Here is a taste of a lecture I gave last week at the University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio. Scroll back to watch the entire lecture.
Way of Improvement
The Author’s Corner with Yii-Jan LinÂ
Yii-Jan Lin is Associate Professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School. This interview is based on her new book, Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration (Yale University Press, 2024). JF: What led you to write Immigration and […]
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: Has capitalism has killed the humanities? Book blurbs Peter Kolchin, historian of slavery, RIP David French on Trump and the American founding The son of an evangelical ministers came out. […]
Song of the day
Did the American people elect THIS Donald Trump?
Did Americans elect Trump to shut down humanitarian aid through USAID? Did they elect Trump to create a Middle East Riviera in Gaza? Did they elect Trump because they wanted a trade war? Did they elect Trump because they wanted […]
Commonplace Book #332
There was a point in my rebellion where hatred and love coincided; both the facts which justified my indignation and the moral motives which demanded it stemmed directly from the district where I was born. This explains, too, why everything […]
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez asks what Jesus Christ would say if he preached his message in the House of Representatives
Watch:
Commonplace Book #331
And if my poor literary work has any meaning, in the ultimate analysis, it consists of this: a time came when writing meant, for me, an absolute necessity to testify, an urgent need to free myself from an obsession, to […]
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for they will get an executive order.”
The day after Trump’s inauguration, the president attended an interfaith service at the National Cathedral. During the sermon, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde urged Trump to consider the human dignity of immigrants, refugees, and members of the transgender community. She spoke […]
Trump orders affecting immigration and humanitarian aid: A World Relief primer
World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, notes that Donald Trump has issued executive orders that are “significantly impacting thousands of lives and reshaping the way we are able to serve those in greatest need.” Jessica […]
Will Marco Rubio be the next director of the National Archives?
The Trump vengeance tour is making a stop at the National Archives. Here is ABC News: There have been extensive discussions at the White House about installing Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the acting director of the National Archives, […]
POLITICO magazine responds to internet trolls
Trump evangelicals are going after Christian institutions that take federal funds.
Thousands and thousands of Christian organizations, including Trump acolyte Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse, have taken federal money to help advance their missions. Christian charities have lost funds as a result of Trump’s cuts to US AID. They include World Vision, […]
More than six years ago I said this:
I still stand by this:
Historians take on Trump’s executive order on K-12 schooling
Here is David Blight, Beth English, and Jim Grossman at The New Republic: Under the grossly misleading title “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” the White House last week issued an executive order that would undermine the integrity of writing […]
Commonplace Book #330
…The traditional definition of “human” is composed of limits as much as privileges. To be properly human, there are some things we must not do. The opposing creed, dominant in our own time, holds that there are no limits. Anything […]
Commonplace Book #329
In the minds of [writer Jonathan] Taplin and his like, the adjective “white” implies racism; “male,” in combination with “white,” “rural,” and “old,” implies sexism; “rural” implies backwardness, stupidity, and the degradation of “mind-numbing” physical work; and “old” implies political […]
Commonplace Book #328
The racist argument has always been so simple as to need no comprehending. It simply divides the two categories, white people and black people, by a line theoretically straight, and opposes one category to the other. The actual history of […]
Ronald Reagan on tariffs
April 27, 1987: Context
Commonplace Book #327
People who hate all Confederates, it seems to me, are oversimplifying themselves in order to do so. They seem to be war propogandists looking for a war, relishing the division of people into abstract or stereotypical categories of Good and […]