Everybody and Everyman: Medieval and Modern Morality Plays

May 7, 2024 By Lynneth Renberg

Maybe let’s just all be a little better about recycling. Also really really listening to each other, and maybe being less judgmental and more forgiving but, also, owning up to our mistakes and being open to changing our own minds. Lead with our Understanding. You know: just being nice to each other. For once. And I’m talking about Everybody. (Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Everybody, p. 54) So concludes Everybody, the modern adaptation of the medieval morality play Everyman, written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins... Read more

Faithful Learning in Institutional Contexts, w/ Allie Lopez

May 6, 2024 By Ansley Quiros

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Faithful Learning in Different Institutional Contexts: A Conversation with Allie Roberts Lopez We have been having conversations within the Anxious Bench–conversations that will hopefully continue at the Conference on Faith and History in October–about doing religious history in various educational settings. How does teaching American religions change (or not) at a private college vs. a confessional college/seminary vs. a public university? What about personal affiliation/creedal/behavioral standards? Today I’m talking through some of these issues with Allie Lopez, a graduate student... Read more

Writing My Global Religion Cycle – And Where I Go Next

May 2, 2024 By Philip Jenkins

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There are great magisterial scholars who plan out vast multi-volume series on grand topics. Then there are people like me who write a lot, but only in retrospect do they get a sense of what they have really been up to all these years. To that extent, this post is about me, but maybe it applies to plenty of other authors who only in hindsight see the literary wood for the trees. And in my own case, it massively helps... Read more

The Company of the Courageous Middle

May 1, 2024 By Guest Contributor

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Few things challenge our integrity or our comfort, like being called to express our opinion on an issue where we know we have trusted friends or colleagues or family members on both sides—and in the same room! We are caught in the middle. Moments like this take us off guard at the family dinner table, or at a church committee meeting, or in a casual drinking-fountain conversation at work. Furthermore, they seem to come more often these days. After all,... Read more

Tell All the Truth

April 30, 2024 By Guest Contributor

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Recently, I wrote a book about poetry. I never intended to. Most of my writing and research involves historical works on the Pilgrims and Puritans, where I feel quite comfortable and where I aim to keep writing. Yet for the past several years, I have been doing something a little strange: I teach poetry at church. I have always loved poetry, which I know statistically makes me a little weird. Most people don’t read poems. Biographies? Yes. Memoirs: definitely. Novels,... Read more

Using Radio to Research American History

April 25, 2024 By Philip Jenkins

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Much of my work through the years has involved using popular culture as a vehicle for understanding American social attitudes, whether we are looking at religion and cults, or politics and race. This post is a comment on a major resource there that we perhaps tend to forget. That comment might be unfair, in the sense that this resource might be really well known to others, but I hope some might find this useful. In short – we all know... Read more

United Methodist General Conference Redux: 2020 vs. 2024

April 24, 2024 By Andrea L. Turpin

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I read with interest fellow Anxious Bencher Jacob Randolph’s excellent recent post on the issues facing the United Methodist General Conference 2024. My interest arose from the fact that just over four years ago I wrote an analysis of the issues facing the United Methodist General Conference 2020. As Jake noted, that conference never happened. COVID postponed it all the way until this year. What struck me is how similar the issues still are–even after the possible split I wrote... Read more

Why Is the Abortion Rate Increasing?

April 23, 2024 By Daniel K. Williams

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The Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 was supposed to reduce the number of abortions in the United States. In the summer of 2022, jubilant pro-life advocates eagerly forecast an increase in the number of childbirths and encouraged churches to be prepared to help care for all the extra children in their communities who would be born to women in crisis situations who would otherwise have had abortions. And advocates of abortion rights issued dire predictions... Read more

The Johnson-Reed Act and American Religious History

April 22, 2024 By Melissa Borja

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This year marks one hundred years since the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, popularly known as the Johnson-Reed Act. Reflecting the nativism, xenophobia, and scientific racism of the early twentieth century, this law drastically reduced immigration to the United States, excluded non-white immigrants who were racially ineligible for citizenship, and created a permanent national origins quota system that prioritized immigrants from northern and western Europe. In creating these new discriminatory barriers to immigration, the Johnson-Reed Act transformed... Read more

Taylor Swift, Tortured Poets Department and Exegesis

April 21, 2024 By Joey Cochran

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I think Taylor Swift, J. J. Abrams, and pre-critical exegesis share something in common. They have mastered the method of employing “mystery” to foster enduring curiosity and interest in discovering the riches that their stories contain. When I chat with my family about a new Taylor Swift album, the pull of Swift’s music that keeps my family members listening is that they want to unlock the secrets of the stories that she tells. They want to know what they “really”... Read more