The Pilgrims would not recognize themselves in the rhetoric of so-called Christian patriots. Here is a taste of Wheaton College historian Tracy McKenzie‘s piece at Religion News Service: Certainly, the English Christians we call the Pilgrims were searching for an...
Thanksgiving
The forgotten virtue of gratitude
Our annual Thanksgiving tradition here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. I wrote this Inside Higher Ed piece on gratitude in November 2008. I have had to remind myself of this piece a lot in the last couple of years.–JF It was a typical...
The forgotten virtue of gratitude
Our annual Thanksgiving tradition here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. I wrote this Inside Higher Ed piece on gratitude in November 2008. I have had to remind myself of this piece a lot in the last couple of years.–JF It was a typical...
Evangelical roundup: Thanksgiving 2021 edition
What is happening in Evangelical land? Celebrating the wonders of creation on Thanksgiving. Apparently it is time to “thank the Pilgrims” for “defeating socialism.” How dare the Pilgrims provide for their neighbors! (After watching this anachronistic video, read Larry Glickman’s...
Do you think America is divided today? Consider the first Thanksgiving
The first official Thanksgiving in the United States did not take place in 1621. (How could it? There was no United States in 1621). It happened in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln, on October 3, proclaimed that Thursday, November 26 would...
Why do the Detroit Lions always play on Thanksgiving?
It’s a Thanksgiving tradition. This year the woeful Detroit Lions are looking for their first win of the season. Here is James Dator at SBNATION: When the Lions moved to Detroit in 1934, owner G.A. Richards was hellbent on starting...
Turkeys are invading college campuses
Not a joke. Here is The New York Times: They are lounging next to bike racks and outside dorms. They are strutting across Harvard Yard. And, yes, they are occasionally fanning their feathers and charging at innocent students. Across the...
The Wall Street Journal will run its traditional Thanksgiving editorials
Here is the Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal: Since 1961 we’ve run a pair of editorials written by our former editor Vermont Royster. The first is a historical account about the Pilgrims in 1620 as related by William Bradford, a...
How Thanksgiving became a capitalist holiday
In Monday’s Evangelical Roundup (available twice a week to Current patrons at the Surface level), I included a piece by Wallbuilders president Tim Barton in which he claims that the seventeenth-century Pilgrims defeated socialism. Here is Barton: We often think...
Celebrating Juneteenth–together
Historian Tara Strauch reminds us that laws don’t truly make holidays. We have to learn how to celebrate them together. In her recent piece at The Washington Post she compares the acceptance of Juneteenth with the celebration of another regional...