Women And Gender At The Conference On Faith And History

One of my favorite academic societies, the Conference on Faith and History, holds its biennial meeting in a couple weeks and I’m excited for the line-up! This society is a group of historians of faith rather than historians who study faith, although many of us do. This year’s theme is “Christian Historians and their Contexts.”

The Conference on Faith and History features a lot of panels on historical topics of interest to me. But I also really enjoy the fact that a lot of the panels are reflective about how to be a good teacher, or writer, or public scholar in a way informed by the theology and ethics of the Christian faith.

When I first began attending in 2008 while I was in graduate school, I was pretty rare there as a historian of women and gender. Only the year before, in 2007, historian Catherine Brekus had explored in the introduction to the edited volume The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past why that might be and why we should fix it. Fifteen years later, I’m delighted by the range of topics in that field on the program. I’ve highlighted them below in red. But I’m also delighted to know that her call has been heeded and the topic is now much more frequently integrated into papers that don’t bear its name.

Indeed, I’m impressed with the breadth of the topics. Not surprisingly given the conference theme, several papers consider the relevance of history to contemporary debates (I’m actually presenting on “Contemporary Conversations on the History and Theology of Race and Gender at The Anxious Bench”!). But others consider the history of medicine or missions or medieval Christianity. Historians also reflect on the opportunities and challenges of teaching in different denominational or secular contexts.

If you happen to find yourself near Samford University on October 10-12, come out and enjoy this intellectual feast for yourself! Otherwise, enjoy this foretaste (aka the CFH 2024 program) of what Christian historians are currently thinking about:

Concurrent Sessions | Thursday, 1:30-2:45pm

Centering the South: Reconsidering Twentieth-Century American Protestantism in a Southern Context
Chair/Comment: Rusty Hawkins | Indiana Wesleyan University
• Daniel Bare | Texas A&M University
• Alicia Jackson | Covenant College
• Ansley Quiros | University of North Alabama
• Benjamin (Jack) Young | University of Notre Dame

Christian Uses of History in Non-Academic Contexts
Chair/Comment: Christopher Gehrz | Bethel University (MN)
• Nadya Williams | Current magazine | “Ancient History for the American Church”
• Chris Armstrong | Christian History magazine | “What I’ve Learned at Christian History Magazine about the Public Communication of Church History”
• Janice Bros | Pastor | “Living the Rule of St. Benedict in Today’s Church”

Evangelical Christians and American Politics from the Postwar Era to the 21st Century
Chair/Comment: Andrea L. Turpin | Baylor University
• Daniel K. Williams | Ashland University | “Reexamining Evangelical Attitudes toward Abortion, 1965-1980”
• Joseph Slaughter | Wesleyan University | “‘Death Stalked Close’: Fundamentalists and Firearms”
• Brian Sears | U.S. Military Academy | “Marching on Washington or Charismatic Reconstructionism: Dueling Political Strategies during the Long Reagan Era”
• Paul Thompson | North Greenville University | “Transhistorical Uses of Ethnoracial Discourse by Christians on the Margins”

Recontextualizing Protestant and Catholic Theology
Chair: Thomas Albert Howard | Valparaiso University
• Sam Neulsaem Ha | Calvin Theological Seminary | “Recontextualizing Calvin and Calvin Studies for the Post Colonial Globe: An East Asian Perspective”
• Seunghwan “David” Roh | Calvin Theological Seminary | “Redemption and Consolation: Recontextualizing Jonathan Edwards on the Purpose of Theology in A History of the Work of Redemption”
• Joshua Sander | University of Alabama | “Saving the Popes from Themselves: John Courtney Murray and the Recontextualization of Papal Antiliberalism”
Comment: the audience

Concurrent Sessions | Thursday, 3:00-4:15pm

Context and Religious Biography in 20th-Century America
Chair/Comment: John Wigger | University of Missouri
• Andrew M. Jones | Reinhardt University| “Peter Marshall and American Evangelicalism: A Study of Change and Context”
• Hunter M. Hampton | Stephen F. Austin State University | “Faith and the Fedora: Tom Landry’s Evangelical Manhood”
• Jonathan Root | Augusta University | “Cordell Walker’s America: Chuck Norris in the 1990s”
• Blake Scott Ball | University of North Alabama | “‘Holy Revival, Batman’: The Dark Knight and the Contours of Modern American Religion”

Intersections of Religion with the Histories of Medicine and Technology
Chair: Jonathan Riddle | Pepperdine University
• Savannah Flanagan | Baylor University |“Moravian Nurses and Midwives: Communal Healthcare in Eighteenth-Century North Carolina”
• Brooke LeFevre | Baylor University | “‘School in Obstetrics’: Mormon Midwifery, Obstetrics, and the Medicalization of Reproduction in Late-Nineteenth-Century Utah”
• Christopher Price | New River Community and Technical College | “Reactions of American Religious Bodies to the Spanish Flu”
• Michael Baysa | Washington University in St. Louis | “Techno-Optimism and the Printing Press in American Religious History”

The New History Wars in Institutional Context
Chair: William Thomas Okie | Kennesaw State University
• Janine Giordano Drake | Indiana University
• Seneca Vaught | Kennesaw State University
• Justin Vos | Florida State University
• Nefertari Yancie | Kennesaw State University
• David Zwart | Grand Valley State University

Teaching “The Truth Shall Set You Free” in the Bible Belt
Chair/Comment: David Bains | Samford University
• Carol Ann Vaughn Cross | Samford University | “Whose Virtue and Character Education? SBC Mythology and Classical Christian Curricula in the Nineteenth-Century Bible Belt”
• Kimberly D. Hill | University of Texas-Dallas | “Classical Education, Introspection, and Diversity of Thought at HBCUs, 1910s-1930”
• Laura Caldwell Anderson | Alabama Humanities Alliance | “The Scottsboro Case and the Legacy of Law and Justice in Alabama: Teaching History as Continuing Education and Professional Development”

Plenary Session | Thursday, 4:30-5:45pm

• Welcoming remarks
• Address by S. Jonathan Bass | Samford University

Concurrent Sessions | Friday, 8:30-9:45am

Doing History in the Midst of Crisis: What Has and Has Not Changed Since October 7th and the Siege of Gaza
Chair: Brantley Gasaway | Bucknell University
• Anne Perez | University of South Alabama
• Daniel Hummel | Upper House
• Walker Robins | Merrimack College
• Deanna Womack | Emory University

The History and Memory of the American South
Chair: Corey Markum | Freed-Hardman University
• David R. Bains | Samford University | “Inscribing History, Celebrating Names: Church Cornerstone Practices in Birmingham, Alabama”
• Charles Regli | Baylor University | “Southern Subtlety: Situating Thornwell’s Spirituality of the Church and Its Reception in Its Theological and Cultural Settings”
• Tara Strauch | Centre College | “Relics in the Churchyard: A Historian at the Intersection of Faith, Community, and History”
• Marlena Graves | Northeastern Seminary | “‘Great God! That’s it! They’re all Southern! The whole United States is Southern!’: The Enduring Legacy of Alabama Governor George Wallace”

Hooked on a Feeling: Emotion, Faith, and Gender in Global and Historical Contexts
Chair: Elise Leal | Whitworth University
• Elizabeth Marvel, “All the Single Ladies: Emotions and Pastoral Care in the Late Medieval English Convent” | Baylor University
• Anna Redhair Wells, “Look What You Made Me Do: Gender and Emotion in the Lives of Two Ethiopian Women” | Central Baptist Theological Seminary
• Lynneth Miller Renberg, “What’s Love Got to Do With It? Love and Marriage in Medieval York” | Anderson University (SC)
• Skylar Ray, “Boys Don’t Cry: Gender and Emotion in the Early Biblical Counseling Movement, 1965-1985” | John Brown University

Religion in East and South Asia
Chair: Lisa Clark Diller | Southern Adventist University
• Kris Erskine | Athens State University | “Bubble Tea and Beef Noodles: Gastro-identity as Public Diplomacy in Taiwan”
• Thomas W. Burkman | State University of New York at Buffalo | “The Faith Life of Nitobe Inazō: A Legacy of Philadelphia Quakerism”
• Alan M. Guenther | Briercrest College and Seminary | “Reading Tertullian in British India: Ram Chandra Bose and His Interpretation of Early Christian History”

Teaching History Beyond Our Comfort Zone: Engaging with Christianities in the Classroom
Chair: Robert Tracy McKenzie | Wheaton College
• Timothy D. Grundmeier, “‘Put the Best Construction on Everything’: Balancing Confessionalism and Charity at Denominational Colleges” | Martin Luther College
• Brendan J.J. Payne | North Greenville University | “Living the Golden Mean: An Anglican Teaching at a Southern Baptist University”
• Pearl J. Young | University of Houston-Clear Lake | “Redefining Religious Orthodoxies in the Secular Classroom”
• Ryan J. Butler | John Brown University | “The Church of South India as a Lens on Western Christianity”
Comment: Beth Barton Schweiger | Independent scholar

Wisdom, History, and the Christian Intellectual Tradition: A Discussion of Marcus Plested’s Wisdom in Christian Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2022)
Chair: Agnes R. Howard | Valparaiso University
• Marcus Plested | Marquette University
• Thomas Albert Howard | Valparaiso University
• Jennifer Hevelone-Harper | Gordon College

Concurrent Sessions | Friday, 10:00-11:15am

Current Issues in Activist History: An Anxious Bench Roundtable
Chair: Christopher Gehrz | Bethel University (MN)
• Joey Cochran | Purdue University Northwest | “The Historian’s Reward and Risk for Public Engagement on Social Media”
• Andrea L. Turpin | | Baylor University | “Contemporary Conversations on the History and Theology of Race and Gender at The Anxious Bench”
• David Swartz | Asbury University | “Local Civil War Memory and Public Engagement”
Comment: the audience

The Simulated Past: Reflections on a Teaching Strategy
Chair: Dawn McCormack | Samford University
• Mark A. Schuldt | The Bear Creek School | “Using Simulation to Teach the Logistics of the Pacific War”
• Michael Weismeyer and Matt Tolbert | Southern Adventist University | “Student Perceptions of the Role of Religion and Spirituality in a Reacting to the Past Game Experience”

Note: this session will include a sample simulation, with the audience acting as students

Teaching and Being Who You Are: Challenges and Strategies for BIPOC in Higher Education
Chair: Alicia Jackson | Covenant College
• Michel Sun Lee | Southern Adventist University
• Seneca Vaught | Kennesaw State University

Women and Gender in American Religious History
Chair: Carol Ann Vaughn Cross | Samford University
• Kayla Becknuss | Yale University | “Mormonism and the Bible: Theology of Gender in Nineteenth-Century America”
• Ashlee Chism | General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists | “Leading from the Homefront: Seventh-day Adventist Women in a Changing Context”
• Leslie Garrote | Baylor University | “The List: Policing Women’s Pastoral Titles and the Failure of Racial Reconciliation in the SBC”
• Rachel Cope | Brigham Young University | “Surviving Vesicovaginal Fistula: A New Lens into the History of Conversion”

Lunch | 11:30am-12:45pm

Optional break-out groups
• CFH graduate students – Patrick Leech, coordinator
• High school teachers of the CFH – Prisca Bird, coordinator
• World/Global Christianity – Paul Grant, coordinator

Plenary Session | Friday, 1:30-2:45pm

• Address by Karen Swallow Prior | Independent scholar

Concurrent Sessions | Friday, 2:30-3:45pm

Beyond the Evangelical Crowd: Nationalism in the Mainline Protestant Establishment
Chair: Bryan Lamkin | Azusa Pacific University
• Annie DeVries | | Samford University | “White Christians Only: The Arabs and Woodrow Wilson’s Vision for National Self-Determination”
• D.G. Hart | | Hillsdale College | “Cultural Transformationalism without Kuyper: John Foster Dulles’ Christian World Order”
• Jason Wallace | | Samford University | “Progressive Liberalism and Christian Nationalism: From Civil War to Civil Religion”
• John D. Wilsey | Southern Baptist Theological Seminary | “‘Futurity’ and Geist: Manifest Destiny and the Hegelian Dialectic”

Christianity and the Ancient and Medieval Worlds
Chair: Aaron Johnson | Lee University
• Mills McArthur | Southern Adventist University | “From Christian Missionaries to the British Museum: The Provenance of Aristotle’s Constitution of the Athenians”
• Rollins H. Tucker | Anderson University (SC) | “The Form of Pauline and Early Christian Prophecy”
• James Halverson | Judson University | “Remembering a Pagan Past in a Christian Context: Augustine’s City of God I-V”
• Paul Grant | University of Wisconsin-Madison | “Were There Christians in Medieval West Africa?”

Evangelicals and Christian Business in the 20th/21st Centuries
Chair: Elesha Coffman | Baylor University
• Joey Cochran | Purdue University Northwest | “Creating the Brand Evangelical Story and Buying into Its Myth”
• John Dyer | Dallas Theological Seminary | “Hopeful Entrepreneurial Pragmatism”
• Bobby Griffith | Flourish Institute of Theology | “The Big Business Vision of Evangelicals: Carl McIntire and J. Howard Pew”
• Alexander Callaway | University of Illinois-Chicago | “Ex-Priests, Evangelicals, and the Business of Converting Catholics in Postwar America: Converted Catholic Magazine, 1949-58”
Comment: Janine Giordano Drake | Indiana University

Gender, Missions, and Social Reform in 19th/20th-Century Christianity
Chair: Daniel Gullotta | University of Mississippi
• Michel Sun Lee | Southern Adventist University | “What Did 19th Century American Christians Have to Say about ‘Domestic Violence’?”
• Mark Joslin | University of Tennessee-Knoxville | “One Hundred Years of Mission Work in New York City”
• Nicole Penn | George Mason University | “Where Have All the Good Men Gone? Problematizing Male Churchlessness in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era”
• Mark Marston Norris | Grace College | “Helen Amelia (Ma) Sunday: The Nation’s Mother”

Non-Public Education in America: Parental Rights, Religious Rights, and Homeschooling Rationales
Chair/Comment: Nadya Williams, Current magazine
• Joseph K. Griffith II | Ashland University | “Parental Rights as Minority Rights?”
• Brantley W. Gasaway | | Bucknell University | “‘A Constitutional and God-Given Right’: How the Home School Legal Defense Association Appealed to Religious Liberty in Legislative and Legal Debates”
• Dixie Dillon Lane | | Hearth & Field journal | “Is Homeschooling Primarily a Religious Movement, Whether Historically or Today?”

Our Civic Imperative: How Secondary Teachers Are Setting the Stage for University Success
Chair: Rob Sorensen | The Bear Creek School
• David McFarland | Pacific Academy
• Prisca Bird | The Bear Creek School
• Zachary Cote | Thinking Nation

Concurrent Sessions | Friday, 4:00-5:15pm

Contextualizing the History of Religion in the Classroom
Chair: Lynneth Miller Renberg | Anderson University (SC)
• Adam Renberg | Anderson University (SC)
• Ansley Quiros | University of North Alabama
• Daniel K. Williams | Ashland University

Desegregation, the Civil Rights Movement, and Christianity
Chair: Paul Thompson | North Greenville University
• Darin Tuck | MidAmerica Nazarene University | “‘Schools Shouldn’t Be for Color. They Should Be for the Children’: Public History, Walker Elementary, and Desegregation in South Park, Kansas”
• David Sheldon | Western Theological Seminary | “Christianity Today, Civil Rights, and Evangelical Social Action: 1956-1968”
• James Cooke | University of Arkansas | “‘Let It Be a Creative Tension’: Translating Ideas of Nonviolent Direct Action from the United States into the Context of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’”
Comment: the audience

Religion and the Making of Racially Exclusive, Narratively Venerated, and Expanding America
Chair/Comment: Brian Franklin | Southern Methodist University
• Pearl J. Young | University of Houston-Clear Lake | “Fashioning the Confederate Nation: Faith & Exclusion”
• Stuart J. Priest | Stephen F. Austin State University | “Slavery as an Institution and Motif: The Duality of Slavery in the Civil War Letters of Robert Franklin Bunting”
• Seokheon Lee | Baylor University | “The Religion of Expansion: How Democratized Methodism Contributed to American Expansion”

Religion in the 17th and 18th Centuries
Chair: Jonathan Yeager | University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
• Mike Kugler | Northwestern College | “Portraits of ‘the Jew’ and Judaism in Early-Modern British Biblical Scholarship”
• John Walker | U.S. Military Academy | “Finding History: The Reverend Zechariah Walker and the Legend of Bethel Rock”
• Darin D. Lenz | Biola University | “‘A Memorial to After-Ages’: The Purpose of History in the Thought of August Hermann Francke”
• Timothy D. Hall | Samford University | “‘Getting a Bushel of Money for the School’: Samson Occom and the Tensions of Evangelical Philanthropy in Post-War England, 1766-1768”

Sex, Surfing, and Softcovers: Power and Navigating Strategies of Evangelical Women Celebrities
Chair: Anne Blue Wills | Davidson College
• Katie Heatherly | University of Notre Dame | “Missionary & Domestic Icon: Contextualizing Elisabeth Eliot’s Purity & Domesticity Publications”
• David Nanninga | Baylor University | “Surfer, Mother, Activist: Bethany Hamilton and the Power of an Evangelical Celebrity Athlete in the Early 21st Century”
• Emma Fenske | Baylor University | “Producing Evangelical Women: Christian Romance Novels from Softcovers to the Silver Screen”
Comment: the audience

Banquet | Friday, 6:00-8:00pm

• Fides et Historia update/invitation• Presidential address by Lisa Clark Diller | Southern Adventist University

Concurrent Sessions | Saturday, 8:30-9:45am

Christian Historians in the Context of an Election Year
Chair: Jonathan Den Hartog | Samford University
Opening Comments: Daniel K. Williams | Ashland University
• Jay Green | Covenant College
• Miles Smith | Hillsdale College
• John D. Wilsey | Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Christianity in the Cold War World
Chair: Blake Scott Ball | University of North Alabama
• Mark Reeves | UWE Bristol | “Moral Re-Armament and a Global Christian Anticommunism”
• Benjamin Brandenburg | Montreat College | “A Comfort to all Nations: Billy Graham’s Spiritual Diplomacy with the Majority World”
• John Young | Amridge University | “Our Man in Havana: Juan Antonio Monroy, Fidel Castro, and the Churches of Christ in Cuba”
• Timothy Paul Erdel | Bethel University (IN) | “The Witness of Wilfrido Sierra Castro: Two Panegyrics about a Holy Peasant”

Religion and Public History: The Benefits and Challenges of Bridging an Artificial Divide
Chair: Kent Whitworth | Minnesota Historical Society
• Devin Manzullo-Thomas | Messiah University
• Sean Jacobson | University of North Alabama
• Susan Fletcher | Buffalo Bill Center of the West
• Bethany Hawkins | American Association for State and Local History

Teaching and Research in Baptist History
Chair: Rick Kennedy | Point Loma Nazarene University
• Aimee Hunt-Beasley | University of Tennessee-Knoxville | “The Redeemer’s Kingdom: South Carolina Southern Baptist Confederate Missions, 1861-1865”
• Blake McKinney | Texas Baptist College | “Navigating ‘Baptist History and Heritage’ as a Historian of Modern Europe”
• Mandy McMichael | Baylor University | “Baptist Women in Ministry: Their Stories and Mine”

Truth Telling while Navigating Denominational Contexts
Chair/Comment: Malcolm Foley | Baylor University
• Bobby Griffith | Flourish Institute of Theology
• Otis Pickett | Clemson University
• Ansley Quiros | University of North Alabama
• Sean Michael Lucas | Reformed Theological Seminary
• Brian Franklin | Southern Methodist University

Concurrent Sessions | Saturday, 10:00-11:15am

Christian Historians and Their Racial Contexts: Comparing Institutional Reviews of Race and Racism at Wheaton College and Whitworth University
• Dale E. Soden | Whitworth University
• Robert Tracy McKenzie | Wheaton College
Comment: Elise Leal | Whitworth University

Evangelical Political Mobilization from the Cold War to the Religious Right
Chair/Comment: Colton Babbitt | Williams Baptist University
• Brian Sears | U.S. Military Academy | “An Anticommunist Pentecostal Vanguard: The Latter Rain Revival Attempts to Drive Eschatological Competition”
• Austin Nicholson | University of Mississippi | “‘The Good Old Southern Baptist Way’? W. A. Criswell, Standard-Bearer of the New Southern Baptist Right, 1956-1976”
• David Nanninga | Baylor University | “God’s Coach and America’s Party: The Political and Religious Activism of Tom Landry, 1970-1990”

Historians & Christian Study Centers in the Current Academic Context
Chair: Karl Johnson | Consortium of Christian Study Centers
• R. Bryan Bademan | Anselm House (Minneapolis, MN)
• Daniel Hummel | Upper House (Madison, WI)
• Kathryn Wagner | Center for Christianity and Scholarship (Durham, NC)
• Brad Hale | Nicaea Study Center (Colorado Springs, CO)

Proclaimers of Good News (and Justice) in Their Social Contexts
Chair: Paul Grant | University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Theodore Francis | Abilene Christian University | “Cast off the old yokes of bondage: African American Ministers, Tourism and Desegregation in Bermuda”
• J. Daniel Salinas | Biblical Seminary of Colombia (Medellín) | “Contributions of Rene Padilla to the Development of an Evangelical Theology in Latin America”
• John Fortner | B.H. Carroll Theological Seminary | “The ‘Mood of Minneapolis’: A Contextual Analysis of Tom Skinner’s 1969 Plenary Address at the U.S. Congress on Evangelism”
• Ronald J. Morgan | Abilene Christian University | “The ‘Two Transmigrations’: African Slavery and the Body-Soul Dichotomy in 17th Century Jesuit Preaching in Brazil and the Caribbean”

Lunch | Saturday, 11:30am-12:45pm

Optional break-out groups
• CFHers at state/secular schools – Tom Okie, coordinator
• Western Regional CFH – David McFarland, coordinator
• Women of CFH – Lisa Clark Diller, coordinator

Plenary Session | Saturday, 1:00-2:15pm

• Address by Benjamin Park | Sam Houston State University
• Closing remarks

Concurrent Sessions | Saturday, 2:30-3:45pm

Conservative Christians and American Culture, 1950-2000
Chair: open
• Scott Culpepper | Dordt University | “Exposing Satan’s Underground: Conservative Christian Literary and Media Depictions of Satan and Satanic Rituals in the 70s and 80s”
• Alex Ward | University of Mississippi | “‘Mix My Blood with the Blood of the Unborn:’ Divine Law, Human Law, and Anti-Abortion Violence”

Ethics, Christian Formation, and the History of Nazi Germany
Chair: Dennis Negrón | Southern Adventist University
• Ryan Huber | Fuller Theological Seminary | “Bonhoeffer, Christian Formation, and Christian Nationalism”
• Daniel Julich | Warner University | “Ethical Dilemmas and Historical Pedagogy: Lessons from the Holocaust”

The History and Memory of Slavery in the Context of Religious Colleges
Chair: Anna-Lisa Cox | Harvard University
• Becky Hyde | Samford University | “Slavery’s Integral Role in the Founding and Lasting Success of Antebellum Alabama Baptist Higher Education”
• Jeff Aupperle | Taylor University | “The Slavery Debate Comes to Campus”|
• Phillip Warfield | Howard University | “‘It Did Not Die Honestly’: The Legacies of Slavery in Religious Higher Education”
• Corey Markum | Freed-Hardeman University | “Restorationist Monuments: A Framework for Considering Memory, Legacy, and Race at Christian Colleges & Universities”

The Relationship of Christianity to Education and Scholarship
Chair: Richard Follett | Covenant College
• Rob Sorensen | The Bear Creek School | “Cassiodorus’ Influence on Christian Liberal Arts Education”
• Harrison Taylor | Alabama State University | “Eighteenth Century American Colleges and the Presbyterian Cooperative Plan”
• Jeff McDonald | Presbyterian Scholars Conference | “The Truth of God: Presbyterians and the Rise of Bible Colleges, 1900-1940”