Here is a taste of Daniel Silliman’s obituary of a major player in twentieth-century evangelicalism. I am guessing most white evangelicals have never heard of him: Melvin E. Banks, founder of the largest black Christian publishing house in the United...
African American evangelicalism
The Author’s Corner with Richard Boles
Richard Boles is Assistant Professor of History at Oklahoma State University. This interview is based on his new book, Dividing the Faith: The Rise of Segregated Churches in the Early American North (NYU Press, 2020). JF: What led you to...
Study: White Evangelicals are “cultural others” and the culture wars are getting worse
The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia just released its 2020 survey of American political culture. It is titled Democracy in Dark Times. James Davison Hunter and Carl Desportes Bowman are the primary investigators/authors. It...
GOP Convention: Night 2
I didn’t get to listen very carefully to many of the speeches on night 2 of the GOP convention. I was preparing for my return to the classroom today. At least my nightmares were different last night. Instead of dreaming...
Episode 48: The Color of Compromise
With so many contemporary examples of racism in American society, it is tempting to see these as the actions of racist individuals. However, many social critics have increasingly pointed to the structure and system of racism as an active part...
The David Walker Memorial Project
A friend recently shared this with me. Does anyone know if this project is still active? It looks like a fascinating public history project about one of America’s great abolitionists. Devout evangelicals like Walker were important anti-slavery voices in early...
“The born-again/evangelical population in this country is highest among blacks…”
According to a recent Gallup survey, the born-again/evangelical population in this country is highest among blacks, “who are overall the most religious racial and ethnic group in the United States.” Gallup reports that 61% of blacks identify as “evangelical” or...
A Black Southern Baptist Pastor Stays in the Southern Baptist Convention
Rev. Gabriel C. Stovall, the senior pastor of the Butler Street Baptist Church in downtown Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, responds to Lawrence Ware, the African American Southern Baptist minister who recently announced in The New York Times that he was leaving...
The Author’s Corner with Mary Beth Mathews
Mary Beth Mathews is an Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Mary Washington. This interview is based on her new book, Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism between the Wars (University of Alabama Press, 2017). JF:...
Phillis Wheatley: “On Virtue”
Michael Monescalchi is a graduate student in English at Rutgers University. Over at Common-place he reflects on Phillis Wheatley‘s poem “On Virtue” and her engagement with the theology of Jonathan Edwards. Monescalchi writes: “Wheatley’s saying that her soul touched by Virtue can...
Black Lives Matter
Born and unborn. Here is Bishop Vincent Matthews Jr. of the Church of God in Christ at yesterday’s March for Life. The Church of God in Christ is the largest African American denomination in the United States and the largest...
American Antiquarian Society Acquires 1805 Lemuel Haynes Sermon
The announcement: Lemuel Haynes (1753-1833) was a highly influential religious and anti-slavery leader. Among Haynes’s many firsts, he was the first African-American to be ordained to the Christian ministry and the first African-American to receive a college degree (an M.A. […]
The “Quandary of African American Evangelicalism”
Over at the Anxious Bench I have been wondering why there is not more scholarly work on the history of African-American evangelicalism. See my posts here and here. I am pleased to see that Miles Mullin of Southwestern Baptist Theological […]