Here is the video of the AHA “History Behind the Headlines” series. Glad to join Jim Grossman, Jon Butler, Holly Brewer, and Heath Carter for this discussion:
Bible in America
AHA’s History Behind the Headlines: “The Role of the Bible in the Founding of the United States and Religious Mandates in Public Schools”
I am looking forward to this event tomorrow at noon. It is hosted by the American Historical Association and is free and open to the public. Check it out. Join us on Friday, July 26, at 12 p.m. ET, for an […]
American Bible Society closes its $60 million museum
American Bible Society (ABS) spent a lot of time and money to build the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center (FLDC). I was present at the first content planning meeting for this museum. During that meeting, the ABS planners believed that […]
What is happening at the American Bible Society?
My book The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society ends just before the society’s 200th anniversary in 2016. If you want to get a sense of what has happened to this storied benevolent society since then, check […]
“America’s commitment to independence shaped how Americans utilized the Bible from the very beginning.”
When you hear presidential candidates like Tim Scott and Mike Pence quote the Bible on the campaign trail for the purposes of advancing their political agendas, please realize that this is not a new thing. Here is a taste of […]
John Erickson, champion of the Bible cause, 1933-2022
I started my 2015 book The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society with these words: John Erickson sits at a table in his home in Crawford, Nebraska, on a chilly March 2015 morning. He is sipping bottled […]
When you start banning books that are “objectionable” to parents, stuff like this is bound to happen.
A Florida man wants to ban the Bible from public schools. He wonders if Florida parents really want their kids exposed to rape, bestiality, cannibalism and infanticide. Psalm 137:9 says: “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes […]
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 […]
Bringing the Bible to the Jim Crow South
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 […]
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 […]
The Author’s Corner with James Byrd
James Byrd is Professor of American Religious History, Chair of the Graduate Department of Religion and Associate Dean for Graduate Education and Research at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. This interview is based on his new book, A Holy Baptism of […]