This column represents a contribution to Hispanic Heritage Month, and before anyone mentions it, I am a couple of days past the deadline. Bear with me. The topic matters! I teach at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. When I first explored the neighborhood where I live, I naturally visited a pretty Catholic church with the romantic name of St. Francis on the Brazos, and I saw something there that amazed me. A plaque on this nondescript church recalls that this... Read more
Preface I am currently in the third year of my PhD program in history, which means I am studying for my comprehensive exams. To non academics, this is a time when one reads more than is possible, attempting to retain as much as one can. At the end of the process, four professors will test me to ascertain if I am qualified to be called an expert in the four fields I am studying. For me, these fields are Colonial... Read more
As anti-Israel protests convulsed American campuses in the spring semester—reappearing this fall—one might be forgiven, judging from the headlines, for thinking that the Ivy League and a handful of major state universities constitute the entirety of American higher education. Not infrequently, even commentators on these events hailed from the same set of schools. But accepting this view distorts reality. America’s experiment in ordered liberty has, in fact, generated a rich tapestry of smaller and mid-size private colleges and universities—a notable... Read more
Nothing sets me off in the classroom like discovering the students’ textbooks have referred to the “decline of the Ottoman Empire” or “the decline of the Islamic societies.” I’m sure I can blame taking an entire class in graduate school called “The Decline of the Spanish Empire” whose purpose was to deconstruct what decline means and demonstrate that there are few ways of measuring it with any precision. Decline implies fault. Hidden within the discussion is the idea that if... Read more
We have a guest post today. Bethany Mannon is Assistant Professor of English at Appalachian State University, specializing in Rhetoric and Writing Studies. She has a new book out from Baylor University Press, entitled I Grew Up in the Church: How American Evangelical Women Tell Their Stories, which has been getting some very good responses. She kindly agreed to reflect further on her work in this blog post. How American Evangelical Women Tell Their Stories Bethany Mannon In my new... Read more
We decided to put our two sons in swimming lessons last Fall. The boys always seemed like fish out of water, but we still wanted them to gain more confidence in their aquatic abilities. I usually took a book with me when I drove them to their lessons. Early October last year I decided to read Matti Friedman’s book Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai about Cohen’s trip to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As I... Read more
Today’s post is about former Anxious Bench Contributor Nadya Williams’ new book with IVP, Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity. The book officially releases on Oct. 15, and you can get your own copy here as well as on other sellers’ sites. My thanks to Nadya for the advance copy that made this post possible! What is the value of a human life? This is the framing question that Nadya Williams’ new... Read more
I have been writing and thinking a lot about evangelicalism, the myth of evangelical consensus, and Mark Noll lately. (Hi Mark! We’ve never met, but you seem very nice!) Most recently, I reviewed, again, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind for ByFaith, the magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). An original draft is printed below. Let me know what you think! …. Admittedly, it’s a little odd to be reviewing a book that is thirty years old.... Read more
My present research involves the relationship between religion and American empire. Recently, I have been viewing that through the context of the idea of “vastness” that dominates current work on early American history, namely the urge to go beyond traditional frontiers, whether national, racial, or chronological. As I’ll show today, a geographical perspective brings those various themes together nicely, and actually has quite a bit to say about the foundations of quite diverse US religious traditions. American history has been... Read more
Tomorrow night, Tim Walz will debate JD Vance, fresh off his Saturday appearance in Pennsylvania. Vance took the stage at what the NY Times called “a Town Hall ‘hosted by The Lance Wallnau Show Courage Series.'” Lance Wallnau is an evangelical prosperity preacher from Dallas and a high profile leader in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Participants in the NAR hold “the belief that Christians should influence or even rule society, from politics to media to culture and the economy.”... Read more
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