Immigration Exclusion as Religious Exclusion

Last updated on: June 27, 2018 at 5:50 pm By Kristin Du Mez

Melissa Borja, assistant professor in American Culture at the University of Michigan, returns today to the Anxious Bench. This week the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision to uphold President Trump’s travel ban, on the grounds that it was within the President’s power to restrict immigration in the interest of national security. The decision met harsh condemnation and protest. Most notably, Justice Sonia Sotomayor offered a fiery dissent. Beginning by saying that “the United States of America is a... Read more

The Value of Failure in Graduate School

Last updated on: June 26, 2018 at 4:46 pm By Beth Allison Barr

This is from my Anxious Bench archives. I currently am leaving for a research trip in England (until end of July) and am gathering more material for future posts! In the meantime, this post continues to resonate with so many, so I thought it could help some more graduate students this summer. My husband suggested once that I have lunch with a friend. She was a graduate student, and struggling in the program. “Did you tell her I almost quit?”... Read more

The Half-Year in Review

Last updated on: June 25, 2018 at 8:19 pm By Chris Gehrz

Counting down your favorite Anxious Bench posts from the first half of 2018 Read more

After the Age of Aquarius

Last updated on: June 23, 2018 at 4:19 am By Philip Jenkins

I’m returning here to a theme I have raised in this blog in the past, namely whatever happened to the occult and esoteric in modern America? Where did the New Age go? You may think that this question has nothing much to do with Christians, and it should certainly not concern them. But it really should. Recently, the New York Times published a column by Krista Burton, about visiting a “crystal store,” the kind of New Age establishment that deals... Read more

A Christian Midsummer Night’s Eve

Last updated on: June 15, 2018 at 9:00 pm By Philip Jenkins

I am adapting the following from a column I published at real clear religion, back in 2013. Many of the events in the Christian liturgical year coincide with older seasonal celebrations, which the church absorbed and consecrated. We think of Christmas (Midwinter), Easter (Spring) and All Saints/All Souls (the beginning of Winter). Generally, Western churches at least have forgotten what was once one of the greatest of these parallel commemorations, which almost amounted to a second Christmas. Somewhere along the... Read more

Evangelicals and the Devil’s Music

Last updated on: June 21, 2018 at 7:44 am By johnturner

“Much of what animates evangelical churches in the twenty-first century,” maintains Randall Stephens, “comes directly from the unlikely fusion of pentecostal religion, conservative politics, and rock and pop music.” In The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ‘n’ Roll, Stephens explores not just how rock music helped shape American evangelicalism, but how the intersection of rock and religion shaped large chunks of American culture. The only thing that would make this book better is if it actually... Read more

The Religious Left in Modern America

Last updated on: June 20, 2018 at 8:08 am By David Swartz

I’m pleased to welcome Doug Rossinow, a professor of history at the University of Oslo, to the Anxious Bench. In 1998 he wrote one of my all-time favorite books, a model piece of scholarship entitled The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America. A beautifully written, close study of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Texas at Austin, it illuminates broader trajectories in the New Left and of the 1960s. He is also... Read more

Believe Me… You Should Read John Fea’s Book on Evangelical Support for Donald Trump

Last updated on: June 18, 2018 at 9:07 pm By Chris Gehrz

Chris reviews Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, in which John Fea explains how evangelical instincts for fear, power, and nostalgia led them to support Trump. Read more

Choice after Humanae Vitae

Last updated on: June 18, 2018 at 12:15 am By Agnes Howard

This summer marks the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, the encyclical from Pope Paul VI in 1968 confirming Roman Catholic rejection of birth control. The decision was important for both American Catholics and Protestants. For many of the former, it presented a crisis of conscience, exacerbating tensions among tradition, reason, and authority. It became a significant cultural marker for the latter too, though they were not bound by it–and indeed, earnest evangelicals whose sexual morality resembles Roman Catholic expectations often... Read more

The Inklings and King Arthur

Last updated on: June 14, 2018 at 6:06 am By Philip Jenkins

It’s hard to ignore the Inklings. They are a huge force both in high culture and popular culture, and the works of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien have generated income for their estates at a mind-bogglingly vast level that either of those two authors would have found hilarious. My own personal favorite among that group remains Charles Williams, who many consider a modern-day Anglican saint, besides being a major and under-acknowledged influence on canonical figures like T. S.... Read more