Since the rule of law was upheld in the courts of New York on Thursday, May 30, 2024 and a jury of his peers convicted the forty-fifth President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, on 34 counts of felony—there have been numerous responses to the verdict from evangelicals. While these events have unfolded and as I’ve taken in the evangelical responses to them, I have been rereading and reflecting on the significance of James K. A. Smith’s book, You... Read more
by Janine Giordano Drake Last November, I had the chance to visit the National Archives on Pennsylvania Avenue. From the special guest list at the entrance to the secret cafeteria in the basement to the giant shelf of old census data, there was not a detail in that building that I did not find thrilling. But perhaps the most fascinating experience of all occurred after a librarian handed me the giant hand-written record book which kept track of all the... Read more
Recently I described the quite extensive work I had undertaken at an earlier phase of my career on the topic of social problems – or, as we might say, of various panics and nightmares – which got me deep into themes of drugs, child abuse, serial murder, terrorism, and other sensational matters. This was really what I was known for before I turned my attention to Global Christianity and Christian History. At this point, you might well be asking: what... Read more
I am delighted to share this guest post on Southern Baptist (SBC) women by Jordann Heckart, a doctoral student in the History Department at Baylor University. Her research interests include eighteenth-century America, women and gender, and religion. In June, Southern Baptist delegates will vote for a second time on the proposed “Law Amendment” at the SBC 2024 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis. If approved, a new requirement will be added to Article III of the SBC Constitution, which outlines the... Read more
Christians didn’t have to wait until the latest round of campus protests against Israel to know that discussions about Israel and Palestine can inspire passionate moral debate about what justice really means in this case. A decade ago, the Presbyterian Church (USA) was sharply divided between partisans on both sides of a denominational debate about divestment that news reports described as “passionate.” In 2012, the denomination’s General Assembly voted by the narrowest of margins – 333 to 331 – to... Read more
Today is my birthday. As a religion scholar, I’ve long been fascinated by the rituals of specific holidays, and I’ve written several posts about how Americans observe a range of religious and secular feast days: Lent, Chrismukkah, snow days. Today, as I begin a new revolution around the sun, I’d like to discuss the holiday of the birthday. Birthdays and their associated rituals intrigue me because the truth is that I’m something of a birthday grinch. I was... Read more
The posts I am offering right now don’t exactly constitute “autobiography,” but think of them rather as auto-archaeology. As I have remarked, anyone looking at the quite numerous books I have published through the years might be truly puzzled without understanding the various phases of my career. I have written about the Christian History Sequence for which I am best known these days, but there was also a whole previous phase in which I studied Social Problems – if you... Read more
(This month, I am taking a short break from my megachurch visits series.) Over at CT, global managing editor Morgan Lee has a new article with a curious problematic. It’s not Israel or Palestine or the 2024 election; no, it’s “Taylor Swift,” whom Lee laments, “can do whatever she wants.” Lee’s coverage of Swift’s latest, “The Tortured Poets Department” (TTPD), focuses attention on the singer’s (purportedly) lackluster songwriting therein. TTPD’s shortcomings don’t simply reflect a slump; in Lee’s take, they... Read more
Throughout my systematic theology class this semester, I ushered students into the painful process of learning theological terms. Like any discipline, theology has specific language (mostly Greek or Latin phrases, because we are pompous like that) which are used to describe certain ideas—once you learn the terms, you can understand the ideas espoused. So, for example, my students learn that the term aseity is derived from Latin phrase, a se which means “from itself”. This term is then employed to... Read more
One afternoon in early November 1519, a Mexica youth named Mitzli, son of a skilled jewel worker, was walking along one of the footpaths in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, capital of the Mexica people. Nearing the southern causeway to Ixtapalapa, that is, a raised road built into Lake Texcoco to provide access to the mainland, he noticed a commotion. Moctezuma, the Tlatoani (Great Speaker) of the Mexica people was standing near a newcomer, whom he would later learn was Hernando Cortés; both leaders... Read more
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