals and the Politics of Identity, and Conspicuous Criticism: Tradition, the Individual, and Culture in Modern American Social Thought.
Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt (Contributing Editor) is Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Her writing has appeared in Religion and the Arts, Reclaim Journal, and The Witness: A Black Christian Collective.
Daniel K. Williams (Contributing Editor) is Professor of History at the University of West Georgia in Carrolton, Georgia. He is the author of several books on American religion and politics, including God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right, The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship, Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade, and The Election of the Evangelical: Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and the Presidential Contest of 1976.
Christine Walter (Business Manager) is a graduate of Southern Methodist University where she majored in Russian Studies. She has started several local businesses, runs triathlons, and previously worked as an assistant in the American embassy in Moscow.
Ben Martin (Digital Specialist) is the chief proprietor at Ben Martin Media. He works with non-profits and small business to maximize their digital impact. He was an honors graduate (Communications and History) from Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, New York.
Kaci Lehman (Podcast Producer) is a graduate of Messiah University with a B.A. in Music Business. She has worked extensively in the music and podcast industry, including work at the Nashville Contemporary Music Center, IHeart Radio, and Hershey Entertainment.
As Executive Editor, it has been a pleasure working with this dream team. We don’t all agree on every issue, but we are all committed to advancing the democratic virtues of free exchange and intellectual debate. You will be hearing a lot more from this group in 2023 as we bring some significant changes to the site.
In the meantime, please consider supporting our work. Now is a great time to become a patron of Current! Click the red “SUPPORT” button in the top right corner of this page or learn more here.