In 1900, Henry Nelson Payne, a missionary and president of Mary Holmes Seminary in West Point, Mississippi, a school for Black women, was frustrated that many Bible societies in the former Confederacy were not willing to distribute Bibles to African...
African American religion
Albert Raboteau, RIP
Princeton University religion professor Albert Raboteau‘s book Slave Religion was the first book I ever read on the history of the religion and the African American experience. Here is Adelle Banks at Religion News Service: Albert J. Raboteau, an American...
Evangelical leader Tony Evans offers “Kingdom race theology” as an an alternative to “critical race theory”
Evans recently gave a two-part presentation on the subject at his Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. Here is Part 1: Here is Part 2: A couple of quick thoughts: First, Evans clearly believes in systemic racism and the value...
Video of the day:
Amazing Grace:...
Episode 3: “The Audacity to Hope”
Barack Obama’s pastor is known for three sermons. In this episode, we put them in historical context. Episode 3: “The Audacity to Hope” (our fourth episode) dropped last night. Subscribers to Current at the Longshore level and above receive this brand new narrative...
Episode 2 of “A History of Evangelicals and Politics” podcast is here!
Episode 2: “Obama Goes to Church” (our third episode) dropped last night. Subscribers to Current at the Longshore level and above receive this brand new narrative history podcast. In this episode I talk about Obama’s first encounter with Jeremiah Wright and what the...
Jeremiah Wright Jr. on Ben Carson, circa 1990s
How things change. Today I was reading some of Jeremiah Wright‘s sermons and came across this line in a sermon titled “Good News for Good Parents”: When all the boys want to wear their pants halfway down their hips with...
Black Southern Baptists are “deeply disappointed” that seminary presidents continue to reject critical race theory in “all its forms”
The debate over critical race theory continues to divide the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Last November, the presidents of the six denominational seminaries published a statement declaring that critical race theory is incompatible with Southern Baptist theology. In response to...
Esau McCaulley’s Christian view of social justice
I am looking forward to reading Wheaton College professor Esau McCaulley‘s book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation As An Exercise in Hope. He talks about it here: And here: Over at The New York Times, David Brooks writes...
Black Protestants are anxious about getting the COVID-19 vaccine. White evangelicals are more anxious.
Here is Yonat Shimron at Religion News Service: Since before the COVID-19 vaccines hit the market, it has been predicted that Black Americans would choose to be vaccinated at dramatically lower rates than white Americans due to a historic mistrust...
Are you watching “The Black Church” on PBS?
I haven’t had a chance to watch the new PBS series, “The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song,” but I am reading some rave reviews. Henry Louis Gates‘s series is streaming here. I am hoping to...
Melvin Banks, RIP
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...
Unearthing First Baptist Williamsburg
Over at Christianity Today, Dan Silliman reports on the excavation at First Baptist Church, an African-American church founded in 1776 by free and enslaved Blacks in Williamsburg, Virginia. Here is a taste: They dug up broken bits of lamp, the...
Why white evangelicals criticize the Black church
In the 1980s, when I was a student at a small Christian college, some of my professors warned us about the “liberal theology” of the civil rights movement. What Martin Luther King Jr. did was notable, they said, but he...
Episode 76: Howard Thurman: Theologian, Mystic, Activist
Howard Thurman was a mid-20th century theologian, writer, activist, and mystic who had a profound influence on the leaders of the Civil Rights movement. Thurman’s writings–especially his 1949 work Jesus and the Disinherited–provided an intellectual and spiritual guide to those trying 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...
The Author’s Corner with Jeffrey Einboden
Jeffrey Einboden is Presidential Research, Scholarship and Artistry Professor at Northern Illinois University. This interview is based on his new book, Jefferson’s Muslim Fugitives: The Lost Story of Enslaved Africans, their Arabic Letters, and an American President (Oxford University Press, 2020)....
An African-American Pastor Guides His Congregation Through the 1918 Influenza Epidemic
Francis J. Grimké (1850-1937) pastored the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C., an African-American congregation, for nearly fifty years. He was an active member of W.E.B. Du Bois’s Niagara Movement and was involved in the founding of the National...
Will Pete Buttigieg Get Any Traction in South Carolina?
Mayor Pete won Iowa. He finished second in New Hampshire. He finished third in Nevada. But he is not doing very well in South Carolina largely because he does not appeal to African-American voters in the state. Over at Religion...