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context

The “Appeal to Heaven” flag was a revolutionary-era symbol. The “Appeal to Heaven” flag is a Christian Nationalist symbol

John Fea   |  May 25, 2024

Not familiar with the Samuel Alito “Appeal to Heaven” flag controversy? Get up to speed here. I am seeing a lot of tweets like this: What Reed and Pence fail to recognize is that symbols like the Pine Tree Flag […]

Why James Cone didn’t “cancel” himself

John Fea   |  January 26, 2024

David Fitch, the B.R. Linder Chair of Evangelical Theology at North Park University, reflects on Black liberation theologian James Cone’s decision not to “cancel” himself. Here is Fitch’s opening: In his 1989 preface to theĀ 2ndĀ edition ofĀ Black Theology and Black Power, […]

Jelani Cobb: “I would like to see our graduates walking out the door with 50 years of contextual knowledge on the beats they cover”

John Fea   |  October 14, 2022

This is what you get when you hire an American historian to run a school of journalism. Historian and New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb is the new dean of Columbia School of Journalism. What a great pick! Here is a […]

The Tampa Bay Times rejects “just the facts” history

John Fea   |  May 22, 2021

History teaching begins with facts. But history teaching that stops with “just the facts” is not history teaching. Historians think about “what happened” in context. They think about facts in relations to other facts, leading them to tell complex stories […]