A few notes before jumping into this interview, which I am delighted to present to you. Francis Spufford is the author or editor of nearly a dozen books spanning an array of genres and fields including memoir, popular history, fiction, and alternative history. I have reviewed his most recent novel, Cahokia Jazz and found it both delightful and poignant. I hope you’ll read it. After my encounter with the book, I reached out in the hopes of chatting with him... Read more
I have several Bibles on my shelf—some in ancient languages, some translations that I use for devotion, and some for study. My reading is often paired with commentaries or devotional literature, but even when I am reading without additional sources, I am never reading the bare text. In fact, each Bible we have has extrabiblical material therein, what we might call paratextual devices, which change the way we read and engage with the Scriptures. A paratextual device is an apparatus... Read more
Hi! I am a cultural sociologist on a tour of Texas Megachurches. Check out my first post here! Megachurches are pretty influential in the culture of US evangelicalism, but their influences are often left out of landscape conversations about the state of religion in public life. Polling outfits, like PRRI, often rely on numbers provided by denominations to build their data sets. But megachurches, which are comprised of at least 2k attendees and bring in an average of 5 million... Read more
Los Reyes Magos, ca. 1875-1900, carved and painted wood with metal and string. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Teodoro Vidal Collection CASPAR: I have been looking around for quite a while. I no longer see the wonderous star, our wonderous guide, that has been leading us the whole time. What I really think, what I reckon, is that we have reached the place where the wonderous child whom we are seeking was born. Truly indeed, here is the great altepetl of... Read more
Britain during the 1960s and 1970s suffered from a Prime Minister named Harold Wilson. Once, when Wilson was to read the lesson at Westminster Abbey, the clergy involved asked him which version of the Bible he would like to use – King James, Revised, which one? Flustered, Wilson replied that he would read from the Word of God. We should sympathize with his problem. When we say that the Bible is the Word of God, it surely helps to ask... Read more
“I distrust folks who have ugly things to say about Karl Barth. I like old Barth. He throws the furniture around.” Flannery O’Connor One of the astonishing things about contemporary U.S. Christianity is the continuing popularity of C.S. Lewis. If you might have grown up in a Christian (evangelical) cultural bubble, then the fact that Christians read Lewis is not so shocking. For instance, it is almost guaranteed that if you attended Christian school then you probably read The Lion,... Read more
The emergence of mid-twentieth century evangelicalism, often referred to as “New Evangelicalism” or “Neo-Evangelicalism,” created an influential conglomerate for the purpose of regaining cultural and political power, and it was nothing short of a re-branding effort of conservative, reformed, protestant Christians, who had witnessed how the “Fundamentalist” brand power had been diminished in the public’s eye by modernist pastors like Harry Emerson Fosdick and journalists like H. L. Mencken. I have come to refer to this turning point in the... Read more
A month ago on this site, in “The Crisis of the Evangelical Heart” Joey Cochran said he was “flummoxed” by John Fea calling Jesus and John Wayne and The Making of Biblical Womanhood “woefully flat” examples of “evangelical history” in a recent Atlantic article because he had also previously heard Fea praise both authors’ books. Regardless of the fact that Fea also praised these books in his article, something else that caught my attention that I want to try to... Read more
This is a click-bait question, but over the last few weeks it is one that has been on my own mind as I’ve been helping my students contextualize the Adventist denomination within the larger story of Christianity in the United States. What groups we think we are part of matters, and Seventh-day Adventists have managed to spend most of their history talking about evangelicals without really feeling part of that community. Asking “are Seventh-day Adventists evangelicals?” allows us to consider... Read more
I have a literary dilemma. I want to rave about a piece of writing – a short story – that I would claim as a masterpiece. It is also the best argument you will find for Biblical literacy as an essential aspect of Western culture. The problem is that I can’t tell you exactly why that is the case without giving away the key to the plot. I abhor spoilers. So let me tread as delicate a path as I... Read more
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