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How the Right gets Gramsci wrong

John Fea   |  April 5, 2022

Check out Alan Wald‘s longform review of Laura Marriss’s translation of Jean-Yves Frétigné’s To Live Is to Resist: The Life of Antonio Gramsci. There is a lot in Wald’s piece, but I want to call your attention to this passage:...

Episode 98: “Conversions: Spiritual and Political”

John Fea   |  March 27, 2022

What do Sammy Davis Jr., Muhammad Ali, Clare Booth Luce, Whitaker Chambers, and Charles Colson all have in common? They all had very public religious conversions. In this episode, historian Rebecca Davis joins us to talk about her new book Public...

Current Associate Editor Felicia Wu Song on the “perils of digital discipleship”

John Fea   |  March 23, 2022

Listen to Felicia Wu Song’s interview with Heather Thompson Day at Christianity Today. In addition to her work at Current, she teaches sociology at Westmont College and is the author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the...

The Penguin Book of Exorcisms

John Fea   |  March 22, 2022

Yes, such a book exists. It is edited by Texas State religious studies scholar Joseph P. Laycock and it is the subject of James Butler’s 3249 word review at London Review of Books. Here is a taste of Butler’s review:...

More books to help us understand the Russia-Ukraine war

John Fea   |  March 16, 2022

Harvard University Press offers seven: Stanislav Aseyev, In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas Volodymyr Rafeyenko, Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love Serhii Plokhy, The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present Yuri Kostenko, Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History Karel C....

Johann Neem “walks among the ruins” of the modern university

John Fea   |  March 11, 2022

Some of you may recall our conversation with Johann Neem in Episode 54 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast. In that episode we talked with the Western Washington University historian about his book What’s the Point of College....

A patriotism reclamation narrative?

John Fea   |  March 2, 2022

This is how political scientist Maxwell G. Burkey describes Stephen B. Smith’s new book Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes. His review shows little sympathy for Smith’s project. Before we get to Burkey’s review, here is a synopsis of...

Episode 95: “The Lost Promise of American Universities”

John Fea   |  February 20, 2022

American universities entered the 1960s with the hope of bringing a high-quality system of universal higher education to all comers. But by the early 1970s hope turned to despair as universities gave way to neoliberalism, corporatism, and a powerful conservative...

Capitalism exhibits “moral idiocy”

John Fea   |  February 11, 2022

I just learned about Christian cultural critic Rodney Clapp‘s recent book Naming Neoliberalism: Exposing the Spirit of Our Age. (I have never met Clapp, but he was the acquisition editor at Baker Books who offered me a contract for Why...

Episode 94: “Gettysburg, 1963”

John Fea   |  February 6, 2022

Our guest in this episode is Gettysburg College historian Jill Ogline Titus. Her new book, Gettysburg 1963, tells the story of the centennial celebration of the Civil War in the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. Through an examination of the experiences of political...

Current Associate Editor Felicia Wu Song publishes Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age

John Fea   |  November 30, 2021

Congratulations to Felicia Wu Song, Professor of Sociology at Westmont College and Associate Editor of Current on the publication of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age (InterVarsity Press). Here is the IVP Press: We’re being...

Roosevelt Montas’s “heartfelt defense of the Eurocentricity of a Great Books curriculum”

John Fea   |  September 21, 2021

Historian Steve Mintz‘s recent column at Inside Higher Ed reviews Roosevelt Montas‘s forthcoming book Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation. Here is a taste: For far too long, he...

Eric Miller reviews Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn’s Ars Vitae

John Fea   |  June 26, 2021

Eric Miller is editor of Current. Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn is a Current contributor. And some of you recall my podcast conversation with Lasch-Quinn in Episode 77 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast. Here is a taste of Miller’s review...

Secession is not a new idea

John Fea   |  May 12, 2021

Here is historian Alan Taylor at The Washington Post: In our polarized times, talk of secession blooms on the losing side of bitterly contested national elections. After the 2016 election, some liberal Californians proposed a referendum to seek independence. Last December in...

Check out the 2021 History Summit

John Fea   |  March 13, 2021

Lindsey Chervinsky is back with another summit. Watch: Authors and books include: Michael Hattem, Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution Ben Wright, Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism Carolyn Eastman, The Strange...

The Author’s Corner with Peter Wirzbicki

Annie Thorn   |  March 4, 2021

Peter Wirzbicki is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University. This interview is based on his new book, Fighting for the Higher Law: Black and White Transcendentalists Against Slavery (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). JF: What led you to write...

Italian-Americans who supported Mussolini

John Fea   |  February 18, 2021

When I interviewed my Italian-American grandfather before he died several years ago at the age of 103, he told me that there were members of my extended family in America who supported Benito Mussolini in the 1930s. I though about...

How did Democrats lose “Joe Bailey”

John Fea   |  February 17, 2021

Over at Dissent, historian Gabriel Winant reviews two new books on working people. The first is David Paul Kuhn’s The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution. The other is Jacob S. Hacker...

A southern evangelical in New York City

John Fea   |  February 17, 2021

Elizabeth Passarella is a southerner who has lived in New York City for twenty-one years. I am eager to take a look at her new collection of essays, Good Apple: Tales of a Southern Evangelical in New York. On her...

Episode 81: God’s Law and Order

John Fea   |  February 2, 2021

On June 1, 2020, Donald Trump declared himself a “law and order” president and marched to historic St. John’s Church for a photo-op with a Bible. Our guest in this episode, historian Aaron Griffith, helps us understand why evangelicals cheered...

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“Turns out the Roman Catholic Church has nothing on the Southern Baptists when it comes to covering up sexual misconduct”

May 27, 2022 By John Fea

What we have said about guns and gun control over the years

May 27, 2022 By John Fea

On abortion, the Trump court evangelicals need the Supreme Court. On gun violence, all they have are “thoughts and prayers.”

May 27, 2022 By John Fea

Episode 37: “Christian Trumpism Before Trump”

May 27, 2022 By John Fea

A lot has changed since Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams met in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race

May 27, 2022 By John Fea

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