I post from time to time about books that talk about religious ideas, and which are arguably classics in their own right, but which have largely been forgotten. This present contribution concerns one of the truly odd examples of that band of (arguably) lost classics, and it is a strange one indeed. I’ll talk about The Lord of the Sea. For reasons I’ll explain, I won’t say right up front what those powerful religious ideas that the book is exploring... Read more
Thanks to Tuesday's night election, Raphael Warnock will become not only the first Black senator from Georgia, but one of the relatively few pastors to hold such an office in American political history. Read more
Jemar Tisby has a new book out this week, How to Fight Racism. Is it any good? First, some personal history. I first met Jemar Tisby at an academic conference, long enough ago that I can’t even remember which one. By that time, I already knew of Tisby through his online writing at what was then called the Reformed African American Network (RAAN, which has now transformed into The Witness). The organization’s name had originally caught by eye. Having grown... Read more
I ended my Baylor graduate course last semester with a one-two punch of books on modern American evangelicals and politics. The first, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, by fellow Anxious Bench contributor Kristin Kobes Du Mez, traces the rise of a brash “militant” version of masculinity within large swaths of White American evangelicalism and its effect on evangelical political and social behavior. Specifically, it contributed to embracing combative foreign and domestic... Read more
“All my writing—and yours,” claimed one composition instructor, “is autobiography.” So I’ve often wondered the extent to which my forthcoming biography of Charles Lindbergh is actually an autobiography of Chris Gehrz. Lindbergh would tell me to expect that. As he started work in 1938 on what became his Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, The Spirit of St. Louis (1953), the famous pilot decided that one reason he should tell his own story is that any “biographer must base his writing on his own... Read more
You have undoubtedly seen yard signs like this around the place. The sentiments listed vary from the indisputable to the (in the context) somewhat controversial, but one in particular is – well, nothing like as straightforward as it looks. I know and respect what the people who put up the signs mean to say, but the raw statement that “science is real” is tendentious at best, dangerous at worst, and especially for anyone who considers themselves on the left or... Read more
I am happy to announce my forthcoming book, due out from Oxford University Press this coming Spring. It is Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith: How Changes in Climate Drive Religious Upheaval. I have described this project in past blogs but here, quite soon, we will have the actual book. The cover is gorgeously apocalyptic. Is it just me, or do I see shades of Great Cthulhu amidst the Noah’s Ark theme? Here is the description: Long before the current era of... Read more
“Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men,” Jesus condemned the scribes and the Pharisees, “but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” As in every other year, lots of scribes and Pharisees around in 2020. Lots of hypocrisy. Two groups of 2020 hypocrites come to mind immediately. In the first camp are politicians who preach fidelity to public health restrictions but then transgress them when they think no one is looking. Examples are legion. There are the... Read more
During the final weeks of this year of extreme partisan polarization, a few more of my friends told me that they have decided to leave evangelicalism because of politics. After an election in which approximately 80 percent of white evangelical voters once again cast their ballots for Donald Trump, perhaps it is not surprising that a number of progressive Christians who believe that misogyny, structural racism, and xenophobia are some of the greatest evils facing the nation finally decided that... Read more
Before we all say good riddance to 2020, Chris reveals our most popular posts and reflects on what they say about our response to a uniquely challenging year. Read more
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