Overlapping Identities and Conflicting Contexts

Last updated on: August 7, 2023 at 10:41 am By Paul Thompson

Everyone’s life is a Venn diagram of overlapping identities and roles. In my case, I am the only child of a preacher and a grandson of immigrants, an American from New York living in South Carolina, a Calvinist-educated Pentecostal Christian teaching at a Southern Baptist university, a history educator and an administrator, an ordained minister, part of generation X, and an African American (or a mixed race, depending on the context) man in an interracial marriage with a white woman.... Read more

Spiritual Travel: Biking the Camino on a Protestant Pilgrimage

Last updated on: August 3, 2023 at 11:03 pm By Lisa Clark Diller

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My husband Tommy just turned fifty. For the last 5 years he has planned to celebrate this milestone by going with a group of friends as “bicigrinos” or bicycle pilgrims along the Camino Primitivo in Northern Spain. It took a great deal of organization and for a couple years during the pandemic we weren’t sure the pilgrimage was going to happen. But on July 8 we completed the 308 km with a total of 11 people, including 3 teenagers. We... Read more

Mark Twain, Slavery, And The Space-Annihilating Power Of Thought

Last updated on: August 1, 2023 at 1:28 pm By Philip Jenkins

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I am not sure how much people read Mark Twain these days, but one work of his has never really got the attention it deserves, even when he was at his most popular. This is his Following the Equator (1897), which is an endlessly quotable account of the world of high imperialism. Although the book is often very funny, I’ll focus here on a couple of examples that are anything but funny, but which do speak powerfully to our current... Read more

Violence and “A Christian Nation”

Last updated on: August 2, 2023 at 5:11 pm By Malcolm Foley

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This past week, President Joe Biden signed a proclamation establishing the new Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley Monument, a symbolic move that one can only hope is indicative of further action. Moments like this are often bittersweet in my mind. I am deeply thankful that the memorial exists. Yet monuments best express aspirational pursuits: often, a monument portrays through an imposing physical presence the person/people that you want to be. This monument has the potential to communicate the opposite: instead... Read more

Do I Always Have to Smile?: C.S. Lewis and “Shiny Happy People”

Last updated on: August 2, 2023 at 12:03 am By Lynneth Renberg

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Today’s post is from a guest contributor, my colleague Dr. Katherine Cooper Wyma. Dr. Wyma is an Associate Professor of English at Anderson University in South Carolina. She teaches several courses on CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. Her primary academic interest is in late medieval and early modern lay piety and devotional literature. Currently, she is writing a monograph on theolocal anthropology, the Inklings, and behavior in digital spaces. As a university professor during the Covid epidemic, there were many... Read more

Evangelical Anxiety: A Review

Last updated on: July 24, 2023 at 10:10 am By Ansley Quiros

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It has been just over a year since Charles Marsh’s memoir Evangelical Anxiety was published. And while there have been positive reviews in Rolling Stone and Christian Century, this imaginative, important book warrants more conversation within evangelicalism. Perhaps it got a bit lost in the spate of evangelical memoirs of the last few years, from exvangelicals and almost exvangelicals to fundamentalists to Beth Moore herself. But this one is different. Combining staggeringly personal disclosure with a critique of evangelicalism’s relationship... Read more

Defending the Protestant Nation: The Role of Church History in 1830s Nativism

Last updated on: July 28, 2023 at 9:13 am By Guest Contributor

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We have the pleasure of inviting Dr. Paul Gutacker to the Anxious Bench today. Gutacker is the Executive Director of the Brazos Fellows. He earned his Ph.D. from Baylor University, and this post is adapted from chapters three and four of The Old Faith in a New Nation: American Protestants and the Christian Past, published in February 2023 by Oxford University Press. If you would like to learn more about this publication, you may listen to Gutacker’s recent Conference on... Read more

The World Her Wilderness

Last updated on: July 27, 2023 at 6:03 am By Philip Jenkins

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Last time I wrote about the English novelist Rose Macaulay (1881-1958), arguing that she was a far more significant figure than her reputation as a comic writer might suggest. I particularly praised her book Crewe Train (1926), which was the subject of my recent Christian Century column. But Macaulay wrote over twenty other novels, several of which demand attention. One in particular here is a powerful historical document for the religious thought of the mid-twentieth century. Christian conversion – specifically,... Read more

The Great Potsdam Castle Bathroom Incident, or, How I Changed My Mind

Last updated on: July 26, 2023 at 4:31 pm By Andrea L. Turpin

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One sunny afternoon in Germany, I found myself in need of a restroom. And I realized that historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn was on to something. I was in Berlin for a conference, which I then extended into a European vacation with my friend Jill. By “European,” I mostly mean Berlin. It contains more than enough to hold your interest for a week. But we are Americans, so Europe means castles. We went in search of the closest... Read more

President Warren Harding’s Liberal Baptist Faith

Last updated on: August 21, 2023 at 9:18 pm By Daniel K. Williams

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Next week marks the 100-year anniversary of the death of the first Baptist president of the United States. But if “Baptist” wasn’t the first word that came to mind when thinking of Warren Harding, who died in office on August 2, 1923, you’re probably not alone. Even if he was a member of a Baptist church, Harding was one of the nation’s least overtly devout presidents. Those of you who have read Barry Hankins’s Jesus and Gin know that Harding... Read more