Life is a whole
Evangelical roundup for November 3, 2022
What is happening in Evangelical land? Some evangelicals support political violence. How a Moody Bible Institute graduate changed his mind about Black Lives Matter. Tim Keller’s new book: Peter Wehner talks about his opposition to Trump. Truth: RIP: Blast from […]
What is going on at Calvin University?
Here is Yonat Shimron at Religion News Service: Calvin University’s board of trustees has allowed a group of faculty members to dissent from a clause in a confession of faith that regards sex outside of heterosexual marriage as sinful, thus […]
Springsteen’s Nebraska at 40
Well, now everything dies, baby, that’s a fact But maybe everything that dies someday comes back Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty And meet me tonight in Atlantic City –Springsteen, “Atlantic City,” Nebraska, 1982 Here is a […]
Springsteen talks to Howard Stern
Here are some clips: On the changing music scene and Taylor Swift’s new album: Bruce talks about the Clarence Clemons solo, the piano opening in “Jungleland,” and writing Born to Run and Thunder Road on a piano: The Rising: Bruce […]
The new Billy Graham archive will open this month
It looks like it will be a professional archive that will gather “the full documentary record” of Graham’s life and work. Here is Daniel Silliman at Christianity Today: When he watched Billy Graham preach, David Bruce couldn’t help but think […]
What MAGA Christians are saying about the Paul Pelosi attack
We covered some of the original reactions to the attack on Paul Pelosi over the weekend, but in the last couple days the rhetoric of the Trump evangelicals is getting worse. If you want to understand how the pursuit of […]
How do evangelicals understand “Christian nationalism?”
Daniel Silliman has some nice reporting on this at Christianity Today. A taste: Caleb Campbell didn’t know he needed the term Christian nationalism. He’d heard it, here and there, but it hadn’t really registered. It was at the edge of his […]
William Tecumseh Sherman: emancipator of the enslaved
Here is historian Bennett Parten at Zocalo Public Square: Americans get Sherman’s March all wrong. Ask anyone who’s seen Gone with the Wind, and they’ll tell you that U.S. General William T. Sherman’s roughly 250-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah marked […]
The “amoral Trump clown show” that Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and others are passing off as a religious revival
Last week I devoted my weekly Current column to the meaning of Christian baptism and the way the pro-Trump ReAwaken America tour was desecrating that sacred Christian rite. Today at Religion News Service, writer Jacob Lupfer tells us more about […]
Eric Metaxas believes Rick Warren, Tim Keller, and Andy Stanley are “Hitler’s favorite kind of pastors”
Eric Metaxas is hawking a book that condemns evangelicals for failing to stand-up to Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. He compares Biden and the Democrats to Adolph Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s and is using his widely […]
AHA president James Sweet: “The apology I issued” was not a “retraction.” Activists historians are starting a fight they will not win.
Over at The Atlantic, David Frum revisits James Sweet’s column at the Perspectives on History. I covered this controversy about history and presentism in a way that was favorable to Sweet’s position. See these posts: The James Sweet/AHA blowup What […]
Evangelical roundup for October 31, 2022
What is going on in Evangelical land? The growing political influence of Latino evangelicals. More on progressive evangelicals in Brazil who reject the “Bolsonarization of Churches” How Christian ethics became right wing populism. Jim Wallis on the attack on Paul […]
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: Current pays its writers. But should you write for free? What is dark academia? Bono on his new memoir. Alan Light reviews it here. And Chris Klimek here. What do […]
What is the Civics Secures Democracy Act?
James F. O’Connor, the president of the Ohio Council for the Social Studies, explains in a piece at the Cincinnati Inquirer: A famous tale about Benjamin Franklin goes as follows: Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional […]
Heather Cox Richardson on writing history’s first draft
The Boston College history professor’s Letters from an American is the most read newsletter on Substack. Here is a taste of John Wolfson’s interview with Richardson at Boston College Magazine: How did Letters from an American get its start?I had a Facebook […]
What are evangelical pundits and politicians saying about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband?
In case you missed it, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was cracked over the head with a hammer by an intruder in their San Francisco home. The intruder shouted “Where’s Nancy?” (This, by the way, was the same thing that […]
Evangelical leaders, including Mark Driscoll, anoint Kari Lake with oil
In case you haven’t heard of Kari Lake, she is running for governor of Arizona. She has the endorsement of Donald Trump. She is also an anti-masker, anti-vaxxer, and 2020 election denier. She believes that the Biden administration is advancing […]
Should America be a Christian nation?
45% of Americans say the United States should be a Christian nation, according to a new study from Pew Research. An even higher number–60%–believe that the founding fathers “originally intended” for the United States to be a Christian nation. And […]
The hope of socialism
Here is a taste of Katha Pollit’s recent piece at Dissent: On the other hand, if you have open elections, with a free press and organized political parties that can compete on equal terms with the governing party, people can […]