That Was The Week That Was

Posted on by Chris Gehrz

This week I studied African American responses to Charles Lindbergh’s historic flight to Paris and celebrated the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment by looking at the role of religion in the suffrage debate. Elsewhere:

• I didn’t watch a lot of the online Democratic National Convention, but I thought that Michelle Obama (in making “the moral case” against Donald Trump) and Joe Biden himself (in a speech that was almost Pauline in spots) acquitted themselves particularly well.

• According to John Perkins, white evangelical support for Trump has “created a split in the church.”

• Fortunately for one prominent Trump supporter, “evangelicalism has built-in insurance for reputational damage, should a wealthy white man make the mistake of public licentiousness widely shared on the Web: the worst sins make for the best redemption stories.”

• If they actually know someone who has suffered from COVID, even white evangelicals are less likely to vote for Trump.

• Of course, maybe all it should take is a bipartisan congressional committee confirming that “Russiagate” was no hoax.

• Religious freedom debates over worship in the age of COVID aren’t limited to the United States.

A National Guardsman from Nebraska says goodbye to his daughter before deploying – Nebraska National Guard

• A Wheaton College professor shared what deployments can mean for military families in the midst of a pandemic.

• In the spring, it didn’t take long for the dominoes to fall and move most colleges online. Will the same thing happen this fall?

(If so, I don’t think I’ll be in the classroom for very long: Bethel’s Big 10 neighbor may delay students’ arrival on campus and have them plan for at least the first two weeks of the semester being online.)

• One Mennonite college found that almost one in ten of its returning students tested positive for COVID when they showed up on campus.

(Speaking of Mennonites… Germany is preparing to mark the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism.)

• What’s it like for college students to live in quarantine?

• I flagged this Joanne Freeman piece for when we discuss historical contingency next spring in our Intro to History course.

• If you were interested in both of the seemingly disparate posts I wrote this week, check out this Smithsonian article on the role aviation played in the women’s suffrage movement.