Do Catholic Colleges Make Students Less Catholic?

Inside Higher Ed reports on debates within Catholic higher education over how well Catholic colleges nurture the faith of their Catholic students.

In 2003 the Cardinal Newman Society, a conservative Catholic organization that serves as a sort of watchdog group for Catholic college's loyalty to church teaching, released a study claiming that graduating seniors at Catholic colleges are "predominantly pro-abortion, approve of homosexual 'marriage,' and only occasionally pray or attend religious services."

But at the recent meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, new evidence was presented to challenge the Newman Society study. The new study suggests that students at Catholic colleges and universities are more likely to "turn toward" their faith than Catholic students at non-Catholic colleges.

This raises a really interesting issue. To what extent are church-related colleges required to inculcate students in the faith-tradition of the sponsoring denomination or religious institution? To what extent are church-related colleges "churches" and to what extent are they "colleges?" I think the answer to these questions vary from institution to institution and from denomination to denomination.

On the one hand, it would be a shame if a Catholic student's faith was deliberately undermined at a Catholic college. In fact, any faculty member in the business of destroying the faith of their students should not be teaching at a church-related school. Church-related liberal arts colleges should be safe places where religious students can feel comfortable asking questions about their deeply-held beliefs without having them attacked by professors.

On the other hand, church-related colleges should be challenging their students to think critically about the tradition. The goal is education, not indoctrination. They should be committed to creating spaces where this kind of intellectual engagement can take place.

This balance is not always an easy one to pull off, but it seems to me to be absolutely essential to church-related liberal arts education.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

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

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Join the "Way of Improvement Leads Home" on Facebook

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Academic libraries and History Day

Ed Kilgore on the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad.

Ray Soller: "The Parson Weems Moment--1854"

Remembering J.D. Salinger here and here and here and here.

Historiann: How to assemble a conference panel with complete strangers.

Symposium: "Obama at One"

Should we return to "trial by ordeal?"

Amy Bloom on books on happiness.

More Howard Zinn tributes.

On-line exhibit: African Americans at the University of Chicago

Sean Wilentz reviews Joan Waugh, U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth

Randall Stephens: Why is the South so religious?

What was the biggest change in 20th century evangelicalism?

James Horn on Jamestown

David Kennedy: What would Wilson do?

Gordon Wood reviews JohnYoo, Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush

90 Uninterrupted Minutes

I wish I would have been more consistent in following Amy Benson Brown's advice in her recent Chronicle Review article: "Attention, Please! Your Book is Calling." Brown describes herself as a "writer and editor who coaches academic writers." I never knew such academic coaches existed, but after reading her essay I suspect her phone might start ringing with potential clients. She writes:

But preserving 90 uninterrupted minutes for writing every day (or even just several days a week) can seem like an impossible dream, given all the other demands on our attention. Most weeks, I block out those chunks of time on my calendar, keeping hope alive. The real trick is to discipline yourself not to respond, during the time you have set aside for writing, to cries (or ring tones) from anything other than the project you are working on...

I admire the example of a highly productive scholar I know who does not respond to e-mail messages on the one day a week she has set aside for research and writing. Somehow the work of her university rumbles on. Her colleagues do not seem to mind the lag time, probably because when they get her attention, they receive the same extraordinary focus she brings to her research. Another researcher I know is making the most of her long-awaited sabbatical by focusing on only her writing in the mornings, resolutely refusing to even look at e-mail until mid-afternoon each day.

Great advice for any academic working on a writing project. Check out the entire article if you have a way of getting around The Chronicle's subscriber wall.

Jacob Needleman: How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?

Religion Dispatches is running an interview with Jacob Needleman, Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State university and author of the recent What is God? (Penguin-Tarcher, 2009). The book describes his "journey from Ivy-educated professor and atheist, to talk about fundamentalist, atheism, separating the sacred from religion, and why listening is the first step of every ethics."

Here are two parts of the interview conducted by Religion Dispatches senior editor Lisa Webster:

How did your ideas about religion change?

Well, as I say, in my life it was more or less thrust upon me. I needed a job. It was 1962—ancient times—I was hired at San Francisco State and I was obliged to teach a course called the History of Western Religious Thought. For me I had no desire to teach anything like that. I was totally allergic to religion. But I had training as a philosophy student, a grad student, a PhD. I did very well, was at the best colleges, best universities— Harvard, Yale—and I was willing to undertake preparing myself to teach such a course. Philosophers generally don't want to come anywhere near that kind of stuff—nor did I. But I honorably tried to prepare myself.

It meant I had to read theologians, Christian writers like St. Augustine—whom I had hated. You see in my book where I talk about burning the pages of the book, that’s exactly what happened. I'm not exaggerating. I was so happy to see it go up in flames; I had suffered so much from that book. And later I read it and I loved it—a great, great man.

So it forced me to read and prepare myself, and I couldn't believe how superficial my understanding of religion had been, even with a liberal education from the best universities. I discovered things about religion; I couldn't believe how good, how interesting, how profound—and how distorted it had become, how shallow it had become. So more and more I got deeply interested in religion because I had to teach it. And then I got personally interested in my own personal, spiritual search which I started to undertake.

And you teach courses in religion, spirituality, so you encounter every kind of opinion. I was so interested in that encounter you describe with the dogmatic student, the fundamentalist...

What an interesting thing that was for me. Because I was always nervous when fundamentalist people came to my class. Mostly I let them speak but I don't pay much attention, because I know they're going to come back with the same old thing and not going to listen to anybody. They're often nice people but they're just impervious, waiting for the chance to come in and say Christ is this or that.

This guy, for some reason, there was something appealing about him. He’d greet me: "How are you this fine day?" He would sit in the middle of the room and he would plunk the Bible down. I was teaching a course on really spiritual esoteric thought: René Guénon, and P.D. Ouspensky. These are two heavy hitters in esoteric thought, and I thought, this guy is not going to swallow any of this. Well all right, as long as he takes notes and does the exam it's fine.

But I liked him. He would always sit there with his bible and he would criticize. It was strong, but it was not hateful; it was not violent. So I took the chance of trying to listen to him. I would make an effort to practice what I preach and listen to a person I totally disagree with about a subject I know a lot about.

So we started having a conversation, and one of the subjects had to do with interpretation of scripture. At one point we were back and forth and I realized: this man, I disagree with him a lot but he has a heart. This is not a maniac—he has a heart, he's feeling something. And I started respecting his being, really, in a sense, without any sense of agreeing with his thoughts.

Anyway, he started saying things like: you can't have criticism, you can't have interpretations, you can't have commentaries—what is right is what's in the Bible. It sounded like the old literalistic fundamentalist kind of thing. But it wasn't, because he was saying something really interesting: let the Bible interpret itself.

And it's true, if you could really receive the Bible, if you could really open to the words—this leads into the whole big question about how you read scripture. In its deeper sense, scripture was never meant to be an academic study, where you take questions in your mind. In its deepest sense you can only understand real scripture when you need something, when you need truth of a certain kind and you need help. Then scripture speaks. Whether it's Christian, Jewish, or sacred books of the Gnostics, or whether it's Buddhist—really scriptural texts.

Scripture is not just recording what Jesus said; scripture is men and women coming together, working inwardly to be true to something and together trying to produce something that has at least a bit of truth of the heart. Real scripture, though it might on the surface seem contradictory or violent, these things are often symbolic and can only be understood with the heart and the head together. Not just with the head.

So I started criticizing as a professor, but I didn't want to stay in my head like that with this man for some reason. I could give him all kinds of good jabs, ask him questions that would refute him, but as I went on playing my role as a professor I started coming down into my own heart. This guy started being less rigid. He was a heart coming up and relating to a head, and I was a head coming down and relating to a heart. A beautiful meeting.

This so-called fundamentalist was a human being. Someone might look like an unpleasant fanatic in certain conditions, you begin to speak to them, and—well, you might be quite surprised.

What Chicago Political Candidates Are Reading

I don't vote any more in Illinois elections, but I found this chart in the Chicago Tribute interesting. The Tribune asked sixteen candidates for office to volunteer the titles of their favorite books in the following categories:

What book influenced your life?
The Bible was the most cited book. I would like to think that these politicians picked the Bible because it really did influence their life, but the cynical side of me wonders if this was also a safe political choice.

There is not a lot of history on the list. Andy McKenna chose a few volumes from Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln. This sounds like a smart political move by a Republican candidate for governor in the state of Illinois, but I would guess most voters have never heard of Sandburg.

I don't think Congressman Mark Kirk can't be accused of political posturing. He chose Daniel Boorstin's The Discoverers as the book that most influenced his life. There is also some classical literature in this category: Orwell, Thoreau, and Homer are all mentioned. Pat Quinn, the incumbent governor, is shoring up the Catholic base with the selection of Joseph Cardinal Bernadin's The Gift of Peace.

What book would you read to prepare for office?
I am pleased to see that most of the candidates would read American history to prepare for office. Books about Abraham Lincoln rule the day. The most cited book is Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Economics and economic history are also well represented. A few candidates would read Amy Shales, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. Alexi Giannoulias, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, is reading Paul Krugman, while Roger Keats, the Republican Candidate for Cook Country Board president is reading Milton Friedman.

What author would most like to meet?
Republicans: Doris Kearns Goodwin, George Will, Ernest Hemingway Tom Clancy, Philip Roth, Tom Wolfe, Milton Friedman, Greg Mortensen, Michael Bulgakov, and Lord John Julius Norwich

Democrats: Diane Scharzbein, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Ellison, and Jane Austen.

Doris Kearns Goodwin makes both lists.

What book would you take to a desert island?
I got a kick out of some of these choices. For example, Bill Brady, a Republican candidate for governor, would bring an encyclopedia. Dan Hynes, a Democratic candidate for governor, would bring Lou Holtz, Wins, Losses and Lessons: An Autobiography. Does Hynes really want to spend the rest of his life on a desert island reading the autobiography of Lou Holtz? This is enough not to vote for him.

At least some of the candidates were smart enough to bring multi-volume works or large tomes such as the Complete Works of Robert Browning and Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking World. Others are more practical. Cheryle Jackson, Democratic candidate for Senate, would bring "any survival guide with a chapter on how to make a raft" and her opponent in the Democratic primary, Jacob Meister, would bring "Boat Building for Dummies." Gotta love the pragmatism of the Illinois Democratic Party! My favorite in this category is Dorothy Brown, the Democratic candidate for Cook County Board President. If she was stranded on a desert island she would bring along the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. Could you imagine spending the rest of your life reading Grant? I hear that he is pretty hot right now, but he can't be that hot.

How would you answer these questions?

What Teachers Make

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan

The Thoughtul Christian: Meet George Washington

The Thoughtful Christian is promoting a short study I wrote recently about the religious faith of George Washington. It was written for churches and includes questions for discussion and other features.

Some of the material stems from the chapter on Washington in my forthcoming book (If you can call it "forthcoming"). You may want to think about using it in your churches or Sunday school classes around the time of President's Day.

Garry Wills on Catholic Culture, Circa 1969

Joseph A. Komonchak, a Catholic priest who holds an endowed chair in religious studies at the Catholic University of America, asks the readers of the Commonweal blog to respond to a description of "Catholic culture" made by Garry Wills in 1969:

Bingo, large families, fish on Friday, novenas, crustily spangled copes, Tantum ergo before the monstrance, clouds of incense, altar boys dropping the priest’s biretta with a plop, pinging of xylophone chimes at Consecration, girls with kleenex hairpinned to their heads, kitchen matchboxes stuck in the sand under the red-cupped candles, the teen-ager in her formal teetering up a ladder in May with flowers for the plaster brow, churchings, car blessings, name-saint days, Dies irae on all Souls (and ducking in and out of church all day for the indulgence), plastic holy water dips at the bedroom door, the Sacred Heart in a heavy frame, scapulars like big postage stamps glued here and there on kids in the swimming pool, J.M.J. at the top of school work, the sign of the cross before a foul shot, Sunday movie in white shoes and pants left over from First Communion; baptism in the spittle of repeated Exorcizo’s, letters dated by the saint’s day, the clank of beads (each as big as a marble) when a nun approached, food-chiseling in Lent (ne potus noceat), the stored candy eaten in marathon gluttony after noon on Holy Saturday, priests mumbling their breviaries in the light of a Pullman men’s lounge, debates as midnight neared on Saturday night about the legitimacy of using Mountain Standard Time to being the pre-Communion fast.

Tribal rites, superstitions, marks of the Catholic ghetto–and, all of them, insignia of a community. These marks and rites were not so much altered, refined, elevated, reformed, transfigured, as–overnight–erased. This was a ghetto that had no one to say “Catholic is Beautiful” over it. Men rose up to change this world who did not love it–demented teachers, ready to improve a student’s mind by destroying his body.

Do we need a culture? Only if we need a community, however imperfect. Only if we need each other.

As I read this, it was clear to me that I was raised in a different "Catholic culture"--an Italian and Slovakian one. There is little about what Wills describes that I remember. But this is probably more of a generational thing. I was born post-Vatican II so I did not experience this kind of thick Catholic culture that Wills describes. Whatever the case, I think Wills remarks were describing an American Catholic culture that was in rapid decline by 1969. There is more than a little nostalgia here. Times have changed and I think it is safe to say that Wills has changed as well.

By the way--this post has 73 comments, many of which are worth reading.

January 2010 William and Mary Quarterly

The new William and Mary Quarterly is now available on-line. Book reviews can be read here. (Will they ever review The Way of Improvement Leads Home?).

Below find summaries of the articles featured in this issue, as well as the book reviews.

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Model Empire, Lost City: Ancient Carthage and the Science of Politics in Revolutionary America
By Caroline Winterer

Ancient Carthage (ca. 804–146 BCE), mighty rival to Rome for supremacy in the ancient Mediterranean, is here restored to its important place in early modern British and revolutionary American political thought. Along with ancient Greece and Rome, Carthage supplied early British empire builders with an example of an enduring, stable republic that was also a profitable sea empire. Britons frequently summoned Carthage as an example as they founded colonies in the Atlantic. The ancient republic also captivated James Madison and John Adams in the 1780s as they sought a model for the new American Republic that was both politically stable and expansively commercial. Yet since most of its archaeological and literary remains had not survived, Carthage also exposed problems in the emerging idea that politics could be a science that rested on knowable facts and principles. How could politics claim to be empirical if its evidentiary base rested on examples such as Carthage, about which frustratingly little could be disc overed? The article suggests that some of the epistemological dilemmas revealed by the case of Carthage in the Constitution-making period marked the beginning of a modern era in which political science turned away from antiquity and toward other sources of evidence.

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Order and Authority in New Netherland: The 1653 Remonstrance and Early Settlement Politics
By Simon Middleton

Anglo-Dutch relationships inflected debates concerning order and authority in early New Netherland. The article focuses in particular on a remonstrance drawn up by English and Dutch settler representatives at a meeting convened at the height of the First Anglo-Dutch War, 1652–53, when the colony’s future as a West India Company colony looked uncertain. Tracing the earlier settlement (some may call it infiltration) of those who served as English representatives, the article investigates the role of key English figures in debates concerning the administration of this Dutch colony. Thereafter, and acknowledging the interpretive limits connections drawn between motives and the meaning of political arguments, the article evaluates the settlers’ arguments for what they indicate of a common European heritage and political language. It was this heritage and language of politics, invoking themes and experiences we might label civic-humanist, that allowed the settlers to construct the kind of alliance indicated by a 1 653 remonstrance. Particularly noteworthy, and perhaps the reason that colonial governors such as Petrus Stuyvesant have enjoyed such unenviable historiographical reputations, is the stress the settlers placed on the relationship between the civility of officeholders—extending to words, manners, and disposition—and the legitimacy of their provincial authority.

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The British Army, “Military Europe,” and the American War of Independence
By Stephen Conway

Recent British scholarship, reacting against the dominance of the Atlantic perspective, has sought to highlight the European orientation of the eighteenth-century British and Irish. This article emphasizes, and seeks to demonstrate, European consciousness in the British army employed to put down the American rebellion. The transfer of personnel, technology, ideas, and institutions among the different European armies, and their common commitment to the Eurocentric laws of war and a shared military etiquette, all helped to create the sense of a European occupational fraternity that transcended national distinctions. British and Irish military men were an integral part of this transnational soldierly society. The place of the British army in military Europe should matter to historians of the Revolution because it helps to explain why so many British officers and even common soldiers reacted so negatively to Americans in arms, both rebels and loyalists. The British army’s superciliousness, resented bitterly by m any Americans, probably owed less to the contempt that metropolitan Britons had for provincials than to the feelings of superiority European professional soldiers felt for military amateurs.

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Sources and Interpretations

Reassessing the “Sankofa Symbol” in New York’s African Burial Ground
By Erik R. Seeman

This article reconsiders the origins of a heart-shaped design made out of tacks on a coffin lid excavated in Manhattan’s African Burial Ground. Scholars have claimed that this design was a sankofa symbol of the Akan people of West Africa’s Gold Coast. But there is no evidence of the sankofa symbol in West African deathways before the twentieth century. Moreover archaeologists have found numerous examples of hearts made out of tacks on eighteenth-century Anglo-American coffin lids. The African Burial Ground heart, therefore, is most likely an Anglo-American mortuary emblem. Other grave goods unearthed from this cemetery, however, are undoubtedly of African origin. Considered as a whole, the material record of the African Burial Ground demonstrates the hybrid deathways that Africans created in eighteenth-century urban settings.

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“Slideing into Monarchical extravagance”: Cato at Valley Forge and the Testimony of William Bradford Jr.
By Mark Evans Bryan

In May 1778 officers of the encamped Continental army performed Joseph’s Addison’s tragedy for an audience that included George Washington. The author investigates the material circumstances of theatrical production in the cantonment, the position and predicament of theater during the period of the American Revolution, and the perspective of the only witness whose account is extant. Though traditional interpretations of the traces of this Cato have understood the performance as a reflection of the republican virtues of the play’s embattled hero, the evidence from a young William Bradford—who demonstrated a great enthusiasm for drama as well as a conservative interpretation of the article that enjoined theater production in the Continental Congress’s 1774 nonimportation accord—suggests that the play’s performance points instead to the aristocratic impulse of the striving subalterns in Washington’s army and the persistence of desire for proscribed imperial indulgences, even in the direst periods of privation i n revolution.

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Reviews of Books

"Indians Abroad," a review essay of Vaughan, Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500-1776; Pratt, American Indians in British Art, 1700-1840; Fulford, Romantic Indians: Native Americans, British Literature, and Transatlantic Culture, 1756-1830; and Bickham, Savages within the Empire: Representations of American Indians in Eighteenth-Century Britain. By Peter Silver.

Truxes, Defying Empire: Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York. By Serena R. Zabin.

Martin, Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia. By Adrienne D. Hood.

Rockman, Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore. By Marcus Rediker.

Waterman, Republic of Intellect: The Friendly Club of New York City and the Making of American Literature. By Catherine E. Kelly.

What If You Write a Book That Nobody Reads?

I am very thankful that people are reading The Way of Improvement Leads Home, especially because books published by university presses, especially first books published by university presses, are not often read. I was reminded of this after reading Peter Dorchester's (a pen name) somewhat depressing essay, "My Book, My Dreams."

Dorchester is a literary critic who published his dissertation with a university press. Unfortunately, the press priced his book so high that only libraries bought copies. The subject matter was so specialized that the press could not sell enough copies to justify a paperback edition. Dorchester wondered for a long time if anyone was actually going to read his book. In fact, one of his own graduate students was not aware of his book despite the fact that it was pertinent to her dissertation research.

Yet, Dorchester claims that he has not been a "total failure." His book helped him get tenure and it is now occasionally cited in footnotes of other books. His name is out there and he is happy about that.

Anyone on the tenure-track needs to read Dorchester's honest and insightful essay--even if it serves as a lesson for what NOT to do when you are trying to get published.

Springsteen Pays Tribute to Howard Zinn

The Boss appeared in the Howard Zinn-inspired History Channel documentary film "The People Speak." Enjoy "The Ghost of Tom Joad," performed from Springsteen's home.

Gay Marriage, Fidelity, and Monogamy

Many Christians who support the idea of gay marriage usually do so with certain caveats. One of the most important of those caveats is that gay married couples respect the institution of marriage by remaining monogamous. Monogamy has been used by some gay Christians to counter the opponents of gay marriage who often link the practice to what they believe to be a gay culture defined by sexual promiscuity.

A recent New York Times article reports on a new study that will probably muddy the waters a bit more and give further ammunition to conservatives fighting the culture wars on this front.

As the trial phase of the constitutional battle to overturn the Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage concludes in federal court, gay nuptials are portrayed by opponents as an effort to rewrite the traditional rules of matrimony. Quietly, outside of the news media and courtroom spotlight, many gay couples are doing just that, according to groundbreaking new research.

New research at San Francisco State University reveals just how common open relationships are among gay men and lesbians in the Bay Area. The Gay Couples Study has followed 556 male couples for three years — about 50 percent of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners.

If this study is accurate, it looks like the opponents of gay marriage may have been right all along about gay culture. Although, as the article suggests, many gays and lesbian couples believe that having multiple partners actually helps strengthen their marriages.

Richard Cizik is Back!

Richard Cizik worked as the Washington lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals for nearly thirty years before he was sent packing in 2008.

The Religious Right was not happy with Cizik because he was an outspoken evangelical advocate of "Creation Care"--the idea that Christians have a responsibility to care for the environment. Folks like James Dobson thought that Christians should not be wasting their time with environmental causes because it would take time away from the fight against abortion and gay marriage.

But it was not Cizik's views on global warming and the environment that cost him his job. He was canned (technically he resigned his position after NAE president Leith Anderson said he had lost credibility among many of the organization's membership) after he told National Public Radio's Terry Gross that he believed in civil unions for gay couples.

Newsweek writer Lisa Miller reports that Cizik is making a comeback. He has formed an organization called New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good. According to Miller, the group is "devoted to developing Christian responses to global and political issues such as environmentalism, nuclear disarmament, human rights, and dialogue with the Muslim world."

Here is more from Miller's article:

Critics will say that Cizik has gone soft or, worse, that he's allowed himself to be co-opted by the left: he's the token conservative evangelical with the progressive agenda who gets trotted out as evidence that conservative evangelicals no longer care about the issues that once mattered so much to them. (This broad point of view, though embraced by many in the left-wing press, is not supported by polls. Younger evangelicals are concerned with a broader range of issues than their parents, especially environmentalism and the developing world, but they are more conservative on abortion.) In any case, Cizik shrugs these criticisms off. "I am, at heart, a centrist evangelical. I am more pro-life than [Sojourners founder] Jim Wallis is, actually. I am what we should be—that is, post-ideological. We are to be about healing, not division. We are not to be subservient to ideology, but above it."

Cizik says he represents a tradition of evangelicalism going back to the beginning of the 20th century—to Francis Schaeffer and Carl Henry, evangelicals who were strictly orthodox, but advocated a broad engagement with the world. "I'm not some upstart who's trying to conjure up a new vision," he says. "This goes back a long way."

Cizik just might be the twenty-first century version of the 1950s "New Evangelicalism"--an attempt by scholars and Christian leaders such as Carl Henry, Francis Schaeffer, E.J. Carnell, John Harold Ockenga, Billy Graham, and others to bring evangelical faith to bear more fully on public life. Their agenda was much more post-fundamentalist than Cizik's, but the spirit of the movement seems to be the same.

It is time that we create a more robust space for evangelical moderates. People like Cizik offer a compelling alternative to James Dobson on the Right and Jim Wallis on the Left.

ADDENDUM: Today Miller has a new piece on religious moderates up at her Newsweek blog.

Is Tony Dungy the Next Arthur Ashe?

We don't do a lot of sports here at "The Way of Improvement Leads Home," but every now and then I run across something worthwhile that I want to share with my readers.

ESPN.Com is running a great piece by Howard Bryant on former Indianapolis Colts coach and current NBC broadcaster Tony Dungy. What I like about the piece is that it acknowledges the powerful role that Christianity plays in Dungy's life, but focuses more on his faith-based action than his faith-inspired rhetoric. Bryant focuses on the way Dungy tries to reach out to young and troubled African-American athletes like Michael Vick.

At one point in the essay Bryant draws comparisons between Arthur Ashe and Dungy:

The worlds Dungy straddles could not be more different, which makes him invaluable. He connects to the young black men who are, overwhelmingly, the financial fuel of top-level collegiate and professional sports. Yet Dungy also has managed to cultivate the men in suits, the men who sign the checks, the ones who have little or no connection to African-Americans outside of athletics (indeed, some owners are removed from their own teams), the ones who might be too insulated from the black perspective.

"The first time I met Arthur Ashe, I was organizing, and here's this guy with a big Afro playing in these lily-white country clubs. So I approached him and asked him for his support," Harry Edwards says. "Now, I wanted him to say what Bill Russell had said, that it was about time, but he said, 'Harry, that's not my way.' And I walked away thinking that he was an Uncle Tom.

"And then I came to appreciate the imperativeness of his way. At some point everyone is going to have to sit at the table and come up with solutions to the problems we face in society. Without Arthur Ashe, without that lesson, I still would have been on the other side of the fence. And that's the role Tony plays. Finally, someone has come onto the national scene to serve that bridge function left vacant after Arthur died."

I hope you get a chance to read this article. It is a fine piece of sportswriting.

So What CAN You Do With a History Major: Part 20

Go into business.

I have always wondered why business majors do not flock to the history department to declare double majors or pick up a history minor. How can you major in something like "International Business" and know nothing about the history of the world?

At the recent meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities two scholars made a strong case for the need for business programs to be "more deeply infused with the virtues of a traditional liberal-arts education."

William Sullivan and Anne Colby, both senior scholars at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, argued, based on a study of business programs at ten colleges, that even at the best business programs in the country students perceive "their liberal-arts courses as irrelevant to their career plans or as generally unserious."

"Students need to experience engagement with the world so that they grasp the practical, personal, and moral significance of what they are learning," Ms. Colby and Mr. Sullivan wrote in a recent essay.

Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Colby's project will be summarized in a forthcoming book that is tentatively titled "Preparing for Business, Learning for Life: Liberal Arts and Undergraduate Business Education." The foundation expects to publish the book in 2011.

Calling all Messiah College business majors: You can find me in Boyer 258 starting on Monday. Let's talk!

The New Fides et Historia

Starting sometime next year, Fides et Historia, the scholarly journal of the Conference on Faith and History, will have a new home at Eastern Nazarene College. The journal will be edited by Don Yerxa, the current director of The Historical Society and senior editor of the Society's signature publication, Historically Speaking (published by Johns Hopkins University Press). Don will be joined by Randall Stephens, the current editor of Historically Speaking and the co-editor of the Journal of Southern Religion.

A new editorial board has also been put in place. The lineup includes:

Peggy Bendroth, (American Congregational Association Library)
Chris Beneke, (Bentley University)
John Fea, (Messiah College)
Peter Harrison, (Harris Manchester College, Oxford)
Thomas Kidd, (Baylor University)
David Livingstone (Queens University Belfast)
Wilfred McClay, (Tennessee-Chattanooga)
Eric Miller (Geneva College)
Jon Roberts (Boston University)
William Shea (University of Padua)

In a recent e-mail, Yerxa explained his editorial vision for the journal:

We will produce a journal of consistently high quality that is known for its provocative, accessibly written, and insightful explorations of the implications of faith for historical inquiry. We want Fides to be a journal that people receive with anticipation, expecting it to stimulate and challenge. There is much talk these days about the “big questions.” And we want to establish Fides not only as the journal of record for matters of Christian faith and historical studies, but also as a congenial venue for exploring the larger meanings of historical inquiry.

High on our agenda will be the goal of diversifying the content of Fides such that church and/or religious history doesn’t overwhelm other topics. We will seek to publish more roundtable discussions along the lines of the session at the January 2009 meeting of the American Historical Association on "History and Belief: Reconciling the Historian's Craft and Religious Commitment" (with Bruce Kuklick, Mark Noll, Richard Bushman, Brad Gregory) or the forum in Historically Speaking on Robert Orsi’s “Abundant History.” We believe that it is important to open up the conversation on faith and history to theologians, to scholars in other disciplines who are grappling with similar questions, and to historians from other faith traditions.

As a former board member of the Conference on Faith and History, I am thrilled with this new direction. (I am also hoping for a new cover design!). Yerxa and Stephens will bring their connections and their energy to this endeavor and I have no doubt Fides will continue to thrive as it has the last several years under the direction of Will Katerberg at Calvin College.

The Graciousness of Howard Zinn

Over at Religion in American History John Turner has a wonderful tribute to Howard Zinn that focuses on an experience Turner had reading A People's History of the United States with one of his United States survey classes at the University of Southern Alabama

Turner writes:

Several years ago, one of my classes noticed a rather obvious factual error in People's History. Zinn was trying too hard to make the case that many Americans opposed the Second World War. Thus, we fired off an email to Zinn:

"My undergraduate survey classes have been profitably reading your People's History this semester. We're learning to read all sources critically and have a question about a detail in your book. Can you help us resolve the following?

On p. 418 (2003 edition) you write, "Our of 10 million drafted for the armed forces during World War II, only 43,000 refused to fight. But this was three times the proportion of C.O.'s in World War I.

On p. 371 (WWI): "About 65,000 men declared themselves conscientious objectors and asked for noncombatant service."

How could 43,000 in WWII be a larger proportion than 65,000 in WWI? Our understanding is that more individuals were drafted during the Second World War. Can you help?"

The then 84-year-old Zinn promptly wrote back:

"Thank you for calling that to my attention. A gross error! I think my absolute figures are right, but what I say about "proportion" is wrong. I don't remember where I got that information but I'll look into it. You can use this as a lesson for your students on how historians can get things wrong!

Best wishes,
Howard Zinn"

Turner concludes: "For a man who received sacks of both positive and negative mail about his work, I found the response extraordinarily gracious and a testimony to a kind and gentle spirit. May we respond similarly to our critics!"

Obama Calls Out the Supreme Court

Without getting too caught up in the politics of this (just don't have the time at the moment), I am wondering if anything like this has ever happened before in a State of the Union Address.

Here is a video of the Obama facedown. If you look closely, you can see Justice Samuel Alito mouthing the words "not true."

Should Class Be Canceled on the Day Before Break?

On Monday, November 23, 2009, I walked into my United States History survey course--a course of 110 students that met in the mid-afternoon--to find that the lecture hall was only half full.

This did not surprise me in the least since the Thanksgiving holiday was only a few days away and students tend to go home early. I praised those students who did show up and then went ahead with the lecture. (Although I must admit that I seasoned the lecture with lines like: "And this material will be important come exam time").

I have never canceled a class on the day before a break (my college will not allow it), but it seems as if such cancellations have been standard fare at Penn State University. Today's Inside Higher Ed reports on a decision by the Penn State Faculty Senate to make a unified stand in opposition to this practice.

At Pennsylvania State University this week, the Faculty Senate voted to take a stand for consistency -- and for holding classes as scheduled on the last days before breaks. While professors who cancel classes won't be tracked down by security, they will now be acting despite the "strong opposition" to a practice the Senate declared "professionally inappropriate" and "demoralizing" to those who do teach as scheduled.

According to the article, the resolution, which passed in the Faculty Senate by a 120-71 margin, was opposed by many of the student representatives.

So students: What do you think? Should professors cancel classes on the day before breaks? And professors: Are you in the habit of doing this? (And are you willing to admit it?)

State of the Union Word Clouds

At First Toughts blog Joe Carter has a really interesting post comparing a "word cloud" from Obama's first State of the Union address (last night) with word clouds from SOTU addresses by George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan.

I must admit that I am not a "word cloud" fan and I only recently did this phrase enter my vocabulary, but I did find this worth looking at for a few minutes.

I will leave the political commentary up to my readers.

African-American History in America's Front Yard

Yesterday's AHA blog calls our attention to an incredible digital tour of African-American history in Lafayette Square, Washington D.C. entitled "Half Had Not Been Told Me."

The site offers two options for exploring Lafayette Square’s historic buildings. First, you can take a digital tour of these buildings, reading and listening to the history of each, as well as perusing primary resources. If you happen to find yourself in Lafayette Square on a trip to Washington, D.C., take a cell phone audio tour using Guide by Cell technology, which allows you to call individual phone numbers for each historic building and listen to a tour narrated by the city’s mayor, Adrian Fenty.

The AHA blog includes links to all the major Lafayette Square sites. The tour is presented by the Decatur House Museum and endorsed by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Trust for Historical Preservation.

This is public history at its best. Go check it out!

Howard Zinn R.I.P.

I just got word that Howard Zinn, the political activist and popular writer about the American past, died today at the age of 87. He will be remembered for his book A People's History of the United States, which has sold over one million copies.

Zinn used the past to promote his left-wing agenda. His A People's History became wildly popular among high school teachers around the country. I remember several years ago lurking on a discussion list devoted to teaching Advanced Placement United States History and was amazed at how many people were using his book in their classes.

According to his obituary in today's New York Times, Zinn's book has found its way into American popular culture on multiple occasions. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon called attention to the book in their Academy Award winning movie Good Will Hunting. Bruce Springsteen's album Nebraska was inspired by the book. Tony Soprano's son A.J. held a copy of the book in an episode of "The Sopranos." Oliver Stone claimed to be a fan.

I have read A People's History several times and have always been impressed with the moral purpose in which Zinn wrote. When I have criticized Zinn it has been because I do not think he should be considered a historian. He was never interested in an honest reconstruction of the past. Instead, he used it to advance a political agenda. And he admitted as much.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once said in regards to Zinn: "I know he regards me as a dangerous reactionary. And I don’t take him very seriously. He’s a polemicist, not a historian.” Schlesinger was right when he said Zinn was not a historian. But he was wrong when he said that he should not be taken seriously. Zinn's books have prompted many people to study history who otherwise would never have cracked the spine of a traditional history textbook. Joseph Palermo, a history professor at Cal State-Sacramento, is not alone when he says that Zinn inspired him to be a historian.

So whatever your politics happens to be, I hope you will join me today in remembering a man who ignited an interest in the past in a way that scholars have never been able to do. I am sure that tomorrow the blogosphere and traditional print will have much to say about his life and legacy. Rest in peace.

A Writer's Best Friend

Writing can get lonely at times so I am glad I can always turn to our faithful dog Jersey to keep me company.

As you might be able to tell from this first picture, she is not a big fan of my work.



But every now and then she gets excited about something I am working on. Here is her reaction after I shared with her my thoughts about the religious beliefs of John Adams:

I Need to Get an "A" in this Class

My recent post on grading student papers drew some comments from both professors and students both here on the blog and on Facebook. Lendol has convinced me to break out the department rubric and Christine has made me more sensitive to student concerns.

Now, as the new semester at Messiah College is about to begin, I offer Rob Weir's list of the most popular start of the semester student comments and questions. I must admit that I have heard a variation on all of them.

"I need to get an 'A' in this course."
I will never forget the psychology student who decided to take one of my history courses in the last semester of her senior year. She was a good student and an even better person, but I do not think she was prepared for all the writing and reading in an upper-division history course. With one paper and a final exam left in the semester she was doing A- work, but certainly had the potential to pull an "A" in the class if she really nailed these final two assignments. A week before the final paper was due she came into my office to tell me that she had a 4.0 GPA and if she did not get an "A" in my course I would ruin her perfect college career. Wow! I really think she expected me to respond to her statement with something like: "OK, no problem. I don't want to ruin your life so I will be happy to give you the "A" regardless of the quality of your final two assignments." Instead, I told her that if she was truly a 4.0 student she would step up to plate and write a darn good final paper and ace the final exam. While I think this student worked a lot harder in the final week of her college career than she had hoped, she did manage to get the "A" and I had the pleasure of informing her at a reception held the night before graduation.

"I need this course to stay in school and I'm willing to work hard."
I don't think I have ever heard this one, but I have heard variations on it such as "I need a good grade in this course to keep my scholarship" or "I need to get a 'B' in this course to stay on the lacrosse team.

"Is this course going to be fun?"
My answer: Of course it is. You get the chance to learn something! And then there is the variation on this theme: "Is this course going to be hard?" Of course it is! All learning requires hard work.

"If I miss a few classes, will it hurt me?"
When I get this question I refer students to the official attendance policy on the syllabus. But I also add that in a history course, where every lecture and discussion builds off the last, a missed class will always hurt you.

"If I screw up, can I do an extra credit project?"
I usually do not give extra credit for "screw-ups." (Student readers: Do your profs offer you a lot of extra credit opportunities? I am curious?). But I am happy to work closely with students to try to help them do better on the next test/exam. I will, however, give extra credit to students who attend a lecture on campus that relates to course content. (And there are many at Messiah College--one of the many things we do very well!). I usually have them write a 1-2 page paper summarizing the theme of the lecture and connecting it to what we are doing in class. Professors: What is your view on extra credit?

Check out Weir's helpful article.

Pope John Paul II's Acts of Self-Denial

Those in the Catholic Church who are making a case for the sainthood of John Paul II have published a new book revealing that the Pope used a belt to whip himself and occasionally slept on the floor in order to draw closer to God. The book was written by Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the primary promoter for John Paul's canonization cause.

In the book, Oder wrote that John Paul frequently denied himself food — especially during the holy season of Lent — and "frequently spent the night on the bare floor," messing up his bed in the morning so he wouldn't draw attention to his act of penitence.

"But it wasn't limited to this. As some members of his close entourage in Poland and in the Vatican were able to hear with their own ears, John Paul flagellated himself. In his armoire, amid all the vestments and hanging on a hanger, was a belt which he used as a whip and which he always brought to Castel Gandolfo," the papal retreat where John Paul vacationed each summer.

While there had long been rumors that John Paul practiced self-mortification, the book provides the first confirmation and concludes John Paul did so as an example of his faith.

I am not sure what to make of all of this, if anything. As a Christian, I think certain spiritual disciplines of self-denial, such as fasting for example, are important. I also think that suffering is a means of drawing one closer to God. But what John Paul II did sounds downright medieval. And, in fact, it is. Self-flagellation was quite common in monasteries and convents in the Middle Ages. According to this article, there was a Catholic sect in the thirteenth century known as the Flagellants who were known for participating in displays of public whipping. The movement was eventually condemned by the Church.

I did find an interesting exchange on this topic between Andrew Sullivan and one of his readers. It appears that John Paul II's practice of whipping himself might be in violation of the Church's teaching that the body is a gift from God and should be respected as such. In other words, John Paul II may have committed what Sullivan's reader calls a "moral crime" by violating "the general Catholic principle that one cannot do evil...in order to promote a good, however good that ultimate end is." Sullivan's short response to this reader is worth a look.

Meanwhile, over at the Commonweal blog, Lisa Fulliam, a professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, defends the usefulness of "moderate ascetical practices," but is "weirded out" by John Paul's II practice self-flagellation.

ADDENDUM: Reader Tim Lacy has called my attention to another take on this at Politics Daily. Thanks, Tim!

Messiah College Soccer Recognized By Congress

The Messiah College Men's and Women's Soccer programs were both recognized today by Congress for their absolute dominance of NCAA Division III soccer.

Check out these congresspersons endorsing House Resolution 1030.

Why I Blog OR A Short History of What We Do Here: Part Two

Earlier today I wrote about my debt to Paul Harvey, whose Religion in American History blog paved the way for this one. In this post I want to reflect a bit on the history of "The Way of Improvement Leads Home" and why I do what I do here.

After blogging at Religion in American History for about a year, I fell in love the genre. Blogging was a way of connecting my life-long interest in journalism and writing for public audiences with my training in history and my propensity to state my opinions about things. While I really appreciated what Paul was doing at Religion in American History (and still do), I also began to envision having a space of my own where I could write about things that did not directly relate to American religious history.

In July 2008 I decided to start "The Way of Improvement Leads Home" to help promote my new book by the same title. Initially, I envisioned the site as a place where I would talk about the book and its main character, Philip Vickers Fithian. If you go back and look, many of my earlier posts are centered around Fithian and speaking engagements related to the publication of the book.

I also hoped to use the blog as a way of keeping friends and family informed about my activity. My father and mother became two of my first regular readers! The first comment I received, by the way, came from Phil "Bald Blogger" Sinitiere.

Since then the blog has taken on a life of its own. I have tried to write in such a way that appeals to both academics and non-academic readers. This is not always easy and I am sure that academic readers often find the content to be a bit to "lite" while non-academic readers find some things to be of little interest. I have tried to narrow the subject matter to issues related to Christianity, American history, politics, and academic life, but I will occasionally throw in some Bruce Springsteen or anything else that I find entertaining. If I have the energy, I hope to continue the blog through the publication of my next book, "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation": A Historical Primer."

Who is my audience? I am not entirely sure. Whenever I am at a conference or speaking engagement I run into people that read the blog. This weekend in Louisville six or seven people mentioned that they read what I write. I am flattered by this, although I am guessing that most of them are not daily readers.

Most of the blog's visitors arrive via Google. But I have also been able to garner a substantial group of regular readers. I find that there at least three kinds of people who read my blog. I try to write posts that cater to all of them.

First, there are historians--teaching professors and graduate students who are interested in early American history or American religious history. A subset of this group includes those who have read *The Way of Improvement Leads Home* or secondary and elementary school history teachers I have met while conducting seminars for the Gilder-Lehrman Institute.

Second, there are thoughtful Christians--those who want to learn more about the religious faith of the founding fathers or recent trends in American evangelicalism. A subset of this group includes those interested in ideas about "place"--a theme that plays a major part in my telling of Philip Vickers Fithian story.

Third, there are students--both my own students at Messiah College and students at other colleges and universities who tend to be attracted to posts dealing with the job market or what they can do with a history major or historical thinking. These are my most active and outspoken readers. They do not always post comments to the blog, but they e-mail privately or contact me via Facebook about my posts.

I am not sure how long I will continue blogging. I still enjoy doing it. When I no longer enjoy it I will stop. Since I have always done a lot of reading on the Internet and elsewhere I have found blogging to be a nice outlet for reflecting on what I have read. The dailiness of the blog can get tedious and tiresome at times, and I have thought about quitting on multiple occasions, but the enthusiasm of my readers keep me going. Thanks.

Why I Blog OR A Short History of What We Do Here: Part One

Whatever blogging "career" I might have I owe to Paul Harvey. (No, not that Paul Harvey, this one!) On July 5, 2007 I found Harvey's new blog (it was a solo operation then) called Religion in American History and wrote a comment on a post I liked on W.E.B. DuBois. Here is what I wrote:

Paul: Great post. I found your blog on the Cliopatria blogroll and have enjoyed reading it so far. --John

About an hour later, Paul responded:

John: Thanks! Please spread the blog address to Am. religious history folks, and let me know if you have any interest in contributing to the blog -- Paul

I decided to take the plunge and within a few days I was listed as the blog's first "Contributing Editor." On July 7, 2007 I wrote my first blog post-- a review of a Boston Review essay by Lew Daly on Catholicism and the common good. I have since written 58 posts for Harvey's blog, including one of his most popular, and still try to contribute something worthwhile every now and then.

Some of my readers may be wondering at this point why I have taken the time to indulge in all of this blogging nostalgia. My nostalgia was triggered by a paper Harvey prepared for a session on religious history blogging at the 2010 meeting of the American Historical Association in San Diego. In this paper, which he posted today at Religion in American History, Harvey reflects on the founding of this premiere American religious blog, its eclectic nature, the demands associated with keeping it going, and the tension he feels trying to write a blog for a scholarly audience in a venue that is open to the general public.

Stay tuned: Part Two will deal with the creation of the "Way of Improvement Leads Home" and why I continue to blog here.

In Partial Defense of Populism

Politics, some believe, is the organization of hatreds. The people who try to divide society on the basis of ethnicity we call racists. The people who try to divide it on the basis of religion we call sectarians. The people who try to divide it on the basis of social class we call either populists or elitists.

So begins today's David Brooks column on the "seductiveness" of populism. Brooks offers three reasons why anti-corporate populism, of the both the Left and the Right variety, is so "popular" these days. First, populism "makes everything so simple." A populist is not concerned with complexity. Populists can blame all of their problems on big corporations. Second, populism "absolves voters of responsibility for their problems." Populists can blame corporations and banks for behaving badly, but you do not have to address the fact that Americans are "racking up unprecedented levels of personal debt." Third, populism is a great political tool for the "ruling class." Democrats want people to hate corporate America. Republicans want people to hate those "liberal elites" with Ph.Ds. He is correct on all three accounts.

Brooks then suggests that populism "nearly always fails." Invoking the failed presidential campaigns of William Jennings Bryan, he concludes that the history of populism "is generally a history of defeat." In fact, Brooks argues, America was built largely by anti-populists--people like Lincoln and Alexander Hamilton who championed markets and banks and manufacturing.

While Brooks is generally correct in his historical interpretation of populism's failure and the success of people like Lincoln and Hamilton, it is hard to unpack the complexity of the past and its legacy for the future in an 800-word column.

You could argue that populism, as an organized political movement, does have a track record of failure in American history. But this is not the entire story. The ideas and ideals of populists have had surprising success in American political culture. Take for example the platform of the Populist Party or "People's Party" of the late nineteenth century. Several of the issues on this platform, including the direct election of Senators and the eight hour workday, would eventually be adopted. Populist reform proposals such as the right of women to vote would also win the day in the twentieth century. The United States even made silver legal tender in America, although only for a short time. (It was official monetized in 1971).

Populists may be irritating, especially when they are fighting for beliefs that we don't like. They can also be naive and uninformed. But when they are at their best they can be an essential part of American democracy. They have contributed to our polity in meaningful ways. America needs its Bryans, Naders, Buchanans, and Perots to lift us out of our political complacency, question our worship of economic and social progress, and give voice to the concerns of ordinary people.

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: Table of Contents

Well, I am finally in a position to reveal my very tentative Table of Contents for my book manuscript: "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: An Historical Primer." Everything that you read below, I might add, is subject to change.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION: How to Think Historically

PART ONE: The United States is a Christian Nation: The History of an Idea

• Chapter One: Evangelical America, 1789-1865
• Chapter Two: Liberals and Evangelicals, 1865-1925
• Chapter Three: Christian America in a Modern Age, 1925-1980
• Chapter Four: History for the Faithful: The Contemporary Defenders of Christian America

PART TWO: Was the American Revolution as Christian Event?

• Chapter Five: Were the British Colonies Christian Societies?
• Chapter Six: A Just Cause?
• Chapter Seven: Nature's God: Is the Declaration of Independence a Christian Document?
• Chapter Eight: Religion in the "Critical Period"
• Chapter Nine: A "Godless Constitution?

PART THREE: The Religious Beliefs of the Founding Fathers

• Chapter Ten: Did George Washington Pray at Valley Forge?
• Chapter Eleven: John Adams: Devout Unitarian
• Chapter Twelve: Thomas Jefferson: Follower of Jesus
• Chapter Thirteen: Benjamin Franklin: Ambitious Moralist
• Chapter Fourteen: What About Witherspoon?: The Evangelical Founders

CONCLUSION

Congressional Quarterly Researcher on Christian America

Was the United States founded as a Christian nation? Thomas J. Billitteri has done some excellent reporting on this question in an extensive study on the relationship between government and religion published in the recent issue of the Congressional Quarterly Researcher.

Last November I had a lengthy phone interview with Billitteri on the subject and I am quoted several times throughout the piece. Billitteri's report is available for purchase--both in hard copy and electronic PDF-- at the CQ Press website. Those interested in this subject should check it out.

This is a Good Essay. That is Why I Gave You a B

Gina Barreca has an interesting post at Brainstorm on how to deal with a student who received a B in a course but thinks that he or she deserves an A. I want to take this in a slightly different direction, namely the grading of student papers.

In an age of grade inflation, students often do not understand that they can produce a decently argued and well-written paper that is not "A" material. In my U.S. Survey course I often find myself having to grade seventy or eighty papers at a time. I cannot devote as much attention to student papers in a survey course as I do in an upper-division history course, but I do try to jot down marginal comments, correct grammatical mistakes, and write a few sentences of summary at the end of the paper. Some of my colleagues think that I spend too much time on these papers. Others do not think I spend enough.

Occasionally I will write something like this on the bottom of a student paper: "Good work. Your essay reveals a clear understanding of Paine's ideas in Common Sense. Grade: B." Here is another example: "Great paper. It is well-written and you do a really nice job of critically examining Ben Franklin's understanding of the 'American Dream.' Grade: A-".

Inevitably students will come to my office confused. How could I use terms such as "clear understanding" or "Great paper" and not give them an "A?" When this happens I usually explain the flaws in their paper that made it less than "A" quality.

My comments on student papers have always accentuated the positive. In other words, I tell them what they did well. But lately, in order to ward off potential complaints, I have been using my end of the paper comments to tell them why this was not an "A" paper or what they need to do to produce an "A" on the next paper. Is this necessary? Can't most students pick this up from looking at marginal notations throughout the paper? Should I stop telling students that they did a "good job" unless I have given them an "A" on the paper?

I am curious to hear from professors and students on this point.

David D. Hall: Questions I'd Like to Be Able to Answer More Confidently

I continue to work my way through some of the papers from the recent conference on American religious history held by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. In my last post on this topic, I commented on Jon Butler's talk on theory and religious advocacy.

In this post, I want to call our attention to a talk by David D. Hall on what sociologists, religion scholars, and historian can learn from one another. Hall teaches at Harvard Divinity School. I have learned a lot from his work. Back in 1998 I participated in a week-long American Antiquarian Society seminar he conducted on the History of the Book in Early America. Though he probably does not remember, he once gave me a helpful set of comments on an essay I wrote on evangelical revivalist and Indian educator Eleazar Wheelock.

The part of Hall's talk that is most interesting is a section on "Questions I'd Like to Be Able to Answer More Confidently." He describes this section as "four aspects of American religious history I would like to understand better, the implied question being, where could I look for help in accomplishing that goal?"

Here they are:

1). The place of religion in nation building.

Hall writes: "By nation building I refer to the 'grand narrative' that encompasses the making and remaking of the American national state, the narrative that encompasses 1776, 1787, the election of 1800, the Mexican War, 1861, the ratifying of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, the ruse of social democracy as tentatively undertaken by the Progressives and undertaken more emphatically by the New Deal and the Great Society." What role, Hall asks, did Christianity play in this process? Why has Catholicism, the South, and Fundamentalism never found its way into this narrative?

I was inspired to read this. I do a bit of this in the first four chapters of my manuscript, "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation."

2). Church and State.

Hall writes: "The truism that church and state are 'separate' is just that, a truism--but as Philip Hamburger and others have recently demonstrated, a thoroughly political truism, put to use by self-interested parties as a means of isolating/criticizing others, especially Roman Catholics." He calls for more study of evangelical voluntarists, such as Philip Schaff, who sought to promote a Christian nation.

Again, this will be a major theme in the first four chapters of "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?"

3). How does theology matter in American religious history?

Hall writes: "...we need a fuller grammar of how practice and theology fit together, recognizing as we take on this challenge that 'fit together' can also entail slippage, inconsistencies, and outright defiance."

This is an interesting observation from a historian who has built a better part of a career pointing out the tensions between official theology and lived religious experience.

4). The "Americanness" of Christianity in the U.S.A.

Hall writes: "it is cause for concern that two major recent studies of religion in America, Mark Noll's America's God and Catherine Albanese's A Republic of Mind and Spirit are both driven by the concept of 'an' American religion--and to juxtapose these two books is to appreciate how wildly different our appraisals of that religion can be. Surely we can do better, if only by declaring a truce and, as an act of will, bracketing the term American." On this point I need to go back and read E. Brooks Holifield's Theology in America, which I believe offers an interpretation of religion in this period that is not as driven by American exceptionalism.

It is always encouraging to hear senior scholars like Hall say that they still need to understand things better.