religion

• 
• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  6/12/2019
  

  Why No One Can Agree on What George Washington Thought About the Relationship Between Church and State

  by Sam Wineburg

  The first president wanted to unite citizens of all religions without alienating Catholics, freethinkers and Jews.

• 
• 3/17/19
  

  The Antigay "Traditional Plan" and the History of the Methodist Church

  by Christopher M. Bishop

  Until this month, slavery was the only other issue that seriously threatened the unity of American Methodism.

• 
• SOURCE: Smithsonian.com
  2/5/19
  

  What a Hundred-Year-Old Department Store Can Tell Us About the Overlap of Retail, Religion and Politics

  The legacy left behind by the Philadelphia-based retail chain Wanamaker’s is still felt by shoppers today  

• 
• 1/29/19
  

  Are Your Religious Beliefs and Conscience Worth Your Life?

  by Bruce Chadwick

  A review of A Man for All Seasons. 

• 
• 12/30/2018
  

  Trump’s White Evangelicals are Nostalgic for an American Past that Never Existed for Blacks and Others

  by John Fea

  Indulging the practice of nostalgia is inherently selfish because it focuses entirely on their own experience of the past and not on the experience of others.

• 
• SOURCE: NYT
  12-20-2018
  

  After More Than Two Decades of Work, a New Hebrew Bible to Rival the King James

  The pre-eminent scholar Robert Alter has finally finished his own translation.

• 
• 12/23/2018
  

  We Wanted to Publish an Illustrated History of the Holy Land. We Couldn’t Make Everybody Happy.

  by H. G. M. Williamson

  One compromise was to stop our history in 1918.

• 
• SOURCE: Princeton University Press (Blog)
  12-11-2018
  

  Historian Ethan Shagan wanted to understand why Martin Luther – in the Middle Ages! – claimed most people do not believe that God exists

  The quest to find the answer took him on a seven year odyssey, as he explains in this interview.

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  12-9-2018
  

  Slave Bible From The 1800s Omitted Key Passages That Could Incite Rebellion

  "About 90 percent of the Old Testament is missing [and] 50 percent of the New Testament is missing."

• 
• SOURCE: NYT
  12-2-18
  

  Einstein’s ‘God Letter,’ a Viral Missive From 1954

  “The word God is for me nothing but the expression of and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends,” the message reads.

• 
• SOURCE: The Daily Beast
  11-24-18
  

  Did Christian Historians Exaggerate Persecution by the Romans?

  Archaeological work in Jordan at the site of a mine where Christians had reportedly suffered horrific torture has uncovered some troubling information.

• 
• SOURCE: NYT
  10-28-18
  

  How Evangelicals Reshaped Elections

  In the early 1970s, many evangelical Christians weren’t active in politics. Within a few years they had reshaped American politics for a generation.

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  10-9-18
  

  The Catholic Church’s grim history of ignoring priestly pedophilia – and silencing would-be whistleblowers

  by Brian Clites

  While the problem of priestly pedophilia might be centuries old, the modern paper trail began only after World War II.

• 
• 11/4/18
  

  Christianity Is to Blame for the Bigoted Purposes to Which It’s Being Put, but ...

  by Steve Patterson

  There's evidence this was Christianity's original creed: "There is no Jew or Greek; there is no slave or free; there is no male and female, for you are all one.”

• 
• 10/14/18
  

  Is Islam a Western Religion?

  by Juan Cole

  It doesn’t hate us. It is us.

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  9-5-18
  

  How views on priestly celibacy changed in Christian history

  by Kim Haines-Eitzen

  The fact is for a long time the Catholic Church struggled with its interpretation of Scriptures on priestly celibacy. It wasn’t until the 12th century that priestly celibacy became mandatory.

• 
• SOURCE: The Salt Lake Tribune
  9-4-18
  

  Mormon church publishes its first official history in nearly a century, and the result is an easy-to-read volume that tackles some hard facts

  Few, if any, books about the beginning of Mormonism start with an Indonesian volcano.

• 
• 9/23/18
  

  How Thomas Jefferson Illuminates the Politics of Race

  by Donald J. Fraser

  No American of the early Republic so reflected the ambivalent view of slavery and injustice towards African-Americans as Jefferson.

• 
• SOURCE: NYT
  8-17-18
  

  Kathleen Sprows Cummings says the Catholic Church needs wholesale radical transformation

  by Kathleen Sprows Cummings

  In an op ed in the NYT she says she can nom longer advocate piecemeal reforms.

• 
• SOURCE: NYT
  8-18-18
  

  How America’s Jews Learned to Be Liberal

  by Steven R. Weisman

  The answer lies in the 19th century, when Judaism became a distinctively American religion.