Way of Improvement
David Brooks: “Biden’s cheerful confidence is an unappreciated national asset”
Here is a taste of Brooks’s recent New York Times column: Biden’s cheerful confidence is an unappreciated national asset. As American power has come to be underestimated, especially since the election of Donald Trump, a man like Biden, who has […]
The Times (London) on Trump’s former court evangelicals and the 2024 election
I was happy to help The Times with this piece. Click here for larger context. Here is a taste of David Charter’s article: John Fea, a historian at Messiah College who studies evangelical culture and politics, said: “This is a […]
The Author’s Corner with Victoria E. Ott
Victoria E. Ott is James A. Wood Professor of American History and the coordinator of Gender and Women’s Studies at Birmingham-Southern College. This interview is based on her new book, The Failure of Our Fathers: Family, Gender, and Power in […]
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:
Song of the Day
Commonplace Book #231
The poor are not actually as disinterested and pure as the Marxist apocalypse assumes. They do have fewer interests to defend than the rich. But though their justified resentments against injustice may be a creative force in history, their bitterness […]
The Author’s Corner with Jennifer Helgren
Jennifer Helgren is Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at University of the Pacific. This interview is based on her new book, The Camp Fire Girls: Gender, Race, and American Girlhood, 1910–1980 (University of Nebraska Press, 2022). JF: […]
Evangelical roundup for January 19, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? Franklin Graham: Leave Amy Grant alone! Young evangelicals and 2024. 51% of white American evangelicals believe that “immigrants are invading the United States.” Jim Wallis and Robert Jones on Christian nationalism: Evangelicals and the […]
Commonplace Book #230
Genuine community is established only when the knowledge that we need one another is supplemented by the recognition that “the other,” that other form of life, or that other unique community is the limit beyond which our ambitions must not […]
Trump says evangelicals who have yet to back his 2024 candidacy are disloyal
Some of Trump’s most prominent court evangelicals have yet to back his 2024 presidential candidacy. Trump is not happy about it: More here. Is the contractual relationship over? Trump delivered for conservative evangelicals. They got the Supreme Court. Roe v. […]
What is going on at the University of Southern California?
No more “field work” at USC. A university wracked with scandal after scandal is putting its foot down about using the term “field” to describe social work practicum. Here is Yale’s Christian McNamara at the Front Porch Republic: The University […]
The Author’s Corner with John Rogers Haddad
John Rogers Haddad is Professor of American Studies at Penn State–Harrisburg. This interview is based on his new book, Cultures Colliding: American Missionaries, Chinese Resistance, and the Rise of Modern Institutions in China (Temple University Press, 2023). JF: What led […]
House passes a resolution condemning attacks on anti-abortion facilities and groups
Last week the House of Representatives passed H.Con Res. 3 “expressing the sense of Congress condemning the recent attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches. Here is some of the text: Whereas since the May 2, 2022, leak of the […]
What does artificial intelligence mean for writers?
I have largely ignored all of the debate over ChatGPT (“Generative Pre-training Tranformer), the artificial intelligence program used to generate prose. I have largely ignored it because I am not ready to come to grips with the fact that a […]
The Author’s Corner with John C. Winters
John C. Winters is Assistant Professor History at the University of Southern Mississippi. This interview is based on his new book, “The Amazing Iroquois” and the Invention of the Empire State (Oxford University Press, 2023). JF: What led you to […]
Commonplace Book #229
The ironic elements in American history can be overcome, in short, only if American idealism comes to terms with the limits of all human striving, the fragmentariness of all human wisdom, the precariousness of all historic configurations of power, and […]
The Author’s Corner with Leslie M. Alexander
Leslie M. Alexander is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University. This interview is based on her new book, Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States (University […]
Evangelical roundup for January 16, 2022
What is happening in Evangelical land? Christianity Today‘s Mike Cosper talks to Bono. A federal judge dismisses a lawsuit brought by Christian college students claiming that religious exemptions were incompatible with LGBTQ rights. Southern Baptists on Dreamers. A Southern Baptist […]
