Happy Easter!
Commonplace Book #254
I am convinced that the climate of skepticism, which for the last two hundred years has made it unfashionable and even embarrassing to suggest that Jesus’s resurrection really happened, was never and is not now itself a neutral thing, sociologically […]
The chair of the Bob Jones University board of trustees steps down
We covered the recent fundamentalist coup at Bob Jones here. Mark Wingfield has the latest at Baptist News Global. John Lewis, the chairman of the Bob Jones University board of trustees, has resigned. Here is Wingfield: …[President] Pettit resigned March […]
What is popular this week at Current?
Here are the most popular features of the week at Current: Here are the most popular posts of the last week at The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog: Here are the most popular posts of the last week at The Arena blog:
What would C. Vann Woodward say?
James Cobb, the Spalding Distinguished professor of history emeritus at the University of Georgia, is the author of C. Vann Woodward: America’s Historian. It is the most satisfying work of American history I have read thus far in 2023. You […]
Evangelical roundup for April 6, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? Why aren’t Ukrainian-American evangelicals lobbying for their homeland? Black evangelicals and Christian nationalism. Evangelicals who care about refugees: How the Trump area changed Chapel Hill Bible Church. Jim Wallis on comparing Donald Trump to […]
What is happening with DEI in colleges and universities?
I am hearing more and more stories like the one Tabia Lee tells at Compact. Here is a taste: This month, I was fired from my position as faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education […]
Anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for president
Here is Kelly Garrity at Politico: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, is running for president as a Democrat, according to a statement of candidacy filed with the […]
Trump speaks to court evangelical “emergency prayer call”
Tonight at 6:45 Donald Trump, fresh off his New York City indictment, participated on a prayer call with some of his conservative evangelical supporters. Paula White’s “National Faith Advisory Board hosted the call. I listened to it here. It looks […]
Marjorie Taylor Greene compares Trump to Nelson Mandela and Jesus
Greene may have a different view of Holy Week:
Alan Noble dispels rumors that his new book is about “wokeness”
It’s not an April Fools joke, but it could be. Hilarious:
Commonplace Book #253
The vast ethnic and religious heterogeneity of the country worked to reinforce the sense of Socialism as “un-American.” While exploitation was often severe, many immigrants nonetheless viewed American conditions favorably when they were contrasted with their immediate European pasts. American […]
Donald is not the first Trump to surrender to authorities
The above article from the April 10, 1935 Akron Beacon Journal is making the rounds on social media today. I went into Newspapers.Com and dug up the orginal: Two days later, Ross Trump Jr. committed suicide. Here is the Massillon, […]
Alvin Bragg: Sunday school teacher
The Manhattan District Attorney bringing an indictment against a former president is a devout Christian. Here is Megan Saliashvili at Sojourners: …at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, one of the most significant institutions serving Black New Yorkers, Bragg is known […]
Cornell University rejects a student call for trigger warnings
Here is a taste of the Cornell University Student Assembly’s Resolution 31: “Mandating Content Warnings for Traumatic Content in the Classroom”: Abstract: Urging university officials to require instructors who present graphic traumatic content that may trigger the onset of symptoms […]
Episode 54: “Respecting life, but not all costs”
A Catholic expert on right-to-die cases testifies at the Terri Schiavo trial. Episode 54: “Respecting life, but not at all costs’ dropped today. Subscribers to Current at the Longshore level and above have access to new episodes of this narrative history podcast. To listen […]
What should we make of Staten Island?
For one year in graduate school (1998-1999) I made a weekly commute between Stony Brook, Long Island and Philadelphia. During that year I often drove through Staten Island. My trip along Interstate 278 took me past the Fresh Kills Landfill. […]
A college without the liberal arts is a vocational school
Historian Bret G. Devereaux asks, “Is a university a university without the liberal arts?” Here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home we have been asking this question for nearly a decade and a half. Here is Devereaux at The […]
In 1920, Eugene Debs got 1 million votes for president of the United States. He was in jail.
Today someone asked me if Donald Trump could still run for president if he is in jail. I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs received over 900,000 votes while […]
Commonplace Book #252
The center of Socialist strength in the Southwest lay in the small towns and adjoining rural areas, and it shared its appeal with fundamentalist religious sects. In 1906 over 86 percent of all Baptists, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, and United […]