Kimberly R. Kellison is Associate Professor of History & Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Baylor University. This interview is based on her new book, Forging a Christian Order: South Carolina Baptists, Race, and Slavery, 1696–1860 […]
American religious history
The Author’s Corner with Christian Goodwillie
Christian Goodwillie is Director and Curator of Special Collections at Hamilton College, Burke Library and Associate Editor of the Richard W. Couper Press. This interview is based on his new book, Richard McNemar: Frontier Heretic and Shaker Apostle (Indiana University […]
The Author’s Corner with Stephen Longenecker
Stephen Longenecker is Professor of History, Emeritus at Bridgewater College. This interview is based on his new book, Pulpits of the Lost Cause: The Faith and Politics of Former Confederate Chaplains during Reconstruction (University of Alabama Press, 2023). JF: What […]
Episode 109: “The Voice and Faith of Sojourner Truth”
In this episode we talk with historian and biographer Nancy Koester about her new book on nineteenth-century abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Sojourner Truth. Our discussion focuses on Truth’s lifelong pursuit of a just society, a deeper knowledge of God, and […]
The original message behind the American Christmas was not very evangelical
Historian Daniel K. Williams, a Current contributing editor, explains in a recent piece at Christianity Today. A taste: Conservative evangelical Christians have sometimes been eager advocates of the modern campaign to “keep Christ in Christmas” and preserve the traditional religious meaning of […]
The Author’s Corner with Leah Mickens
Leah Mickens is August Wilson Project Archivist at the University of Pittsburgh. This interview is based on her new book, In the Shadow of Ebenezer: A Black Catholic Parish in the Age of Civil Rights and Vatican II (NYU Press, […]
The Author’s Corner with Rodney Hessinger
Rodney Hessinger is Professor of History and Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at John Carroll University. This interview is based on his new book, Smitten: Sex, Gender, and the Contest for Souls in the Second Great Awakening (Cornell […]
The Author’s Corner with Matthew Smith
Matthew Smith is Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Regional Director of Public Programming at Miami University of Ohio. This interview is based on his new book, The Spires Still Point to Heaven: Cincinnati’s Religious Landscape, 1788–1873 (Temple University Press, […]
The Author’s Corner with Adam D. Mendelsohn
Adam D. Mendelsohn is Associate Professor of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. This interview is based on his new book, Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army (NYU Press, 2022). JF: What led you to […]
Episode 105: “‘Heathenism’ in America”
According to historian Kathryn Gin Lum, Americans have long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term “heathen” fell out of common use by the early 1900s, but […]
Episode 103: Spiritual Socialists
Does the American Left have religion problem? What can progressives learn from people like Dorothy Day, Ignazio Silone, Henry Wallace, Staughton Lynd, and Cornel West? Many of these thinkers and activists offered a powerful vision for a moral and just […]
The Author’s Corner with Mark Noll
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 […]
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 […]