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anxiousbench

David Swartz

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. 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February 2019

February 13, 2019

Yun Ch’iho Meets Jim Crow

How a Korean Christian's encounter with racial segregation soured him on America

January 2019

January 30, 2019

The National Prayer Breakfast and Evangelical Prophetic Witness

On February 1, 1973, Senator Mark Hatfield (R) of Oregon delivered a stinging address at...

January 16, 2019

“Joe Brown, Joe Brown, He’s a Mean White Man”: Southern Baptist Seminary and the Convict-Lease System

An evangelical seminary tries to reckon with its history of white supremacy

January 02, 2019

Serendipity in the Stacks: A Case against Bookless Libraries

Why I'm not ready to leave behind real books in real library

December 2018

December 19, 2018

A Very Not-So-Merry Christmas: How Protestantism Nearly Killed St. Nick

We all give thanks that the excesses of the Reformation didn’t kill Christmas in the...

December 05, 2018

The Amish Farmer and the Pietist Prince

Wrestling with my Anabaptist heritage during a recent trip to Germany

November 2018

November 21, 2018

Why Kids in Kentucky Didn’t Dress Up as Pilgrims after the Civil War

And how is it that my own children now celebrate Thanksgiving in their Jessamine County...

November 07, 2018

The Evangelical Party

As Watergate smolders, a Bible college student proposes an evangelical political party.

October 2018

October 24, 2018

The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: An Interview with Melani McAlister

David Swartz interviews Melani McAlister about her new book

September 2018

September 26, 2018

Fundamentalist Mormons, Essential Oils, and the Antiestablishment Gospel

Tara Westover on the context of her family's essential oils business

September 12, 2018

Before Evangelicals Believed in Family Values

That evangelicals are pro-family is one of the ironies of American religious history

August 2018

August 29, 2018

The Apocalyptic Billy Graham

Franklin Graham, Eric Metaxas, and other court evangelicals remind us of the apocalyptic side of...

August 15, 2018

Rainn Wilson, Dwight Schrute, and the Search for Meaning in Postmodern America

In its radical individualism and stress on tolerance, Baha’i appears to be a religion invented...

August 01, 2018

Carter’s malaise speech still matters four decades later

Nearly 40 years ago, on July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter went on national television...

July 2018

July 18, 2018

The Hare with Amber Eyes

I'm on a break from blogging as I conduct research in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. If...

July 04, 2018

Unexpected Sites of Christian Pacifism: Pentecostal Edition

I'm on a blogging break while conducting research in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I hope you...

June 2018

June 20, 2018

The Religious Left in Modern America

I’m pleased to welcome Doug Rossinow, a professor of history at the University of Oslo,...

June 06, 2018

Rock Piles and Elves: Secularism and the Supernatural in Iceland

How elves complicate the usual narrative of secularism in Iceland

May 2018

May 23, 2018

Death (and Life) Comes to the Archbishop

“I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die having lived.”

May 09, 2018

From Mennonite Pacifist to Marxist Revolutionary

The journey of a Mennonite woman from rural Kansas to international radicalism

April 2018

April 11, 2018

Falwell vs. Claiborne: A Report from Lynchburg

What Liberty University and the Red Letter Revival in Virginia can tell us about the...

April 10, 2018

Evangelicals in Lynchburg: A Photo Essay

We recently returned from Lynchburg, Virginia, home of Liberty University and the site of the...

March 2018

March 28, 2018

The Feminisms of Madeline L’Engle and Betty Friedan

Though she did not overtly situate her work within feminist conversations, L’Engle nonetheless points toward...

March 14, 2018

A Wrinkle in Time and the Gospel of the Third Way

If Madeleine L’Engle’s portrayal of communism as the evil "other" was not unusual, her antidote...

February 2018

February 28, 2018

Black Fundamentalists and Moody Bible Institute

How black fundamentalists responded to Moody Bible Institute's accommodation to racial segregation

February 14, 2018

Race and Respectability at Moody Bible Institute

Moody Bible Institute’s pursuit of middle-class respectability led away from a soft racial egalitarianism toward...

January 2018

January 31, 2018

Cultivating Respectability at Moody Bible Institute

Efforts to secure white, middle-class respectability are nothing new at Moody Bible Institute.

January 17, 2018

Crusade University and the Limits of Evangelical Intellectualism

Why Crusade University never got off the ground

January 03, 2018

Crusade University and the Intellectual Ambitions of Evangelicals

The story of evangelicals' attempt to launch an Ivy League-quality research university in the 1950s

December 2017

December 20, 2017

Blaming the Victim: Billy Sunday and Male Power

How evangelicals abet a culture of masculine aggression

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