Tribal Sovereignty Day?

Last updated on: October 11, 2019 at 2:18 pm By D. G. Hart

Americans struggle with history. The day normally allotted to Christopher Columbus is on the horizon and in states like Maine, the chief executive is at odds with mayors over whether to celebrate Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day. For what it’s worth, President Obama tried to finesse the dilemma in ways that bypassed George W. Bush. For instance, Bush hit the main themes of celebrating initiative and the contributions of Italian-Americans: More than five centuries ago, Christopher Columbus boldly set... Read more

Why Dressing for Halloween as a Bible-Carrying, Cis-Gender Kid is Scary

Last updated on: October 10, 2019 at 5:05 pm By D. G. Hart

In my quest to rank the significance of modern society’s injustices, the question today concerns the threat of kids who read the Bible compared to children who want gender-neutral bathrooms. Over at Religion and Politics, Cavan Concannon worries about the recent Bring-Your-Bible-to-School Day: These materials are designed to increase the visibility of Bible-carrying students on campus, and thus also the possibility for confrontation and conversion. The site includes stories of persecution, including a video about Gio, who claims he was... Read more

Speaking of Sex

Last updated on: October 4, 2019 at 11:43 am By D. G. Hart

You might think that Protestants who place themselves in the camp of family values and sexual fidelity might also embrace sexual restraint. You might, but then you would also be surprised to see how leading figures in the Religious Right gave advice to readers about the details of sexual intimacy. It’s a free country and all, but when Paul recommended setting our minds on things above, he likely implied not meditating on matters below the waist. Even when Presbyterians get... Read more

If You Love Karen Swallow Prior, Can You Find a Little for Her Boss?

Last updated on: October 2, 2019 at 10:52 am By D. G. Hart

Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s reputation only grows larger in proportion to Donald Trump’s critics’ need to scapegoat his supporters and enablers. Since evangelicals voted for Trump in large numbers, so-called evangelical leaders bear the disgrace for the movement’s performance in 2016 at the ballot box. Combine that with the less than honorable aspects of Liberty University’s president’s personal life as reported by one of the university’s alums in Politico, and you have a territory and level of toxicity that is easy... Read more

M(ake) (the) A(tlantic) G(reat) A(gain)

Last updated on: September 25, 2019 at 5:21 pm By D. G. Hart

Here is another curious communication from my email in-box (received soon after subscribing to The Atlantic). It is from the editor, Jeffrey Goldberg and went out to all new subscribers (so I am not revealing any private thoughts): In the spring of 1857, a group of Boston transcendentalists gathered for dinner at the Parker House Hotel. After five hours of repartee, they decided to create a new magazine, one that would make politics, literature, and the arts its chief concerns.... Read more

If Baptist or Episcopalian, Why be Evangelical?

Last updated on: September 24, 2019 at 2:19 pm By D. G. Hart

Alan Jacobs uses Tommie Kidd’s latest book on evangelicalism to explain to Atlantic readers what evangelical Protestantism is (ideally): that’s one of the most important points to grasp about evangelicalism: It’s not a denomination. It’s not even a single tradition. It is, rather, a complex and fluid movement dedicated to the renewal of Christianity, largely among Protestants, though its efforts have occasionally reached into Catholicism. Its focus is on preaching the euangelion, a New Testament Greek word meaning “good news”... Read more

Virtue Laundering

Last updated on: September 19, 2019 at 4:00 pm By D. G. Hart

As an alum of Harvard Divinity School, I regularly receive mass email messages from the University’s president. A recent communication from Laurence S. Bacow addressed the challenge of how Harvard should address the gifts it received from Jeffrey Epstein. This is a genuine moral dilemma, one that lots of charitable and non-profit institutions face when revelations about the lives of wealthy people come to light. For instance, Villanova University had to figure out what to do with the arena in... Read more

Raiders Nation Reading Hour

Last updated on: September 17, 2019 at 4:58 pm By D. G. Hart

Say what you will about the dust up between Sohrab Ahmari and David French and what the phenomenon of Drag Queen Reading Hour reveals about political conservatism, what seems to be missing from every comment I have read is the wisdom of the public library officials who approved of men dressed in drag reading to children. Imagine what the public reaction in San Francisco might be if fans of the nearby Oakland Raiders had a regular shot a reading to... Read more

Christians Want to be Modern, But They Don’t Trust Moderns

Last updated on: September 14, 2019 at 6:38 am By D. G. Hart

If you can believe it, the disagreement between Sohrab Ahmari and David French has gone from the op-ed page and on-line publishing to a road show. Their debate, which first appeared at Catholic University of America, recently played its second exhibition match at the University of Notre Dame — when will the evangelical French get the home field advantage, at Wheaton College, for instance. That second exchange, not exactly the Lincoln-Douglas show down, spurred a number of Christian reflections about... Read more

Why Are “Liberals” So Insecure that They Need the Times’ Green Light to Dump on Conservatives?

Last updated on: September 11, 2019 at 12:41 pm By D. G. Hart

The New York Times’ poor driving skills have already caught my attention and are now in the bloodstream of comment and opinion. Driving here refers to journalists’ failure to stay in the lane of journalism by trying to do history, in this case, telling the story of the United States so that slavery is basic to understanding national history and identity. Someone at the Times could just as easily have reframed American history by noticing how much Christianity has been... Read more