In episode 2915 of Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” the Alt-right pundit, former Trump adviser, and convicted felon has some choice words for Christianity Today editor and evangelical anti-Trumper Russell Moore. Watch: Several things strike me about this video. First: Bannon...
Great Awakening
The great revival is coming and it will make America Christian again
Greg Laurie says it is coming and it will restore America to its Christian roots. Ted Cruz says it is coming and it will propel evangelicals into cultural prominence. Eric Metaxas and Greg Locke also say it is on its...
Megachurch pastor Greg Laurie keeps pushing the links between the Great Awakening and the American Revolution
Last week at the Sons of American Revolution conference on religion and the American Revolution, I started my keynote lecture this way: On April 5, 2020, Donald Trump announced (via Twitter of course) that he would be streaming the Palm...
Trump supporter says that prayer for “election integrity” may lead to the “Third Great Awakening.” (And other court evangelical news)
Russians are hacking the U.S. government and Trump remains silent. Thousands of people died today from COVID-19 and Trump remains silent (except when he takes credit for the vaccine in a tweet about the stock market). Meanwhile, Trump continues to...
Evangelicals and QAnon
At last night’s town hall meeting on NBC, Donald Trump refused to condemn QAnon. Many evangelicals are embracing QAnon conspiracy theories. (Never heard of QAnon? Read this Atlantic cover story). I continue to be interested in the connections between QAnon...
On Israel, Great Awakenings, and absurdly bad court evangelical “history”
Mike Evans is one of the lesser known court evangelicals. One of America’s leading Christian Zionists, Evans recently founded the Friends of Zion Heritage Center and the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem to celebrate the “everlasting bond between the Jewish and Christian peoples.”...
Liberty University’s Falkirk Center meets all expectations at its “Get Louder” event
Yesterday, Liberty University’s Falkirk Center, the culture war wing of the largest Christian university in the world, held a 1-day conference titled “Get Louder: Faith Summit 2020.” Evangelical Trump supporters were encouraged to yell and scream more, fight more, and...
Night two (Tuesday) at the DNC convention
Here are some of my tweets from last night with additional context. My twitter followers seemed to be split 50-50 on this take: Obama could not get away w/his 2004 national unity speech today. After night 1 of #DNC2020, it...
Springsteen at the Democratic National Convention 2020
The Rising: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KExE6wL_GFM&w=560&h=315] It looks like QAnon, Steve Bannon, and evangelicals do not have a monopoly on the #GreatAwakening...
Doug Sweeney Reviews “Sarah Osborn’s Collected Writings”
Yale University Press recently published Catherine A. Brekus’s edited volume, Sarah Osborn’s Collected Writings. Check out Sweeney‘s review at the website of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. A taste: This lightly annotated edition of selected Osborn manuscripts...
Review of Eric Metaxas, "If You Can Keep It": Part 5
We are in the midst of a short series on Eric Metaxas’s new book If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty. This post examines Metaxas’s understanding of the First Great Awakening and, specifically, the role in the...
One and Done
In case you haven’t seen the First Round results in the 2016 Junto March Madness tournament, my article “The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian’s Rural Enlightenment (JAH 2003) lost to Jon Butler’s “Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening...
George Marsden on British Colonial Collegiate Education, Circa 1764
At Brown University. Great stuff at the beginning of the lecture on the historical imagination. And Gordon Wood is in the audience! I think he would like Marsden’s opening comments. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OwluiBp7c8]
Was the United States Born as a Result of a Religious Revival?
On June 11, 2012 I appeared on Jerry Newcombe’s radio program when it aired on a local Fort Lauderdale station. David Barton was scheduled to follow me on the show that evening, but at the last minute he backed out. I...