Why Baylor Will Never Be Notre Dame: Ecclesiastical Polity and College Football

Last updated on: August 4, 2021 at 10:30 pm By johnturner

Hunter Hampton is Assistant Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University. Hunter earned his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri in 2017, and he’s at work on his first book,Man Up: Muscular Christianity, College Football, and the Making of 20th-Century American Religion. In the midst of conference realignment chaos, Hunter explains why the nation’s most prominent Baptist university cannot replicate the football fandom of its Catholic and Latter-day Saint counterparts. The most anxious bench in all of Baptist-dom... Read more

Some Hope for Evangelicalism

Last updated on: August 9, 2021 at 9:28 pm By Beth Allison Barr

Last January we spent two nights in a ghost town. Deep in West Texas, on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, stand the crumbling remains of Terlingua. It was once a prosperous mining town, booming between the late 1890s and 1930s; drying up as quickly as the mercury veins that birthed it. The sun sparkled in the dry desert air as we removed our unnecessary jackets. I watched from above, drinking a Topo Chico, as my husband and kids clambered... Read more

The Olympics: Competition as Striving Together

Last updated on: August 2, 2021 at 10:13 pm By Chris Gehrz

Chris found it easy to forget that competition derives from a Latin term for "striving together" — until he watched Olympic track and field events this past Sunday... Read more

Teaching the Cold War: Was There Really a Red Scare?

Last updated on: August 1, 2021 at 5:25 pm By Philip Jenkins

I have been posting about my forthcoming book on the Global History of the Cold War. Today’s post concerns language, and some terms that I really would avoid in writing and particularly in teaching – or if I was to use them, it would be with multiple quotation marks. I’ll make the case that we should never use terms like red scare, witch-hunt, or paranoia in a Cold War context, except with those multiple caveats. And we should be very... Read more

Writing the Cold War: Globalizing the Eve of Destruction

Last updated on: July 29, 2021 at 6:24 am By Philip Jenkins

I have been writing a book called The Global History of the Cold War, which is due out next year. In my next few blogposts, I will be describing some of the key points that emerged for me in this work, and particularly how they are affecting the way I might teach the topic, and the period. In a sense, that “global” element in the title is obvious. Many Cold War conflicts happened across the Global South, and the underlying... Read more

Why One Ancient Megachurch Pastor Would Like You to Get the Vaccine

Last updated on: July 27, 2021 at 9:45 pm By Daniel K. Williams

Today’s post is another guest feature from my wife, Nadya Williams, professor of ancient history at the University of West Georgia. Nadya’s current research includes a substantial focus on the ancient North African church, which, as she argues in this post, has a lot to teach us about how we can practice love toward our neighbors during a pandemic. It was a news-worthy event. In the middle of a pandemic, one pastor of a large urban church plant assembled... Read more

Innocent Readings of Evangelical History

Last updated on: July 28, 2021 at 9:43 pm By David Swartz

I hate to come down hard on leaders trying to move their tradition away from toxic aspects of evangelical culture, but . . . Read more

Alvah Hovey and the Northern Baptists

Last updated on: July 26, 2021 at 9:14 pm By Chris Gehrz

Today I’m happy to welcome to the Bench Clay Sidenbender, a freelance journalist based in Edwardsburg, MI. Last month Anxious Bench contributor Daniel K. Williams imagined an evangelicalism where Northern evangelicalism was at the center instead of its Southern counterpart. This phenomenon actually happened in the mid to late-19th century, when Northern Baptists were the leaders in the denomination. In Thoughtful Christianity: Alvah Hovey and the Problem of Authority within the Context of Nineteenth-Century Northern Baptists (Pickwick, 2021), Matthew Shrader of Central Baptist Seminary (MN)... Read more

Religion, Race, and “Never Have I Ever” – A Roundtable on Season Two

Last updated on: July 26, 2021 at 8:42 pm By Melissa Borja

After a painful and exhausting year that found Asian Americans reeling from a surge in anti-Asian racism and violence, the arrival of Season Two of Mindy Kaling’s acclaimed comedy Never Have I Ever was a long-anticipated moment of joy. Especially for Asian American women, who have experienced the lion’s share of anti-Asian attacks during the Covid-19 pandemic, the opportunity to watch a television show created by Asian American women and about Asian American women was a moment to celebrate. Not... Read more

St. Francis and the Climate Apocalypse

Last updated on: July 22, 2021 at 7:09 am By Philip Jenkins

It would be hard to find a more universally popular figure than Francis of Assisi. Christians and non-Christians alike commonly recall him as a wonderful figure of holiness, fully in tune with the animal kingdom, and the environment. It’s odd then to recall a time when Francis was the centerpiece of what we can best call a dreaded messianic cult, which the Church suppressed with a great deal of bloodshed. This was one of the gravest political and spiritual crises... Read more