Christianity Today news editor and historian Daniel Silliman reflects on his current employer’s relationship to FBI Director (1935-1972) J. Edgar Hoover. Silliman’s thoughts were triggered by his reading of Lerone Martin’s The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover. Here is a […]
Archives for 2023
“Christianity in overalls”
Over at Jacobin, Stephen Barton introduces many of us to J. Stitt Wilson, the socialist major of Berkeley, California from 1911 to 1913. Here is a taste: On Easter Sunday, 1911, San Francisco’s Central Theater was packed with more than […]
Virginia will commemorate “Green Book” locations
The Negro Motorist Green Book (or simply Green Book) was an annual guidebook that included businesses–hotels, restaurants, etc.– friendly to African American travelers. Last month Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin signed into law a bill that designates surviving Green Book locations […]
The Author’s Corner with Sharon Ann Murphy
Sharon Ann Murphy is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History and Classics at Providence College. This interview is based on her new book, Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States (University of Chicago […]
On turning yet another year older
For two of my college years at the University of Virginia, I got to live in the French House, a beautiful historic mansion on the edge of campus. There were clear rules involved: all conversations in the house had to […]
REVIEW: The Free Speech Conundrum
If neutrality regarding speech is impossible, how do we settle our disputes about it?
Businessman Kenneth C. Griffin gives $300 million to the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences
The rich get richer. Here is The Harvard Gazette: Harvard University announced today that business leader and philanthropist Kenneth C. Griffin ’89 has made a gift of $300 million to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) to support the […]
Commonplace Book #255
Consider Thomas L. Friedman’s announcement (New York Times, January 9, 2019): “I believe there is only one thing as big as Mother Nature, and that is Father Greed–a.k.a. the market. I am a green capitalist.” As a green capitalist, Mr. […]
Ukrainian mothers who traveled into Russian-occupied Ukraine to get their children back
The war in Ukraine has largely faded from the news of late, but this does not mean that the suffering there is any less profound. An emotional piece in the New York Times this weekend highlights the impact of war […]
Fox News anchor Brett Baier: “I look at my job as being sort of like an ice hockey goalie trying to stop bad pucks from getting through…”
I am not sure if Brett Baier is Jim Craig of the 1980 Olympic team or Elvis Merzlikins of the Columbus Blue Jackets. Whatever the case, he has faced a lot of “bad pucks” over the years. Here is David […]
Democrats heading to Chicago in 2024
The Democratic Party will return to Chicago in 2024. It will be held from August 19-22. You can get the details from any news website, but we thought we would call your attention to previous Chicago conventions. This will be […]
“The Left is more likely…to hold men responsible for their own problems and advise them to purge themselves of their ‘toxic masculinity.'”
Over at Commonweal, Brendan Ruberry reviews Richard V. Reeves’s book, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It. Here is a taste: “…today, around the industrialized world, men seem […]
In the GOP it’s “the elites vs. the rabble”
Here is a taste of Sam Adler-Bell’s New York Times op-ed: “The One Things Trump Has That DeSantis Never Will“: Thus far, Mr. DeSantis has had greater success with party elites. By pairing aggressive stances on the culture wars with […]
Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey Jr. is running for re-election in 2024
Good news from Pennsylvania! Here is John Salant from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: U.S. Sen. Bob Casey announced Monday that he will run for re-election next year, a boon for Democrats in a must-win race for the party to hold the […]
What if students WANT the humanities in their college curriculum?
Most of the time, the well-merited jeremiads about the state of the humanities in American universities come from scholars. At the same time, most of the attacks themselves come from university administrators or system-level administrators (for state universities). But last […]
Evangelical roundup for April 10, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? Latino evangelicals against DeSantis’s immigration policies. Nashville’s The Covenant School will move to a new church for the remainder of the academic year. Evangelicals and premarital sex. Evangelicals are always renewing and reviving. Shane […]
Revisiting the Cuban Missile Crisis
“What’s important,” Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev reflected in October 1962, “is not to cry for the dead or to avenge them, but to save those who might die if the conflict continues.” That so many didn’t die, then, was the result of Khrushchev’s, […]
The Author’s Corner with Joseph Giacomelli
Joseph Giacomelli is Assistant Professor of Environmental History at Duke Kunshan University. This interview is based on his new book, Uncertain Climes: Debating Climate Change in Gilded Age America (University of Chicago Press, 2023). JF: What led you to write […]
What are you reading?
Billy Budd is one of Herman Melville’s most enigmatic writings. It involves an inexplicable animosity toward a handsome sailor, an accidental death, and a verdict of ambiguous justness. The captain of the ship on which the events take place is […]
Caledonia
Is anything more necessary than music that tells us who we are?