Some years back, I published a lot at this site on the general subject of Alternative Scriptures, and their rediscovery in modern times. I found a lot to say that was new and counter-intuitive, and the whole subject really cried out to be a book. At the time, I was focused on other topics, but my recent work on the 1890s really makes me think that the time has come to develop that. I will use my next couple of... Read more
I love to tell the story; ’tis pleasant to repeat what seems, each time I tell it more wonderfully sweet. As Dr. Daniel Williams points out in a recent post, John MacArthur became famous for his expository sermons. My own biblical and spiritual maturity was reinforced by listening to his sermons for many years during my early twenties. My mother recently mentioned she heard something from MacArthur in passing so she put him back on my radar. Around last... Read more
In June 2010 I was privileged to meet Dr. Daniel Williams through a mutual acquaintance at the Policy History Conference in Columbus, Ohio. His first book came out that year — God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (Oxford University Press). While I am not a 20th century historian, as a fellow Christian scholar, I have found the scope of his scholarship quite compelling and its content highly relevant to Christians seeking to make sense of much of... Read more
Thirty years ago a friend introduced my husband Tommy and I to the music of Les Mis. It took us a few months to see the show—a fancy dress outing to the Kennedy Center that Tommy organized as he was planning to propose to me. But for months ahead of time we listened to the music on the many road trips our long distance relationship required. And it is one of the only albums whose songs we have both... Read more
In recent weeks, I have been writing extensively about the transformations that America experienced during the year of 1893. You won’t be surprised to hear that this is part of a larger book project that I have been developing, although I am still working hard on a proposal. As part of that process of thinking through, I would like to pull this material together and look at some of the long-term consequences, which were truly far reaching, and above all... Read more
As our guide walked with us out of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, he started telling us about the planned restoration to the famous church and mosque, set to start this year. “The biggest challenge has been deciding to what century they’re restoring each part,” he said. For the Hagia Sophia (and so many other sites), that’s a rather politically and religiously fraught decision. Would a faithful restoration focus on the site’s first design and structure, from its construction as... Read more
As I write about that amazing year of 1893, I have often used the language of new opportunities, new insights, even of liberation, and that was certainly true in some matters. White women, especially, vastly expanded their range of life-choices. But things were very different indeed for the eight million Black Americans who constituted some twelve percent of the national population. The years 1892 through 1894 were a dreadful time, which marked the decisive shift to a horrible new social... Read more
I recently blogged about the radical feminist theories in religion that emerged during that critical year of 1893, the year of Matilda Joslyn Gage’s Woman, Church and State. But in other ways too, that same year witnessed other landmarks in women’s history, changes that profoundly changed mainstream politics and social thought. Apart from the obvious matter of the suffrage, I will talk about the revolutionary changes in approaches to Temperance, and to the protection of girls and women from sexual... Read more
Much of the commentary about John MacArthur in the wake of his death last week has focused on the controversies about his views on gender and politics or his habit of turning a deaf ear to women who complained about abuse from their husbands or church leaders. But few people have asked the question of what made MacArthur popular to begin with. MacArthur was not a charismatic preacher in any sense of the word. As a cessationist, he was certainly... Read more
Evangelical church camps found their ascendance in the twentieth century. The privilege of resort and camp life are portrayed in two cinematic depictions, Dirty Dancing and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. These depictions emphasize how resort and camp cultures were contexts to display class distinction and status, while simultaneously functioning as spaces for networking and cultural exchange. Both portrayals are set in an upstate New York Catskill Mountains resort. Dirty Dancing is a coming-of-age story about Baby (Jennifer Grey), who comes... Read more
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