Christianity

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• SOURCE: War on the Rocks
  9/4/2020
  

  Topics You’re Not Supposed To Discuss At Dinner: The Role Of Evangelical Religion In U.S. Foreign Policy (Podcast)

  Lauren Turek, Ashlyn Hand and William Inboden discuss how, as Turek documents, in the late 20th century, the specific notion of human rights intersected with evangelical missionaries and their perceptions of the risks associated with communism and other important foreign policy questions, and were able to organize and influence U.S. foreign policy in a new and important way.

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• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  9/8/2020
  

  Why Thomas Jefferson Created His Own Bible

  by Peter Manseau

  The "Jefferson Bible," representing Thomas Jefferson's efforts to excise the supernatural and miraculous from the New Testament, is an important document of American religious culture. The story of its preservation by Cyrus Adler and John Fletcher Lacey is a remarkable tale as well that reflects changes in the political nature of American religion.

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• SOURCE: Saved by History
  8/27/2020
  

  Stars and Stripes and Blasphemy

  by L.D. Burnett

  What we heard from Mike Pence was a white evangelical Christian swapping out the Savior for the United States flag.  

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• SOURCE: The Way of Improvement Leads Home
  8/26/2020
  

  The Last Fundamentalist Empire Died Yesterday in Lynchburg, Virginia

  by John Fea

  Although he oversaw tremendous growth at Liberty University and tried to lead in the culture wars, Jerry Falwell Jr. was unable to maintain credibility as a faith leader necessary to hold his empire. It's unclear whether any evangelical organization can succeed as a business and a theological enterprise. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  8/26/2020
  

  The Evangelical Left once Had a Home in the GOP. What Happened?

  by John W. Compton

  Evangelical Christians in the political arena today support conservative Republicans. It's not just because the Democratic party moved too far left; the leaders of the New Right purged moderate Evangelicals from the ranks in the 1970s and left the religious left without a clear partisan home. 

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  8/18/2020
  

  Is the White Church Inherently Racist? [review]

  Ph.D. candidate in history Jemar Tisby reviews "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity."

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• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  8/17/2020
  

  An Interview With ‘Playboy’ Magazine Nearly Torpedoed Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Campaign

  by Rick Perlstein

  Jimmy Carter's 1976 campaign was nearly destroyed by an honest and introspective magazine interview; the fact that the magazine was "Playboy" did not help.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/11/2020
  

  The Harvard Professor Who Told the World That Jesus Had a Wife (Review)

  A new book details Karen King's 2012 discovery of a papyrus scrap suggesting that Jesus had a wife whose existence was concealed from posterity. As it turns out, the discovery was a fraud. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/13/2020
  

  We Can Tear Down False Idols of History. Thomas Jefferson Did it to Jesus Christ

  by Peter Manseau

  "Considering “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth” anew today, we might begin by asking whether Jefferson’s willingness to challenge convention gives the lie to a justification of his many failings as unavoidable for a man of his time."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/9/2020
  

  After Falwell Stumbles, His Hometown Sees a Leader in Need of Redemption

  Historians of religion including Grant Wacker, Anthea Butler and John Fea comment on the significance of Jerry Falwell, Jr.'s recent public scandals and the position of Liberty University in the evangelical world. 

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• 8/16/2020
  

  Examining Christian End Times Rhetoric in the Time of COVID

  by Andrew Joseph Pegoda

  Historical amnesia and everyday privilege are what make it seem to some Christians that end prophecies are actively in progress.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/3/2020
  

  The White, European Jesus of Western Imagination is Fiction

  Opinion columnist Michael Gerson takes issue with conservative writer Eric Metaxas's comments on the ethnicity of Jesus Christ. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/3/2020
  

  How White Supremacy Infected Christianity and the Republican Party

  Columnist Jennifer Rubin discusses the findings of Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, presented in his new book, that elements of evangelical theology are strongly supportive of hierarchy and inequality. 

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• SOURCE: Minnesota Public Radio
  7/28/2020
  

  The Impact of White Evangelicals on U.S. Politics (Audio)

  Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez argues in "Jesus and John Wayne" that contemporary Evangelical political views are a product of the group's embrace of patriarchal authority and power, a situation that will not end when Trump leaves office. 

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• SOURCE: University of South Carolina
  7/22/2020
  

  The Long History of How Jesus Came to Resemble a White European

  No one knows exactly what Jesus looked like, and there are no known images of him from his lifetime. Art history professor Anna Smartwood House writes about the complicated history of the images of Christ and how historically they have served many purposes.

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• SOURCE: NPR
  7/1/2020
  

  White Supremacist Ideas Have Historical Roots In U.S. Christianity

  At an earlier point in American history, some Christian theologians went so far as to argue that the enslavement of human beings was justifiable from a biblical point of view.

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• 5/31/2020
  

  Trump and the Puritans

  by Martyn Whittock

  No one would ever call Donald Trump a Puritan. But the 17th century religious movement is a foundation of Trump's America.

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• SOURCE: Christianity Today
  5/13/2020
  

  What Ahmaud Arbery’s Death Recalls About Lynching and Church History

  How and why these killings—and Christians’ responses to them—changed over the centuries.

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  4/20/2020
  

  Christian Groups That Resist Public-Health Guidelines Are Forgetting a Key Part of the Religion's History

  by Matthew Gabriele

  Scholars have shown that a large part of Christianity’s attraction in the Roman world was that it cared for the welfare of the people who were suffering.

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• 4/19/2020
  

  Evangelicals, Donald J. Trump, and the Making of the Tribune in Chief

  by Paul Croce

  Even Donald Trump's harshest critics would do well to understand his powerful appeal to white evangelical Christians instead of simply complaining about it.