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 […]
American religious history
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 […]
Live-tweeting PBS’s Billy Graham documentary
As a historian of American evangelicalism, I thoroughly enjoyed last night’s PBS documentary “Billy Graham: Prayer. Politics. Power.” As as an evangelical Christian, I also enjoyed it. Billy Graham’s message–the Good News–changed my life. I will always have a deep […]
The Author’s Corner with Crawford Gribben
Crawford Gribben is Professor of History at Queen’s University Belfast. This interview is based on his new book, Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford University Press, 2021). JF: What led you to write […]