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California

The Author’s Corner with Lloyd Barba

Rachel Petroziello   |  October 26, 2022

Lloyd Barba is Assistant Professor of Religion at Amherst College. This interview is based on his new book, Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California (Oxford University Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Sowing the Sacred? LB: Having...

The Author’s Corner with Andrea McDowell

Rachel Petroziello   |  July 28, 2022

Andrea McDowell is Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law. This interview is based on her new book, We the Miners: Self-Government in the California Gold Rush (Harvard University Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write...

What the six California Super Bowl stadiums tell us about The Golden State

John Fea   |  February 2, 2022

The Super Bowl has been (or will be) held in: SoFi Stadium (2022) Levi’s Stadium (2016) Stanford Stadium (1985) The Rose Bowl (1977, 1980, 1983, 1987, 1993) Jack Murphy Stadium (1988, 1998, 2003) Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (1967, 1973) Here...

Is it possible to respond to Greg Laurie’s invitation to accept Jesus tonight at Angel Stadium without also joining a political movement? 

John Fea   |  October 3, 2021

Thousands of Christians and their unbelieving friends will file into Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California on Sunday for Greg Laurie’s Southern California Harvest Crusade. They will be hoping for a good-old fashioned revival. Laurie is the pastor of Harvest Christian...

What California’s conservative evangelicals think about Larry Elder

John Fea   |  September 11, 2021

Here is Jack Hibbs, pastor of Calvary Chapel–Chino Hills, coming just short of telling his congregation to pray that talk radio host Larry Elder replace California governor Gavin Newsom in the upcoming recall election. As is often the case with...

California settles with John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church

John Fea   |  September 1, 2021

Here is Alejandra Melina at Religion News Service: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday (Aug. 31) voted to authorize a $400,000 payment to settle a legal battle with Grace Community Church over lead pastor John MacArthur’s defiance...

When celebrity megachurch pastors get too close to politicians.

John Fea   |  August 20, 2021

Some California evangelicals love GOP gubernatorial candidate and conservative talk show host Larry Elder. None more than Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel–Chino Hills. Today Elder’s former fiancée and radio producer is accusing him of waving a gun at her while...

Episode 17: “The City by the Bay Starts Marrying Same-Sex Couples”

John Fea   |  August 11, 2021

San Francisco beats Massachusetts to the punch and starts issuing marriage licenses. The Christian Right responds. Episode 17: “The City by the Bay Starts Marrying Same-Sex Couples” dropped last night. Subscribers to Current at the Longshore level and above receive this narrative history...

The Western Klan

John Fea   |  April 7, 2021

When we think of the Ku Klux Klan we think about the American South during Reconstruction and the 1920s. But as Kevin Waite informs us in his recent piece at The Atlantic, the Klan also targeted Chinese immigrants in California....

The “moral complexity” of Junipero Serra

John Fea   |  August 17, 2020

Father Junipero Serra, a Franciscan priest who established some of the earliest Spanish missions  in California, has been under attack of late. On June 19, 2020, activists pulled-down a Serra statue in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The following day,...

What is going on with John MacArthur and Romans 13?

John Fea   |  July 25, 2020

I could say a lot of things here about John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, but until yesterday I always thought he took a pretty consistent stand on passages like Romans 13 that require Christians...

Friday night court evangelical roundup

John Fea   |  July 3, 2020

What have Trump’s evangelicals been saying since our last update? Jentezen is worried about the radical left controlling churches: California’s Governor just banned singing/chanting at church. Catholics can’t recite mass; Evangelicals can’t worship out loud. The very definition of discrimination is to allow thousands...

Most of California’s Evangelical Megachurches are Still Online

John Fea   |  May 22, 2020

1200 California churches will open this weekend in defiance of the governor’s orders. We posted about this here. But before the press paints California evangelicals with one broad brush, as they are prone to do, it is worth noting that...

“Genuine Christian Faith is Larger Than the Constitution”

John Fea   |  May 22, 2020

It looks like more than 1200 California pastors will hold in-person services this weekend in violation of Governor Gavin Newsoms’s stay-at-home order. Read their letter to Newsom here. Here is Peter Marty, publisher of The Christian Century: What’s motivating this...

How Politics Shapes American History Textbooks

John Fea   |  January 13, 2020

In a nice piece of investigating reporting and research (which she writes about in this companion piece), New York Times education reporter Dana Goldstein compared middle school and high school textbooks read by students in California and Texas.  These books,...

California Confederates

John Fea   |  August 20, 2019

There were apparently a lot of Confederates in California.  Kevin Waite, a history professor at Durham University, explains at The New Republic: Earlier this month, the last major Confederate monument in California came down. It was a curious one: a nine-foot granite...

Song of the Day: Nostalgia Upon Nostalgia

John Fea   |  June 28, 2019

I am really enjoying Bruce Springsteen’s new album Western Stars.  Like I usually do when Springsteen releases a new album, I have been listening to Western Stars on repeat.  (It has been nice to take a break from the Hamilton soundtrack). Last week I was walking...

Father Junipero Serra is OUT at Stanford

John Fea   |  September 18, 2018

Here is the Stanford press release: Stanford will rename some campus features named for Father Junipero Serra, the 18th-century founder of the California mission system, but will retain the Serra name and the names of other Spanish missionaries and settlers...

“No, this was not a land dedicated to Big Macs”

John Fea   |  June 15, 2018

With the current debate taking place over whether to split California into three separate states, Rebecca Worby tells us about other secession movements in American history.  Here is a taste of her piece at Pacific Standard: MCDONALD TERRITORY No, this was...

Franklin Graham Calls Sanctuary Cities “just a little picture of hell”

John Fea   |  June 3, 2018

From Relevant magazine: Evangelist Franklin Graham has made some incendiary comments about cities in California. Graham was speaking on a radio show when he was asked about the evangelical “fight to win back California,” as The New York Times called it. Though Graham told host Todd...

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