I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but shortly after I began teaching American history, I learned to love the bomb. More accurately, I learned to love teaching about the nuclear bomb. Maybe it was the day I suddenly realized that none of my students knew what USSR stood for (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!)—because they were all born after the Cold War. Maybe it was the day I realized I had shown the “Duck and Cover” film enough times... Read more
Check out a map of our most recent and popular blog posts! You might find that your summer travels will bring you close to important, but relatively unknown historical sites... Read more
Call it a guilty secret of Christian history: a secret about secrecy. As I have been describing over several recent posts, a great many Christian believers have held their faith in secret, even to the point of denying that they were really Christians. On the one hand, we think of the martyrs who stood up and proclaimed their faith at risk of torture and death, but there were also plenty of others who remained private and clandestine. In the modern... Read more
Are food photos on Instagram a kind of mealtime prayer? Chris thinks about the meaning of table graces. Read more
People often change their religious identity, shifting from one faith or denomination to another. They vary a lot in how they regard the religion they leave. Sometimes, converts have a benevolent view of their old world, and they maintain excellent relations with their family and friends who chose to remain. In other cases, they become the deadliest enemies of that former faith, and even seek to combat or even persecute it. In the history of religious conflict and persecution, this... Read more
Every so often, I remind myself that academia (at least in the discipline of History) is not a meritocracy. At the end of this post, I’ll explain why this reminder is important. This is true at every step of an academic career, from applications to graduate school to publishing to seeking a new job. For now, I will concentrate on the intersection between the job market and the world of university-press publishing. Almost everyone finishing graduate school has some sort... Read more
In this collection of personal narratives, forty Jews of diverse backgrounds tell a wide range of stories about the roads they have traveled away from a Zionist worldview. Read more
Fifty years after Apollo 11 began its historic journey to the surface of the moon, Chris considers how observers at the time attached different religious, metaphysical, or moral meanings to the Space Race. Read more
Not much more needs to be said on the conflict between Oberlin College and Gibson’s Bakery and on the court decision that settled it. Something remains to be said about a former Oberlin president’s read of this series of events. The basics of the recent case: the treatment of three African-American students in a 2016 Gibson’s Bakery shoplifting incident generated ferocious protest from Oberlin students, supported by the school’s administration, alleging that the bakery was racist. Gibson’s sued. Last month a... Read more
When I read the excellent reviews offered by the Wall Street Journal, I always enjoy pieces by the versatile, well-informed, and wide-ranging Barton Swaim. I say that before disagreeing with him in a major way on his most recent offering, a highly critical reading of John Barton’s important new book A History of the Bible. While acknowledging much that is positive about the book, Swaim launches a basic attack on the historical critical method that it exemplifies. His complaint is... Read more
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