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social justice

The lost social justice ethic of the temperance movement

Daniel K. Williams   |  April 25, 2024

This essay is cross-posted from the Anxious Bench. When even the most conservative of American evangelicals started drinking alcohol, they lost their movement’s philosophical foundation for social justice. That’s an overly simplistic statement, but what I mean by that is […]

An Australian theologian changes his mind about “woke”

John Fea   |  November 18, 2023

Michael Bird is the Academic Dean of Ridley College in Melbourne. He is author or editor of over a dozen books. Recently, Bird wrote a piece at his Substack page titled “How I Changed My Mind on Woke.” I can’t […]

Shawn Fain’s Christian radicalism

John Fea   |  September 30, 2023

Earlier this week I wondered why people were not talking and writing more about UAW president Shawn Fain’s Christian faith. Church historian Heath Carter has published the piece I was hoping for. Here is a taste of his Jacobin article […]

The Christian faith of UAW’s Shawn Fain

John Fea   |  September 27, 2023

He carries a Bible and regularly invokes his faith as he leads the United Auto Workers in a historic strike against the country’s three largest automakers. For Fain, the strike is a “righteous cause.” This reminds of Eugene Debs’s claim […]

Every revival has its Old Lights and skeptics

John Fea   |  February 13, 2023

If you’ve been following my ongoing curation of the Asbury University revival going on right now, you will see that there are a lot of skeptics. Anyone who knows something about the history of revivalism in the United States is […]

Staughton Lynd, 1929-2022

John Fea   |  November 18, 2022

We brought Staughton Lynd’s death to your attention yesterday. We now have an obituary. Here is the New York Times: Staughton Lynd, a historian and lawyer who over a long and varied career organized schools for Black children in Mississippi, […]

More on Christian socialism

John Fea   |  October 12, 2022

Last weekend we dropped Episode 103 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast with historian Vaneesa Cook, author of Spiritual Socialists: Religion and the American Left. I hope you enjoy this episode. If you are interested in learning more […]

There is not a “hard distinction” between the gospel and the pursuit of social justice

John Fea   |  June 6, 2022

Mark Glanville of Regent College (Vancouver, B.C.) explains: The recent Guidepost Solutions report on sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention revealed that August Boto, a key leader on the SBC Executive Committee, labeled the work of advocates on behalf of survivors […]

Biden responds to evangelical World Relief’s call to raise the refugee ceiling

John Fea   |  April 17, 2021

Evangelicals are doing good work. Here is a taste of Jack Jenkins’s reporting at Religion News Service: President Joe Biden’s administration has reversed a decision to keep in place a historically low cap on refugee admissions left by Donald Trump, […]