Mitt Romney left the U.S. Senate this week. Over at The Dispatch, Samuel Benson reflects on his “farewell address.” A taste: …There are some today who would tear at our unity, who would replace love with hate, who deride our […]
religion and American Revolution
One night event: “Faith and Democracy and the Legacy of the First Prayer in Congress”
Join Carpenters’ Hall at the American Philosophical Society‘s Benjamin Franklin Hall on the evening of September 5th for a rousing discussion between nine faith leaders from historic Philadelphia congregations. They will discuss and debate prayer and religion in American government […]
AHA’s History Behind the Headlines: “The Role of the Bible in the Founding of the United States and Religious Mandates in Public Schools”
I am looking forward to this event tomorrow at noon. It is hosted by the American Historical Association and is free and open to the public. Check it out. Join us on Friday, July 26, at 12 p.m. ET, for an […]
The disputed thesis that underpins MAGA evangelicalism
I have a piece today at Commonweal. Read it here. A taste: On April 5, 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Trump announced via Twitter that he would be streaming the Palm Sunday service at Harvest Christian […]
Was America founded as a Christian nation? Historian Allen Guelzo weighs-in
Here is the prize-winning historian at John Piper’s Desiring God website: John Randolph of Roanoke (1773–1833) had no confidence that America was, or ever had been, a Christian republic. Six months after the close of the War of 1812 — […]
Is evangelical Christianity a religious movement, or is it something else?
I first read historian Paul E. Johnson’s 1978 book A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 in 1989 while I was studying church history at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Johnson argued that evangelical religion in Rochester, […]
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 […]