Humor may be even more complicated than evil
Archives for August 2023
Remembering Brother Jerome (a good teacher)
Oh, did Brother Jerome drive me nuts. Jerome Cox, F.S.C., was a friend of my father’s from their days in the Christian Brothers junior seminary in Glencoe, Missouri. Their years together in the juniorate were formative for both of them, […]
Commonplace Book #277
In The Triumph of the Therapeutic, the sociologist Philip Rieff…thought the emergent therapeutic culture was an “anti-culture” based on an “ethic of release,” which fostered individualism and preoccupation with the self. Falling by the wayside was the earlier belief that […]
Evangelical roundup for August 17, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? Evangelical politico Bob Vander Plaats: “Iowa is going to be wide open.” Good advice on how to send money to evangelical groups working in Maui. Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is an organization to avoid […]
What is a man?
Recently Tucker Carlson, the bow-tie wearing paragon of journalistic courage, interviewed professional misogynist Andrew Tate. If you have never heard of Andrew Tate, consider yourself lucky, although perhaps a bit ill-informed. If you have a daughter (I do) you’d better […]
What Rise of Christian Nationalism?
There’s a deeper reality at play
If it scares you, it must be Marxism
Here is a taste of Ben Burgis‘s piece at Jacobin: Earlier this month, best-selling author Jordan Peterson declared that “climate justice” is “the new guise of murderous Marxism.” The same day, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis appeared at a town hall event […]
Commonplace Book #276
The world of the diversity engineers is a world in which virulent white racism and white supremacist attitudes still reigned unchallenged, a world of victims and victimizers, a world in perpetual recovery, a world of endless slights. Here racist crimes […]
Oh the Places We Went: The Place Where My Story Began
The joy—and responsibility—of belonging to a place
Mark Thomas Edwards on Walter Lippmann
Mark Thomas Edwards is professor of US history and politics at Spring Arbor University in Michigan. He is the author of The Right of the Protestant Left: God’s Totalitarianism (2012) and Faith and Foreign Affairs in the American Century (2019). In the Spring of 2018, he […]
Trump plans to release a 100-page report on the Georgia election fraud claims
If Mike “MyPillow Guy” Lindell appears in the footnotes of this report I don’t know whether I am going to laugh or cry. 🙂 Here Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at The New York Times: Hours after former President Donald […]
Jenna Ellis’s crowdfunding page and more pro-Trump evangelical responses to the Georgia indictments
Indicted evangelical lawyer Jenna Ellis has established crowdfunding page to help pay for her legal fees. She has already raised over $7000. It appears that Donald Trump’s PAC won’t pay her legal fees because she supports Ron DeSantis. Lance Wallnau […]
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to Donald Trump: “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen”
Today the governor of Georgia responded to a Trump post on “Truth Social”: Here is Richard Luscombe at The Guardian: Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, insisted on Tuesday that the 2020 presidential election in his state “was not stolen” in […]
Jenna Ellis is not the only religious figure indicted in Georgia
We discussed Jenna Ellis here. Over at Religion News Service, Jack Jenkins has the story of Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod pastor Stephen Lee. A taste: While most of those indicted are lawyers or people with close connections to Trump, at least […]
A message from the executive editor of Current
Hey, that’s me! 🙂
The political folly of the Iowa State Fair
Here is a PBS report on the GOP candidates in Iowa:
Trump is indicted for a fourth time. Some responses:
Get up to speed here. The Speaker of the House: Ohio GOP congressman Jim Jordan: Jenna Ellis (INDICTED): Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn: Texas Senator Ted Cruz: Arizona congressman Andy Biggs: California congressman Adam Schiff: Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert: Georgia congresswoman […]
What role should environmental history play at sites devoted to the American Revolution?
Blake McGready is program assistant at the Gotham Center for New York City History and a Ph.D candidate at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Check out his piece at The Panorama on the what he […]
Big-Time Jesus Stuff
A stint among Catholic Workers, a pathway into joy
And a happy 40th anniversary to Robert Schuller’s Self-Esteem: The New Reformation
Historians love anniversaries. They give them an excuse for writing about what they want to write about anyway. This year is the 40th anniversary of a book that, unless you’re approaching retirement age you have likely never heard of, but […]