In 1974, the famed filmmaker interviewed his parents and turned it into a documentary film. I thought I was sitting in the room with my own Italian grandparents. Oh the stories! I could listen to Catherine Scorsese talk all day. […]
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:
The House Freedom Caucus boots Marjorie Taylor Greene
Apparently the Trumpiest wing of the GOP doesn’t like their fellow Trumpers calling Lauren Boebert a “little bitch.” Here is Politico: Why was Greene removed? Though tensions were already brewing within the Freedom Caucus, the formal vote came shortly after Greene […]
Mike Pence responds to an election denier at an Iowa Pizza Ranch
Mike Pence ran into an election denier at a Sioux City, Iowa Pizza Ranch. (As a north Jersey kid who is half Italian I can’t get my head around the idea of a “Pizza Ranch”–but I digress). She told Pence […]
“The Bartons are surrounded by tools but that fact doesn’t make them historians anymore than my tool collection makes me a mechanic.”Â
Warren Throckmorton on David Barton, Tim Barton, and Wallbuilders: I have tools and gadgets and parts that I don’t know how to use. Some of those tools are left over from my dad and some seem to have just appeared […]
We have a cover!
The cover of the second edition of Why Study History : Reflecting on the Importance of the Past is here! The book will be available in early 2024.
Arthur Brooks: “Google isn’t grad school”
According to public intellectual Arthur Brooks, the internet has created “an explosion of nonsense.” He’s right. Let’s take my discipline of American history for example. If you read this blog, you know that there is a lot of bad history […]
John McWhorter on affirmative action
Reading McWhorter’s piece today at The New York Times reminds me of the first time I read Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory twenty years ago. The only difference is that McWhorter took the Ivy League job and Rodriguez turned it […]
Evangelical roundup for July 6, 2023
What’s happening in Evangelical land? Latino evangelicals are backing Ron DeSantis despite his views on immigration. An evangelical building interfaith bridges with Mormons. Karen Swallow Prior’s career and the Southern Baptist Convention. In my view, she has been an essential […]
Daniel K. Williams is the new Director of Teacher Programs at The Ashbrook Center at Ashland University
A big congratulations to Current contributing editor Daniel K. Williams who was just appointed the Director of Teacher Programs at The Ashbrook Center at Ashland University. Dan is leaving his post at the University of West Georgia to assume the […]
Song of the Day
Commonplace Book #274
The Twitter mob in too many ways defines the current Internet. The objective of the mob is to stamp out apostasy. We are righteous. We are correct. We conform to the current patterns of behavior–and you’d better too. Ultimately, what […]
Evangelical roundup for July 3, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? Has marriage taken a backseat to gender issues among evangelicals? Rebecca Naylor, Southern Baptist missionary surgeon. When did male headship become the core to Southern Baptist identity? Shane Claiborne on 4th of July services: […]
Commonplace Book #273
The notion of identity, now so popular among those who look for it in gender and race and sexuality, implies the possibility of resolving the self in some binding manner. If Freud is right and the psyche is always churning, […]
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: Charles Arrowsmith reviews Peter Moore’s Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Britain and the American Dream Jill Lepore on how to save the Constitution. Economic rights Aram Goudsouzian reviews […]
Commonplace Book #272
I love my students–I surely do. But there is no way I would want to be one of them, or part of what’s now being called “Generation Z.” They’re stepping into the arena grossly underequipped to fight: no sword, no […]
More reporting on the closing of Alliance University (Nyack College)
Here is Emily Belz at Christianity Today: Alliance University, a 140-year-old Christian & Missionary Alliance (CMA) school in New York City, will close on August 31 after years of financial struggles. Known for much of its history as Nyack College, […]
Commonplace Book #271
Make use of power? What a pernicious illusion. It’s power that makes use of us. Power is a difficult horse to lead: it goes where it must go, or rather, it goes where it can go or where it’s natural […]
Whitworth University will now hire LGBTQ faculty
Here is Yonat Shimron at Religion News Service: Whitworth University, a Christian school affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has revised its policies to allow for the hiring of LGBTQ faculty and to add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination statement. […]
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools sanctions Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
The sanctions are related to financial improprieties at the Southern Baptist seminary. (Remember Adam Greenway’s $11,000 espresso machine?) Here is Liam Adams at The Tennessean: An accreditor sanctioned Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary on Wednesday, escalating an already dramatic saga marked […]