religious history 
-
SOURCE: Conference on Faith & History
1/13/2020
Resolution of the Conference on Faith and History: Executive Board Response to the Assault on the U.S. Capitol
The global organization of scholars of the relationship between Christian faith and history has issued a statement condemning the Capitol riots as "a gross violation of the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ."
-
SOURCE: Harvard Magazine
12/16/2020
The American Exception: How Faith Shapes Economic and Social Policy
by Benjamin M. Friedman
Historian Benjamin Friedman's new book examines the importance of changing religious ideas in American Protestantism as influences on the development of social and economic policy. Part of the concluding chapter is excerpted here.
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
9/28/2020
The Story Behind Amy Coney Barrett’s Little-Known Christian Group People Of Praise
Massimo Faggioli, a church historian and theologian at Villanova University, a Catholic school, studies these lay-led movements — also called “renewal” groups — that began popping up since Vatican II. While some are a source of spiritual energy, they may also reflect militance and untransparent leadership.
-
SOURCE: Vox
7/12/2020
Is Evangelical Support for Trump a Contradiction?
Religious historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez explains why Trump wasn’t a trade-off for American evangelicals.
-
SOURCE: The New Yorker
6/29/2020
In Search of King David’s Lost Empire
The evidence of David’s life is sparse. Was he an emperor? A local king? Or, as Biblical archaeologist Israel Finkelstein claims, a Bedouin sheikh?
-
SOURCE: Catholic Sun
5/22/2020
Polish Historian Questions German Researcher’s Claims About Wartime Pope
"I’ve never personally encountered a situation in which 11 volumes of material, published over two decades, are suddenly countermanded by a single document, found after a few days’ research," says Jan Zaryn.
-
SOURCE: NY Times
2/25/20
Why Religion Is the Best Hope Against Trump
by Jon Meacham
Evangelicals may support an amoral president. But faith can still offer hope for liberation and progress.
-
SOURCE: The Conversation
2/10/10
Lynching preachers: How black pastors resisted Jim Crow and white pastors incited racial violence
by Malcolm Brian Foley
Religion was no barrier for these white murderers, as I’ve discovered in my research on Christianity and lynch mobs in the Reconstruction-era South. White preachers incited racial violence, joined the Ku Klux Klan and lynched black people.
-
2/9/20
How Religious History Helps Us Understand Russia's War Against Ukrainian Independence
by Khrystyna Karelska and Andreas Umland
In recent months, the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian multidimensional military, political, economic and cultural conflict has made international news. What is less well known beyond Eastern Europe is the important religious aspect of Moscow’s “hybrid war” against Ukrainian national independence.
-
SOURCE: The Dialog
2/2/20
Black History Month has a little known Catholic history as well
by Shannen Dee Williams
In 1949, famed Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes celebrated Negro History Week (the precursor to Black History Month) with members of the Oblate Sisters of Providence and their students at the all black and Catholic St. Alphonsus School.
-
2/2/20
Why Thomas Jefferson Was Really No Friend of Religious Freedom
by M. Andrew Holowchak
Thomas Jefferson, because of the passage of his Bill for the Establishment of Religious Freedom, is customarily viewed by scholars as a paladin of religious freedom. Yet there is reason to question that view.
-
2/2/20
Kindergarten Goes to the University Classroom: The Educational Value of Show and Tell
by Andrew Joseph Pegoda
During the Fall 2019 semester, I experimented with having students do 10-minute Show and Tell presentations in my Secularisms/Atheisms religious studies and U.S. history seminar. The results couldn’t have been better.
-
SOURCE: The Guardian
1/8/20
Evangelicals using religion for political gain is nothing new. It is a US tradition
by Reverend William Barber
No one who has read US history can be surprised by the hypocrisy of Evangelicals for Trump but it also tells us how their undoing will inevitably come.
-
SOURCE: The Hollywood Progressive
12/28/19
Why Netflix’s The Two Popes Is Important
by Walter G. Moss
At the core of the film are the differences between Benedict and Francis, especially before Benedict retired and Francis took his place.
-
12/22/19
An Abolitionist and the Christmas Tree
by John Buehrens
Christmas, in 1835 Boston, was not yet widely celebrated. New England’s Puritan heritage considered it “popish.”
-
12/8/19
Jack Miles' God in the Qur’an brings the three Abrahamic traditions to the table
by Zaman Stanizai
We cannot force someone to hear a message they are not ready to receive, but we must never underestimate the power of planting a seed.
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
12/4/19
Calling Trump ‘the chosen one’ is a political act — not a theological statement
by Wallace Best
Claims about God’s plans for the United States often morph into justifications for wrongdoing.
-
SOURCE: The Conversation
12/3/2019
Faith made Harriet Tubman fearless as she rescued slaves
by Robert Gudmestad
Harriet Tubman worked as a slave, spy and eventually as an abolitionist. What I find most fascinating, as a historian of American slavery, is how belief in God helped Tubman remain fearless, even when she came face to face with many challenges.
-
12/1/2019
How did November become the Mizrahi Heritage Month? And what’s Mizrahi anyhow?
by Lior Sternfeld and Arie M. Dubnov
The Mizrahi heritage month is not a local, grassroots initiative that emerged in response to experiences of discrimination or marginalization. Instead, it is a transatlantic importation of recent attempts by the Israeli government to commemorate the forced expulsion of Jews from the Arab and Muslim world in the wake of the establishment of Israel.
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
11/26/19
The apocalyptic myth that helps explain evangelical support for Trump
by Thomas Lecaque
Implicit is a vision of the president as a triumphantly apocalyptic figure, one who evokes the medieval legend of the Last World Emperor.
News
- The Deep South Has a Rich History of Resistance, as Amazon Is Learning
- America’s Political Roots Are in Eutaw, Alabama
- University Finds 18th-Century Schoolhouse Where Black Children Learned to Read
- Searching for Our Urban Future in the Ruins of the Past
- Denied a Teaching Job for Being ‘Too Black,’ She Started Her Own School — And a Movement