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Randall Balmer

Carter: “I come here speaking to you today about your subject with a base for my information founded on Reinhold Niebuhr and Bob Dylan.”

John Fea   |  December 31, 2024

This morning I read Randall Balmer’s piece at Politico, “Jimmy Carter: The Last Progressive Evangelical.” Here is the part of Balmer’s article that focuses on Carter’s 1974 Law Day address at the University of Georgia: One of the venerable traditions […]

Randall Balmer on the resignation of Claudine Gay at Harvard

John Fea   |  January 7, 2024

Here is the American religious historian‘s column at Valley News: In the late 1980s, while I was teaching at Columbia University, I received an urgent request to attend a meeting at Union Theological Seminary. I don’t recall everyone who was […]

Current writers join a Politico forum on post-Roe America

John Fea   |  June 23, 2023

Last year Politico asked twenty thinkers to respond to the end of Roe v. Wade. Today Politico asked the same twenty people to reflect on the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. Current editors and […]

Randall Balmer: “Don’t look for pronouns on my email signature”

John Fea   |  May 31, 2023

The Dartmouth College historian of American religion weighs in on the pronouns debate. Here is a taste of Balmer’s piece at the Santa Fe New Mexican: It’s all the rage these days, especially in academic circles, to specify pronouns — […]

Randall Balmer on the closing of his alma mater

John Fea   |  February 21, 2023

On Monday we called your attention to the closing of Trinity College, the undergraduate college of Trinity International University. In that piece I noted that Randall Balmer, a religion professor at Dartmouth College and one of our best chroniclers of […]

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

John Fea   |  May 27, 2022

Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth religion professor and one of the country’s most prominent religious observers, addresses the Southern Baptist sexual abuse report. Here is a taste of his piece at the Los-Angeles Times: In an origin story oft-repeated in SBC circles, […]

Evangelicals talk abortion: round 2

John Fea   |  January 24, 2022

Yesterday I posted a video of evangelical Christians Lisa Sharon Harper, Shane Claiborne, Randall Balmer, Ron Sider, Andrew Lucado, Rob Schenk, and others discussing abortion. Today I realized that this conversation took place just before the 2020 elections. Some of […]

Evangelicals discuss abortion

John Fea   |  January 23, 2022

All of these participants–Elaina Ramsey, Shane Claiborne, Andrea Lucado, Jerushah Duford, Tatiana Torres, Rob Schenck, Randall Balmer, Ron Sider, and Lisa Sharon Harper–identify as evangelical Christians. Rob Schenck’s remarks are especially revealing and powerful:

What I learned this weekend

John Fea   |  June 14, 2021

It was good to get back to conferences this weekend. I forgot how much there is to learn through attending conferences and how much face-to-face engagement is so much more effective at stimulating thinking than ZOOM events. On Thursday I […]