Richard Carwardine is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. This interview is based on his new book, Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union (Knopf, […]
Protestantism
The Author’s Corner with Tom Smith
Tom Smith is Keasbey Research Fellow in American Studies at Selwyn College, Cambridge. This interview is based on his new book, Word across the Water: American Protestant Missionaries, Pacific Worlds, and the Making of Imperial Histories (Cornell University Press, 2024). […]
The Author’s Corner with Jason S. Lantzer
Jason S. Lantzer is Assistant Director of the Butler University Honors Program. This interview is based on his new book, “Prohibition Is Here to Stay”: The Reverend Edward S. Shumaker and the Dry Crusade in America (University of Notre Dame […]
The Author’s Corner with Edward B. Davis
Edward B. “Ted” Davis is Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at Messiah University and a Fellow of the International Society for Science & Religion. This interview is based on his new book, Protestant Modernist Pamphlets: Science and Religion […]
Episode 119: “How the Social Gospel Undermined Social Democracy”
There was a profound difference between Christian Socialism and the so-called “Social Gospel.” Janine Giordano Drake explains these differences in her new book The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement. Drake argues that […]
The Author’s Corner with Mark Valeri
Mark Valeri is the Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. This interview is based on his new book, The Opening of the Protestant Mind: How Anglo-American Protestants Embraced Religious Liberty (Oxford […]
The Protestant roots of “wokeness”
Harper’s Magazine is running a piece by Ian Buruma, the former editor of The New York Review of Books (read the article to learn why he is no longer the editor), titled, “Doing the Work: The Protestant ethic and the […]
A national conservative defines “national conservatism” as an effort to “legislate toward a Protestant vision” for America
The so-called “national conservatives” are meeting next month in Miami. Speakers include Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Missouri senator Josh Hawley, political scientist Yoram Hazony, First Things editor R.R. Reno, historian Wilfred McClay, and Southern Baptist seminary president Albert Mohler (we […]
The Author’s Corner with Janet Moore Lindman
Janet Moore Lindman is Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Rowan University. This interview is based on her new book, A Vivifying Spirit: Quaker Practice and Reform in Antebellum America (Penn State University Press, 2022). JF: […]
The Author’s Corner with Dana Logan
Dana Logan is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at UNC Greensboro. This interview is based on her new book, Awkward Rituals: Sensations of Governance in Protestant America (University of Chicago Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Awkward Rituals? […]
The Author’s Corner with Gene Zubovich
Gene Zubovich is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Buffalo. This interview is based on his new book, Before the Religious Right: Liberal Protestants, Human Rights, and the Polarization of the United States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). JF: […]
Is there a link between complementarianism and the proper evangelical response to mask wearing?
Some evangelical groups facing mask mandates in their local school districts are sharing sample religious exemption forms that their fellow evangelicals can use. Here is one that came across my feeds today: I, _________, hereby state that I have chosen […]
Commonplace Book #198
However much the United States has been a moral or religious nation guided by (individual) impulses of spirit and conscience, it has also seen repeated mergers, or confusions, of religious and material intentions. One would be hard-pressed to argue that […]
How do Christian nationalists deal with the Establishment Clause?
Recently, a scholar in another discipline asked me how Christian nationalists who study the American past “ignore, navigate around, or distort the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.” I address this in Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A […]