Sometimes it seems that Americans are unusually good at hating each other. Red/blue, secular/evangelical, vaxxed/anti-vaxxed, you name it, we go at it. Media outlets of many stripes promote feed these tropes and stoke these fires. And although I mostly use it to chat about new academic books, everyone tells me that social media is a cesspit of hatred and abuse. And yet. Most of us aren’t full of hate, even for those who have different opinions about masks and vaccines.... Read more
Many years ago, I saw the superb play Brief Lives, which led me promptly to explore the sprawling, shapeless, and endlessly readable book of that name by John Aubrey (1626-1697), on which the play is based. Aubrey knew everybody, and loved to gossip. There is no useful or systematic way to read his book cover to cover: you just start randomly and follow its courses as it meanders along. The play consisted of one off-the-charts brilliant actor, Roy Dotrice, solo... Read more
Do Christian colleges offer a liberal or instrumental model of education? At his institution, Chris argues, it's long been both. Read more
In some periods in history, events and trends move at a rocket sled pace, when a generation’s worth of change seem to be packed into a couple of revolutionary years. Often, such eras of whirlwind transformation shape social and cultural agendas for decades to come One such time occurred between 1739 and 1741, when Americans underwent a radical restructuring of everything they knew about race and religion. And giving that crisis profound modern relevance, that change resulted directly from a... Read more
I have been posting about the Cold War as a subject for writing and especially for teaching – this is, after all, a very popular course in colleges around the world. I talked about using films in such settings, and today I’ll discuss how songs and music might be deployed. Whenever I do teach on any topic, particularly on very modern eras, I always find the music of the age very useful for conveying the mood and ideas of the... Read more
Guest blogger Joy Qualls considers the role of women in her Pentecostal denomination, past and present. Read more
As the US left Afghanistan last month after a twenty-year occupation, “marking the end of the United States’ longest war,” it has become clear that such departures are not easy or straightforward. Negative reactions have emerged from a range of sectors, including veterans of the war, providing a rare instance of unity of opinion (albeit for different reasons) on the part of Americans, normally so polarized politically. Indeed, the only group whose joy over this development has been clearly documented... Read more
As the Christian university where he teaches turns 150 years old, Chris reflects that "if you work at an institution whose history spans multiple centuries, you’re always building on — or tearing down — what’s already built up. I’d rather we do so knowingly than not." Read more
Once upon a time in the City of Brotherly Love, a Lutheran minister, led by faith in God’s providence, threw his relentless energies into public health. Pastor of the largest Lutheran parish in late eighteenth-century North America, Heinrich Helmuth gave himself to the care of the sick in his ambit. Helmuth excoriated those who confronted the public health crisis by prioritizing their own self-preservation rather than helping prevent and alleviate the suffering of others. The pastor attributed the epidemic to “social breakdown.”... Read more
Around the world, the stunning violence of September 11 cast a long shadow over the remaining years of the twentieth century. And no, that is not a typo for the 21st. For many people, above all in Latin America but also in Europe, the events of September 11, 1973 took a very long time to process and comprehend. For the Left – broadly defined – those events changed everything. In its way, that other September 11 likewise remade the world.... Read more
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