An NBC news exit poll shows that 32% of white “evangelical” or “born again” Christians voted to enshrine the right to an abortion in the Ohio constitution. As expected, 68% of white evangelicals opposed the measure, but I was surprised...
I’ll have my eye on several elections and referenda tonight. I am interested to see what happens with abortion in Ohio and I will be voting in the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court race. But I am most intrigued by the...
Here is Jeremy Gray at Alabama.Com: The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Kentucky State Supreme Court arguing an expanded child abuse law should not allow claims to be brought against “non-perpetrators” such as religious organizations, the Louisville...
Something is happening at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky and it has some striking similarities to 1970: Here is Alexandra Presta at The Asbury Collegian: I have been in Hughes Auditorium for almost twelve hours now without an intent to...
I talked to the Associated Press this week. A taste: KENTUCKY, USA — In the midterm elections, evangelical Christians across the nation reconfirmed their allegiance to conservative candidates and causes, while Catholic voters once again showed how closely divided they are...
While Georgia and other states are restricting the right to vote, Kentucky is expanding it. Here is Tim Elfrink at The Washington Post: As Republicans in more than 40 states have pushed bills to restrict voting after former president Donald Trump’s November...
A reader sends this along. I think it sums up the troubling moral contradiction at the heart of American politics today. I also recommend Lisa and David Swartz’s political sign photo essay from Wilmore, Kentucky.
Hope Reese has written a nice introduction to Wendell Berry and his place-centered, agrarian ideas. Here is a taste: Bill McKibben’s environmental activism was spurred after his wife gave him a copy of Berry’s 1979 essay collection Home Economics, which offered...
Apparently last night’s visit by Donald Trump, Rand Paul, and Mitch McConnell did not help Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin. As David Axelrod just said on CNN, Trump would not have gone to Kentucky is he did think Bevin was going...
This image has been making the rounds on social media: Actually, this image has probably been photo-shopped. Here is the original: Read more about this image at the Library of Congress....
Saul Cornell, the best historian on guns and the Second Amendment working today, tells us about an 1853 school shooting in Louisville, Kentucky. Here is a taste of his piece at Politico: Though little remembered now, the first high-profile school shooting...
Kentucky governor Matt Bevin wants to close the University Press of Kentucky. Agrarian writer and novelist Wendell Berry, who lives on a farm in Henry County, thinks Bevin’s budget proposal is “petty and barbaric.” Writing in the Louisville Courier-Journal, Berry defends...
Matthew Stewart is a Ph.D candidate in American history at Syracuse Univesity. In his recent piece at “Boom California,” he explores the agrarian writer Wendell Berry‘s decision to leave his home state of Kentucky for the creative writing program at...
Regular readers of The Way of Improvement Leads Home will be familiar with a longer version of this piece. Here is a taste of a shorter version syndicated today through Religion News Service: (RNS) Matt Bevin, the governor of Kentucky, recently...
Some students will do just about anything to get an “A” on a final exam. The Lexington Herald Leader is reporting that a University of Kentucky student climbed through ceiling ducts to a professor’s office to steal a statistics exam. ...
John Inscore Essick is a co-pastor at Port Royal Baptist Church in Henry County, Kentucky and teaches Christian History at the Baptist Seminary of Kentucky. But more importantly, he is a regular reader of The Way of Improvement Leads Home!...
Craig Thompson Friend is CHASS Distinguished Graduate Professor of History and Director of Public History at NC State University. This interview is based on his new book, Along the Maysville Road: The Early American Republic in the Trans-Appalachian West (University...
Creekside Baptism–Primitive Baptist Church of Morehard, KY–August1940. Source...
In case you haven’t heard, Rowan County Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis refuses to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because it violates her Christian beliefs.I appreciate Davis’s religious-inspired convictions about marriage. As long as religious liberty is part of the...
Richard C. Traylor is Professor of History at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. This interview is based on his new book Born of Water and Spirit: The Baptist Impulse in Kentucky, 1776-1860 (University of Tennessee, 2015). JF: What led you to...
