In 2018 I got an e-mail from Amitai Etzioni. He invited me to participate in a “civil dialogue” at The Arena Theater in Washington D.C. titled “There Are No Deplorables Here: A Dialogue Between Trump Supporters and Opponents.” Needless to...
One of the students in my US history survey class this semester began his final family history essay by describing how close he feels to his extended family – and how close his relatives feel to him and to each...
Alison Bell is Professor of Anthropology at Washington and Lee University. This interview is based on her new book, The Vital Dead: Making Meaning, Identity, and Community through Cemeteries (University of Tennessee Press, 2023). JF: What led you to write The Vital Dead?...
Alan J. M. Noonan is an independent historian. This interview is based on his new book, Mining Irish-American Lives: Western Communities from 1849-1920 (University Press of Colorado, 2022). JF: What led you to write Mining Irish-American Lives? AN: I have...
Peter Boag is Professor and Columbia Chair in the History of the American West at Washington State University. This interview is based on his new book, Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon (University of Washington Press, 2022)....
Robert A. Gross is Emeritus Draper Professor of Early American History at the University of Connecticut. This interview is based on his new book, The Transcendentalists and Their World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). JF: What led you to ​write The Transcendentalists...
Rabbi Juliana Karol gets it right in her letter to The New York Times. She is responding to this piece. . . . Entertainment suppresses the agency of its audience, rendering us passive observers. Faith is just the opposite, demanding...
This is a revised and updated version of a post originally published on March 6, 2020: After a couple weeks focusing on “creation” in my Created Called for Community (CCC) course at Messiah University, we have shifted gears slightly to focus on the...
“We Take Care of Our Own”: Back in 2012, I wrote a piece about this song at my old Patheos column: What is this experiment that we call the United States? What did Thomas Jefferson mean by the phrase “the...
Letter to You is here. My favorite song so far is “House of 1000 Guitars”: I am sure people will interpret this song in different ways, but my interpretation starts with Springsteen himself. Here is a taste of Brian Hiatt’s...
Here is Ruth Graham at Slate: Fewer than 3,000 people live in Warner. For this community, losing Schoodacs is shattering. My family and I saw someone we knew at the coffee shop every time we stopped in. Our next-door neighbor worked...
What can you do with a history major? You can offer leadership and a path toward social healing in the midst of a suffering community. This is what 2015 Messiah College history major Grady Breen, a social studies teacher and...
I published this piece in 2012 when I was writing a column at Patheos. I think it holds up pretty well. –JF What is this experiment that we call the United States? What did Thomas Jefferson mean by the phrase...
Most of my students have never heard of Augustine of Hippo. Very few of them have read a 5th-century text. So I wasn’t sure what to expect when we discussed parts of Augustine’s Confessions in my Created and Called for Community...
This is an important reminder from Shai Held, president, dean, and chair in Jewish Thought at Hadar. Here is a taste of his recent piece at The Atlantic: Why do I say “the elderly”? In its biblical context, the obligation to...
Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam published his article “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” in 1995. (His book titled Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community appeared in 2000). Last Friday, we read and discussed Putnam’s seminal article in...
After a couple weeks focusing on “creation” in my Created Called for Community (CCC) course at Messiah College, we have shifted gears slightly to focus on the meaning of “community.” Our first reading on this front was Martin Luther King...
Ernest L. Boyer (1928-1995) is the most distinguished graduate of Messiah College and one of the most influential educators of the last century. He was a Brethren in Christ pastor, the chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY)...
I am pretty old school when it comes to the first day of class. As some of you remember from my post last week, this semester I am teaching Messiah College’s first-year course Created and Called for Community (CCC). Yesterday...
This semester, for the first time in my eighteen-year career at Messiah College, I will not be teaching any history courses. Instead, I will be teaching three sections of a required first-year seminar titled “Created and Called for Community.” This...
