Did Christopher Lasch Predict 9-11?

No.

But he came pretty close.

I was reading a bit this morning in Lasch's provocative and magisterial The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics (W.W. Norton, 1991) and I was struck by this paragraph on p. 23.

A sign of the times: both left and right, with equal vehemence, repudiate the charge of "pessimism." Neither side has any use for "doomsayers." Neither wants to admit that our society has taken a wrong turn, lost its way, and needs to recover a sense of purpose and direction. Neither addresses the overriding issue of limits, so threatening to those who wish to appear optimistic at all times. The fact remains: the earth's finite resources will not support an indefinite expansion of industrial civilization. The right proposes, in effect, to maintain our riotous standard of living, as it has been maintained in the past, at the expense of the rest of the world (increasingly at the expense of our minorities as well). This program is self-defeating, not only because it will produce environmental effects from which even the rich cannot escape but because it will widen the gap between rich and poor nations, generate more and more violent movements of insurrection and terrorism against the West, and bring about a deterioration of the world's political climate as threatening as the deterioration of its physical climate.

Most of this is still relevant today, eighteen years later.

Wendell Berry at George Washington University

Messiah College students are fired up about Wendell Berry's visit to Washington D.C. this Sunday. The last I heard there was a busload heading to George Washington University to hear him and Bill McKibben speak at an event sponsored by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN). If you can't make it, the CCAN will be live streaming the event on its blog.

Alan Wolfe at Messiah College

I just returned from a lecture at Messiah College by Alan Wolfe, the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and Public Life at Boston College and one of our leading observers of American religious life. Wolfe's lecture, "Who's Afraid of American Religion," was sponsored by the Messiah College Center for Public Humanities and was part of the Center's annual Spring Humanities Symposium.

Wolfe argued that atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens--pundits who worry that the Christian Right is going to create a theocracy in America--are overreacting. He compared this rise of popular atheism to the Enlightenment skeptics of the eighteenth-century. Their arguments against organized religion are strikingly similar to Voltaire, Diderot, and Paine. He even compared Hitchens, a Brit who now lives in the United States, to Thomas Paine. (I have never thought about this before, but the comparison make sense). Wolfe suggested that these atheist writers are not bothered by religion per se, but are more angry about the way religion is linked with politics. They fear theocracy.

Wolfe, however, gave three reasons why Americans need not fear theocracy:

1. The long history of separation of church and state in America. Wolfe reminded us that the separation of church and state has religious roots, particularly among early American Baptists like the Virginia preacher John Leland. Separation of church and state is good for religion. He said that American religion's "Faustian bargain" with politics has corrupted the soul of religion. This reminded me of an essay by Randall Balmer chiding Rick Warren for not being true to his Baptist faith during the Proposition 8 debates.

2. The Religious Diversity of American Religion
As long as America remains a pluralistic nation--and it is getting more pluralistic every day--a theocracy will be impossible. Wolfe described an "in-built tolerance" in American religious life that prevents one religion from dominating the others. During this section of the talk he accused the Republican Party of religious bigotry for their rejection of Mitt Romney's presidential candidacy. During the Q&A he also called Mike Huckabee a bigot for promoting these anti-Mormon views. I think he is right.

3. The Way Americans Practice Their Faith
Since American Christians do not take their faith seriously we should not fear theocracy. America is "the most religious people in the world, but the least theological." In other words, they do not care about theology enough to force their beliefs on others. Americans are just "too nice."

It was a great talk. Wolfe is a very engaging speaker and it was great to meet him and chat with him a bit after the talk. I also learned that he is a reader of this blog!

Teaching Ben Franklin and Philip Vickers Fithian

Russell Menard, in his review of The Way of Improvement Leads Home, makes a point worth repeating for those of you thinking about reading assignments for your early American history courses.

If the press brings out a moderately priced paperback edition of this book, I will assign it in my early American history classes, where, paired with Franklin’s Autobiography, it will provide students with some insight into the origins of American culture.

Well, the University of Pennsylvania Press has delivered. The Way of Improvement Leads Home in paperback should be out any day now. I hope you might consider it for course adoption. Menard is right. It will work very well with Franklin's Autobiography. While Fithian does not wholeheartedly reject a Franklinesque view of American culture and opportunity, he balances this optimistic view with a healthy dose of skepticism about where the "way of improvement" might lead him.

As I write in the final chapter of the book:

Similarly, ambition--the inner drive and passion that motivated him to move beyond the agrarian life of limits that his father offered him--was understood by Philip in the context of the Christian doctrine of vocation. Enlightened ambition and the spiritual discipline of obeying a call from God were not incompatible to him. A properly fashioned life of self-betterment did not necessarily have to result in a rejection of Christianity, either in the way that Thomas Jefferson had argued when he predicted the end of organized religion, or in the way that Benjamin Franklin exemplified in his move from Puritan Boston to Enlightenment Philadelphia. Philip's call to an educated and Enlightened life and his call to serve God were often one and the same.

And as long as we are talking about teaching The Way of Improvement Leads Home, here are snippets from a few more reviews:

Fea has captured a multi-faceted world that teachers of American history should rush to share with their students.--Dallett Hemphill

With its clear thesis and chapter ending summaries, it will be accessible for undergraduates and a more general audience as well.--Maxine Lurie

Fea is right about the potential utility of his book; it should be a wonderfully teachable volume in undergraduate classrooms... Will Mackintosh

More Bad News for the Humanities?

Have you seen Patricia Cohen's article on the humanities in Tuesday's New York Times? It's worth a look. Stanley Katz has an insightful post on the article at Brainstorm. He discusses the ways in which the economy may impact the humanities and liberal arts on college campuses. Also, be sure to check out Michael H. Ebner's remarks in the comments section. It is encouraging.

It's Hoosiers Time!

This is the time of year when I turn into a high school basketball junkie. Pennsylvania is in the midst of its district playoffs and the state playoffs will start soon. For the last several years I have spent February and March keeping my eye on high school basketball scores and dragging my daughter to neutral gyms to watch playoff games. All of this culminates with a weekend with old friends in State College to see the PIAA state finals at Penn State's Bryce Jordan Center.

With this is mind, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Bill Kauffman piece in First Principles on the production of the movie Hoosiers. Kauffman concludes:

Watch Hoosiers. Then get down to the high-school gym to watch the local team. Listen to the screams, the handclaps, the laughs, the shouts of encouragement. That noise you hear is the sound of community.

Washington Book Prize Finalists

In my weekly "Sunday Night Odds and Ends" post, I mentioned that the C.V. Starr Center, in conjunction with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Mount Vernon, have announced the three finalists for the George Washington Book Prize:

The $50,000 award—co-sponsored by Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and George Washington's Mount Vernon—is the largest prize nationwide for a book on early American history, and one of the largest literary prizes of any kind. It recognizes the year's best books on the nation's founding era, especially those that have the potential to advance broad public understanding of American history.

This year's finalists are:

Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Norton)

Kevin J. Hayes's The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (Oxford)

Jane Kamensky's The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse (Viking).

The winner will be announced on May 28th at Mt. Vernon.

Fox News Assault on Teaching American History

Has the study of history returned to the front lines of the culture war in America? Yes, if Fox News has anything to say about it. The Fox morning show, Fox and Friends, is running a series of segments about "bias" in American history textbooks. The series seems to have been prompted by the publication of University of Dayton professor Larry Schwiekart's book 48 Liberal Lies About American History (That You Probably Learned in School).

In this particular segment, Schwiekart and the host of Fox and Friends, Steve Doocy, go after Teaching American History: Essays Adapted from the Journal of American History, 2001-2007, edited by Gary Kornblith and Carol Lasser, the editors of the teaching and textbooks section of the Journal of American History. The book includes articles on teaching by a host of leading American historians and also includes essays by Lendol Calder and Sam Wineburg, two experts of pedagogy who I have devoted a lot of coverage to on this blog.

Watch the segment for yourself:




First off, Teaching American History is not a textbook, it is a group of essays designed to appeal to teachers, not students.

Second, almost any legitimate historian--liberal or conservative-- would agree with the authors of this text that "history is not a set of fixed facts, figures, and events." Schwiekart, I would like to think, knows better than to allow Doocy to mock this assertion. And to make it worse, he adds fuel to the fire by agreeing with him.

In the meantime, I would encourage all of those interested in teaching to get your hands on a copy of Teaching of American History. I have read most of these essays when they first appeared in the Journal of American History and can attest to their high quality and helpful suggestions for how to be a better teacher of American history.

Revise and Resubmit

This post is addressed largely to my academic and graduate school readers. How many of you have submitted a journal article for publication only to have it returned with with a decision of "revise and resubmit?"

Over at the award-winning The Edge of the American West, Eric Rauchway offers some suggestions about how to respond to such a decision. And don't forget to read the comments. Some of them are pretty good.

Pennsylvania Historical Sites Continue to Take Hits

Last week I blogged about Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell's proposal to cut 50 of the current 57 staff positions at the Pennsylvania State Library in Harrisburg.

Today, the Harrisburg Patriot-News reports that the State Museum of Pennsylvania may be forced to charge admission in order to survive Rendell's budget cuts.

His spending plan would eliminate the $3.8 million in state grants for small museums and regional history centers. It also would cut funding by 10 percent to nine museums, including the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts in Harrisburg, in the commission's $26.5 million budget.

The article also reports that due to budget cuts the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission may have to close up to seven of the state's historical sites.

Unfortunately, historical and cultural institutions are often the first to go during times of economic crises. This is a shame, since during difficult times these kinds of institutions remind us of who we are as a people. Our shared past offers a source of strength and communal identity in times of trial.

Let's hope Rendell might reconsider these cuts.

Russell Menard's Review of the Way of Improvement Leads Home

My work-study student, Courtney, just dug up a review of The Way of Improvement Leads Home by University of Minnesota early Americanist Russell Menard in History: A Review of New Books. I print it here in full:

John Fea’s biography of Phillip Vickers Fithian is a rare book, one that will appeal both to academic historians specializing in early America and to those whose interest in the field and in history is more casual. Fithian is familiar to students of early America because of a diary he kept during a two-year stint as a tutor on the Robert Carter plantation in eighteenth-century Virginia, a diary that has powerfully shaped scholarly understanding of the Chesapeake gentry. Until now, however, we have known little about the rest of Fithian’s life, even though he kept a diary his whole life. His is a compelling story, and his usually penetrating and often quotable observations illuminate many of the major events and processes in early American history.

Fea has seized the opportunity Fithian’s diaries present to produce an engaging biography that deserves the attention of anyone interested in America’s colonial past. Fea organizes the biography around what he sees as the central tension in Fithian’s life—that between his commitment to the enlightenment ideals of selfimprovement and membership in a cosmopolitan republic of letters and his deep attachment to his home along the Cohansey River in southwestern New Jersey. While tracing this tension, Fea shows how the enlightenment was lived in rural America, explores the complex relationship between enlightenment ideas and evangelical religion, and tells a compelling story of one young man’s relationship to the independence movement.

He also takes us on a fascinating journey through Fithian’s life, beginning with his years as a young agricultural laborer in rural New Jersey, moving on to his college years at Princeton, and then on to the Presbyterian ministry’s missionary tour through the American backcountry. Fea also explores the engaging story of Fithian’s difficult, but ultimately successful, courtship of Elizabeth Beatty and follows Fithian into the Revolutionary War as a chaplain.

If the press brings out a moderately priced paperback edition of this book, I will assign it in my early American history classes, where, paired with Franklin’s Autobiography, it will provide students with some insight into the origins of American culture. Fea makes effective use of Fithian’s diaries, which deserve a wide audience. I hope Fea can be persuaded to publish an edition of substantial selections, so that Fithian can extend our understandingof early America beyond the life of the Virginia gentry.

Although Fithian’s diaries constitute Fea’s major source, the author supplements these with public records from Fithian’s home to produce what at times approaches a community study of the Cohansey River region of New Jersey, and he has read deeply in the available scholarship on eighteenth-century America to contextualize Fithian’s life. In sum, with this charming, nicely written, and thoroughly researched biography of an engaging colonial character, John Fea has provided readers of early American history with a gift to be treasured.
RUSSELL R. MENARD

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things on the web that caught my eye this week:

David Brooks is "dreaming of Denver, but Rob Inglis thinks he has it all wrong.

Is being prolific a good thing?

Bipartisan dreams have been crashing into political reality from the earliest days of the Republic.
A new vision for academic libraries.

The finalists for the George Washington Book Prize have been announced.

Alan Wolfe on liberalism.

Small cities and a sustainable future.

Patrick Deneen on the end of "Right Patriotism."

The First Popemobile?

And the accompanying story at dotCommonweal.

Reinhold Niebuhr Lives!

If you have a spare eighty minutes you need to check out "Obama's Theologian," a recent installment of "Speaking of Faith."

E. J. Dionne and David Brooks join Krista Tippet to discuss the legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr. Jean Bethke Elshtain begins the session by reading one of Niebuhr's prayers.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the discussion.

Brooks: "The University of Chicago is a Baptist school where Jewish professors teach atheistic students St. Thomas Aquinas." (This quote has been attributed to Martin Gardner).

Dionne: "Niebuhr was a progressive who believed in original sin."

Brooks: "The core of conservatism is epistemological modesty and original sin...the Republican Party has drifted far away from this."

Dionne: "A lot of Democrats found God in the 2004 exit polls...you can find God anywhere."

Also listen carefully for Brooks's riff on the relationship between human nature and politics.

Dionne: "Because Obama is a post-60s liberal, he is really a 1930s and 1940s liberal."

If Ever We Needed the Liberal Arts...

Columbia's Andrew Delbanco has a great piece in the Feb. 13th Chronicle of Higher Education in which he argues that we need liberally educated people more than ever before.

He begins by questioning Richard Hofstadter's idea that the influence of intellectuals and academics has tended to wax and wane over the course of the 20th century based upon "public irrationality":

Yet is it really true that intellectuals go in and out of favor entirely for reasons of public irrationality? In fact, Eisenhower had his own brain trust — led by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who had studied with the French philosopher Henri Bergson and was a fluent reader of Ancient Greek. George W. Bush, too, turned to advisers with strong academic credentials. Paul D. Wolfowitz, his deputy defense secretary, was eminent enough in his University of Chicago days to earn a bit part in one of Saul Bellow's novels. Leon R. Kass, also of Chicago, advised Bush on issues of ethics and science, and Bush's second secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, once held the position of provost at Stanford University.

The deeper implication of Hofstadter's book is not so much that Americans oscillate between periods of antiand pro-intellectualism, but that they tend to harbor simultaneously an "ingrained distrust of eggheads" and "a genuine yearning for enlightenment and culture."

If indeed the public does yearn for "enlightenment and culture," then intellectuals, Delbanco argues, must do more to the earn the public trust. Why should intellectuals try to reach a broader public? Delbanco offers three reasons:

1). ...the nation needs liberally educated people if it is to compete in the global economy — people, that is, with a certain versatility, creativity, and, ideally, some knowledge of foreign cultures.

2). ...if citizens are to participate responsibly in a democratic society, they require some knowledge of history and a capacity for critical thinking.

3). Liberal education — education, that is, that includes an engagement with what we call the humanities — deepens and enriches individual experience.

Deblanco is more persuaded by #2 and #3 than he is #1, but all of them are worth considering.

Finally, Deblanco takes intellectuals, particularly those ensconced in the ivory towers of the Ivy League and other elite bastions of academic life, to take their values seriously:

But if true liberal education is to flourish in our colleges and universities — education, that is, in history, literature, philosophy, and the arts as well as in science — we might start by pulling back from defensiveness toward putative "anti-intellectuals" outside the ivy gates, and ask whether those of us inside have lived up to our own professed values.

Can we say, with Hofstadter, that "of all the classes which could be called in any sense privileged," it is intellectuals who have "shown the largest and most consistent concern for the well-being of the classes which lie below [them] in the social scale"? Academics certainly talk a lot about social justice, but how credible are we when, for instance, our wealthiest and most prestigious universities admit such a minuscule percentage of students (often fewer than 10 percent) from low-income families?

I like it.

Graduate School Advice

I just got some good news today--one of my former students was accepted into a Ph.D history in American Studies.

Coincidentally, I also ran into some great advice from Progressive Historian's Jeremy Young about what to do after you have been accepted to graduate school.

I hope some of my student readers will find this helpful.

How Will the Economy Impact Scholarship?

Over at Praxis Habitus, Gerardo Marti has an insightful post on the way that the economy will impact scholarly work. Marti makes four points:

1. Colleges and universities are contracting the ranks of professors by releasing contractually-hired lecturers and freezing new hires for academic departments.

2.Traveling expenses to academic conferences are being cut by institutions, and grant monies for travel are being cut back or removed entirely.

3.Grant funding from private endowments will drop for the coming years as the percentage of proceeds from endowment investments goes negative.

4.Libraries are cutting expenses by pulling back on book orders and journal subscriptions.

Check out Marti's blog to see how he develops each one of these points.

So far, I have experienced some of #1 and #2.

Is This What Luther Had in Mind?

When Martin Luther promoted translating the Bible into the vernacular I do not think he could have ever imagined a "Bible Across America" tour.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the New International Version of the Bible, Zondervan publishers is traveling to 90 different U.S. cities and inviting people to copy a verse of the Bible in their own hand. Participants are asked to copy their verses in two different books. One will be sent to the Smithsonian and the other will go to the International Bible Society.

Zondervan, of course, cannot resist the chance to turn a profit on this tour. The publisher plans to scan the images of the copied text and create a new Bible called "America's NIV."

The Way of Improvement Leads Home in Paperback

I went to the mailbox today and found an advance copy of the paperback edition of The Way of Improvement Leads Home. It is finally here!My eleven year old daughter described the book as "very bendy."

I hope it will be available on-line very soon.

C-SPAN's Historians Presidential Leadership Survey

CSPAN recently asked 64 presidential scholars to rank American presidents based on the following characteristics: public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with congress, vision, equality and justice, and performance within the context of the times.

You can read the results here. The top five are:

1. Abraham Lincoln
2.George Washington
3.Franklin Delano Roosevelt
4.Theodore Roosevelt
5.Harry Truman

Other notables:
6.John F. Kennedy
7.Thomas Jefferson
10.Ronald Reagan
15.Bill Clinton
36.George W. Bush

I have no qualms with Lincoln at #1, but I would probably put FDR at #2, the spot he held during the last CSPAN survey in 2000.

In the nine years since the last survey, Bill Clinton made the biggest jump forward (from 21 to 16) and Rutherford B. Hayes took the biggest dive (from 26 to 33).

I am always surprised to see Truman so high on these lists. He has really been rehabilitated in recent years by the likes of David McCullough and Alonzo Hamby. I would probably rank Reagan a bit higher than #10 and James K. Polk a bit lower than #12.

Actually, I was more interested in the presidential scholars chosen to take the survey. There are a lot Lincoln scholars in the bunch.

The Business Model of Higher Education

If you are concerned about the future of higher education, you should read Peter Katopas's "The Business Model is the Wrong Model," in today Inside Higher Ed. Even Katopas, an administrator at a community college, sees the serious problem in treating our colleges and universities like businesses. Here are few excerpts:

...when colleges follow the business model in order to bolster enrollments or to compete for the “top” students, the results over time can also have serious consequences for the society as a whole. When rigor and purpose are replaced by luxury dormitories, state of the art health spas, haute cuisine cafeterias, and inflated grades, what is created is a culture of entitlement and a demand for instant gratification.

My college, for example, is in desperate need of a new library. Unfortunately, this is not as high a priority as some other building projects that would more effectively attract new students.

Historically, one reason for going away to college was to dislocate the young man or woman from their otherwise familiar environs to such an extent that they would be ready to “re-invent” themselves as, ideally, independent and responsible members of society. When colleges attempt to replicate — and in many cases even exceed — the conditions of the student’s pre-adult existence, one might well ask what it is they are teaching the students. Ideally, children are the center of their parents’ world and are indulged accordingly. What, however, does it mean to be an “adult”? Surely it can not be age alone which determines adulthood in contemporary society.

I have long been torn on the "liberalizing" influence of a college education. Yes, college should "dislocate" us and present an opportunity to learn, change, and be transformed by ideas. At the same time, these very tendencies of a liberal arts education lead us away from real places, real communities, and the kinds of networks of kin, faith, and neighborhood that make for a truly flourishing life. These are the very reasons why I sometimes wonder what I am doing in higher education.

Higher education ought to involve dislocation. That is, we owe it to our students to help them to understand that they are not the center of any universe except perhaps their own; that their unsupported opinions and subjective feelings will carry little weight in the “real world”; and that gratification does not always occur on demand.

Amen.

College ought not to be merely a place where someone learns “skills” and racks up credentials, but rather an environment and an experience in which students learn, in addition to history and literature and mathematics, also how to begin to navigate the adult civilized world in an adult, civilized, and responsible manner. Their naïve assumptions about life and nature should be tempered by the rigors of discourse, debate, and discussion. Higher education should be training for life as it is — not as it is imagined by the child’s mind.

While I agree with this, I tend to think that history and literature and mathematics--in other words, a liberal arts education--is precisely the way in which we can teach our students to "navigate the adult civilized world in an adult civilized, and responsible manner."

The End of the Pennsylvania State Library As We Know It

Educational and cultural institutions are being hit hard by the economy. Saturday's Harrisburg Patriot News, my "hometown" newspaper, reports that Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell will be cutting 50 of the current 57 staff positions at the Pennsylvania State Library and the budget will be cut in half. A fight is expected.

Sad news.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things that caught my eye on the web this week:

Are liberals becoming more patriotic? Michael Kazin thinks so.

Alan Brinkley on the history of "railing against the rich."

Can Rowan Williams keep the worldwide Anglican communion together?

Michael Hirschorn on the future of network television.

Professors: Do you want your lectures on YouTube?

Do you write articles for academic journals? Wendy Belcher on parsing the decision letter.

Getting Out: Scholars reflect on past war exit strategies.

History outside the academy.

Nice essay on NBA star Shane Battier.

The subtle art of the Facebook update.

Christopher Hitchens reflects on Abraham Lincoln.

Top 25 Conservative Movies

I seldom think of movies as "conservative" or "liberal," but the folks at the National Review sure do. Here is their list of the top 25 conservative movies of the last 25 years. Juno, Groundhog Day, Ghostbusters, Gran Torino, the Chronicles of Narnia, and Forrest Gump are on the list. Isaac Chotiner comments on the list at the New Republic.

The Republic in Print

About ten years ago, during my stint as a fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, I met Trish Loughran. Though we both spent the 1998-1999 academic year together in residence at Penn, I did not get to know her that well. (We did occasionally chat about our New Jersey roots). I was, however, very impressed with her research project--a study of print culture and nationalism in the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War. I was thus pleased to see that her book, The Republic in Print: Print Culture in the Age of U.S. Nation Building, 1770-1870, appeared a couple of years ago with Columbia University Press. It is due out in paperback later this month.

Well, I have finally gotten around to reading it. In this forcefully argued book, Loughran concludes that print culture is overrated as a way of explaining the emergence of American nationalism. In doing so, she challenges scholars such as Michael Warner and Benedict Anderson who have argued that print culture was the key to the development of national identity. Instead, Loughran focuses on the weaknesses of the print/communication infrastructure in early 19th century America. Without this strong infrastructure, print culture could not play a prominent role in Americans' understanding of their national identity until, ironically, just before the Civil War.

My favorite section of the book deals with Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Loughran concludes that Paine's influence on the American Revolution was not as strong as historians make it out to be. In fact, there is no way possible, she argues, that Common Sense sold as many copies (over 100,ooo) as Paine claimed that it did. The communication networks throughout the British colonies were far too weak and fragile for this to happen. (Loughran's argument here has been challenged by Robert G. Parkinson in his review of the book in the recent Common-Place, but I would encourage you to read the book and decide for yourself. In my opinion, Loughran seems pretty convincing. I actually made a similar argument about print and the spread of the First Great Awakening here).

I wish Loughran would have explored religious print culture a bit more. Nathan Hatch, for example, has argued that religious print played a powerful role in what he calls The Democratization of American Christianity. What role did religious print play in the construction of American nationalism and, particularly, the sense of providential or Christian nationalism that permeated early 19th life. I also wonder how the appearance of Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought, with its focus on the development of a communication infrastructure, may have influenced Loughran's interpretation? I suspect it may have confirmed many of her conclusions.

Read this book.

Saving a Doctoral Program

The February issue of Perspectives has a piece by Jonathan Rose about Drew University's attempt to save their doctoral program in history after the university pronounced a "death sentence" on it.

In the end, after taking a hard look at their existing program, the Drew history faculty decided to create a new "history and culture" Ph.D. Rose lists nine points of emphasis in this new program:.

Small is beautiful
Small is innovative
End the exploitation of teaching assistants
Don't let them take forever
Do away with examinations
Involve other departments
Serve other programs
Play only to your strengths
Train your students to be public intellectuals

And the graduates of this program even land jobs!

Human Dignity and Colonial American History

I have been thinking a bit this morning about Catholic social teaching's view of the human dignity and what that might mean for the way we think about my field of history--colonial America.

While one does not need to be Catholic to uphold the belief that all human beings have intrinsic worth, there is a strong tradition within Catholicism that we are created in the image of God and thus have dignity. This means that human beings in the American past are important because they are human beings, and not because they have contributed to the American Revolution, the rise of the United States, or some other sort of Whig end.

It seems to me that if one believes in Catholic social teaching in all its fullness, then the belief in human dignity should influence the stories we tell about colonial America. In the Whig view, colonial Americans are only important because they provide the necessary background for understanding 1776 and beyond. But if human beings--all human beings--are important and dignified, then it must be the task of the historian to treat them this way, regardless of how they may have contributed to American nationalism.

In other words, it seems to me that Catholic social teaching meshes very well with the recent resistant to teleological understandings of the colonial period--especially those put forth in American Colonies, Alan Taylor's synthetic overview of the period.

Liberal Patriotism

Historian Michael Kazin has a nice piece in Sunday's Washington Post about the way that the Obama victory has made patriotism a "liberal faith." He writes:

Liberals are still getting comfortable with thinking of themselves as the upholders of civic virtue. And conservatives will certainly try their best to recapture that image, as last fall's attacks on Obama as a European-style socialist demonstrated. But after decades in denial, progressives have finally realized that they cannot lead America if America does not hold a privileged place in their hearts. If Obama is as successful at running the country as he has been at recrafting the national story, his most fervent supporters might come to believe that a majority of their fellow citizens are also proud of them.

Obama, liberals, and civic humanism. I have written a bit about this here and here and was interviewed about it here.

New OAH Newsletter Available On-Line

I just got word that the new OAH Newsletter is available for on-line reading. Some highlights include an article by Jill Lepore and Jane Kamensky about their new historical novel, Blindspot; a report on Sam Wineburg's recent keynote address at the Teaching American History symposium; James Percoco on being a history teacher; and a preview of the upcoming OAH meeting in Seattle.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things on the web that caught my eye this week:

William Safire's guide to the onslaught of Abraham Lincoln books. More Lincoln recommendations here and here and here.

Randall Balmer on why Obama should reach out to non-believers.

Another Christian college goes "for profit."

"Citizenship" is the theme of the new Hedgehog Review.

A radically conservative faith-based initiative.

History at the Virginia Festival of the Book.

Interview with Kate Carte Engel on her new book, Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America

New books on John Milton

How Do You Organize Your Library?

Over at Brainstorm, Gina Barecca has a great post on her struggle to organize her library. I read her post with much sympathy. I have been struggling for years with how to bring some order to my books. First of all, half of them are in my office at the college and the other half are in my home study. Of course whenever I need a book in my office it is at home and vice-versa. A few years ago I made a half-hearted attempt at organizing my history books by time period, but as my reading interest expanded to novels, cultural criticism, theology, local history, historiography, etc... my shelves have lost all sense of rhyme or reason. Now half of my shelves are classified by genre or subject matter and the other half are organized by time period. Help! I spent fifteen minutes this morning trying to track down a biography of Reinhold Niebuhr.

Any advice would be most appreciated. How do you bring order to your library?

John Patrick Diggins, R.I.P.

In case you have not heard, historian John Patrick Diggins past away last week at the age of 73. The New Republic is featuring an obituary by Ronald Steel. Here is an excerpt:

Since the founding of this journal nearly a century ago, its editors have tried to remain true to the vision of our nation's founders: to be visionary without seeking utopia, to be progressive without succumbing to doctrine, to be pragmatic without eschewing a passion for ideals. This has often placed us on embattled ground: "to the right of the Left and to the left of the Right"--to borrow an illuminating phrase used by one of the nation's most imaginative intellectual historians to describe himself.

It is in part for this reason that we pay special homage to that historian, John Patrick Diggins, who died of cancer last week in New York at the age of 73. Although gentle and soft-spoken in his personal demeanor, and refined in his tastes, he boldly embraced intellectual challenge and never shrunk from necessary combat.

I confess that I have not read much of Diggins. I skimmed On Hallowed Ground and The Lost Soul of American Politics and read some of his scathing critiques of the National History Standards. I liked his contarian style and admired his intellectual courage and independent thinking. His writing roars, and sometimes I wish I had the same guts in my own work.

A while ago I blogged on Gordon Wood's review of On Hallowed Ground. Wood was rough on Diggins, going as far to suggest that he was not an historian.

I was unaware that Diggins, at the time of his death, was writing a biography of Reinhold Niebuhr. Now that is a book I would have looked forward to reading.

The Madness of Providential Thinking

In my Religion and the American Founding course we are reading through Nicholas Guyatt's excellent Providence and the Invention of the United States (Cambridge, 2007). One of Guyatt's points is that "providence" has always been politicized in American history. In other words, God's providence is usually invoked to support the particular agenda of the one who invokes it.

While preparing for class the other day, I came across this interesting piece on providential thinking by Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed blog. It illustrates why providence, if you believe in it, can be a lousy category for understanding politics and history.

Messiah College Hosting Lincoln Scholars

On April 29, 2009, Messiah College will host noted Abraham Lincoln scholars Darrell Bigham (a Messiah alum), Gabor Boritt, and Matt Pinsker as part of the college's annual American Democracy Lecture. The event has been officially endorsed by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. See you there!

Why the American Revolution Really Happened

OK--I admit that my title is a little provocative. But as some of you know I have been doing a lot of research and thinking of late about the religious dimensions of the American Revolution. I have been exploring the way in which many Loyalists, Anglicans, and British officials viewed the American Revolution as a "Presbyterian Rebellion." For example, Ambrose Serle, General William Howe’s secretary, wrote in 1777 that “the War…at Bottom is very much a religious War.” He would later write that “Presbyterianism is really at the Bottom of the whole Conspiracy, has supplied it with Vigor, and will never rest, till something is decided upon it." King George III said that the American Revolution was nothing more than a "Presbyterian Rebellion." And I could provide dozens and dozens of similar quotations.

But why were Presbyterians so rebellious? This is a huge question--one in which I hope to address in book form. But today while reading letters from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), the Anglican missionary society to the British colonies, I came across an interesting explanation from Charles Inglis, a Church of England priest from New York City.

Inglis, writing on October 31, 1776 to the SPG in London, argues:

...yet is it now past all Doubt, that an Abolition of the Church of England was one of the principal Springs of the Dissenting Leaders’ Conduct; & hence the Unanimity of Dissenters in this Business, their universal Defection from Government—emancipating themselves from the Jurisdiction of Great Britain, & becoming Indpendent (sic) was a necessary step towards this grand object.

Inglis is saying that independence from England was the "necessary step" for "dissenters" (read Presbyterians) to achieve their ultimate design or "grand object," namely the "Abolition of the Church of England" and not the other way around. Interesting.

If Inglis is right, perhaps there is more to be said about religion and the coming of the American Revolution. Stay tuned.

McClay on Lincoln

Several years ago I wrote an essay for the literary and public affairs magazine, The Cresset, on my experience teaching the Civil War. (The article, as far as I can tell, is not on-line. Drop me a note with your address and I will be happy to send you off a hard copy). The piece reflected on the way my Christian students responded to Abraham Lincoln. Some of them praised Lincoln for freeing the slaves and the preserving the Union. But others offered compelling critiques of his commitment to Total War. Most of my students rejected the racist and slave culture of the American South, but they wondered whether Lincoln's celebration and promotion of Union at all costs may have led to the loss of local community, tradition, and folkways. Some of my Anabaptist students could not reconcile Lincoln's love of Nation with their understanding of a universal Kingdom of God that transcends national identity. (As a college with Anabaptist roots, Messiah does not fly an American flag on campus).

I thought about these things today reading Wilfred McClay's reflections on Lincoln in the January/February 2009 issue of Humanities. McClay humanizes Lincoln for us and offers some helpful reflections on the Lincoln we have come to revere and the Lincoln who was a product of mid-19th century American history.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things on the web that caught my eye this week:

Damon Linker's proposal for ending the culture war.

Jon Meacham reviews some new books on Abe Lincoln.

New York Times review of Lepore and Kamensky's Blindspot.

The financial woes of the Christian Cathedral.

A play about the evangelical culture of Colorado Springs is coming to New York.

Is technology harming critical thinking?

Portraits of the Evangelical Ivy League.

Interesting post on Wikipedia and the web.

David Brooks on "institutional thinking."

Doing history at a community college.

Why are more and more graduate students turning down work at research universities?

A Thomas Paine scholar's reaction to Obama's inauguration speech.

Howard Zinn as Don Quixote

Why I am Rooting for the Steelers Today

I am one of those people who cannot just sit down and watch a football game without rooting for one team to win and the other team to lose. With this in mind, here are three reasons why I am rooting for the Steelers today.

1). The AFC. I am a lifelong fan of the American Football Conference. The first football game I ever watched was the 1973 Super Bowl between the Miami Dolphins and the Washington Redskins. Since the Dolphins were undefeated going into the game I decided I would root for them to have a perfect season. I have been a Dolphins fan ever since, although my loyalty has declined greatly since the end of the Don Shula era. As a Dolphins fan in the 1970s, I despised the Steelers. But with the passing of time, my dislike of the Steelers has mellowed to the point that I am actually willing to root for them as the representative of the good old American Football Conference.

2). The working class grit of Western Pennsylvania. I love working class cities and the Steelers have always represented the hard-working people of Pittsburgh. These are the kinds of people who William James praised in his essay "What Makes a Life Significant." Of course this image of Pittsburgh is a bit nostalgic. The Onion recently suggested that the Steelers should change the name of their defense from the "Steel Curtain" to the "Mid-Level White-Collar Curtain" to reflect the city's changing economy. Fair enough--but I reserve the right to be as nostalgic as I want to be on Super Bowl Sunday.

3). My kids. My daughters are not big football fans during the regular season, but they are thoroughly caught up in the Steelers fever that has captured the imaginations of all Pennsylvanians who live west of the Susquehanna River. The walls of their room are covered with Steelers posters that they got from the sports section of the Harrisburg Patriot-News. In years past I have wondered if they were more excited about the Super Bowl because Mom breaks out the junk food, but this year I actually think they are eager to watch the game (and the commercials!). I look forward to watching it with them.

Go Steelers!

P.S. This is the first Super Bowl in which I am anticipating the halftime show(Springsteen!) as much as the game.