Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History

Last updated on: February 26, 2025 at 3:08 pm By Thomas Albert Howard

I am very pleased to announce on this post that my new book Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History (Yale University Press) will be released this month. Here is a link to the book and here is the cover description: A popular truism derived from the Enlightenment holds that violence is somehow inherent to religion, to which political secularism offers a liberating solution. But this assumption ignores a glaring modern reality: that putatively progressive regimes committed to secularism have... Read more

Who’s Watching the Kids? Justice, Morality and Childcare

Last updated on: March 7, 2025 at 6:36 pm By Lisa Clark Diller

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Recently I was in charge of an event—inviting people to come, making sure the program went well, helping with logistics, promoting it, organizing speakers—and I forgot to think about childcare. I’m not a parent right now myself, but that isn’t an excuse. I had married couples on the program who were parents, and I hadn’t thought about how to be more hospitable or inclusive for families with kids. This isn’t just a matter of creating an event that is... Read more

Donald Trump, Canada, and the Deep Roots of American Empire

Last updated on: March 6, 2025 at 7:24 am By Philip Jenkins

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You can think many things about the Trump presidency, but few devote much attention to the impact on the select band of scholars who work on the history of American empire, people such as, oh, myself. I will explain that concern in this post, and suggest that the apparent weirdness of some of the administration’s current claims have very deep historical roots. He is no Donald-come-lately. Dreams of US Empire So here I am innocently writing a book on religion... Read more

Christianity, White Supremacy & the Rise of American Nazism

Last updated on: March 5, 2025 at 12:44 pm By Ansley Quiros

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Old/New Nazism in America Like many of you, I have observed in horror the uptick of expressions of American Nazism over the last several months: American Nazis marching in Nashville, Elon Musk’s emphatic salute, Kanye West selling swastika t-shirts during the Super Bowl. These events have also shaken loose a dormant memory, that offers historical context for some of this, if no comfort. Over a decade ago, in 2012, I conducted field research for my first book in Southwest Georgia.... Read more

Systems and Shields: A Women’s History Month Reflection

Last updated on: March 3, 2025 at 7:01 am By Lynneth Renberg

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It’s March, which means it’s Women’s History Month– and while in past years at the Anxious Bench, my March posts have been more celebratory, this year’s post is a bit different. Past posts have pointed out how doing church history with an eye towards women tells a better story of the church, or why having women at the table when making policies matters. This year, I’m writing about two books that I think everyone should read this March (one that’s... Read more

Using Tin Pan Alley Songs to Understand American Empire

Last updated on: February 26, 2025 at 4:48 pm By Philip Jenkins

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This post concerns using a kind of historical evidence that I don’t normally deal with, namely popular songs from the early and mid-twentieth century. Film, pulp fiction, and even radio programs, I often use, and with great confidence, but Tin Pan Alley is new to me as a resource. I think I am drawing some valuable lessons, and I really would request help in finding more examples. I am presently dealing with the history of American empire, and specifically from... Read more

Reckoning & Healing: Recovering from Purity Culture Review

Last updated on: February 26, 2025 at 9:30 am By Guest Contributor

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“I want an honest recollection of what has been done. I want a reckoning with the harm purity culture has caused so many people. Not because I have a vendetta against evangelicals (to be clear, I don’t), but because I see the disparity between my faith and the ideas purported by purity culture.” I recently expressed this sentiment to an interdisciplinary group of scholars. We were reflecting on the ways we envision our scholarship having an impact on society. I... Read more

The Evangelical Assault on Democratic Institutions

Last updated on: February 24, 2025 at 11:19 pm By Daniel K. Williams

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As I have watched the rapid destruction of constitutional checks and balances and liberal democratic norms over the past month, I have continued to reflect on why so many (though thankfully not all) of my fellow evangelical Christians in the United States support this eradication of institutional safeguards. The destruction of democratic norms did not come as a surprise. On the morning of Donald Trump’s inauguration last month, I issued this warning in Current magazine: “When the second Trump administration... Read more

CAPTAIN JINKS, CATCH-22, and the Radical Tradition

Last updated on: February 20, 2025 at 8:05 am By Philip Jenkins

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I have been discussing Ernest Crosby’s novel Captain Jinks, Hero (1902), which I would claim as a lost classic of radical American literature, a comprehensive assault on war, militarism, empire, institutional religion, and racism. One reason that it is lost, I think, is so much of the message is delivered quite subtly, and you really have to stay awake to catch all the allusions. No, Crosby calling the flag “Old Gory” throughout is not a typo (but try telling Autocorrect... Read more

Corset-burning, Revivalism, and 19th-Century Feminism

Last updated on: February 18, 2025 at 9:54 am By David Swartz

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Revivalists burn their bras in a Free Methodist bonfire Read more