Forgive a second post from me in the same morning, but I’m reeling from some news I woke up to find in my inbox, at the end of editor John Wilson’s e-newsletter for the Christian review Books & Culture: The November/December issue of B&C will be at the printer by time you are reading this newsletter, and will mail in mid-October. Alas, this will be the last issue of the magazine. (In that issue, look for a Note to Our Readers from... Read more
For my fall sabbatical, my family has been blessed with the opportunity to spend four months living in one of the most beautiful parts of the country: the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia. It’s an area I know fairly well; my parents moved here from Minnesota twenty-three years ago. (The other reason for this move: lots of Oma and Opa time for our kids!) But while I knew this to be one of the reddest parts of a largely blue state, I... Read more
Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad many evangelicals are lining up to condemn Trump’s vulgar behavior, revealed most recently (and incontrovertibly) in the appalling video tape released by the Washington Post last Friday. Jerry Falwell Jr., a staunch Trump supporter, had this to say about the video: “…it was reprehensible. We’re all sinners, every one of us. We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t….We’re never going to have a perfect candidate unless Jesus Christ is on the ballot. I’ve... Read more
Last time I posted about the New Testament passages describing the anointing of Jesus. Here, I will explore the implications for approaches to Scripture, literalist and otherwise. Each of the four gospels has a scene in which a woman uses costly oil to anoint Jesus, with the suggestion that this is in preparation for his imminent death and burial. The passages in question can be found at Mark 14.3-9 Matthew 26.6-13 Luke 7.36-50 John 12.1-8 This is one of the... Read more
Whatever its undoubted spiritual power, the Gospel of John is one of the most intriguing and sophisticated literary texts you are likely to encounter in any religious tradition. Although the text as we have it is the product of multiple layers of composition and editing, you can see so many literary devices and strategies that simply inspire awe, so many examples where a theme is introduced in one portion and amplified by being echoed elsewhere. I have elsewhere written about... Read more
How corporate evangelicals remade themselves in the Great Depression and after. Read more
I remember trick-or-treating when I was small. The night air was crisp and cool (we lived in the northwest at the time). My little sister was batman, my older sister a ballerina, and I a clown. My dad held our hands as we walked through the neighborhood, returning home only when our plastic pumpkins brimmed with candy. It was a fun night, especially since I didn’t realize until the next day that my little sister had eaten all my M&Ms….... Read more
A rare Anxious Bench parenting post: six things that Prof. Gehrz has learned about teaching history to his six-year old twins Read more
At one point in the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Trump was asked what he meant by a remark that Clinton did not have a presidential “look”. To be sure, it already is common knowledge that women’s looks are of interest to this candidate. Furthermore, nearly all elements of the possibility of a female president feel exhausted, overanalyzed, by now. Still, though Trump claimed to doubt Clinton’s “stamina” instead, concern over her “look”–face, hair, clothing, all the... Read more
I have been doing a series of posts about the global revival of religious politics during the mid-1970s. As part of this, I have offered a framework for what was happening at this time, suggesting why discontent being expressed in those traditional religious forms. Throughout, we must stress the effects of the 1973-75 economic crisis. At many points, Iran’s religious politics offer a surprisingly close analogy to the US pattern. One of the pivotal events of this era was the... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In