To say the least, the 2016 meeting of the Conference on Faith and History was a memorable one. Start with its end, when Regent University hosted a Donald Trump rally — unexpectedly bumping the last day of CFH2016 to another part of campus and giving Americanists like Kristin, David, and our friend John Fea a chance to watch up close a most unusual chapter in U.S. history.
A lot of people on Regent University campus today. Many of them want to make America great again. #cfh2016 #Trump
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) October 22, 2016
Oh, and there was also this meeting of the minds at the Friday night dinner: one of the few times that so many of our far-flung contributors have been at the same place at the same time.
A few of us ran into each other at a chicken dinner in Virginia. #cfh2016 pic.twitter.com/cqyi7VOFWY
— The Anxious Bench (@anxious_bench) October 22, 2016
But mostly, I came away from CFH2016 again grateful for my favorite professional society, the only one whose plenaries and panels so consistently leave me thinking anew about my faith, my profession, my calling, and how they intersect.
Because I wasn’t presenting a paper myself for once, I had the opportunity to focus on live-tweeting session after session for others. I won’t repeat more than a fraction of those tweets here, just a few clustered around the three themes embedded in the conference title, “Christian Historians and the Challenges of Race, Gender, and Identity.”
Race
Race — and its implications for the expansion of empire and slavery — was central to plenary addresses by Tommy Kidd (on revivalist George Whitefield’s defense of slaveholding) and Verónica Gutiérrez (on indigenous Christianity in the Mexican city of San Pedro Cholula).
Mostly, @ThomasSKidd reminds me that slavery, not freedom, was the constant in the 18th c. Atlantic world. #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 20, 2016
What to do? @ThomasSKidd found wanting by one @Amazon reviewer who found him overly critical: the "don't harp on it" model. #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 20, 2016
Or, "face the quandary": Whitefield spread both the Gospel *and* slavery. @ThomasSKidd #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 20, 2016
16th c. Franciscans believed that they had found in Cholula the perfect place to regain ground lost to Protestantism. #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
Among other things, this is a great way to do a talk: Verónica walking us through both time and space as she recalls her visit. #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
Veronica: "I refuse to be a tourist. I have come as a pilgrim. I have come as a historian." #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
Then I also managed to attend two panels focused on race, starting with one Friday morning on Christian missionaries in 20th century Africa. I’ll skip past most of those tweets to keep this post from sprawling too much, but I appreciated Jay Carney’s conclusion to his paper on the role of Catholic missionaries in shaping the racialized identities that led to genocide in Rwanda:
Carney's challenge: How do we form Christian imagination that transcends race without minimizing historical realities of racism? #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
But I think the most thought-provoking panel I heard all conference came Saturday morning, when three professors reflected on race and American history. The chair and respondent was Beth Barton Schweiger, whose essay on love as a historical virtue was mentioned by all three papers:
Running a bit late, but walked in and heard someone talking about the importance of love as an intellectual virtue… #rightplace #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
Harkrider celebrating panel chair Beth Barton Schweiger and her discussion of love in Confessing History. https://t.co/xnu6GnAnmX #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
Up next, Rusty Hawkins of @IndWes on "White Evangelicals, Historical Memory, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice." #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
The paradox: confronting individual prejudice is necessary… but evangelicals have inherited *structures* created by segregation #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
#3 – Karen Johnson (also of @WheatonCollege): "Remembering Emmett Till: On the Importance of Teaching White Supremacy." #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
Johnson: While many evangelicals seem to think that you stop racism by not talking about it, essential that historians do otherwise #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
How to teach such stories? Karen points to the biblical discipline of lament as a "pastoral practice." (echoes of @ThomasSKidd) #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
Implied (at least for me): Do evangelical churches and colleges provide that kind of community? Space for lament, or silence? #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
Gender
For me, Friday morning started with a panel on gender (as it intersected with religion) in American popular culture, with two papers on sports following Mandy McMichael’s on the Miss America pageant.
Perhaps the first winner to talk about faith in the Miss America pageant: Vonda Kay van Dyke (1965). https://t.co/WECNDMeFUF #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
Evangelism, Miss America-style: contestant testimonies drew others to the pageant. @mandyemcmichael #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
@AndreaLTurpin makes a fascinating point: the Miss America contestants quoted by @mandyemcmichael spoke of God as Father, not Jesus #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
#2: @hhampton44 on "Notre Dame Football, American Catholic Manhood, and Muscular Christianity." #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
Said one of Finn's football-playing boys: "Every bump I get can be offered up for my sins." @hhampton44 #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
#3: @p_emory on women in the history of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (pre-Title IX). #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
One key forerunner here is Henrietta Mears, introduced to @anxious_bench readers in 2013 by John Turner. https://t.co/4F3VFmcHo9 #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
That afternoon I enjoyed a panel discussion of religious biographies of women, with the speakers including our own Kristin Du Mez. I’m working up a couple of posts on biography for November, so I’ll revisit more ideas from this session at that time. But here are a few from Kristin, Hannah More biographer Karen Swallow Prior, and Tim Larsen (editor of the Spiritual Lives series at Oxford Press) to give you a bit of flavor:
@kkdumez Nervous hand goes up: "That woman who wrote that song whose dad was a famous minister?" Yes. https://t.co/TjicNFkPlP #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
Some possible subjects? @kkdumez nominates Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ethel Waters, Madonna, and, of course, Hillary Clinton. #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
@LoveLifeLitGod takes up the @Slate article, "Is History Written about Men, by Men?" https://t.co/7w5Bx2ZG5T #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
Larsen adds to @kkdumez's list of challenges: How interested are most historians of women/gender in religion, or religious women? #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 21, 2016
I had to cut short my time at CFH2016 in order to take my kids to Yorktown and Williamsburg (home of my undergraduate alma mater), which unfortunately meant that I had to miss a promising panel with multiple Anxious Bench connections:
#cfh2016 panel on teaching women's history at Christian colleges @kkdumez @AndreaLTurpin pic.twitter.com/oPPFaUNQxW
— Beth Allison Barr (@bethallisonbarr) October 22, 2016
But before leaving, I’m glad I got to hear Kate Bowler’s lively, insightful analysis of women in megaministry:
@KatecBowler situates @JoyceMeyer, @AnnVoskamp, et al. in longer tradition of women as "advice-givers." #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
One thing for me to confess: I write about "evangelicalism" knowing little of these women, whose ministry reaches millions. #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
@KatecBowler: women in megaministry "can't be accused of usurping the pulpit – just the limelight." #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
@KatecBowler: Women in megaministry "earn their authenticity" by these confessions – their brand depends on their flaws. #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
Better, read @KatecBowler's own blog – which is poignant, hilarious, and thought-provoking. #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
Lots to love about #cfh2016, but nothing more than this: 50+ brilliant women spoke at a conference displaced by Donald Trump. #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
Identity
Our final theme came out most clearly for me in the presidential address by Jay Green (Covenant College), whose book, Christian Historiography: Five Rival Versions, was the subject of a rich discussion late Friday afternoon. Like the 2012 address by Tracy McKenzie, Jay’s talk interpreted CFH’s past, surveyed CFH’s present, and presented challenges for CFH’s future.
Green: old politics of evangelical identity in DNA of @faithandhistory, but what does it mean for us today? #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
Green: founders of new evangelical historiography sought an honest but usable past – for renewal of evangelicalism. #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
More recently, Green sees a 2nd wave deepening and complicating evangelical historiography… again, mostly insiders. #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
Many struggle to reconcile appreciation for evangelicalism past (18/19th c.) with evangelicalism present. #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
Exit question: our alienation from evangelicalism is undeniable… will CFH again take up identity politics and contend for it? #cfh2016
— Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) October 22, 2016
Special thanks to Beth for coordinating such a rich program. We look forward to hearing her 2018 CFH presidential address… which will no doubt resolve all the tensions suggested by Jay Green and provide us with a clear path forward!