In case you missed it yesterday morning, The Gospel Coalition featured a reworked version of my Anxious Bench post on the religious history of the modern Olympics. They asked me to conclude with a bit more application for Christian readers, so here’s what I came up with: So how should Christians respond to an event whose website still defines Olympism as “a philosophy of … More Can the Olympics Bring Americans Together?
Every time I write a post about Donald Trump, I tell myself it’s going to be the last one. This is not, and has never been, a blog about politics. But it is a blog about Christianity, history, education, and how they intersect, so as the Republican National Convention begins, I’m going to write one … More Why I Signed the Historians Against Trump Letter
Okay, so it was fun taking part in Monday’s #iftrumpwereevangelical tweeting. But all that negativity isn’t sitting well with me… #iftrumpwereevangelical he would feel a teensy bit guilty for tweeting an #iftrumpwereevangelical joke. — Chris Gehrz (@cgehrz) June 27, 2016 I’m not sure that historians or bloggers can afford to be bound by the “if … More Top 10 Nice Things I Can Say about Donald Trump
Some levity for your evening: from many of the same summer-breaking scholars of religion who brought you #IfTrumpwereEvangelical, it’s #MethodistHillary! In the spirit of #iftrumpwereevangelical comes super #MethodistHillary. She wants your vote but also that casserole recipe. — Kate Bowler (@KatecBowler) June 28, 2016 N/sure #MethodistHillary can be as yuge as #iftrumpwereevangelical… or wants to be … More #MethodistHillary
Quick math: (presidential campaign season + sudden conversion story + observers of evangelicalism on summer break) x (social media) = ? That’s right: #iftrumpwereevangelical! If you’re on Twitter, agree that the best response to fear is laughter, and enjoy inside references to evangelical subculture, then you should click on the day’s fastest-trending hashtag. (Well, the most hilarious.) Among my favorites … More #iftrumpwereevangelical
Republicans have garnered 77-78% of the evangelical vote in the last three major elections (2014, 2012, 2010). And it seems unlikely that Hillary Clinton will even reach the near-quarter of the evangelical vote that Barack Obama won in 2008. In April, Barna found that 81% of evangelicals had an unfavorable view of Hillary Clinton — over … More Could Hillary Clinton Win a Significant Share of Evangelical Voters?
In the wake of the recent Southern Baptist debate about religious freedom for Muslims — and given the larger conversation about the meaning of religious freedom in an increasingly post-Christian society — I thought I’d use this week’s Anxious Bench post to revisit something I wrote about last year: how Baptists responded to the 1960s Supreme Court rulings against … More Religious Freedom: The Contested Core of Baptist Identity
Ah, 2012: when I lamented how civil discourse was being replaced by “ideological segregation,” as the Left and Right engaged in “epistemic closure.” That phrase came from Julian Sanchez, who had observed that, among many conservatives, “Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with … More Conservatives for Progressives to Read (revisited)
Like everyone, I’m stunned and grieved by the news from Orlando yesterday. I’m not sure I have anything useful to say… except to repost what I shared the last time there was a mass shooting on anything like this scale. Sadly, I only had to go back seven months in my archive to find that post. It … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: “Thoughts and Prayers”
I haven’t written a lot about the Democratic side of the 2016 presidential election. (Frankly, if it weren’t that the Republicans had picked the nominee they apparently they have picked, I wouldn’t be writing much about them either.) But I don’t think I ought to let the week go by without saying something about what Hillary Clinton … More Seeing the Election through My Daughter’s Eyes
The Pietist Schoolman 