Reports from the OAH

Last weekend the Organization of American Historians held their annual meeting in Seattle. Here are some on-line dispatches from the conference:

Historiann

Ben Alpers at US Intellectual History

History News Network

Michigan State University

Stranger Things Have Happened

I Prefer Saturated Colors

Tenured Radical

Chrisopher Capazzola at Legal History Blog

National Council on Public History

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

OK, so it is not yet "night," but I will be traveling tonight. So, here are a few things on-line that caught my attention this week:

"Big" at the National Archives.

The end of printed monographs?

Chris Rodda debunks the David Barton Christian Nation crowd. (Although the "liar" monicker seems a bit much).

Pursuits of Happiness: Tocqueville in the Newfane, VT and P.S 47 in the Bronx.

More on John Hope Franklin here and here

Narcissism

Collin Calloway: New York Indians Discover Dutchmen

Newt Gingrich is converting to Catholicism

Cass Sunstein on large republics.

Brian Urquhart reviews three books on Reinhold Niebuhr

The conservative flavor of British localism

What does it mean when your team is down at halftime?

Howard Zinn vs. David Barton

Well, the prolific commentators over at American Creation have managed to distract me from my quiet evening in front of the television watching the Pitt-Villanova game. This morning I wrote a post on this blog criticizing Howard Zinn and questioning his identity as a "historian." Brad Hart at American Creation wrote a post about my post and it has opened up a real hornet's nest in the comments section of his blog.

My post on Zinn comes on the heels of another heated debate at American Creation that centers around whether or not Christian nationalist David Barton is or isn't a "liar." Barton gadfly Chris Rodda has put together a YouTube lecture series showing, quite convingly I might add, how Barton has a tendency of manipulating primary sources to make his dubious argument that America is a Christian nation. (I showed the first two parts of these lectures to my Religion and American Founding class yesterday. I think they got a kick out of the whole debate).

Some commentators at American Creation are unwilling to accept my comparison between Zinn and Barton. (With the exception of Brad Hart, who seems to be one of the lone defenders of my post. Thanks for taking the heat Brad!). They are arguing that Zinn is different from Barton because Barton deliberately "lies" about what the sources say and Zinn does not. While I am not sure I would go as far as some in calling Barton a "liar," it does seem that he has distorted the truth of the documents he uses. (Zinn may do the same thing, but I have not had the time or inclination to check it out thoroughly). The argument of some of the American Creation commentators thus goes something like this: Since Barton "lies" about the evidence and Zinn does not, this makes Zinn a legitimate historian and make Barton a fraud.

Fair enough. A historian, of course, must tell the truth. If they consciously or unconsciously misrepresent documents they are bad historians. But this is not the criteria I was using when I said that Zinn was a bad historian. My critique of Zinn was based on his presentist agenda--using the past to prove a political point. I strongly suggest that you read my many posts on historical thinking and you will understand what I mean by this. (Look especially at my posts on books by Sam Wineburg and Gordon Wood).

By cherry picking from the past things to support his activism, Zinn is just as guilty as Barton (even when Barton IS historically accurate on the facts) in failing to provide a complete picture of American history. In other words, both Zinn and Barton are activists who have convinced a lot of people that they are historians.

I should also add that the Michael Kazin article I reference is noteworthy because Kazin himself is a man of the left.

A Morning at a Used Book Sale

This morning I headed over to campus for the first day of the "Friends of the Murray Library Booksale" at Messiah College. This is an annual event to raise money for the library and it usually draws a big crowd. The doors opened at 10am and I arrived around 11am to a packed room of book buyers. (On my way in the door I saw one of my students who told me that he would never again come to the sale on the first day. Too many people).

Over the years I have grown rather picky about the kinds of stuff I buy at these sales, so rather than browsing with a sense of anxiety about whether or not the books I wanted would be snatched up by another shopper, I decided to relax and just listen to the conversations whirling all around me.

There are several kinds of people that come to a big used book sale like this. Let me try to explain two of these "types."

1. The "Theologians"
These book shoppers--many of them local clergymen--like to hang out around the "Religion" section, perhaps the largest of all the sections at the sale. Few, if any, are trained theologians, but they can certainly talk a good game. They are in the habit of picking up books and placing the author within a certain theological framework. For example, one guy picked up a copy of John Walvoord's commentary on the Book of Revelation, announcing for all within earshot that "this is the classic dispensational commentary on Revelation--Walvoord was the chancellor at Dallas (Theological Seminary) for years!" Another guy grabbed a book about "Christian World Views" and wrote it off because it was "written by a bunch of Grove City (College) guys." His buddy responded by saying--"you should buy that book. I am all about World View and you should be too." Yet another man approached his friend with a book on Christian martyrs: "I am a bit surprised that this book is still on the table and no one has snatched it up yet. Do you want it?" His friend replied, rather smugly I thought, "nope--I already have it in my personal theological library." Wow! I began to think about whether I had enough theology books to claim to have a "personal theological library."

2. The Book Buyers
These are the on-line booksellers who show up to the event an hour in advance so they can be the first ones in the building. They could really care less about the content of a particular book, but instead simply grab whatever they can find that is in good condition and throw it into a device with wheels that I can only describe as a cross between a piece of luggage and shopping cart. When they are done ravaging the the tables (and taking books away from elderly Mennonite women with head coverings), they retreat to the corner of the room to revel in their acquisitions, not unlike a mouse with a piece of cheese. They pull out an electronic thing-a-ma-jig (I think they are PDAs) that looks similar to a scanner at a grocery store and begin scanning the books into their on-line databases. Apparently they subscribe to a service that tells them the going rate for each book based on the ISBN number. They then use this information to conclude whether or not they can make money on the item. If they can't, they put the book back on the table. I saw one guy busily at work and asked him what he was doing. "Updating my inventory," he said. In which I replied--"Oh, so you are going to resell these book on-line?" In which he said, "Oh no, I am just entering them into my database." He obviously lied. I am pretty sure he was not buying that advice book for pregnant women over 40 to put on a shelf in his own "personal library."

In the end, I spent $16.oo and bought the following books:

Rodney Clapp, A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society

John Wilson, ed., The Best Christian Writing--2001

Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology

Henry Steele Commager, The American Mind

Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man

Hanna Rosin, God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America

Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder: Essays

Rodney Clapp, Border Crossings: Christian Trespasses on Popular Culture and Public Affairs

Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America

Philip Zaleski, ed., The Best American Spiritual Writing--2004.

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning.

What to Make of Howard Zinn

Over the last couple of weeks the topic of Howard Zinn has come up in my seminar, "Religion and the American Founding."

In this course we have been reading some of the writings of those who defend the notion that America was founded as a "Christian nation," including the works by David Barton and Marshall and Manuel. (We have also read Mason Locke Weems's Life of Washington--a 19th century work of Christian nationalism). I have tried to make the argument that these writers are really more political activists or theologians than they are historians. Yet, their writings often pass as history to thousands of conservative Christians and are used as history textbooks in Christian schools and among Christian homeschoolers. (I have at least one student in my course who had a high school American history teacher assign Marshal and Manuel to prepare for the AP Exam).

A few weeks ago one of my students asked me privately if there are writers on the left who are comparable to these Christian nationalist writers. Howard Zinn immediately came to mind. I am always amazed at the popularity of Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Several years ago I decided to lurk on an internet forum for Advanced Placement U.S. History teachers and found that Zinn is used by many of them as the primary textbook in their classes. Last month I was talking to a group of history majors at a big university and they all wanted to know "what I thought of Howard Zinn." Many of my more lefty students at Messiah College read Zinn--his books work well with the kind of social-justice Anabaptism one finds at such an institution. As I write, A People's History is ranked #543 at Amazon.Com. Not bad, especially since The Way of Improvement Leads Home is currently ranked 764,861 . (Come on faithful readers, let's lower that number!).

Zinn writes well and is quite inspiring, but his book is bad history. In fact, I would not even call it history. A People's History of the United States is a political tract that uses the past to promote a presentist agenda. It is basically, to paraphrase the words of Bernard Bailyn, political indoctrination by historical example. Now I have no problem if Zinn wants to use the past to advance his leftist agenda. In fact, there is a lot I can agree with in Zinn's criticisms of his country. But please don't call this history and pass it off to students as a model of how to write history. Zinn's book violates virtually every rule of good historical thinking.

The best thing I have read about A People's History is Michael Kazin's review of the book. It is definitely worth a look.

Terry Pluto: Is He a Religion Writer or a Sports Writer?

The answer is both.

I was first exposed to the sportswriting of Terry Pluto of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer when I read Loose Balls, his history of the American Basketball Association. (I highly recommend it). I have always admired Pluto's sportwriting and have read several of his books over the years.

This is why I was surprised to learn that Pluto has written several books on religion and even writes a column for Cleveland.Com called "Faith and You." Today, for example, he wrote a column on the Cleveland Indians and a column on the power of prayer.

Is anyone aware of another sportswriter who doubles as a religion columnist? I love the combination!

Another Day With Lincoln and Teachers

Today was the second day of my "Teachers as Scholars" seminar: "Abraham Lincoln and American Nationalism." We spent most of the morning talking about Lincoln's understanding of the Union as it related to the Emancipation Proclamation, his belief in "total war," and the Gettysburg Address. I lectured for an hour or so on the way in which the Emancipation Proclamation allowed Lincoln to accomplish his goals of preserving the Union and freeing the slaves. I then showed the teachers the section on Sherman's March and the Battle of Franklin in Ken Burns's PBS series, "The Civil War." After watching this, I gave them a host of quotes about nineteenth-century warfare. We discussed McClellan's "civil" approach to war, Sherman and Grant's "total war" approach, and a few paragraphs from Charles Royster's excellent The Destructive War. The goal was to portray Lincoln as a president who was absolutely committed to total war as a means of preserving the Union.

After lunch in Messiah College's Lottie Nelson Dining Hall we did some exegesis of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address with help from Ronald White's Lincoln's Greatest Speech. We talked a great deal about Lincoln as a "theologian" and we examined the 2nd Inaugural alongside the comments on the war made by some of the period's leading Christian clergymen.

I always learn something from the teachers I am supposed to be teaching. Today was no exception. Thanks to Steve, M.J. Chrissy, Kristi, and Ann for spending ten hours with me exploring the ideas of Abraham Lincoln.

John Hope Franklin, R.I.P.

We lost a great historian yesterday--perhaps one of the greatest. Here a few obituaries to help us remember John Hope Franklin:

Washington Post (editorial)

Walter Dellinger (Washington Post).

Associated Press

Duke Chronicle

Duke has created a special website devoted to Franklin.

I am sure more memorials are on their way.

Places

From Phil: Paris, France



Do you have a photo for our "places" feature? Send it along. --JF

Oh Let Us Turn Our Thoughts Today to Martin Luther King

Today I taught Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." It was part of the "community" unit in Messiah College's first-year CORE course: Created and Called for Community. I am by no means an expert on King or the Civil Rights movement, but I always enjoy teaching things outside of my area of expertise.

This time around I was struck by King's nationalism. True national community, according to King, is rooted in "just laws. He defines a "just law" as a "man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God." An "unjust law" is a "code that is out of harmony with the moral law." Just laws "uplift human personality" or respect the inherent dignity and worth of human beings. Unjust laws do not. Thus King's vision for America is a Christian one. Equality, freedom, and liberty can only be sustained when a society's laws measure up to the law's of God.

But sometimes, King argues, Christians fail to promote just laws. This was certainly the case with churches of the 1960s American south. (See David Chappell's great book, A Stone of Hope , on this issue). The fact that the church does not "come to the aid of justice" does not worry King because justice is also embedded in the values and ideals that have defined the nation throughout American history. As King puts it, "the goal of America is freedom." And it always has been.

King believes that the only way to end segregation is to embrace these universal principles that define Christian and American views of justice. King takes on the local ministers in Birmingham who perceive him as an outside agitator. He makes no apologies for his visit to this heavily segregated city. He represents the ideals of the United States of America and Christianity against the localism of Birmingham--a localism defined by racism and segregation.

I left class today thinking, once again, about the relationship between place and cosmopolitanism. (For my thoughts on this idea in an eighteenth-century context click here). King's "Letter" reminds me that a commitment to localism, regionalism, place, and tradition has sometimes resulted in the worst forms of injustice. This was certainly the case with the history of the American south.

A Spy at Liberty University

Kevin Roose, an English major at Brown University, decided to take a few months away from his Ivy League college and enroll for a semester at Liberty University, the Christian university founded by the late Jerry Falwell. Roose wrote a book about this experience: The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University.

Since I was recently invited to give an address at Liberty (I have never been on the campus), I read with interest Karen Prior Swallow's review of Roose's book. Swallow teaches English at Liberty.

From Swallow's review we learn that Roose expected to write a book about a place that trains militant and intolerant culture warriors, but instead found Liberty to be a college full of loving, honest, smart, and sincere Christians. He was clearly surprised by what he found in Lynchburg.

Swallow writes:

It is this sense of love, ultimately, that Roose can't shake, even two years later. He found at Liberty a kind of community, he acknowledges, that has no parallel in the secular world. "I never thought," Roose writes to the school in the book's acknowledgements, "that the world's largest evangelical university would feel like home … . But by experiencing your warmth, your vigorous generosity of spirit, and your deep complexity, I was ultimately convinced—not that you were right, necessarily, but that I was wrong."

Roose's life was changed for the better through his semester at Liberty. And hopefully, Liberty University will be changed for the better, too, through having seen itself through the eyes of a stranger—an angel of sorts, perhaps (as Roose intimates in the book's epigraph), that we entertained unaware.

I hope I find something similar at Liberty when I go down there next month.

Women's History Month

Today's AHA Blog has some excellent resources on women's history. The post includes some great teaching tools and a shout-out to our friend Historiann. Check it out.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

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

State universities cut back, including the "New American University."

E.J. Dionne on the virtues of populism.

Hope in troubled times.

Unread monographs, uninspired undergraduates.

Mary Beth Norton reviews Richard Beeman's Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution.

Obama's election and high school history textbooks.

Bancroft Prizes announced

The Historical Society now has a blog.

Patriotism and religion--from a liberal perspective.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is 157 years old.

PIAA Basketball

I am taking the night off from blogging. (Actually, since I am writing this I guess that it is not entirely true). This weekend I am hanging out in State College, Pennsylvania catching two solid days of the Pennsylvania high school state basketball finals (PIAA).

Kristoff: The Daily Me

Nicholas Kristoff has an insightful op-ed in today's Times on the way in which the decline of newspapers and the rise of on-line news will result in readers being their own editors. He writes: "When we go online...We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about...there’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices."

Kristol adds:

The result is polarization and intolerance. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor now working for President Obama, has conducted research showing that when liberals or conservatives discuss issues such as affirmative action or climate change with like-minded people, their views quickly become more homogeneous and more extreme than before the discussion. For example, some liberals in one study initially worried that action on climate change might hurt the poor, while some conservatives were sympathetic to affirmative action. But after discussing the issue with like-minded people for only 15 minutes, liberals became more liberal and conservatives more conservative.

While I have no delusions that print newspapers are ideologically and politically neutral, it is clear that most on-line news sources, and especially blogs that report and comment on the news, are unapologetically biased in their coverage. This is precisely why people flock to them.

Kristol concludes:

The decline of traditional news media will accelerate the rise of The Daily Me, and we’ll be irritated less by what we read and find our wisdom confirmed more often. The danger is that this self-selected “news” acts as a narcotic, lulling us into a self-confident stupor through which we will perceive in blacks and whites a world that typically unfolds in grays.

So what’s the solution? Tax breaks for liberals who watch Bill O’Reilly or conservatives who watch Keith Olbermann? No, until President Obama brings us universal health care, we can’t risk the surge in heart attacks.

So perhaps the only way forward is for each of us to struggle on our own to work out intellectually with sparring partners whose views we deplore. Think of it as a daily mental workout analogous to a trip to the gym; if you don’t work up a sweat, it doesn’t count.

Let's not shy away from these intellectual workouts. Let's not get fat in our own ideological enclaves. A civil society depends on it.

New Review of The Way of Improvement Leads Home

Rixey Ruffin in The Journal of American History writes:

The strength of this book is that it succeeds in what it sets out to do; in so intimately linking ideas and behavior, Fea has put a memorable human face on the abstractions of the age.

At another point in the review, Ruffin writes:

The more he embraced reason, the more he wanted to flee from it. Fithian was a walking war zone, a young man who in every way embodied some of the great intellectual struggles of his age.

Fithian as a "walking war zone." I will have to think about that one.

Ruffin also critiques my work:

And while there are certain challenges in writing a biography of a man who died so young, surely not all of the details provided in this book are essential ones. Fea has an insightful thesis but sometimes comes too close to burying it beneath the minutiae of his subject's daily life.

Fair enough. There are a lot details about Fithian's life in this book. My only response is that it is in the minutiae of everyday life that the Enlightenment was lived. My thesis must be embodied in everyday life or else the "rural Enlightenment" thesis does not work. Moreover, it is precisely the biographical details that draw in the average reader. This explains, I think, why The Way of Improvement Leads Home has had some limited cross-over success with general audiences.

Ruffin concludes: But overall, this is an engaging study of a life fully lived even its brevity, a life through which the ideals and fears of the Enlightenment can be witnessed anew.

Obama's Bracket

Click on the bracket to see the picks. If you can't read it, try looking at this article.

Kazin on Populism

Michael Kazin has a timely piece in today's Daily Beast entitled "A Short History of Populist Rage." For those unfamiliar with the history of populism in America the essay offers a brief introduction. Kazin argues that populism has always been a part of United States political life, whether it has been the economic populism of the left or the cultural populism of the right. He is also aware that the idea of the "people" has changed significantly over the years:

Since the 1950s, however, the U.S. has been a middle-class nation. It also gradually became a stock-owning one, as 401(K) plans and Internet day-trading knit an implicit partnership between financial wizards and nearly everyone with a decent job. As a consequence, in the current economic debacle, far more Americans think of themselves as cheated investors than as horny-handed captives of “the money power.”

I have come to appreciate Kazin's work for two reasons. First, I admire him for his willingness to take religion seriously as a factor that motivates human beings to act in the world. The best example, of course, is Godly Hero, his biography of William Jennings Bryan. If you have not read it yet, you should. Second, I admire him for his willingness to write for popular audiences and serve society as a historian and public intellectual.

The Fithian House

Mark and Carolyne Krull have opened a small art gallery in the southern New Jersey town of Millville called "The Fithian House." It appears that the Krulls have been working on this project for some time, but I recently learned that The Way of Improvement Leads Home helped them envision the Fithian House as part of their local community and place. Check out their website to learn more about the connections between Philip Vickers Fithian and the Fithian House. And the next time you are in Millville or the vicinity go visit their shop!

I, of course, am thrilled and flattered that Fithian's story is inspiring people like the Krulls to promote, in a sense, their own "rural Enlightenments."

The Spirit of Commercial Optimism Will Always Prevail

David Brooks has identified the true American religion: the pursuit of wealth. I like Brooks because he is one of the more historically informed columnists writing today. In yesterday's column alone, Brooks referenced Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Horatio Alger, Norman Vincent Peale, Andrew Carnegie, Russell Conwell, Dale Carnegie, and Walt Whitman. This is a virtual pantheon of those who have defined their "way of improvement" in terms of the accumulation of wealth and success. Brooks writes:

Walt Whitman got America right in his essay, “Democratic Vistas.” He acknowledged the vulgarity of the American success drive. He toted up its moral failings. But in the end, he accepted his country’s “extreme business energy,” its “almost maniacal appetite for wealth.” He knew that the country’s dreams were all built upon that energy and drive, and eventually the spirit of commercial optimism would always prevail.

Whitman and Brooks, of course, are right. America has always been, and always will be, the great Enlightenment nation. Americans will always understand their "pursuits of happiness" in terms of economic progress and the accumulation of wealth. That is just who we are.

The belief that the "way of improvement" might lead "home" is a left-over relic of the eighteenth century. The idea that the pursuit of American ambition could be balanced with more local affections and attachments, or that we might be held in check by limits we or others or God place on our lives, is a notion that was part of a world that is long gone--the world of people like Philip Vickers Fithian. This world has been crushed by the forces of American modernity-- the triumph of individualism, industrialization, consumerism, Protestantism, and nationalism. It is a world left to the historians.

As I wrote The Way of Improvement Leads Home I often wondered if it has to be this way. Maybe so.

Did Philip Vickers Fithian Know James Madison?

Yesterday, March 16, was the anniversary of James Madison's birthday. (He was born in 1751). Steve Waldman has a nice reflection in the Wall Street Journal on Madison's commitment to religious freedom. Waldman admits on his blog that the op-ed is part of his efforts to promote the paperback edition of his excellent, Founding Faith. (See my review of it here).

I will take Waldman's lead and use Madison's birthday to help promote (shamelessly) the paperback version of The Way of Improvement Leads Home. Madison and Fithian attended the College of New Jersey at Princeton together. Madison was in the class of 1771. Fithian was in the class of 1772. They were both students of John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence. Madison was the president of the Whig debating society in 1771 and Fithian was the secretary. They both teamed up against the rival Clio Society, whose membership included Aaron Burr.

When I first embarked on this Fithian project I expected that Madison would have much to say about his classmate from southern New Jersey. I thought Fithian would have even more to say about Madison. So you can imagine how disappointed I was to find that Madison never mentions Fithian in any of his private papers and Fithian never mentions Madison. Yet both of them wrote all the time about their other Princeton classmates.

You will have to read the book to see my attempt to explain this. The fact that Fithian never mentions Madison is still one of the great mysteries of his story.

Check Out the Compliment Guys!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWBbXA58PKI

Places

I want to try something new on the blog. We'll see if it works.

I want to feature a regular or semi-regular feature called "Places." (Not unlike Andrew Sullivan's feature: "The View from Your Window.")

Since this blog celebrates Philip Vickers Fithian's sense of place and his connection to the rural world of eighteenth-century Cohansey, I want to ask you, my readers, to send in pictures of the places in this world that have meaning to you. It could be a contemporary place or a historical place, but it should reflect a sense of connection and rootedness. I prefer photographs as opposed to images pulled off the Internet. No commentary is necessary and I will not even use your name (unless you want me to). Just send me the pic and tell me where it is and I will put it up on the blog.

I can be reached at jfea(at)messiah(dot)edu

History Job Advice

What happens when you finish your Ph.D and cannot find an academic job? With the job market the way it is, what should we be telling undergraduate history majors about their prospects for working in the field?

Today I came across two essays that provide helpful suggestions. Melissa Bingmann has a nice article in the March 2009 Perspectives about counseling undergraduate history majors about careers in the public sector. She offers some helpful information about how to choose a graduate program in public history.

Bingmann concludes:

As many public history programs celebrate their 20th, 25th, 30th, and 35th anniversaries, there are significantly more career and graduate study options open to students interested in pursuing careers in history. This has caused confusion among those who advise undergraduates. First and foremost, it is essential to understand what it is that public history programs offer—graduate training in history, with an emphasis in researching and developing interpretations for a variety of audiences. Course offerings that include “Historic Site Interpretation,” “Community and Local History,” “Archives and Manuscripts,” “Historical Resource Management,” and “History and Public Policy” and the ability to place students in the field are indicative of a program’s ability to fulfill the latter. The former should be easily recognized by all historians upon a perusal of a program’s ability to teach methodology, train students to develop an extended research project, and demonstrate reading competency on a specialized topic. Advisors whose students tell them they love history, but don’t want to teach, would serve their advisees will by becoming familiar with the range of options for graduate training in public history.

But what if you have already decided to pursue a Ph.D in history and are worried about your job prospects? Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Alexandra Lord urges graduate students to "expand their horizons" by considering internships at historical sites and museums. Lord runs Beyond Academe, a website designed to help historians find work outside of the academy. She writes:

Now, as I review the résumés of doctoral students, I wish more graduate programs would encourage their students to expand their horizons. Won't a graduate student in literature surely bring added value to the classroom when she teaches the ubiquitous freshman-composition course if she has worked as a journalist or done technical writing along with her scholarly writing? Won't an art historian who has worked at an art gallery have a more nuanced understanding of the impact that the art market can have on an artist's career, and won't that more nuanced understanding benefit his research on the 18th-century art market? Won't a historian who works with a small town to preserve its 19th-century school building not only gain a better understanding of how the public uses history but also build skills that will serve her university well when she is asked to do service in her college town?

The Big Dance: Academic Style

Who would win the NCAA basketball tournament based on each school's academic performance? Check out the brackets at Inside Higher Education.

Sunday Nights Odds and Ends

A few things on-line that caught my eye this week:

What Obama can learn from classics.

"New Calvinism" is one of Time Magazine's "10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now."

John Stackhouse on fair payment for speakers.

Red Sox vs. Yankees in the scholarly world.

Lisa Deam: What we can learn from Alexander the Great about living a decentered life?

The end of conspicuous consumption?

Is soccer ruining America? Stephen H. Webb thinks so.

Jon Pahl jams with Jeremiah Wright.

The humanities in a civil society.

More on the fate of liberal learning in a recession.

Obama vs. Marx.

Interview with Joyce Lee Malcom, author of Peter's War: A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution.


Another review of Blindspot.

Obama's five pastors.

Clinton County Historical Society and Rendell's Budget

I drove up to Clinton County, PA today to give a talk on the revolutionary courtship of Philip Vickers Fithian and Elizabeth Beatty. It was a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Speakers lecture and my hosts were Anne and Lou at the Clinton County Historical Society (CCHS) in Lock Haven.

The audience had a particular interest in Fithian because he had traveled through this area in the summer of 1775, preaching to small congregations of English and Scots-Irish Presbyterians along the Susquehanna River. (See Chapter 7 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home--now on sale in paperback for $17.95 at Amazon). Many of them link Fithian's visit to the founding of the Great Island Presbyterian Church in Lock Haven.

Since I was the speaker for the historical society's annual meeting I got a chance to observe the yearly business session. The CCHS is running a variety of wonderful programs, but there is a serious possibility that they may have to curb programming or perhaps even furlough some staff if the Ed Rendell budget passes--a budget that will make huge cuts in the funding operations of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The CCHS, like many other Pennsylvania historical societies, relies heavily on PHMC funding to help carry out its programs.

As I sat and listened to the executive director and curator of the CCHS talk about the struggles they will almost inevitable face in the coming year, I began to think about what a tragedy it would be if places like this cannot fulfill its mission.

I realize that we are in difficult economic times. Sacrifices are necessary. But if we cannot preserve our past and the institutions that promote it, then we are in danger of forgetting who we are as a people. History is the story of the human experience, but human beings are grounded and embedded in local places like Clinton County. If Rendell wants to build stronger communities during these times of economic crisis then he should reconsider some of these budget cuts. During hard times people turn inward. They take a deeper look at who they are and draw inspiration from the those who came before them--people who dealt with similar problems.

It would be a shame if the opportunity for such historical exploration is eliminated, especially now.

Are the Roots of Modern Liberalism Christian?

There is some excellent discussion going on (you will need to scroll down a bit) over at The Immanent Frame on Nicholas Wolterstoff's new book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs.

I have yet to read Wolterstorff's book, but from what I can glean from this discussion and other reviews, he is arguing that the roots of justice and rights are not to be found in Greek or Roman civilization, the Renaissance or the Enlightenment, but in the Bible and the early church fathers.

Much of Wolterstorff's argument is based on the scholarly work of political scientists John Witte Jr. and Brian Tierney, whose recent books are on my reading list as I work on my current project on Christian America.

I found the posts by John Schmalzbauer and James K.A. Smith especially interesting. Schmalzbauer discusses the ways that evangelicals have struggled to adopt "rights talk":

...evangelicals regard “rights talk” as an alien language with little connection to Biblical faith. Raised in the evangelical subculture, I have experienced this attitude firsthand. During my undergraduate years at Wheaton College, one of my professors presented the class with a startling claim: human rights are a product of modern political thought and cannot be found in the Bible. At the time, I wondered how he could square this statement with the dozens of Bible verses proclaiming the rights of the poor. In Justice: Rights and Wrongs, Yale University philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff offers a devastating critique of the historical narrative employed by my professor.

Smith claims that Wolterstorff is promoting a "Whig Calvinism"--a Reformed version of the neo-conservative Catholicism associated with the late Richard John Neuhaus and his First Things gang. He concludes: "Wolterstorff...has unwittingly been assimilated to regnant paradigms in liberal political thought and is now “baptizing” them with a theological story."

The posts by Schmalzbauer, Smith, and others are worth checking out in their entirety. I should also add the Wolterstorff responds to his critics.

NY Times Hires Douthat

The New York Times has announced that it has hired 29-year old Atlantic editor and blogger Ross Douthat to replace Bill Kristol. Douthat now joins David Brooks in the fraternity of the Times's conservative columnists.

Over at American Creation, Jon Rowe calls our attention to a Douthat blog entry on the public theology of the American founding. Douthat also seems to be engaged with some of the Berryesque lovers of place over at Front Porch Republic.

Teaching Lincoln to Teachers

Yesterday I spent the day with a group of area history and social studies teachers. The meeting was part of a "Teachers as Scholars" seminar sponsored by the Messiah College Center for Public Humanities. The Center sponsors several of these seminars a year as a means of enriching the intellectual lives of local educators and providing them with an opportunity to receive much needed continuing education credit from the state.

The topic of the session was "Abraham Lincoln and American Nationalism." I spent the morning lecturing on Lincoln's commitment to the Whig party and his embrace of Henry Clay's "American System." The afternoon was spent working closely with primary sources--Lincoln's 1858 "House Divided Speech" and his "First Inaugural Address." In two weeks we will meet again to discuss Lincoln's war-time nationalism/unionism and discuss our reading of Ronald White's book on Lincoln's second inaugural address: Lincoln's Greatest Speech.

As I conduct seminars like this, and continue to do similar seminars with the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History (check out their new webpage), I grow more and more committed to the historian's role as a public intellectual. For too long "public intellectuals" have been associated with those who write for small magazines and bring their minds to bear on public issues from their perches in the ivory tower. While this is certainly one way of thinking about the role of a public intellectual, it seems to me that working with teachers, museums, and other forms of public history is another rewarding way of bringing our expertise to the general public.

Free Writing Advice

Need help finishing that dissertation, article, or book? I found this helpful piece from 2006 by Liena Vayzman on the American Historical Association website. Vayzman offers eight suggestions to get you writing:

1. Set up a writing schedule.
2. Create a dedicated workspace.
3. Write daily in a dissertation journal.
4. Distill your argument into a single sentence.
5. Visualize your ideas.
6. Fuel your mind with exercise, nutrition, hydration, and sleep.
7. Cultivate community.
8. Rewrite.

Some of these points are obvious, but it is always good to remember such things.

Would the Founding Fathers Have Supported Prayer in Public Schools?

It all depends on which "Founding Father" you are talking about. This is Steve Waldman's argument and he is correct. His book, Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty is now out in paperback.

Waldman reminds us that James Madison would have almost certainly opposed prayer in public schools, but other founders may not have opposed it. Moreover, he correctly adds that the framers of the Constitution were federalists in that they left certain decisions--religion was one of them--up to the states to decide.

Waldman writes on his blog:

There's really no such thing as "The Founding Fathers" when it comes to religious liberty. Madison would be thrilled (with the abolition of prayer in schools). He really was a hardcore believer in separation. Adams was more comfortable with church-state intermingling, defending for a long time Massachusetts right to have Congregationalism as the official state religion.

...the First Amendment needs to be seen in part as a states rights compromise. Some members of Congress, like Madison, wanted separation of church and state throughout the land but others just wanted to make sure the national government would leave the states alone - including letting them regulate religion as much as they want. At the point the constitution was ratified 11 of the 13 states still had rules banning people of certain faiths -- e.g. Jews, atheists, Catholics -- from holding office. Some members of Congress wanted to preserve that freedom to discriminate.

The Coming Evangelical Collapse

Michael Spencer, a.k.a. InternetMonk, is predicting a major collapse of evangelical Christianity in the next ten years. He is calling evangelicalism away from its therapeutic, consumer-driven megachurches and back to theological orthodoxy. What will be left from this collapse will be a much more vibrant, apolitical, and less ambitious (in an American sense) Christianity.

I am always skeptical when I read these kinds of prophetic pronouncements, but I think Spencer may just be right. Read the piece for yourself and let us know what you think.

The Virtues of Cosmopolitanism

I ran across an article today from one Brendan Case, an editor of a student-run on-line magazine called The Gadfly. Case and his fellow editors are students at The King's College--a Christian college that occupies a few floors of the Empire State Building in New York City. They have big ambitions--to "foreshadow the seeming impossibility of a Christian liberal arts college that rivals the Ivy League." The spirit of their publication reminds me a great deal of Philip Vickers Fithian's ambitions for his tiny club of young friends and thinkers in the eighteenth-century New Jersey countryside. They called it the Bridgeton Admonishing Society. At one point, Fithian wrote that he hoped this club of mutual improvement in the remote woods of southern Jersey might gain a "reputation abroad." Another time he dreamed of becoming another John Locke or John Witherspoon.

While these students at The King's College have big ambitions, they, like Fithian, want their "way of improvement" to ultimately lead them home. Here is how Case concludes his essay on "The Virtues of Cosmopolitanism":

Finally, I would suggest that there is a discipline of place that could be the salvation of culture, if men could learn to practice it. The hallmark of the cosmopolitan seems to be that every place is as good as any other (for all are “interesting,” a mine of quaint stories, knick-knacks, and other ghostly abstractions). However, to love a place because it is yours—not because you have chosen it, but because it has in some sense chosen you (by birth, most naturally, but perhaps some other providential entanglement is possible)—is to begin the process of creating true culture. To love the deep emptiness of a blue winter sky, or a gnarled oak dangling a tire swing from its twisted fingers; to prefer bacon and eggs to a croissant: these are the first stirrings of a truly human existence. And I would venture that it is the man who loves bacon and eggs above all who might truly appreciate the startling savor of a French pastry.

This is some pretty darn good writing for an undergraduate. Fithian could not have put it any better.

Is the American Dream Still Viable?

David Kamp thinks we need to rethink the meaning of the "American Dream." In a great article in the recent Vanity Fair, he traces the history of this idea from Puritans to the Declaration of Independence to the settlement of the West to Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Norman Rockwell to Levittown to television families of the 1950s to Laguna Beach and The Hills. The piece also reproduces some great photographs.

Kamp concludes:

The American Dream should require hard work, but it should not require 80-hour workweeks and parents who never see their kids from across the dinner table. The American Dream should entail a first-rate education for every child, but not an education that leaves no extra time for the actual enjoyment of childhood. The American Dream should accommodate the goal of home ownership, but without imposing a lifelong burden of unmeetable debt. Above all, the American Dream should be embraced as the unique sense of possibility that this country gives its citizens—the decent chance, as Moss Hart would say, to scale the walls and achieve what you wish.

Well put.

Spring '09 Speaking Schedule

Here are my speaking engagements for the spring 2009. If you are interested in scheduling an engagement feel free to contact me.

Click here for the full 2009 schedule.

March 12 & 26, 2009: Messiah College Center for Public Humanities
Grantham, PA
Contact: Norman Wilson
Teachers as Scholars Seminar: "Abraham Lincoln and American Nationalism"
(Seminar for high school teachers)

March 15, 2009: Clinton County Historical Society
Lock Haven, PA 2:00pm
Contact: Lou Bernard
"Presbyterians in Love: Courtship in Revolutionary America"
(Pennsylvania Commonwealth Lecture)

March 31, 2009: Society of the Cincinnati Library
Washington D.C. 7:00pm
Contact: Ellen Clark
Book Talk and Signing

April 14, 2009: South Central PA History Day
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Contact: Dr. James LaGrand
Supervisor of Judges

April 16, 2009: Historical Society of Somerset Hills
Basking Ridge, NJ 7:30pm
Contact: Sonja Heijne
Book Talk and Signing

April 17-18, 2009: Christianity and American History Conference
Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA
Contact: Dr. Samuel Smith
Plenary Address and Panel Discussion

April 21, 2009: American Democracy Lecture
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Contact: Jon Stuckey
Roundtable Discussion on Abraham Lincoln (with Gabor Boritt, Matt Pinkser and Mark Neely)

May 13, 2009: New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance Meeting
New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University
Contact: Bonita Craft Grant 4:30pm
Lecture: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment

May 14, 2009: The Hermitage
Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ 7:30pm
Contact: Richard Sgritta
Book Talk and Signing

May 21, 2009: Westmoreland County Museum
Montross, VA 6:30pm
Contact: Alice French
Public Lecture: "Philip Vickers Fithian: A Tutor in Colonial Virginia"

May 22, 2009: Colonial Williamsburg
Williamsburg, VA, Hennage Auditorium 5:30pm
Contact: Patricia Balderson
Lecture and Book Signing

May 26, 2009: Bayshore Discovery Project
Port Norris, NJ
Contact: Janis Traas
Book Talk and Signing

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

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

Blogging the recession.

Jonathan Rowe on Presbyterian "tone" and the founding and the Biblical roots of natural rights.

Bald Blogger is in Paris and thinking about DuBois.

John Lukacs on doing history.

A defense of archives in the Internet age.

Spring training and bling.

Keith Thomas and the pursuit of happiness in early modern England.

New blog: The Front Porch Republic offers an agrarian/conservative perspective on American culture.

Sabbaticals and the economy.

Weren't the humanities being hit hard before the recession?

The Trees at Gettysburg

Like the lead character in Dr. Suess's The Lorax, John Summers speaks for the trees.

Summers is upset about the attempts by the National Park Service to restore the Gettysburg battlefield to its original 1863 condition by removing some of the trees on Seminary Ridge.

To truly experience what it was like to be at Gettysburg, we would need to lie with soldiers as they bled to death, groaning in pain; rotting corpses with missing limbs; streams running red; winds swarming with flies; air smelling of burning horseflesh. As we cannot know the precise cartography of the battlefield, or the movements of every soldier, or the location of every tree, so we should not try to leap backward into authenticity, or expect to become an eyewitness to history simply by showing up. The arrogance laid up around this expectation is astonishing. At Gettysburg, as elsewhere, the parties of preservation, restoration, and rehabilitation seek to transport us forward into the past by scrubbing off the blemishes of time. But, in offering the illusion of authentic experience, inviting us to "almost feel the bullets," they promise both too much and too little: They forget that historical suffering must be regarded from a distance if tragedy is to make us humble--or even be understood at all.

If a battlefield is not a locus of authentic experience, then what is it? A shrine? A classroom? The trees may teach us something yet. As flesh decayed at Gettysburg, it fertilized the earth for new vegetation. What the Park Service calls "non-historic trees"--that is, trees which grew after 1863--once were seedlings. Since then, in the changefulness of the seasons, they have formed a palimpsest, offering the closest we may come to communing with the lost souls of the battle. "As he gazed around him the youth felt a flash of astonishment at the blue, pure sky and the sun gleaming on the trees and fields," Stephen Crane wrote in The Red Badge of Courage. "It was surprising that Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden processes in the midst of so much devilment."

I have never thought about this before--decaying flesh fertilizing the ground in a way that made post-1863 trees grow. It seems a bit far fetched, but Summer's point is worth thinking about. Visitors to Gettysburg, especially Civil War re-enactors, are so obsessed with authenticity that the larger meaning of the battle is often missed. The trees may be a reminder of the tragedy, bloodshed, and loss of human lives that occurred in Gettysburg during the summer of 1863. Sometimes deep reflection on the past is more important than getting every detail correct.

Is Libertarianism Compatible with Christian Ethics?

Messiah College is a very interesting place. It is a Christian school with Anabaptist roots, which means that we do not fly a flag on campus (the "Kingdom of God" is more important than any symbol of nationalism--unless, of course, it is the flag in the school gymnasium that is required by the NCAA). We also have our share of liberal Christians concerned with social justice. The college sponsors programs and institutes that support social justice in the Anabaptist, Wesleyan, and Pietist traditions.

But there is also a very vibrant group of conservative students on campus. Many of them are quite bright. Most of them, it seems to me, are more free-market libertarian conservatives than more traditional, Burkean conservatives. (Of course, nearly all of them combine their libertarianism with beliefs in today's "conservative" values such as the opposition to gay marriage and abortion). Few of them have thought deeply about the relationship between their libertarianism and Christian social ethics.

I thought about these students this morning as I read Hunter Baker's nice piece on the First Things website: "Evangelicals and Economics: Reflections of a Conservative Protestant." Baker describes his intellectual journey from a free-market libertarianism of the Smith, Friedman, Hayek variety to a conservative who is more thoughtful about the ways in which libertarianism and Christian ethics may not "always be an obvious fit."

I think I might pass this along to some of my students.

New Jersey Historical Society Cuts Back

First it was the State Library of Pennsylvania. Then it was the Pennsylvania State Museum. Now, I just learned, that the New Jersey Historical Society--a place where I have done a decent amount of research in the past--will be eliminating its public hours and furloughing some of its employees.

More sad news.

In Support of Kathleen Sebelius

Abortion is a terrible thing. We should do everything we can to reduce the number of abortions in the United States. As a Christian, I am pro-life. I believe that all human beings--even unborn infants--are created by God and have inherent worth and dignity. With many in the Democratic Party, I believe that government should do everything possible to aid the powerless and helpless. This should include the unborn as much as the poor and the oppressed.

Unfortunately, the label "pro-life" has been co-opted by the Republican Party--a political party that has fought, at times admirably, against abortion; but has also supported war, capital punishment, and torture.

Because I am pro-life, I am glad that Barack Obama has appointed Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) of Kansas to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services. From what I have been able to glean, Sebelius is a devout Catholic who has signed significant legislation in Kansas to reduce the number of abortions. If these evangelicals are correct, abortions in Kansas have dropped by ten percent under her watch.

Some might criticize Sebelius because she does not want to overturn Roe v. Wade. But if these critics were truly pro-life, they should be rejoicing at Obama's decision to appoint her. Conservatives must realize that they lost the 2008 election. The country chose the other guy. This is the guy who believes in protecting a women's right to choose and said he would push a pro-choice agenda. It is time that the pro-life movement get a healthy dose of realism. Roe versus Wade will not be overturned anytime soon. It is just not going to happen.

So why such criticism when Obama picks a candidate for Secretary of Health and Human Services with a solid track record of reducing abortions? Shouldn't this be a good thing for pro-lifers? Shouldn't pro-lifers be glad that Obama is, as E.J. Dionne said today, stepping "gingerly" into the culture wars?

ADDENDUM: Since I posted this, I have learned more about Sebelius record on life issues from people "on the ground" in Kansas. I have been convinced that my description here of Sebelius's record on abortion is a bit too rosy and I am guilty of jumping to conclusions here based on the ideas of some of the evangelical leaders references in this post. While there may be a lot of good reasons to support her nomination, I am not sure her commitment to reducing abortions is one of them. I learned a good lesson through all of this about localism. There a lot of people in Kansas--Republicans and Democrats and Independents--who have offered me a much more nuanced,informed, and I think accurate, picture of Sebelius's views on this issue.

Thoughts on Teaching from Frank Bryan

I was just surfing around a bit over at Front Porch Republic and came upon this essay by Bill Kauffman on the University of Vermont political scientist Frank Bryan. Bryan is a champion of local democracy and has written a book, that I am hoping to read soon, about the New England town meeting and how it works. He calls himself a “decentralist communitarian” whose heart “is with the small is beautiful crowd.”

I was particularly taken by Bryan's thoughts on the Internet. Bryan does not rail against the Internet for the way it destroys face to face communities. Rather, he praises it for the way it allows people to work at home and be part of a real community of people without having "to drive to a centralized workplace, which was the great dislocation of the 20th century.”

After reading Kauffman's essay, I wanted to learn more about Bryan and his work. On his website I found this great manifesto on teaching from the October 8, 1999 edition of the UVM Record.

In teaching, CONTENT IS THE CORE NECESSITY. Come to class unprepared and your students will know it. Worse, do it several times and you will lose them. I take knowing your subject cold as a given. But content, while necessary, is not sufficient. That, after all, is why we are called teachers. To wit, my top ten observations on becoming a better teacher.

1. Moses could come down to lecture on the Old Testament and students would fall asleep if he didn’t apply energy and style to his work.

2. Teaching done well takes effort. Sweat if you have to, and it’s OK to let them see you do it.

3. Everyone has a style. Find yours and work at developing it.

4. Don’t be pretentious, but never be palsie-walsie either. Act your age and your status. If you need friends get them somewhere else.

5. Never be cynical about what it is you are teaching. If you don’t believe in it, why should they?

6. Just because you are not a friend doesn’t mean you can’t be nice.

7. If you miss a class—for any reason—make it up.

8. Don’t be a jerk about exams.

9. This doesn’t mean you can’t be demanding.

10. Never forget that teaching beats the hell out of working for a living!

Pedagogical words to live by indeed!

Warner to Lecture on the "Evangelical Public Sphere"

I just received word of this lecture series. It might interest some of our readers in the Philadelphia area:

Rosenbach Lectures for 2009: Michael Warner, Yale University"

The Evangelical Public Sphere

Lecture Dates: March 23, 25, and 26, 2009
Time and location: 5:30PM, Rosenwald Gallery, 6th floor, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library
More information: (215) 898-7088; jpollack@upenn.edu

Monday, March 23, 2009:"Printing and Preaching: What is a Sermon?"RSVP HERE

Wednesday, March 25, 2009: "Between Freethought and Evangelicalism: Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin"RSVP HERE

Thursday, March 26, 2009:"Evangelical Publics and Christian Nationalism in the Late Eighteenth Century"RSVP HERE

Michael Warner is Seymour H. Knox Professor of English and Professor of American Studies at Yale University. His recent publications include The Portable Walt Whitman (2003), Publics and Counterpublics (2002), The Trouble with Normal (1999), and American Sermons (1999).

I have not read some of Warner' latest work, but I heartily recommend his The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).

While looking at Warner's Yale website, I also came across an essay on his pentecostal childhood that might also be of interest to the readers of this blog.

Are You a Christian Hipster?

I think I share certain ideals with "Christian hipsters," but I am too old to be "hip."

I am sure, however, that many of my students at Messiah College (and even some of my faculty colleagues) fit the bill.

Richard Hughes Takes on Christian America

I want to call your attention to my colleague Richard Hughes's book, Christian America and the Kingdom of God. It is due out in June with the University of Illinois Press.

Hughes reflects on the meaning of the "Kingdom of God" in both the Old Testament and New Testament and concludes that "Christian America" is an oxymoron. In other words, the United States of America and the Kingdom of God are ultimately incompatible ideas. The book comes with endorsements from Martin Marty, Robert Bellah, and Mark Noll and a foreword by Emergent Church leader Brian Mclaren.

I read an earlier manifestation of this book in manuscript form and have heard Hughes speak about it so I can say with a certain degree of confidence that anyone interested in this topic will be in for a treat.

The SLOP Bucket

A librarian at the State Library of Pennsylvania has started a blog called "Our Slop Bucket." Here is what the blog title means:

"SLOP" as in State Library Of Pennsylvania
"Bucket" as in 'a place to dump stuff about us getting dumped'

This blog is the place to go for editorials and media coverage related to Ed Rendell's backward decision to cut the library's budget in half and furlough 50 of 57 employees.

I have blogged on this before and will blog on it again real soon. 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.

Attention all of my Pennsylvania readers: Let's make some noise.

It's Finally Here!

Hurry now to Amazon and pick up your copy of the paperback edition of The Way of Improvement Leads Home. It became available today.

Dobson is Not Going Away Anytime Soon

Randall Balmer is right. The recent resignation of James Dobson from Focus on the Family highlights, to some extent, the generational change within the Christian Right.

But Dobson has hardly "depart(ed) the scene." In fact, I predict that you will see and hear more of him than ever now that he is no longer tied down by his role at Focus on the Family. Dobson's contribution to the moral agenda of the Christian Right has always been driven by his political activism, his radio show, and his writing. He has said that he will not be abandoning any of these activities.

Dobson may be 72, but if his health holds up he is not going away anytime soon.

History and Moral Criticism in the Classroom

Regular readers of this blog know that I am very interested in pedagogical issues as they pertain to the relationship between teaching history and engaging in moral criticism. I have come down hard on the side of making sure students understand the past before casting moral judgment on it. I have illustrated this point with the example of teaching 19th century pro-slavery documents. I want my students to enter into the world of the 19th century slaveholders. I want them to empathize with them. I want them to show intellectual hospitality to them regardless of whether or not they find their views morally repulsive. It seems to me that this is the primary task of the historian.

I was recently talking about teaching with a group of college professors at a research university and I mentioned how my students were quick to cast moral judgment on slaveholders before fully understanding their world. One experienced professor in the room said that he had the opposite problem. He could easily bring his students to understand and empathize with the slaveholders, but had difficulty getting them to make any moral judgments on the past. When confronted with the views of slaveholders many of his students, in good postmodern fashion, simply said something like: "everyone is entitled to their views and if this is what these people believed then that is cool with me, as long as they don't impose their beliefs on me."

The question threw me off a bit, but when I got my bearings I realized two things. First, and perhaps most obvious, is the fact that college students today, if this professor was correct, seem to be lacking moral sensibilities. Second, I realized that social location is always important to the teaching of the past. At Messiah College my students tend to have very active moral radars and thus need more education in how to think historically. At this secular university the students had the opposite problem and thus need to have their moral imaginations awakened by their study of the past.

I think we need to have a robust conversation about the role of moral criticism in the history classroom.

Stanley Fish's Answers to our Economic Woes

God

Wendell Berry: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" from The Country of Marriage, copyright © 1973 by Wendell Berry, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.