I bet that, for those of you attending church on Easter Sunday, at least half of you will sing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” Christ, the Lord, is risen today, Alleluia! Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia! Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia! Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply, Alleluia! Vain the stone, the watch, the seal; Alleluia! Christ has burst the gates of hell: Alleluia! Death in vain forbids his rise; Alleluia! Christ... Read more
I have been posting about the extreme violence that characterized US life around the turn of the twentieth century, roughly between 1877 and 1917 – all the private armies and paramilitary activity, the massacres and ethnic wars, the prevalence of political murder and assassination. These currents set the US far apart from most other parts of the advanced world at this time, and I’d like to explore the reasons why. Europeans at the time were very conscious of this American... Read more
Why baseball fans like Chris get so excited about Opening Day — and why it's so hard to explain that excitement to non-fans. Read more
I posted on the extreme violence that characterized the United States around the turn of the twentieth century. Many of the examples we might think of from that era concern the so-called Wild West, but we should be very careful in applying that label. Often, those conflicts mimicked exactly the same kind of ethnic and partisan battles then raging in the industrial East and the post-Reconstruction South. They pitted Republicans against Democrats, Irish against Nativists, and often, the struggles harked... Read more
Early modern English Protestants, at least the more earnest among them, were known to be a rather dour bunch. “Better it is to goe sickly (with Lazarus) to Heaven,” wrote Lewis Bayly in his The Practise of Piety, “than full of mirth and pleasures, with Dives, to Hell.” That Bayly’s devotional manual was immensely popular suggests that earnest zealous Protestants did not mind foregoing mirth. They liked being told not to have too much fun in this world.... Read more
Guest-blogger H. Paul Thompson on the need for a comprehensive theology of diversity "that embraces diversity, writ large, as a positive good." Read more
Hundreds of "Confessing Faculty" at Christian colleges have signed a "Statement of Confession and Commitment." Chris explains what its language of justice has to do with the purposes of Christian higher education. Read more
Enough already with leadership. What we need are some good followers. This is the bottom line of an excellent New York Times piece by Susan Cain, timed tactfully just before this year’s batch of college acceptance letters come due. Cain’s article opens with a college questionnaire filled out by the father (!) of an applicant to Vassar who described his daughter as “more of a follower than a leader.” The surprise? That this admission, in 1934, helped in securing the... Read more
Why the recent death of an elderly friend has Chris thinking about history as an act of gratitude, a recognition of God's undeserved grace in our lives. Read more
I know the American Civil War happened, but I’m not too sure when, how, or whether it ended. That question was in my mind recently when I visited Georgetown, Kentucky, with its lovely old main street. Near the courthouse stands a monument to the trial of people accused in a sensational event of the era, the 1900 assassination of Governor William Goebel. Now, political killings happen, and are often the work of deranged loners. On this occasion, though, the assassination... Read more
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