Mark Noll is retired Professor of History at Wheaton College and the University of Notre Dame. This interview is based on his new book, America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911 (Oxford University Press, 2022). JF: What...
American religious history
The Author’s Corner with Steven K. Green
Steven K. Green is Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Religion, Law and Democracy at Willamette University. This interview is based on his new book, Separating Church and State: A History (Cornell University Press,...
Kenneth Jackson reviews Jon Butler’s God in Gotham
One of the late 20th-century’s foremost historians of New York City reviews one of the late 20th-century’s foremost religious historians. Here is a taste of Jackson’s review of Butler‘s God in Gotham: The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan: When...
The Author’s Corner with David Sehat
David Sehat is Professor of History at Georgia State University. This interview is based on his new book, This Earthly Frame: The Making of American Secularism (Yale University Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write This Earthly Frame? DS:...
The Author’s Corner with Jeremy Schipper
Jeremy Schipper is Professor of Religion at Temple University. This interview is based on his new book, Denmark Vesey’s Bible: The Thwarted Revolt That Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial (Princeton University Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write...
The Author’s Corner with Adam Jortner
Adam Jortner is Goodwin-Philpott Eminent Professor of Religion in the Department of History at Auburn University. This interview is based on his new book, No Place for Saints: Mobs and Mormons in Jacksonian America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022). JF:...
The Author’s Corner with Jeffrey Perry
Jeffrey Perry is Assistant Professor of History at Tusculum University. This interview is based on his new book, Law in American Meetinghouses: Church Discipline and Civil Authority in Kentucky, 1780-1845 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022). JF: What led you to...
The Author’s Corner with G. Kurt Piehler
G. Kurt Piehler is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Institute on World War II and the Human Experience at Florida State University. This interview is based on his new book, A Religious History of the American GI...
Nudity in the Bible?
There were a lot of pictures of naked people in 19th-century Bibles. Here is historian Joseph Slaughter at The Panorama: Every now and then, work in the archives produces moments that jar us out of our misplaced assumptions. The biggest...
Fosdick’s “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” turns 100
Current Contributing Editor Daniel K. Williams reflects on this classic 1922 sermon. Here is a taste of his post at The Anxious Bench: Now that we have reached the centennial anniversary of this sermon, perhaps it’s time to ask the...
COVID-19 vaccines and and the history religious exemptions
Last November I joined Michelle Mello of Stanford University Law School in a conversation on religious exemptions and vaccines. The Council on Foreign Relations sponsored the event. You can watch it here:...
Sources on the history of religious-based vaccine resistance in America
I included a lot of history in today’s Current feature on vaccine exemptions. The piece draws on a talk I gave earlier this week to the constituents of the Council of Foreign Relations. I am told that the video will...
Historian Thomas Kidd leaves Baylor for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
I knew Tommy Kidd liked barbecue, but I was not expecting this. Here is the press release: Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Jason Allen has announced that historian Thomas S. Kidd will join Midwestern Seminary’s residential faculty as research professor...
The Author’s Corner with Leigh Eric Schmidt
Leigh Eric Schmidt is Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities at Washington University. This interview is based on his new book, The Church of Saint Thomas Paine: A Religious History of American Secularism (Princeton University Press, 2021). JF: What led...
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...
The Author’s Corner with Eric Smith
Eric Smith is Senior Pastor of Sharon Baptist Church and Adjunct Professor of Historical Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This interview is based on his new book, John Leland: A Jeffersonian Baptist in Early America (Oxford University Press,...
The Author’s Corner with Brian Ogren
Brian Ogren is Associate Professor of Judaic Studies at Rice University. This interview is based on his new book, Kabbalah and the Founding of America: The Early Influence of Jewish Thought in the New World (New York University Press, 2021)....
The real Tammy Faye
A lot of people are talking and writing about The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a new film on televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. I hope to see this soon. I am particularly interested in Vincent D’Onofrio‘s portrayal of Jerry Falwell. Over...
Is evangelical Christianity a religious movement, or is it something else?
I first read historian Paul E. Johnson’s 1978 book A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 in 1989 while I was studying church history at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Johnson argued that evangelical religion in Rochester,...
Yale’s Harry Stout is still going strong
I am teaching Harry Stout’s The Divine Dramatist again this Fall. I find it to be the most undergraduate accessible biography of Whitefield available. My students really like it. Stout has been busy of late. He has two biographies in...