Liberation Theology for White People: The Preferential Option for Moore

Last updated on: October 5, 2022 at 1:06 pm By Malcolm Foley

I offer a brief reflection today and one that is perhaps more theological than my other pieces. To add to the cascade of sources and writings decrying white Christian nationalism, Russell Moore, now the editor in chief of Christianity Today, penned a piece for CT and his newsletter titled, Christian Nationalism Cannot Save the World. Obviously the title is correct. Yet within the article, one finds the tendencies of white evangelicalism run rampant. These tendencies are exemplified in clauses that... Read more

A Reflection on Why (Some?) Women Flourish in Complementarian Spaces

Last updated on: October 4, 2022 at 9:45 pm By Beth Allison Barr

I haven’t made it to the patriarchal bargain yet. We’ll save that for my first November post and follow it with a consideration of why patriarchy persists in egalitarian spaces. I will also tackle the difference (is there one?) between patriarchy and paternalism, which I think will spark some interest. Stay tuned as I continue this series in November. Today I just want to build on my last post. I want to think harder about the circumstances in which women... Read more

Listening to George Kelsey: Racism as Idolatry

Last updated on: September 28, 2022 at 4:08 pm By Ansley Quiros

In the recent scholarly debate over presentism, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, in conversation with Tera Hunter and Austin McCoy, made a comment that struck me as particularly poignant. She wrote: “We [those referred to as ‘presentist’] are not imposing our contemporary views on the past, we are finding the voices & activities of those opposed to the existing order in their own time…voices that have otherwise been ignored or suppressed.”[1] One of the most striking things about conducting historical research is precisely... Read more

History, Royalty Chic, and the Upside Down Kingdom

Last updated on: October 7, 2022 at 9:31 am By Lisa Clark Diller

On a recent trip to New York City to binge on musical theater, my companion and I fit in the Broadway and West End hit Six. It was excellent fun. As someone who teaches on the Tudors each year, I found myself wanting to explain the historical jokes to my friend and trying to decide whether the musical was an asset to those of us who do early modern history as we try to convince the world of our relevance.... Read more

Religion Overthrows Heresy: The Art of Anti-Protestantism

Last updated on: September 25, 2022 at 1:54 pm By Philip Jenkins

I am thinking of founding a Museum of Religiously Incorrect Art. We presently live in a world of broad ecumenism and toleration. It’s instructive, then, to recall how much religious debate through the centuries has been so extremely confrontational and downright nasty, and this is especially true of conflicts within faith traditions. No church or denomination has any monopoly on this rhetoric. We think readily enough of the rich anti-Catholic tradition that has so often surfaced within Protestantism, but the... Read more

Recent Books on Women, Gender, and Sex in American Religious History, Part 2

Last updated on: September 27, 2022 at 11:22 pm By Andrea L. Turpin

This semester I am teaching one of my favorite courses: “Women, Gender, and Sex in American Religious History.” It’s a graduate course, so I joke that it’s basically my personal book club: I make a bunch of smart people read and discuss a different book of my choosing every week! What’s not to love? This is my fifth time teaching the course (the first was in 2014). Each time I change about a third of the books to mix it... Read more

The Southernization of American Evangelicalism (and American Christianity)

Last updated on: September 27, 2022 at 9:49 am By Daniel K. Williams

Fifty percent of all people in the United States who attend church at least once a month live in the South, according to data from the 2018 General Social Survey. A half-century ago, when more than 50 percent of people in both the Northeast and the Midwest claimed to go to church at least once a month, differences in church attendance rates between various regions of the country were barely noticeable. But today the South – along with the lone... Read more

Undocumented Saints: An Interview with William Calvo-Quiros

Last updated on: September 26, 2022 at 12:25 pm By Melissa Borja

September marks the beginning of National Hispanic Heritage Month, a welcome opportunity to discuss new books that bridge the fields of Latinx studies and American religion. In honor of this month, I interviewed Dr. William Calvo-Quiros, Assistant Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan and author of Undocumented Saints: The Politics of Migrating Devotions, which will be published by Oxford and released next month. In Undocumented Saints, Calvo-Quiros explores the popular devotion of several saints–Jesús Malverde, Juan Soldado,... Read more

Call It What It Is: On Race Riots

Last updated on: September 22, 2022 at 9:46 pm By Malcolm Foley

Yesterday was the 116-year anniversary of the Atlanta “Race Riot”. I put “race riot” in air quotes to affirm what a good friend of mine tweeted yesterday: that we should stop calling race massacres race riots. Indeed we should. But I would take it a step further. They were mass lynchings. Whether we consider the “riots” in Colfax (1873), Wilmington (1898), Atlanta (1906), Slocum (1910), East St. Louis (1917), Chicago (1919), Ocoee (1920), Tulsa (1921), Rosewood (1923), or others of... Read more

Towards 2070: Is The Future None?

Last updated on: September 21, 2022 at 5:19 pm By Philip Jenkins

“Christianity projected to lose majority status among Americans by 2070, Pew model projects.” That is the key takeaway from a recently published report from the Pew Research Center. I have no problem with the report itself, which is well researched and presented, and if anything, might be over-cautious in its projections. I would argue that the real changes the study portends go beyond any mere process of counting formal believers and church members. Since 2007, Pew studies have done a... Read more