This post grows out of my current book project, which is about US history in and around the pivotal year of 1893 (I posted a lot about that last year). I knew a great deal happened in that year, but only gradually have I realized how central a role it played in making what we regard as very familiar American iconography and national symbolism. Something dramatic was happening to national self-definition and self-consciousness, and in a very few years. It... Read more
It’s March, Women’s History Month, and this year, as I write about two medieval women, I’d like to invite you to imagine with me for a minute: Margareta had travelled a long way, and at a dangerous time: the Black Death was still ravaging the countryside, and going into the cities was particularly perilous. But Margareta had a clear motivation driving her travels: the needs of her people. Caught in a trade conflict and in the economic upheavals of the... Read more
Over the last two months, I have been overwhelmed with friends discussing The Correspondent, Virginia Evans’ debut novel. I requested it from my library’s audible book app and just finished it this week. What a treat. I have written here before about aging, and there is much to be said about the themes of growing older in The Correspondent. But the book is above all an epistolatory novel, and so I want to reflect here on the decline of letter... Read more
Yesterday, John Piper made social media waves again when he posted Leviticus 19:34 on X (formerly Twitter). “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you,” the verse reads, “and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Almost immediately, right-wing evangelicals pounced on Piper’s post, accusing the retired Minneapolis pastor of making a political statement against the administration’s immigration policies. (Enterprising social media researchers have since discovered... Read more
One of the many advantages of working at Baylor University is having such a range of very talented and productive colleagues, who do really interesting work. One such is Bruce Longenecker, of Baylor’s Religion Department, who has published extensively in the history and archaeology of Early Christianity. Including both sole-authored and edited collections, he has over thirty books in print. These include his In Stone and Story: Early Christianity in the Roman World (Baker Academic, 2020), and his edited collections... Read more
Last week Brazos Press and I agreed on a title for my forthcoming book. The title is: Our God Is an Awesome Brand: How Evangelicals built America’s Most Powerful Religious Movement. When the title was floated to me, I had an uncontrollable knee-jerk response. I have had this involuntary reflex to the term “awesome” since 2010, when I first realized that nothing is awesome but God alone. God Alone Is Awesome When I was in my late twenties, I thought... Read more
Last time I posted about some work I was doing on Washington Gladden, who was a very significant leader in American Protestantism around 1900, and who was also a sharp writer. I will illustrate that from a brilliant (and funny) piece he wrote to illustrate the ideas of Biblical Higher Criticism. His work is a shining example to any later would-be popularizer of weighty academic matters. In 1891, Gladden published Who Wrote the Bible?, which was intended as a user-friendly... Read more
My father died ten days ago on February 8th. It was his 63rd birthday. His name was Tim Mayfield. If I’m honest, I didn’t feel much like writing this week, but sometimes deadlines are good for us. Though I apologize in advance if there is no neat bow to be tied. This is a reflection in process. Grief is an intensely personal thing. It lives in us, that hollow space where someone belongs. It is a void, and that void... Read more
In a press conference a few weeks ago, US House Speaker Mike Johnson responded to a question concerning Pope Leo’s condemnation of the mass deportation agenda under the Trump administration. In his response, Johnson emphasized Romans 13 and the responsibility of civil authorities to maintain order. While there is a lot to unpack here (see Russell Moore’s recent discussion for commentary on Romans 13), I wanted to focus on Johnson’s specific comment about what we should expect of the immigrant.... Read more
There is nothing new about the idea that Europeans and Americans in the nineteenth century tended to lose faith in the Bible as a literal or perfect record of historical truth. Generally, we attribute this to the growing evidence of just how old the world was, and also the impact of new ideas of evolution. We also point to the Higher Criticism, which tried to show how different Biblical books were constructed, and generally not by the people whose names... Read more
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