Boom Year on the Early American History Job Market

If you are a graduate student in early American history who is nearing completion of your dissertation this seems to be your year. I am amazed at the large number of open assistant professor/tenure-track jobs in early America this job season. So far I have seen jobs at the following institutions:

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Whittier College
Claremont-McKenna College
Syracuse University
Indiana University Purdue University-Ft. Wayne
University of Toronto-Mississauga
Colby College
Framingham State College
Georgia Southern University
Illinois State University
Indiana University-South Bend
Norfolk State University
St. Ambrose University
University of Arkansas
University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Utah Valley State
Wake Forest
St. Francis (PA)

I am sure I am missing some, but looking at this list one has to ask: "What economic downturn?"

October Speaking Schedule

It looks like October is going to be a busy month. Here is what I have lined up. (For a full schedule and information about bookings click here).

Saturday, Oct. 3: Keynote speaker at annual luncheon of the Mayflower Descendants Society, Riverton, NJ. Topic: "The Way of Improvement Leads Home."

Wednesday Oct. 7: Gilder-Lehrman "Teaching American History" Workshop, Monroe, LA. Topic: "The Coming of the American Revolution."

Thursday, Oct. 8: Bethany Village "Venture Series," Mechanicsburg, PA. Topic: "Did George Washington Chop Down the Cherry Tree and Other Myths About the 'Father of our Country.'"

Saturday, Oct. 10: Cape May County Library, Cape May Court House, NJ. "New Jersey Authors Roundtable."

Tuesday, Oct. 13: Gilder-Lehrman "Junior Historians Forum," Milwaukee, WI. Topic: "Children in Colonial America."

Wednesday, Oct. 14: Gilder-Lehrman Teachers Workshop, Milwaukee, WI. Topic: "Children in Colonial America."

Tuesday, Oct. 27: Gilder-Lehrman "Junior Historians Forum," Huntsville, AL. Topic: "The Coming of the American Revolution."

Scandal of the Evangelical Mind Conference

Next week (October 1 and 2), Gordon College is sponsoring a conference to honor the fifteenth anniversary of Mark Noll's landmark, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

According to the Gordon website:

The two-day event—which is free and open to the public—will also feature lectures, panel discussions and book signings from 10 other notable authors and academics, including Jon Roberts of Boston University, Karl Giberson of the BioLogos Foundation and Randall Stephens of Eastern Nazarene College. Maura Jane Farrelly, assistant professor of American Studies at Brandeis University, will conduct a public interview with Noll on Thursday evening. David Hempton of Harvard Divinity School will discuss “Minds and Mentalities in the Evangelical Tradition.” And Noll will give a keynote address, “The Evangelical Imperative for Evangelical Intellectual Life,” Friday morning in the A. J. Gordon Memorial Chapel.

I cannot make it to the conference, but if any readers are going and would like to write a report for this blog, please let me know.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

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

Peter Mancall: Why a fourth grader knows more about Henry Hudson than you do.

Why writers are bad at speeches and interviews.

Review of Ken Burns's "National Parks: America's Best Idea." Here is another one.

A new college dedicated exclusively to the study of history.

Heather Cox Richardson: What is historiography?

"Born (Again) in the USA: Jim Cullen's plenary address at the Bruce Springsteen Symposium.

Why we need journalists, not ideologues.

Damon Linker on conservatism. Eric Miller on conservatism.

Nones

Was Teddy Roosevelt a gun-toting St. Francis?

A new literary history of America.

David Greenberg on the meaning of Richard Hofstadter's "paranoid style."

Ft. Ticonderoga Revolutionary War Seminar

Today I gave a plenary address at the Ft. Ticonderoga Revolutionary War seminar to a very knowledgeable group of history buffs. My talk was entitled: "A Presbyterian Rebellion: Christianity and the American Revolution." While many in the audience weres students of military history, there was a small group of people who seemed to be interested in religion. I always learn something from the audience during these kinds of talks. In this case, I left with a lot of good research leads based upon conversations with some of the conference attendees.

I used my time to argue that Presbyterians drove the American Revolution in the mid-Atlantic. I discussed the way in which Presbyterians moved from a divided denomination in the wake of the First Great Awakening to a potent political force by the 1760s, focusing specifically on the emergence of "Presbyterian Parties" in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. I concluded the talk with short vignettes of two revolutionary-era Presbyterians: John Witherspoon and Philip Vickers Fithian.

The folks at Ft. Ticonderoga, especially Rich Strum, were welcoming and hospitable. After lunch we had a book signing in the fort's museum store and I sold a good number of copies of The Way of Improvement Leads Home. Tonight they took all of the speakers out to a very good dinner at a local Ticonderoga eatery.

I also got a chance to meet three historians whose work I have long admired--James Kirby Martin of the University of Houston and Douglas Egerton of LeMoyne College delivered talks. Martin has recently published a book on the Oneida Indians and the American Revolution and Egerton's new work is on African-Americans and the American Revolution. I also had a nice chat with Alison Games, a historian at Georgetown who has written two very smart books on the Atlantic World.

One of the highlights of the morning was spending time catching up with a former student--Susanna Carey--who drove down to Ft. Ticonderoga for my talk. Thanks, Susanna!

It was a great weekend in upstate New York. I hope to visit Ft. Ticonderoga again soon.

"And the poets down here don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be"

Song of the Day: Springsteen, "Jungleland"

Christian Tea Parties?

In December 1774, a group of young Presbyterians from the tiny hamlet of Greenwich, New Jersey had a tea party. Actually, the event is probably better described as a "tea burning." When a British brig filled with East India tea docked at the port of Greenwich (an official British customs port) the young Calvinists, obviously protesting the dreaded Tea Act and copying a similar event that occurred the year before in Boston, seized the tea from storage and burned it in the town square. As I tried to argue in The Way of Improvement Leads Home and hope to argue in a currently stalled book project titled "The Greenwich Tea Burning: History and Memory in a New Jersey Town," it is not insignificant that these tea burners were Presbyterians. Middle Colony Presbyterians were at the forefront of the Revolution in this region. Whether it was John Witherspoon at Princeton, so-called "Presbyterian Parties" in New York and Pennsylvania, or ordinary Calvinists like Philip Vickers Fithian, the Revolution can be legitimately interpreted as a "Presbyterian Rebellion."

But the more I think about the Greenwich Tea Burning, the more I wonder just how "Presbyterian" this event really was. While it is true that almost all of the participants were affiliated in one way or another with the three Presbyterian churches in the region, what they did that December evening seems to be motivated more by traditional Whig ideas about tyranny and liberty than any sort of Christian public theology--Presbyterian or otherwise. I thus wonder if the so-called "Presbyterian Rebellion" was little more than a political rebellion carried out by members of a religious denomination who had drunk deeply from the Whig/Enlightenment well and simply baptized this Whig thought by claiming that God, in his providence, promoted it.

I still need to think through a lot of this, but this whole idea of a Christian tea party came to mind today after reading Sarah Posner's essay on this past weekend's Values Voters Summit. (See my take on the event here). Posner describes the way the Christian Right has been promoting "tea parties" as a way to protest the policies of the Obama administration. In fact, tea-party-type protests against the current administration seemed to have played a more prominent role at the Values Voter Summit than traditional Christian Right hot-button issues like abortion and gay marriage.

So I wonder: Just how "Christian" are these tea-parties? It seems like a lot of Christians are involved in them, but do they get involved out of some sort of well-thought-out Christian understanding of public life.? The last I checked there is nothing in the Bible that condemns socialism or universal health care. On the other hand, there is a lot in capitalist thought that condemns socialism and a lot in libertarian thinking that condemns universal health care.

Or let's take another example. The Bible says more about Christians submitting to governmental authority (see Romans 13 for example) than it does about rebelling against governmental authority. Whig political thought and Lockean liberalism says more about rebelling against governmental authority than it does about submission to the authority of government. You could argue based upon Whiggism or Lockean liberalism that a revolution against unjust taxation is morally legitimate. But can you make the same argument from the Bible?

If Posner is right, and conservative Christians are hitching their wagons to the tea-party movement, it forces me to ask whether they are motivated to do so by Christian convictions or convictions that stem from other sources. The members of the Christian Right who Posner interviewed believe that their involvement in this kind of protest movement is Biblical. But if you go back to the age of the Revolution there were a lot of Christians who misused the Bible to justify rebellion. (See the work of Mark Noll in this area).

In the end, it seems that the decision by Christians to promote the so-called tea party movement repeats the same old mistake that Christians made in the years leading up to the American Revolution, namely confusing Biblical teaching on government and public life with the popular political ideals of the day. Presbyterians promoted the Greenwich Tea Burning, but one would be hard pressed to say they were motivated by any Presbyterian principles beyond a certainty that God was on their side. In the same way, it seems that the Christian Right's turn to tea parties to protest the policies of the Obama administration is little more than libertarianism and capitalism baptized by a Christian view of providence.

Was Philip Vickers Fithian a Pompous Ass and a Schlemiel?

Today my colonial America class helped me look up the definition of a word:

Schlemiel: "an unlucky bungler; chump."

I don't have much contact with Yiddish culture, so I have only heard this word used once. That was in the opening theme song of the 1970s sitcom "Laverne and Shirley" when the lead characters skip down the sidewalk chanting: "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Schlemiel, Schlimazel, Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!"

NOTE: We already had a pretty good sense of what "pompous ass" meant so we did not need to look it up.

These words were used to describe Philip Vickers Fithian in my favorite review of The Way of Improvement Leads Home so far. The review came from Andrew Shankman, a professor at Rutgers University-Camden. It appeared in the first edition of the snazzy new on-line journal: New Jersey History: Studies in State and Regional History. (Actually, it is an old journal in a new format and I am honored to sit on the editorial board). I must admit I have been chuckling over this creative and honest review all morning. (Andy, if you are reading this, thanks for making my day!) Shankman had many nice things to say about my work, but he despised the character of Philip Vickers Fithian as I portrayed him. I will let the review speak for itself:

I thought that Philip Vickers Fithian was an insufferable prig well before page 168, where John Fea informs us that Fithian‘s twentieth-century editors described him as such. Nevertheless, this erudite biography of such a judgmental epigone is an illuminating work of intellectual history that also has much to say about the Enlightenment, eighteenth-century education, rural life, Presbyterianism, and the American Revolution. Yet discussing Fea‘s considerable accomplishments exposes Fithian for the pompous ass he surely was.

Fea uses Fithian‘s life to explore significant issues of the American revolutionary era. He successfully challenges some central assumptions—the gulf between urban cosmopolitans and rural localists, and the irreconcilable tension between religiosity and the Enlightenment. Fithian, a striver and self-improver, was, first and foremost, of the rural world. Fea situates him in the Cohansey River region of southern New Jersey and lovingly demonstrates how at home he was there. Fithian was a yeoman‘s son. His formative years were organized around the rhythms of agriculture.

Fea shows how connected many rural localities were to a broader world. One link was Presbyterianism, which brought to regions like Cohansey educated ministers steeped in the latest learning. Presbyterians prized education and supported academies to prepare talented young men for higher education, especially at the Presbyterian College of New Jersey in Princeton. Presbyterians also embraced the French and especially the Scottish Enlightenment, brought to Princeton by its brilliant president, John Witherspoon. They drew on Enlightenment ideals of rationality and responsible control of emotions to end the conflict produced by the Great Awakening.

This locally oriented, cosmopolitan world produced Philip Vickers Fithian and countless others on the eve of the American Revolution. As a Presbyterian minister at Princeton, Fithian struggled, through his reading and extensive diary keeping, to lead a life at once pious, enlightened, rational, engaged, zealous for God, and in service of Man. Along the way he fell in love, preached in the backcountry, lived for a year in Virginia, and died in October 1776 as an army chaplain in service to his country.

By the end of the book I couldn‘t stand him. Fithian reliably licked the boots of his betters, mouthed the platitudes of his superiors, used many long words where a few small ones would do, and condescended to the poor and uneducated. On the great questions of his age, Fithian bravely insisted on occupying ground least likely to question injustices or to improve much of anything. Fithian spent the year in Virginia for which his diary is famous in awe of his employer Robert Carter. Not once (as Carter himself impressively would do) did his Enlightenment learning cause him to question the source of Carter‘s wealth. Revolutionary tensions caused Fithian to write imitative Whig-inspired history, though his leading preoccupation was that inferiors were becoming unruly. His examples were servants stealing horses and slaves stealing, well, themselves. Many Enlightenment thinkers wrestled with the problem of slavery in an age of revolution – Fithian not so much.

Fithian had problems with those he thought inferior. His backcountry flock was "barbarous, clownish, and ungospelized [sic] as Indians…." (p. 158). He often had to disguise his clerical costume afraid he would be mocked and assaulted. I assume his was the concern of many itinerants, though I do hope it was a particular fear for Fithian. Men of the backcountry, Fithian opined, had no conversation. No opinions would be proffered unless by Fithian himself. Of course his opinions were really just warmed-over Witherspoon.

Fithian really shone in his treatment of the ladies. When his long-adored Elizabeth Beatty rejected him, he helpfully explained her behavior to her in a letter. Women were "fond of being admired and flattered," wrote Fithian, which was why she had succumbed to another. Fithian succeeded in breaking Betsy‘s attachment and married her. His triumph led him immediately to wonder whether he would love her once her looks went. In an extensive passage, he described in pitiless detail what Betsy would look like at age 60: "poorly supporting a pipe in a toothless mouth…her flabby wrinkled Bosom…lips…sunk down, like a mouldered Grave, upon her wasted gums…." The passage is considerably longer and, Fea allows, "…overly graphic…" (p. 171). More accurately, it‘s cruel, fetishistic, and neurotic. But Fithian had a problem with the body. His chief criticism of the backcountry barbarians was the one-room cabins and all the immodesty. I only wish Betsy had possessed a bit more of the spirit of one backcountry Irish girl who, when Fithian rose "in the morning, in the Blaze of day," gazed scornfully "searching our subjects for Remark." (p. 167).

That Fithian was shallow, self-important, and obnoxious really only adds to Fea‘s achievement. All of us are far less than we should be, and some of us try to improve. To improve in Fithian‘s eighteenth century was to be a pious, educated, enlightened, revolutionary who tried to merge love of home with graceful devotion to the world and those who lived in it. When he died young, this schlemiel had a long way to go.

Can You Do This?

How about this?

New Review of The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Virginia Magazine of History and Biography

Edward L. Bond offers a nice review of The Way of Improvement Leads Home in the most recent number of the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.

Historians of colonial and revolutionary Virginia probably know Philip Vickers Fithian best through the published portion of his diaries, edited in the 1940s by Hunter Dickinson Farish. Indeed, Fithian's criticisms of the Church of England found in his published diaries have been quoted frequently by several generations of historians who have found in Fithian's words proof of the weakness and lack of sincere religiosity in Virginia's established church. His description of the gentry entering church in a group after the service had already begun is well known, as is his characterization of Anglican sermons as "cool, spiritless harangue[s]."

In John Fea's biography of Fithian, The Way of Improvement Leads Home, the author introduces complexity to Fithian's understanding of the church in Virginia and, more importantly, introduces readers to the intellectual world of mid- to late eighteenth-century Presbyterianism. Fithian's relationship to the Church of England, as Fea points out, was much more complex, and although Fithian's brief one-year sojourn in Virginia takes up just one chapter of the book, historians will welcome this material. Fithian, in fact, accepted employment as a tutor for Robert Carter in part so that he could gain a "more perfect acquaintance with the … established church" (p. 111). Fea does a fine job of demonstrating the similarities shared by the Presbyterian and Anglican churches, especially how members of the two denominations after the Great Awakening shared a "similar Enlightenment-based moral philosophy" (p. 114). Fithian, Fea argues, occupied a middle ground of sorts theologically in Virginia. On the one hand, Fithian sympathized with Baptist preachers who attacked the colony's toleration of gambling, dancing, and often lax church attendance. On the other hand, he sympathized with Anglicans who saw in the Baptists a tremendous threat to social order.

Relying on the vast number of unpublished diaries and letters written by Fithian, Fea illuminates the world of the Presbyterian Enlightenment that emanated from Princeton University in New Jersey. He outlines four tenets that helped define the movement: the Enlightenment was about self-improvement; enlightened individuals could use reason to successfully check their passions; a rational individual directed his passions away from local concerns and "toward a universal love of the human race" (p. 6); and, in America, the Enlightenment existed in compromise with the American peoples' Christian faith, with Christian institutions, in fact, often supporting Fithian's Enlightenment endeavors. The world Fea portrays was one of compromise and contradiction. The Bible, for example, lost its place as the single source of morality for Americans. According to Fea, morality, particularly for Fithian, emerged from a variety of sources, including the Bible, the Spectator, popular novels, and classical literature. Living in this world of compromise led to some significant contradictions for Fithian and other evangelical Christians as well. At the same time, Fithian pursued the Enlightenment yet rejected its contention that human history was heading toward a "secular Utopia" of human freedom rather than toward the return of Christ and the reign of his heavenly kingdom (p. 213).

Pursuing the self-improvement associated with the Enlightenment was not always easy for Fithian, who struggled to blend his love of his rural home with the cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment. Nor did he find it easy to regulate his passions, and he struggled in this respect to be a rational, enlightened man throughout his life.

Fea paints a vivid portrait of the intellectual world of mid-eighteenth-century colonial American Presbyterianism, one that highlights the tensions between the modern world and Christianity (and the deep roots of the Christian faith among both the American people and their understanding of the world) and between rural life and the cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment. The Way of Improvement Leads Home deserves a wide readership and should find a place on the reading lists of many undergraduate and graduate classes in early American history.

Are Members of the Christian Right the Only "Values Voters?"

The 2009 Values Voters Summit concluded this weekend in Washington D.C. The Summit featured a star-studded cast of conservatives that included Gary Bauer, Bill Bennett, Mike Huckabee, Ed Meese, Bill O'Rielly, Phyliis Schafly, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitch McConnell. And what kind of Christian conservative political conference would be complete without former Miss California Carrie Prejean, actor Stephen Baldwin, congresswoman Barbara Bachman, and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins.

Part of the festivities was a 2012 presidential straw poll. The winner was Mike Huckabee (29%) followed by Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, and Mike Pence (all with about 12% each).

Breakout sessions included:

Thugocracy: Fighting the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy
Activism and Conservatism: Fit to a Tea (Party)
Speechless: Silencing the Christians
Global Warming Hysteria: The New Face of the "Pro-Death" Agenda
Obamacare: Rationing Your Life Away
The Threat of Illegal Immigration

Based on these breakout session, here are a few questions I would like to ask the organizers and speakers of the Values Voters Summit.

Can a member of the political left who believes that government is the best way to help "the least of these" be a "values voter?"

Can someone who supports universal healthcare based on the idea that healthcare is a religious right be a "values voter?"

Can someone who believes that global warming is real and has the potential to destroy God's creation be a "values voter?"

Can someone who believes that all human beings--including illegal immigrants--should be treated with love and care be a "values voter?"

All of these questions can be answered in the affirmative. So let's be honest and rename the "Values Voter Summit" something like "The Christian Conservative Voters Summit." Or let's keep the original name and invite, in addition to the usual conservative suspects, people like Jim Wallis, Ronald Sider, Tony Campolo, Jimmy Carter, Philip Yancey, and Stanely Hauerwas to give speeches. Now that would be a conference that might be worth attending.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

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

Interview with Terry Eagleton: Religion for radicals.

Claude Marx reviews David Waldstreicher, Slavery's Constitution.

Andrew Hartman on the fate of intellectual history.

Samuel Johnson was born 300 years ago.

Preview of the National Book Festival.

Are we in the midst of a Burkean revival?

Anthony Grafton on Google Books.

More by Rob Weir on classroom discussions.

Joanne Freeman offers historical perspective on the Joe Wilson affair.

Ira Berlin reviews Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us From Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South

Patrick Murray is visiting every American Revolutionary War battlefield in New Jersey.

Twittering historians.

Podcast: John Wilson and Stan Guthrie talk about Catcher: How the Man Behind the Plate Became an American Folk Hero.

Ron Briley on the '69 Mets.

Early American pirates and today's pirates.

Religious & Ethics News Weekly profile of Marilynne Robinson

Getting the "Negatives" Out of the Texas Social Studies Standards

It appears that at least one member of the Texas State Board of Education thinks the state should remove the "negatives" from its American history curriculum. The clip will speak for itself, but I was quite amused that this board member thinks references to both "isolationism" AND "imperialism" should be removed.

See for yourself:




This is what can happen when major curriculum decisions are left up to politicians rather than historians.

David Barton: Multiculturalist

According the Texas Freedom Network's blog, it looks like David Barton has changed his mind about whether or not to include multicultural voices in the Texas Social Studies standards. In yesterday's meeting it appears that Barton and Peter Marshall completely backed down from their original recommendation to remove Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez from the list of people Texas schoolchildren should learn about in their history classes. No word yet on whether they changed their minds about Anne Hutchinson.

I noticed that Daniel Driesbach, the American University politics professor who served as one of the expert reviewers for the Board, did not testify yesterday. Does anyone know why?

Here is the latest from the TFN blog:

David Barton and Peter Marshall were in full retreat from their calls over the summer to remove Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall from the social studies standards. When questioned today by state board members, the two claimed they had never really wanted to blacklist the two famous civil rights leaders. Oh no, they simply thought that Chavez and Marshall had been misplaced in the standards. By suggesting that discussion of Chavez be moved elsewhere, for example, Barton even claimed he was trying to make room for more minorities. Marshall protested that he had only wanted to make sure that the two were discussed in their proper context.

As the TFN blog notes, Barton and Marshall's reports were much more political and harsh toward minorities than their public presentations yesterday seemed to be. (See my thoughts on these reports here).

It also looks like Barton suggested that MORE multicultural figures need to be included in the standards. WOW!

TFN is doing a great job of keeping us up to date on the proceedings, but they are, admittedly, covering this from a liberal, anti-Christian Right perspective. I would encourage readers to watch the proceedings for themselves, if they ever become available on-line. In the meantime, does anyone know if any conservative or Christian right bloggers or websites are covering the proceedings as extensively as TFN?

Live Blogging from the Meeting of the Texas Board of Education

The Texas Freedom Network was live-blogging today from the meeting of the Texas Board of Education. Of particular interest here is the coverage of the debate over the state history standards. (The meetings are being webcasted here, but they do not seem to be available yet. See my posts on the subject here.)

Based on the TFN blog, here are a few highlights:

1. Several members of the board lament the politicization of this whole process.

2. NAACP, Latino, and Christian Right activists are present at the meeting and get a chance to speak.

3. Peter Marshall begins his testimony by appealing to the Declaration of Independence as a document that issued a religious creed for the nation.

4. Peter Marshall defends the view that Pedro Flores, the inventor of the Yo-Yo, should be included in the standards. (I am not sure what this was all about).

5. David Barton claims that he DOES NOT want to eliminate Cesar Chavez from the Texas standards. He does, however, think that Chavez should be taught in a different part of the curriculum. Board member Don McElroy notes how he is impressed with Barton's "command of history."

6. Board member Terri Leo objects to references to "global citizenship" in the standards. She thinks that Americans should be learning about "patriotism" and "nationalism" instead. I guess that it is more important that students know that they are Americans and not members of a worldwide community of human beings. Why not both? I wonder how much Leo's views here are a response to Barack Obama's global citizen speeches, particularly the one delivered recently in Berlin.

7. A strange debate emerges over whether or not first graders should learn about Nathan Hale. Leo demands that Hale be included. Teachers object based on the fact that Hale's execution may be a bit too much for first-graders to handle. Leo still insists the standards for first-grade students must include Hale.

8. Leo argues that the Bible should be listed as one of the "principles and ideas" that underlie the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution.

9. Board member Sara Cargill wants the Puritans and Pilgrims to be listed alongside the Hebrew tradition, Greece, and Rome, as a source of American democracy.

The Texas Board will now turn the work of revision over to curriculum writers who will take into consideration the recommendations of the experts. They will have new drafts for the Board to consider when they meet again in November.

Stay tuned.

Texas Social Studies Debate is Heating Up.

Yesterday I spent about thirty minutes chatting with Kate Alexander, a reporter from the Austin Statesman-American, about the Texas Social Studies standards. You can read Alexander's article here. (I still have no idea how reporters can boil an extended conversation down to a few quotes!) As my regular readers know, I spent a good part of July blogging about this issue and wrote an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle on the subject.

According to Alexander's article, the debate over the Texas standards begins today. I hope that the members of the Texas State Board of Education will model some of the virtues that are essential to good historical thinking and inquiry: humility, prudence, civility, and empathy. These are the kinds of virtues that students should learn from history--regardless of the content! My gut, however, tells me that it will be politics as usual.

I will try to follow these debates as they unfold, but it will obviously be tough to do so from Pennsylvania. If there is anyone in Texas who has access to these debates and wants to fill me in, or perhaps even write a guest post, let me know. jfea(at)messiah(dot)edu

Is it the End of Civilization?

A South Carolina congressman calls the President of the United States "a liar" from the floor of the House of Representatives as the President delivers a speech before a joint session of Congress. A rapper interrupts an award show to announce that the 19-year-old country singer who just won an award does not deserve it. A world champion tennis player threatens an official in the semifinals of the U.S. Open. The greatest basketball player to ever live gives an egomaniacal speech at his induction into the Hall of Fame.

What is happening to our culture? Why are so many people losing control? Does it all add up to the end of civilization? As Kathleen Parker notes in today's Washington Post: "civilization is a fragile and delicate idea, held together by a few mere threads, bound together by little more than a wisp of mutual consent." These recent examples of misbehavior is evidence that the thread is "fraying."

David Brooks blames this kind of behavior on "expressive individualism," a kind of narcissism that was largely unknown among the generation of our grandparents. They watched shows like "Command Performance" where celebrities like Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Dinah Shore used their talents in the service of their country. Today, however, things are different. Brooks writes:

When you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line. Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then.

But that humility came under attack in the ensuing decades. Self-effacement became identified with conformity and self-repression. A different ethos came to the fore, which the sociologists call “expressive individualism.” Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within.

I will give Brooks the last word here, largely because I find myself in agreement with him:

This isn’t the death of civilization. It’s just the culture in which we live. And from this vantage point, a display of mass modesty, like the kind represented on the V-J Day “Command Performance,” comes as something of a refreshing shock, a glimpse into another world. It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.

The Way of Improvement Leads Home Wins NJSAA Book Award

I just learned today that the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance (NJSAA), an organization of scholars devoted to the promotion of New Jersey studies, has awarded their 2009 Book Award in Scholarly Non-Fiction to The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

Here are several comments from Prize Committee:

"Fea's book was special because it aimed to relate New Jersey history with the Enlightenment, surely a goal that demonstrates that books on New Jersey topics can be and often are relevant to those outside our state."

"Fithian's diary is one of the most-cited pieces of literature that survives from 18th-century America. But all most folks know about him is that he was born in southern NJ and served as a tutor on a plantation--where he acted the part of a cultural anthropologist writing an ethnography--before he returned home and died early in the Revolution. Fea does a great job of situating his work and provides a critical context for understanding Revolutionary New Jersey. He also looks at the enlightenment in rural areas, courtship, travel, and the role of Presbyterians in moving the Revolution forward. I found myself regularly citing the book in my graduate course on NJ history."

"Fea does a nice job of explaining various 17th and 18th century terms and side notes (I thought the beginning of the volume would be wonderful for a college class studying this early period) and he has the volume well supplemented with excellent images and very helpful maps."

Federer Loses/ Bills-Pats Going Retro

I spent the early part of the evening tonight watching the Juan Martin del Potro's five set victory over Roger Federer in the US Open Final. I was rooting for Federer, but it is good to see an Argentinian tennis player win the US Open again. I think the last one to win it was Guillermo Vilas (right) in 1977 when the tournament was still played on clay. I remember watching that match as a kid and being very upset that my hero--Jimmy Connors--lost to the guy I have always called the Argentine Bjorn Borg.

After the match I switched over to ESPN to catch the second half of the Bills-Patriots game. As a long time AFL-AFC fan, I am enjoying seeing both teams commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the old American Football League with their vintage uniforms. It took me a few seconds to realize that I wasn't watching O.J. Simpson and Joe Ferguson against Steve Grogan and Sam "Bam" Cunningham. At halftime the Patriots introduced their 50th anniversary team. It was good to see one of my favorite players of all-time, Nick Buoniconti, as a member of that team. Buoniconti is known best for his years with the Dolphins (including the 1972 undefeated season), but he spent several years as an all-pro linebacker with the Boston Pats in the 1960s.

By the way, Buffalo is winning this game. Let's see if they can hold on.

Another Review of The Way of Improvement Leads Home

James S. Baugess of Columbus State Community College has a review of The Way of Improvement Leads Home in the May 2009 issue of The History Teacher. (It is not on-line). Baugess writes:

There is not much to criticize here, as Fea's narrative is an easy read and makes for a pleasant experience, but the lack of a bibliography weakens the utility of the book for secondary teachers and community college instructors for use in their courses. Nevertheless, Fea succeeds in giving his readers keen insight into the life and mind of a diarist who left to Americans and the world a record of what it was like to live as a Christian amid the Enlightenment and the revolution.

I have always wanted to write a book that makes for a "pleasant" reading "experience." Thanks!

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

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

Randall Stephens on the 15th anniversary of Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

John D. Boy: Beards and the new evangelical leaders.

Did Pope Pius IX send a crown of thorns to Jefferson Davis? Probably not. But a Confederate Civil War Museum thinks he did.

Heather Cox Richardson: Who cares about plagiarism?

Some think that Cardinal Sean O'Malley should not have participated in Ted Kennedy's funeral. O'Malley defends himself.

Can you be Catholic and Evangelical?: A conference at Wheaton College.

A library without books.

10 things students should ask during the first week of their colleges classes.

College classes are being taught at 2am!

Eric Miller slams Facebook.

Christian colleges reinventing themselves in an economic crisis.

Is conservatism a tradition or a pathology?

Amanda Bowie Moniz reviews Johan Neem, A Nation of Joiners

What my 11-year old daughter is reading: Al Capone Shines My Shoes.

All free libraries in Philadelphia will close on October 2.

Native American Nostalgia?

What I am thinking about today:

The other day in my colonial America course we were discussing the first few chapters of Dan Richter's excellent Facing East from Indian Country and thinking together about the impact of European colonization on native American cultures. Our discussion turned to Western views of progress and whether or not native Americans ever saw their societies as "progressing" or "improving" prior to their contact with European ideas and goods. When, if ever, did native Americans embrace Enlightenment notions of "improvement?"

This led to a conversation about nostalgia. Nostalgia seems to require societal improvement. You cannot look back warmly on a specific period in a society's history unless that society has advanced--culturally, technologically, etc...-- beyond the period for which you are nostalgic.

So at what point did native American cultures start to get nostalgic? Did they long for the "good old days" when they hunted with spears rather than guns? At what point did they reflect longingly on a lost world--a world that existed before their exposure to European ways of life? I know enough about native American history to do a decent job covering it in my upper-division colonial America course, but I do not claim to be an expert. I thus wonder if there is any literature on this idea of post-contact Indian nostalgia. Were native Americans nostalgic before European contact? If so, does this imply that natives did have some notion of "improvement" embedded in their culture?

Thomas Jefferson and "False Religion"

Here is what I am spending way too much time thinking about this morning:

In his famous "Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom," (1786) , Thomas Jefferson writes:

Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time...

Here is my quandary: What does Jefferson mean by "false religions?" He gives no examples of these so-called "false religions," but suggests that they are being and have been "established and maintained" all over the world.

Is Jefferson saying that any kind of belief that has added something to the pure and undefiled moral teachings of Jesus is a false religion? If you read Jefferson's writings on religion, he often distinguishes "real" Christianity (which he defines as the moral system of Jesus as described, for example, in his so-called "Jefferson Bible") from the kind of superstitious religion propagated by clergy, churches, historic confessions, etc.... If this is indeed what Jefferson meant by "false religion," then we might interpret the "Virginia Statute" of 1786 as a subtle slam on all of organized Christianity. To interpret it this way, however, seems to undermine the very purpose of the Statute, which was meant to give freedom to all religious believers, even if Jefferson deems the content of their religion to be "false."

Or is Jefferson using "false religion" here to simply mean any religion that is connected, or has been connected, to the state. This interpretation fits better with the message of the Statute, but whether a religion is "true" or "false" is based, it seems, on one's opinion of the content of the religion and not how the religion relates to the state or government.

Or Jefferson could be suggesting a combination of both of these options. Religions are "false" when they defend theological principles that add to the moral teachings of Jesus and/or are connected to a state church. In this sense, Jefferson believed that Calvinism was a "false religion" both because it affirmed theological principles (atonement, inspiration of the Bible, predestination, miracles, etc...) that went beyond the moral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and it had been too closely wedded to political experiments by John Calvin in Geneva, John Winthrop in Massachusetts Bay, or the Federalists of the 1790s.

So what did Jefferson mean by "false religion?"

Joe Wilson: Congressional Heckler

This may be old news by now, but I have been teaching all day and am just getting around to reading the coverage of Obama's health care speech from last night. It seems that Joe Wilson, the South Carolina congressman who called Obama a liar during the speech, is getting a lot of press today. Check out Wilson (or at least his voice) in action:



According to this article from the Associated Press, not only has Wilson been rebuked by both Democrats and Republicans, but Rob Miller, his expected opponent in his re-election bid for his congressional seat in South Carolina's second district, raised over 100,000 in the eight hours following the outburst. Wilson has since apologized.

Wilson may have let his emotions get the best of him, but let's give him a break. At least he didn't attack Obama with a cane in the way that Preston Brooks did to Charles Sumner in 1856.

How to Lead a Classroom Discussion

Today's Inside Higher Ed has a great piece, written by David Weir, on how to lead a classroom discussion. He includes both "dos" and "do nots" when it comes to leading college students in discussion sections. (For more development of these points check out the article).

The "Do Nots":
1. Discussions are not extra lectures
2. Discussion groups are not drill sections
3. Discussion is not group interrogation
4. Discussions are not "one fewer class preparation."

The "Do's"
1. Create a separate syllabus for discussions
2. Structure discussion to maximize student involvement
3. Make discussion sections a place where students feel comfortable "taking chances."
4. Ask the right kind of questions and in the right amount
5. Embrace silence
6. Seize teaching moments.

Beware: Obama Was in Your Kid's School Today!

Frankly, I am baffled by the conservative response to Barack Obama's decision to speak to school children today.

According to this CNN story, conservative parents were frightened that the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES would be speaking to their children. Some thought he would try to turn them into socialists. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty said that the classroom is no place to show a video address from the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer was appalled that taxpayer money was being used by the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES to "indoctrinate" students.

Apparently none of this was a problem when George H. W. Bush addressed students in 1991 or when Ronald Reagan did the same in 1988. Unlike Obama's speech today, Reagan's used his time with school children to attack high taxes and big government.

Obama's "indoctrination" included the following themes: responsibility, hard work, perseverance, commitment, setting goals, learning through failure, writing extra drafts of papers, asking for help, showing respect for teachers, standing up against bullies, washing your hands, striving amid adversity, having a vision for the future, and developing one's talents, skills, and intellect.

It is only a matter of time before someone comes along and connects these virtues and practices to communism. How dare the federal government tell our students to write extra drafts of papers and stand up to bullies!

I do want to know this: Why aren't level-headed GOP leaders and politicians standing up to this fear-mongering?

My 3rd grade daughter watched the speech today in her class. She came home excited that the president of the United States planned a speech for kids like her. For her, the highlights were Obama's reminder to wash her hands, the fact that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and the importance of working hard. After the talk she filled out a worksheet related to the controversial "lesson plan." It asked her to set a goal for herself. Her goal: To practice hard enough to make the "A" travel soccer team next year and to "make straight 'A's' or 'B's' in her classes.

I am glad the president inspired her today.

ADDENDUM: In the comments section Russ R. reminds me that there was indeed some controversy surrounding George H.W. Bush's 1991 speech to school children. Here is an article on the Democrat response to Bush's speech. Thanks, Russ!

Exploring George Washington's Religion: Where to Begin

A few weeks ago, while up in the great north woods of New Hampshire, I finished writing a draft of a chapter on the religious beliefs of George Washington. You will have to wait until late next year to find out where I come down on the question of whether or not Washington was a "Christian," but in the meantime, for those who want to explore this topic for themselves, I thought I would list some of the best books on the religious beliefs of this so-called "Father of our Country."

In no particular order (and I am sure I am forgetting a few):

Mason Locke Weems, The Life of Washington: A New Edition with primary documents and introduction by Peter S. Onuf (M.E. Sharpe, 1996). Writing in the early 19th century, Weems is the source of many Washington myths, including the cherry-tree and the prayer at Valley Forge. Onuf's introduction is great.

Frank E. Grizzard Jr., The Ways of Providence: Religion & George Washington (Mariner, 2005). A short introduction to Washington's religion. Includes many primary sources, including some of Washington's letters to churches. Also valuable for Grizzard's debunking of the Valley Forge prayer story.

Gerarld E. Kahler, The Long Farewell: Americans Mourn the Death of George Washington (U of Virginia, 2008). Best book on the many funeral sermons and speeches delivered after Washington's death.

Francois Furstenberg, In the Name of the Father: Washington's Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation (Penguin, 2006). Excellent on the way Washington was remembered by evangelical Christians in the early 19th century. Chapter on Mason Locke Weems is outstanding.

Peter A. Lillback, George Washington's Sacred Fire (Providence Forum, 2006). Huge tome written from the perspective of the Christian Right. Argues that Washington was a devout Christian, but probably not an evangelical. I would use it more as a reference tool than a compelling argument for Washington's Christianity.

Edwin Gaustad, Faith of the Founders: Religion and the New Nation, 1776-1826 (Harper, 2004). Chapter on Washington is solid.

Brooke Allen, Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers (Ivan Dee, 2007). Chapter on Washington is decent, but the book as history is too tainted by Allen's agenda to take on the Christian Right.

Gary Scott Smith, Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush (Oxford, 2006). Chapter on Washington is very thorough and well-done. Argues that Washington was a "theistic rationalist."

Michael and Jana Novak, Washington's God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father of Our Country (Basic Books, 2006). The Novaks argue cautiously (more cautiously than Lillback) that Washington was an eighteenth-century Anglican Christian.

Steve Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and Birth of Religious Freedom in America (Random House, 2008). Great overview of Washington's faith. Very accessible.

Mary Thompson, “In the Hands of Good Providence”: Religion in the Life of George Washington (U of Virginia, 2008). A researcher on the Mt. Vernon staff argues that Washington was an eighteenth-century Anglican Christian. Very good in helping to think through how to use the testimonies about Washington's faith written in the 19th century by evangelical members of his family. I found this book to be very helpful.

David Holmes: The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (Oxford, 2006). This book got a lot of positive press when it appeared. Indeed, it is a good introduction to Washington and the other founders, but I found it to be a bit thin. Argues Washington was a "Christian deist." I did not find this category particularly helpful.

Paul Longmore, The Invention of George Washington (U of Virginia, 1999). This book does not focus specifically on Washington's religion, but Longmore does look closely at Washington's daily life--including his church attendance.

Paul F. Boller, George Washington and Religion (SMU Press, 1963). Classic work on Washington's religion. Boller argues Washington was a deist. I don't completely buy his argument, but the book is excellent as a reference tool to help identify Washington's writings related to religion. Lillback's book, noted above, is written as a direct response to Boller.

Jeffry Morrison: The Political Philosophy of George Washington (Johns Hopkins, 2008). Chapter on Washington's religion is insightful. Morrison argues that Washington was more biblically literate than others give him credit for.

Joseph Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (Vintage, 2005). Great biography of Washington, but weak on religion. Ellis describes Washington as "lukewarm Episcopalian."

James Hutson, The Founders on Religion: A Book of Quotations. (Princeton, 2005). Great starting point for locating Washington's thoughts on religion.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

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

William G. Hyland Jr. in defense of Thomas Jefferson.

The history of Labor Day. And again.

A "digital humanist" on Martha Ballard's diary.

What is the future of scholarly journals in the humanities.

Mark Valeri reviews Peter J. Thuesen, Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine.

Buy the house where Bruce Springsteen wrote "Born to Run" and "Thunder Road."

The minister who prayed for Barack Obama to die and go to hell.

The 50 greatest Civil War books.

Why English departments are declining. (And history departments too).

A new kinds of college rankings from Washington Monthly: Schools that serve their country.

Dominos pizza and the rise and fall of Ava Maria Law School.

James McPherson reviews four of the most recent biographies of Abraham Lincoln

Jill Lepore: Public Historian

David Haglund reviews Louis Masur, Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen's American Vision.

Stephen Hahn on his recent book: The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom

Like....Happy 40th Shaggy!

Forget about Woodstock or the moon landing, September 13, 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of the premiere of Scooby Doo. The Washington Post reports.

New Review of The Way of Improvement Leads Home

Here is a snippet from the latest review of The Way of Improvement Leads Home. This one, which was published in Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, comes from Marcus Gallo, apparently a graduate student at the University of California-Davis.

John Fea's well-crafted and readable biography of the diarist Philip Vickers Fithian shows how metropolitan culture from Paris and London tricked down to seemingly isolated rural colonists in the years before the American Revolution. Unfortunately, I could not bring myself to like the book's principal character. Whereas Fithian's detractors in the early twentieth century called him an "insufferable prig" (166), I could not shake the sense that he was just a phony, filling his journals with sentiments that he believed an enlightened gentleman of his era would hold. My personal distaste for Fithian aside, his published and unpublished writings demonstrate what Fea calls "the rural Enlightenment.

A Summer of Archives

This was one of the first summers in a while that I did not set foot in an archive. To be honest, I missed the musty smell of Hollinger boxes, the white gloves, the call slips, the foam spine supports, the lockers, eighteenth-century script, the helpful and not so helpful archivists, , the cheap accomodations, and the daily decision about whether to work through lunch in order to maximize time with the sources.

My archive withdrawl has been alleviated by an insightful series of posts by my colleagues over at Religion in American History. Some of the scholars at the site are offering first-hand accounts of their summer archive experiences. Head over there to read about:

• Randall Stephens's visit to the Congregational Library in Boston


• John Turner's three months at Mormon archives in Provo and Salt Lake


• Paul Harvey's reflection on his 1988 visit to the Southern Baptist Historical Archives and Library in Nashville.


• Matt Sutton's evangelical magical mystery tour with stops at Wheaton, Moody, Biola, Gordon-Conwell, Fuller, and Bob Jones.

Thanks guys. I wish I could deliver a similar report but I spent my usual archive time this summer writing at a beautiful lake-front cabin/house in the Great North Woods of New Hampshire where I was allowed to write with pens.

Good Will Hunting and The Evolution of the Market Economy in the Southern Colonies

I started my Colonial America course today by showing my students the classic Cambridge bar scene from the movie "Good Will Hunting." (I was surprised that only about a third of the fifteen students in the course had actually seen the movie!).

Many of you, I hope, recall the scene where working-class genius Will Hunting (Matt Damon) matches wits with a first-year Harvard graduate student in a historiographical debate on early American economic history. Watch the clip here:



After showing the students the clip, I told them that by the end of the semester they would all know exactly what Will Hunting and the Harvard graduate student were talking about. Let's hope!

A few comments on the video:

The mention of "Vickers" is a reference to Daniel Vickers's Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1850. I do not have my copy of Farmers and Fishermen handy, but I wonder if anyone knows if Vickers does indeed argue on p.98 that Gordon Wood "drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth"? If you have the time, click on the Amazon page for Farmers and Fisherman (above). Nearly every customer comment is a quotation from or reference to this scene in "Good Will Hunting." I don't know Vickers, but John Murrin once told me that he thinks I present a legitimate challenge to him in the category of "tallest early American historian in North America."

"Lemon" is a reference to geographer James Lemon's, The Best Poor Man's Country: Early Southeastern Pennsylvania. The writers of "Good Will Hunting" did their homework here. Indeed, Lemon does argue that the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were "entrepreneurial way back in 1740." (Actually, Lemon argues that Pennsylvania was capitalist well before 1740).

The late John Patrick Diggins argued that the mention of Gordon Wood was a reference to his The Radicalism of the American Revolution, but Wood's wikipedia page notes that the entire scene is "based mainly on an obscure 1994 New York Review of Books article by Wood that discussed James T. Lemon's writings and on a subsequent letter to the editor by Lemon rather than on Wood's more well-known writings." I remember reading this New York Review of Books essay for my doctoral comprehensive exams. It is a masterful overview of the debate over whether or not the colonies were driven by a market economy or an agrarian economy. The "Good Will Hunting" scene could easily have been based on this historiographical overview.

For what it's worth...

Writing During the Academic Year

As the new school year begins, I am thinking about practical ways of sustaining my writing amid the demands of the semester.

This Fall I am teaching three classes--2 sections of the first half of the United States history survey course and an upper-division course on colonial America. I serve on three very active college committees and advise a dozen or so students. I also attend regular faculty and department meetings. Some think this load is very heavy. Others, including my readers who are high school teachers, might think I have it easy.

This Fall, in addition to teaching, I need to finish a book manuscript, which is due at the publisher on January 15, 2010. I also need to complete a few other smaller writing projects and prepare a few public talks. I usually start the semester with high hopes of making progress on various projects, but within a few weeks I become overwhelmed by the day to day life of the semester and end up punting on everything else. This Fall, with deadlines approaching, punting is not an option. I need to sustain my writing during the semester.

I know some of my readers have become quite good at balancing their scholarly/writing work with their teaching responsibilities. What works for you? When do you write during the semester? How do you balance writing with the busyness of the semester? Is such balance possible.

Any tips would be much appreciated.