Here is ABC News: A longtime Arkansas legislator and nephew of the state’s Republican governor said Thursday that he’s leaving the GOP, citing Donald Trump‘s rhetoric and the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol by the former president’s supporters. State Sen....
Bob Jones University
The last fundamentalist empire died yesterday in Lynchburg, Virginia
Male authoritarian figures presiding over regional empires were an important part of 20th-century Protestant fundamentalism. I began to think historically about these empires during divinity school when I first read William Trollinger’s book God’s Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern...
How the history of white evangelical racism has led to Donald Trump’s election and continues to shape support for his presidency
I begin with a caveat. This post is not implying that all white evangelicals are or have been racist. Many white evangelicals have been anti-racist and have fought hard to curb systemic racism in American life. But, as I argued...
Remembering John McCain
Here are some things I remember about John McCain (1936-2018). The “Straight Talk Express” was a breath of fresh-air in 2000. McCain was strongly critical of the Christian Right approach to politics. He blasted George W. Bush for visiting Bob Jones University...
The Author’s Corner with Adam Laats
Adam Laats is a professor of Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership at Binghamton University. This interview is based on his new book, Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education (Oxford University Press, 2018). JF: What led you to write Fundamentalist U? AL: Over...
Why No Billy Graham University?
A great question from Adam Laats, author of the recent Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Edcuation. Here is a taste of his recent blog post: Moody had Moody Bible Institute. Billy Sunday had Winona Lake. William Bell Riley...
A Step Toward Racial Reconciliation in Greenville, South Carolina
I was really encouraged to read this article in yesterday’s Greenville Online. It describes a growing relationship between Bob Jones University and Greenville’s Phillis Wheatley Community Center. Here is a taste: It was a sight that brought tears to the...
The Bob Jones University Factor
In the 2000, George W. Bush, who said in a nationally-televised debate that his favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ “because he changed my heart,” easily won the Iowa caucuses, appealing to the strong evangelical base in the Hawkeye State. But...
Was I Wrong About a Fundamentalist–Neo-Evangelical Detente?
Last week the most popular post at The Way of Improvement Leads Home was my reaction to Adam Laats’s post about a visit that president Steven Pettit of Bob Jones University made to Wheaton College. Read it here. Apparently some...
A Fundamentalist–Neo-Evangelical Detente?
Bob Jones University President Steven Pettit In the wake of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 1910s and 1920s conservative evangelicals in America divided into two groups. This has been a well-chronicled story (see works by George Marsden and Joel Carpenter,...
What a Fundamentalist College Might Look Like: Part 2
I think Bob Jones University might qualify as a fundamentalist college. I wrote about BJU in my M.A. thesis at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (thanks Darryl Hart for being my second reader on that beast), but if you want to...
Adam Parsons on Randall Balmer and the Origins of the Religious Right
Regular readers of The Way of Improvement Leads Home will remember the Author’s Corner interview we did in April with Randall Balmer on his new book, Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter. In this book Balmer offers a new interpretation...
Bob Jones University Hires a Non-Jones as 5th President.
Big news in fundamentalist-land. Bob Jones University has a new president and his surname is not “Jones.” And he did not even attend Bob Jones as an undergraduate (although he does an M.A. from the institution and is a current […]