The Way of Improvement Leads Home on Vacation

It is time for a vacation.

Starting today The Way of Improvement Leads Home will be off the so-called "grid." (I am not really sure what that means, but it sounds good).

I will be in Raleigh for a few days this week doing a Gilder-Lehrman seminar on the American Revolution and then I need to complete some writing projects and prepare for the new academic year.

I hope to be back online before August 15.

In the meantime, feel free to browse our archives for posts that you may have missed!

Ray Bradbury on Writing Persistently

HT: The New Republic

Song of the Day

HT: Scot McKnight

Good Thoughts on the University of Illinois' Catholic Problem

Kenneth Howell is the Catholic theologian who was fired (and the rehired) by the University of Illinois for teaching (and apparently advocating for) Catholic theology in a course entitled "Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought." It turns out that Howell had written an e-mail to his class arguing that natural law could be used to oppose same-sex marriage.

I have found the most thoughtful voice on this whole affair to be Janine Giordano Drake, a Ph.D candidate in History at Illinois who is writing a dissertation on the working class religious left in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America.

In two excellent essays--one at Religion Dispatches and the other at Religion in American History (aptly titled "The Costs of Secularism")--Drake argues for the validity of theology courses in public universities.

In her Religion Dispatches essay, she concludes:

Our public university’s mission is now, and arguably always was, quite modern. Today we aim to provide students with “the freedom to consider conflicting views and to make their own evaluation of data, evidence, and doctrines.” A liberal arts education aims to put students in the driver’s seat among various ideas, and ask them to evaluate these ideas with the tools of scholarly interpretation developed in the most current scholarship. But which categories of the most current scholarship? Does the university’s mission to achieve pluralism foreclose the possibility of highly biased instruction?

The university’s statement asserts that, “Faculty members have a responsibility to maintain an atmosphere conducive to intellectual inquiry and rational discussion.” Buried in this statement is the vicious knot challenging the next generation of scholars and teachers of religion. We are tasked to research, teach and write about believers in an irrational world, but arm ourselves only with the modern tools of rationality.

We need more writers like Drake. Intelligent voices and public intellectuals who expose the inconsistencies between the postmodern language of academics and the modernist "mission" that still seems to define life in the public research university.

Howard Zinn and the FBI

Yesterday the FBI released its 423 page file on the late political activist and "historian" Howard Zinn. David Knowles at AOL News focuses on three highlights:

1. Several FBI informants identified Zinn as a member of the Communist Party, but Zinn denied it.

2. Despite his commitment to non-violence, Zinn claimed he would defend his country "in the event of a war against any enemy, including the Soviet Union."

3. The FBI renewed its interest in Zinn after he wrote an article critical of Bobby Kennedy and the FBI.

HT: Cliopatria

Providence Christian College Moving to Pasadena

Providence Christian College, a small and relatively new Christian liberal arts college in California, is moving from Ontario, California to a new home in Pasadena.

Russ Reeves, a regular reader of this blog and the college's academic dean, will be talking about the move on the Frank Pastore Show on KKLA today at 5:30 PST. (You can listen to the show live via the Internet).

Congrats to Providence!

Re-Creation For Summer Vacations

Over at the Huffington Post, Paul Raushenbush offers five suggestions for "re-creation" this summer as we head off on our vacations.

1. Make time and space for prayer and meditation
2. Engage in physical activity
3. Get into nature
4. Celebrate and meet with family and friends
5. Take advantage of the recreational power of creativity.

Read the entire article here.

The Best Magazine Articles Ever?

How many of these have you read? Here is the top five from a group of "correspondents" to the Cool Tools section of Kevin Kelly's website. (I hope I got that right!).

The Top Five Articles

****** David Foster Wallace, "Federer As Religious Experience." The New York Times, Play Magazine, August 20, 2006.

***** David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster." Gourmet Magazine, Aug 2004.

***** Neal Stephenson, "Mother Earth, Mother Board: Wiring the Planet." Wired, December 1996. On laying trans-oceanic fiber optic cable.

****** Gay Talese, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." Esquire, April 1966.

**** Ron Rosenbaum, "Secrets of the Little Blue Box." Esquire, October 1971. The first and best account of telephone hackers, more amazing than you might believe.

**** Jon Krakauer, "Death of an Innocent: How Christopher McCandless Lost His Way in the Wilds." Outside Magazine, January 1993. Article that became Into the Wild.

HT: First Thoughts

More Advance Praise for Was America Founded as a Christian Nation

With careful research and judicious scholarship, John Fea has produced a remarkably useful guide for navigating the arguments about America’s “Christian” origins. His reluctance to dictate conclusions is a measure of his evenhandedness.

Randall Balmer, Barnard College, author of God in the White House: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction will appear in February with Westminster/John Knox Press.

Do Christians in the Academy Experience Discrimination?

We blogged on this topic back December 2009, but Timothy Larson's article in today's Inside Higher Ed has led me to revisit it.

Larson cites examples of what could certainly qualify as discrimination against Christians in the academy. One involved a student who was not permitted to use the Bible or C.S. Lewis in a persuasive essay. The other involved the reviewers of one of Larson's book proposals to Yale University Press.

Larson concludes:

...scholars ought to be concerned that Christians often report that the academy is a hostile environment. Are academics generally glad that such a perception exists? If not, how might it be dispelled? If it is based on genuine experiences, what can be done about a climate that tolerates religious discrimination? If the two stories presented here are merely assailable, anecdotal evidence, then why not gather information on this issue more systematically? Do academic institutions ever try to discover if their Christian students or scholars experience discrimination? I am hereby calling for such an effort....

As I have said before, I am not aware of ever being discriminated against in the academy because of my Christian faith. But that does not mean that I have not. If I were omniscient, and could read the minds of some of my fellow academics or review the musings of search committees, I am sure I would learn that somewhere along the way I have been discriminated against. I am guessing that my affiliation with a school called Messiah College or my training at a divinity school raises all kinds of red flags when I apply for grants or fellowships, or jobs.

Whatever the case, I think Larson raises a good point here. If Christians do feel discriminated against on college campuses, why doesn't anyone in the academy care? Isn't the university supposed to be a place of tolerance, civility, intellectual openness, and a free exchange of ideas? If other segments of the student population felt discriminated against wouldn't it lead to a full-blown investigation or study?

Romney Will Not Court Evangelicals in 2012

It looks like Mitt Romney has changed his presidential campaign strategy for 2012. He will no longer be trying to win over evangelicals. You may recall that many evangelicals were hesitant to support Romney because of his Mormon beliefs.

Joanna Brooks reports at Religion Dispatches:

This time around, the Romney campaign’s decision to quietly set aside the hopes of winning the support of evangelical Christians is likely to have significant strategy impacts not only in Iowa but also in the South. For now, the Romney campaign seems focused on making endorsements—now numbering 100 or more—in key 2010 races, including successful GOP gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley in South Carolina.

...This strategy shift reflects a refinement of the Romney 2008 campaign’s tactic of downplaying the candidate’s faith entirely as well as a renewed focus (taking a page from his friend California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s playbook) on emphasizing Romney’s can-do know-how as a successful businessman. Romney’s December 2007 George Bush Presidential Library address—billed by his campaign as a major statement on faith and public life—tellingly skirted the hot topic of his Mormonism almost completely. His recent book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness (2010) offers only a few scant mentions of the candidate’s deep Mormon roots and a simple two-page statement on the importance of “Belief and Purpose” in public life....

Read the whole post here.

What's the Difference Between Women's History and Feminist History?

Historiann explains:

For the past twenty years, we’ve seen a complex de-coupling going on between women’s history and feminism. (This was of course one of the laments in Judith Bennett’s wide-ranging evaluation of the relationship between history and feminism in History Matters.) Women’s history is a large and rich enough field that there are histories of women that aren’t particularly feminist, just as the history of women has expanded far beyond the history of just feminist women to include the histories of women who lived before the invention of feminism as a political movement as well as women who weren’t feminists or even worked actively against feminism. (As an outsider to modern U.S. women’s history, it seems to me that histories of right wing women’s activism have been particularly hot in the past decade. Those of you who work in the field should feel free to correct my impressions if necessary, and add your own thoughts about recent work in your field.)

But, I was wondering today about women’s history. What would happen if we just stopped writing it? Who in the larger historical profession would notice, or care, or complain? As a colleague in my field remarked to me last year, there are a number of women’s historians in my generation who wrote their first books in women’s or gender history, but then have written (or are writing) something definitely not women’s or gender history for their second books.

Read her entire post here.

A Woman of Faith

Check out this story from Memphis.

Survivor: Academe

Ever wonder what a television reality show starring academics might look like? Laurie Fendrich, a contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education's Brainstorm blog, has not only imagined such a show, she has described it. Here is a taste:

Each week the candidates are presented with a different challenge. In the first episode (the only one aired so far), the challenge was to get a five-page article accepted in a peer-reviewed journal. It was oh-so-tense watching everyone frantically type away for a full day on their laptops. Afterwards, we got to listen to the contestants whispering on their cell phones to their dissertation advisers, asking them to put in a good word with their inside contacts at various journals. I was surprised at how most of those advisers seemed so stand-offish toward their former students, but a couple of them said no problem, the article was as good as published. The guy who lost the first round was chewed out big-time by the judges for being so naive as to think that anybody would print an article arguing that the textual evidence proves Ayn Rand and I.F. Stone were lovers.

Jesus Will Return on May 22, 2011

According to this Colorado ad:



And what is Jerry Jenkins doing hiding behind all those copies of his Left Behind novels?

More Advance Praise for Was America Founded as a Christian Nation

Today's endorsement comes from Mary V. Thompson, Research Historian at Mount Vernon and author of In the Hands of a Good Providence: Religion in the Life of George Washington (University of Virginia Press, 2008).

In his latest book, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction, John Fea confronts the culture wars head-on. With polemicists on all sides wanting to claim the Founding Fathers (and founding era) for themselves, the blogosphere and talk radio are filled with a contentious “he said; she said” back-and-forth, leaving thoughtful listeners more confused than ever. For that befuddled person, Fea offers help. He challenges his readers to think like historians, and presents them with the facts they need to weigh the evidence for themselves. He does an excellent job of both explaining the complexity of the issues and putting them into context. Particularly enlightening are case studies of the religious beliefs and practices of seven founding fathers—three undoubtedly devout and orthodox in their faith, while the other four are questionable in regard to one and/or the other. Fea’s suggestions for further reading will be especially useful for readers who want to delve even deeper into the topic. Those who are ready to move past simplistic answers will be well-served by this thought-provoking work.

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction will be available in February with Westminster/John Knox Press.

Color Photos of Depression Era

The Denver Post has posted a great collection of color photos taken by the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information between 1939 and 1943. They are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on rural America.

Americans With Disabilities Act Turns 20

Now & Then, the blog of the American Social History Project, has a nice historical reflection by Leah Nahmias on the 20th anniversary of the American with Disabilities Act.

Here is a taste:

The other night I saw a public service announcement on television in which President Obama marks the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. My first reaction was, wow, 20 years already! My second reaction was to reflect on the efforts of ordinary people to effect such a profound change in the American landscape and society.

The disability rights movement fits squarely within the broader context of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Activists borrowed demonstration tactics and the language of the black freedom struggle and the women’s movement. (One of my favorite images in the Smithsonian’s online exhibit about the disability rights movements is of a “black power” fist superimposed with “wheelchair access” icon.)*

Gushee: Tea Party Libertarianism is Not Christian

In a post that is up today at The Huffington Post's religion site, David Gushee argues that the Tea Party movement, and the libertarianism that informs it, "stands in sharp contrast with the most recognizable Christian traditions of social thought."

Here is the crux of his argument:

I said in a recent interview that libertarianism is not an intrinsically Christian worldview and that Christian embrace of it makes for an uneasy marriage. My friendly Christian "tea party" correspondents beg to differ, but any review of the great traditions of Christian social and political thought bears out my claim.

The options are so rich. We could begin with the social thought of the pre-liberal "Christendom" era, in which the state was generally understood to be partner to the church in advancing a Christian social order that included care of both bodies and souls. Or if you don't like Christendom, we could look at the way Protestant social ethics responded to the urban squalor and workplace sufferings of Gilded Age capitalism with insistent demands not just for the factory-owners to soften their hearts but also for the government to pass laws to limit their depredations.

If you don't like Protestant "Social Christianity," there is the very rich Catholic social teaching tradition, which began with Pope Leo XIII's analysis of these same problems in 1891 and has continued unabated to this day. Catholic social teaching has constantly called for a more organic understanding of society and a vision of the well-being of the national (and international) community as a whole rather than merely its atomized individuals. The Catechism today teaches that the proper role of the state is to "defend and promote the common good of civil society."

Or if you don't like the Catholic social teaching, there is a great deal of historic and contemporary evangelical social engagement that calls for the state to join with others, each in their proper role, to advance public justice and the common good. Evangelicals were involved in most of the great social reform efforts of the 19th and 20th centuries, most of which called for government intervention -- whether in restricting workplace racial segregation or the market's role in providing abortions.

These kinds of Christian traditions certainly understand that individuals matter, but that if so, it is especially those individuals whose needs go unmet and whose rights are routinely violated that matter most. These traditions also affirm that humans are social beings, and therefore the well-being of the communities we have created also matters. They understand that we were made by our Creator not just to claim rights for ourselves but to serve one another, and that a society governed by raw libertarian individualism cannot be the best we can do. Today's libertarian resurgence is at best an uneasy fit with Christian principles. I will never back down from that claim.

While I may be a bit more open to having my mind changed, I find myself leaning toward Gushee on this issue. I have not yet found a compelling "Christian" argument for Tea Party libertarianism. See my posts on the issue here and here and here.

Archaeology at Valley Forge

In case you did not know, there is an archaeological dig going on at Washington's Headquarters in Valley Forge National Park. It is being run by several archaeology and anthropology students from Temple University.

Keep up to date on the project via their blog.

Leftist Historians of the Amerian Revolution

William Hogeland, author of a new book on the two months leading up to July 4, 1776, has a blog post about his favorite left-leaning ("informed by Marxism," as he puts it) historians of the American Revolution. The list, which spans two blog posts, includes Jesse Lemisch, Staughton Lynd, Alfred Young, Gary Nash, Eric Foner, Stephen Rosswurm, and Dick Hoerder.

He promises a "Tory History" list soon.

Amish Teen Charged With Overriding an Animal

He was also charged with possession of alcohol, reckless endangerment, failure to stop at a stop sign, and failure to yield to an emergency vehicle. The charges were levied after he fled from police in a "low-speed chase" in Leon, New York. Read all about it.

HT: First Thoughts.

Take the Students of Faith Survey

Move over U.S. News and World Report. First Things is coming out with its own college rankings and guide. The rankings will serve as a guide for students and parents interested in schools that are both academically strong and serious about "spiritual and religious formation."

The folks at First Things are looking for help with their project. If you are a member of the classes of 2010-2013 consider taking their "Students of Faith Survey."

Read more about it here.

A Young Student of American Religious History Reflects on a Classic

Michael J. Altman has done something I have never done--read through all 1096 pages of Sydney Ahlstrom's magisterial A Religious History of the American People.

Impressive.

Check out his great reflection on finding things worthwhile in a classic text of American religious history. Who knows, I may actually pull my worn-out paperback copy of Ahlstrom off the shelf and start reading.

Do College Students Know How to Take Notes?

I have always been an obsessive note-taker. Somewhere--perhaps in the attic of my parents' house-- I have dozens of spiral notebooks filled with notes I took in courses in college, divinity school, and graduate school. Everyone always wanted to borrow my notes largely because I tried to write down everything that the professor said in class. (Back then my printing was much better too!). When I first started teaching I actually used a lot of these notes to help structure my course lectures.

I am always shocked when I teach a big lecture course like the United States survey and I see students staring up at me while I talk. Sometimes I will chide them for this, but it never seems to do any good.

Tara Brabazon is a professor of media studies at the University of Brighton who teaches first-year writing courses. Brabazon has noticed similar note-taking habits in her students.

She writes:

The idea of taking notes from readings was foreign to at least half of my first-year students...

For many months I pondered the cause of this problem. Then, while delivering a seminar in Portsmouth, my librarian audience explained why this behaviour was emerging.

They told me that in their schools, teachers deliver content via PowerPoint. Teachers upload slides to the virtual learning environment and print them out for the students to revise. There is a reason for this attentiveness. So many schools are conscious of league tables that teachers cannot risk student failure. They not only teach (to) the exam, but give students page after page (after page) of PowerPoint slides so that they do not risk missing anything from their notes.

One consequence of their actions is that students do not learn how to take notes from research material. A dependency culture on teachers is created, facilitated by PowerPoint and its non-Microsoft equivalents Keynote and Impress. When these students arrive at university, many academics perpetuate the problem. A lack of planning and preparation for a teaching session means too many walk into a lecture with a memory stick of PowerPoint slides. They have not written a lecture. They have written PowerPoint slides. They think these two things are the same. They are not. We see similar problems in conferences. Researchers are meant to present scholarship to colleagues. Instead they project PowerPoint slides....

Read the rest. (HT: University Diaries)

Students, former students, and professors: Do you agree with Brabazon?

Richard Cizik is Back on NPR

The last time Richard Cizik appeared on NPR's "Fresh Air" he said that he was in support of gay civil unions. The remarks cost him his job as the chief lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals. We have blogged about Cizik here and here and here and here.

Now Cizik is back on "Fresh Air" to talk with Terry Gross about how his life has changed since that fateful day. Cizik, who is the founder of The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, revisits his remarks about gay civil unions and offers his views on a variety of issues facing evangelicalism, including the Tea Party, religious imperialism, and creation care.

Democrats Still Trying to Figure Out Religion

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly reports on a meeting today between Democratic senators and religion reporters about the role that faith plays in partisan politics.

Some concluded that there might be limits to the role that religion plays in the "nitty gritty" of partisan politics.

Here is a taste:

But just how far religious groups and communities of faith are willing and able to go when they enter the political fray on moral and social issues was a question raised by Klobuchar, who suggested there are “limits on advocacy” for religious coalitions. She said that is especially the case when Republicans represent “a clear obstacle to moving forward” in areas such as immigration reform, one issue that has attracted considerable faith-based support across the spectrum. “How far can they go in pointing out the obstacle?” asked Klobuchar. “How strong an advocate can they be?” Durbin added that while 11 Republican senators once supported immigration reform, now there are none. “That’s what’s stopping us” from passing a bill, he said.

Klobuchar said in conference calls with Minnesota faith leaders about Senate slowness on immigration issues she has been told that when it comes to pure political strategy, religious groups are “not involved” and “don’t deal with that stuff.” How, then, can faith communities “play a larger and louder role” and “push back,” she asked, at a time when the politics of immigration reform are most at issue? Can they serve as a force and a voice for getting past political differences to common ground? Stabenow added that some religious groups do, in fact, have “comfort in the partisan arena” and are willing to “get into strategy and partisan differences.”

In Defense of Amazon

Earlier today we did a post on Scott McLemee's Inside Higher Ed piece on Amazon's "hardball tactics" with university presses. In order to be "fair and balanced," we now call your attention to Ruth Franklin's defense of Amazon at the blog of The New Republic. Here is a taste:

...The real trouble with Amazon, it seems, is that nobody truly believes we were better off without it. This is where the often-made comparison of Amazon with other monoliths such as Wal-Mart falters. Wal-Mart is not known for its catalog of obscurities; the merchandise it sells is all available elsewhere. It put the mom-and-pop drugstores and hardware stores and grocery stores out of business by offering the same items that they sold, just at lower prices.

This isn’t the case with Amazon. Before it appeared on the scene, if you lived in a part of the country that happened not to be served by a great independent bookstore, you were out of luck when it came to getting books other than bestsellers....

New Book on Reinhold Niebuhr

CNN's Belief Blog calls our attention to a new book on Reinhold Niebuhr. Richard Crouter, a religious studies professor at Carleton College, has written Reinhold Niebuhr, On Politics, Religion and Christian Faith. Here is a description from Oxford University Press.

A primer on the current "Niebuhr revival" of the political left and right, this book traces the significance of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought for secular as well as deeply Christian minds. Placed in the context of religious and cultural history, Niebuhr's theological views deepen and challenge contemporary expertise on issues of war, peace, economic, and personal security. While rejecting cynical pessimism and naive optimism, Niebuhr's Christian realism reinvigorates age-old teachings of the Bible, St. Paul, Augustine, and Kierkegaard. His thought enriches present-day debates between science and religion and between atheists, agnostics, and believers. To live with Niebuhr's legacy is to combine critical acumen with humble self-awareness. It is to pursue a larger common good - for him, God-given - that is shared among individuals, nations, and the world community. Features:

• The most accessible account of Niebuhr's theology, social ethics, and politics on the market.
• The only book that provides a comprehensive roadmap of the current "Niebuhr revival."

Maybe someone at Oxford will send us a review copy here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. We would be happy to review it.

How is This Article Boring?

Over at The Atlantic Wire, Michael Kinsley has started an unofficial "Boring Article Contest." He writes:

Now, I think I have discovered the most boring article ever published in a newspaper, and I invite rival claims. (Use the comment section at the bottom of this article). One rule: The boredom must be caused by the banality of the story. Boredom by sheer length doesn’t count.

Kinsley's "most boring article" was published in the July 26 issue of the New York Times. It is about the sudden death of a man who used to walk around the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles. Here is Kinsley's description of the piece:

The story that grabbed my inattention was in the New York Times on Monday, July 26. It was about a man who used to take long walks around the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, until he died last week. That’s it. That’s the story. In Silver Lake, he was wittily known as "the Walking Man." (You see, it’s because he walked all the time).

Was he a homeless man who walked because he tragically had no place to go? No, he was a family doctor named Marc Abrams. Was he an eccentric recluse who lived in squalor and scared the neighborhood children? No, he lived in a house with a hot tub next to the reservoir with his wife, Cindy. Cindy worked with him in his practice. Did he walk every day, rain or shine? No, only “near-daily.” Did he reject all conversational overtures due to the intensity of his need to keep walking, walking, walking? No, a local restaurant owner used to “walk half a block with him” and “strike up a conversation.” People along his route knew him from “years of drive-by small talk.” So what inner demons possessed him and caused him to take long walks nearly every day? The Times reporter asked neighbors. “He walked, he told them, to keep fit.” Of all things.

True, he was only 58 and was found dead in the hot tub. And he was being sued for malpractice. The police haven’t ruled out suicide. These quasi-interesting facts, buried near the end of the piece, “may complicate an effort by local residents to name the path around Silver Lake reservoir after him.” But last Sunday, “several bloggers” organized a memorial walk, and “several hundred people” walked in his memory. “They walked past signs and a few bouquets of flowers for him…then set off toward a strip of cafes and boutiques.” So much for Dr. Abrams.

Actually, I found this story to be quite interesting. Obviously the daily (or almost daily) rhythm of Abrams's walking really meant something to some people in this community, as evidenced by the fact that so many residents of that neighborhood turned out to walk his route in the wake of his death. What a great human interest story about everyday life on the streets of Los Angeles.

Kinsley's choice of the "Walking Man" story probably says more about him than it does about Dr. Marc Abrams or the editorial decisions of the New York Times.

More Advance Praise for Was America Founded as a Christian Nation

This endorsement comes from Scot McKnight, Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University in Chicago.

Very few writers can take a complex subject—200+ years of history with bewildering, bemoaning and belligerent claims by Americans about whether this nation is Christian or not—hold it up for inspection and make its utter complexity clear, but John Fea accomplishes this and more. Informed, judicious, insightful and genuinely delightful.

--Scot McKnight, North Park University, author of The Jesus Creed

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Primer will be available in February 2011 with Westminster/John Knox Press.

Young Evangelicals are Converting to Catholicism

Jonathan Fitzgerald reports that a growing number of young evangelicals are converting to Catholicism. While I would hardly call it a "hastening trend," it does seem that Catholicism has become an option for young men and women who want a deeper, more historically informed Christian faith.

Fitzgerald writes about a small rash of converts to Catholicism at The King's College, an evangelical school that meets in the Empire State Building:

Lucas Croslow was one such student to whom these and other attributes of Catholicism appealed. This past spring, graduating from The King’s College was not the only major change in Croslow’s life, he was also confirmed into the Catholic Church.

Croslow’s interest in Catholicism began over six years ago when he was a sophomore in high school. At the time, Croslow’s Midwestern evangelical church experienced a crisis that is all too common among evangelical churches: Croslow describes it as “a crisis of spiritual authority.” As a result of experiencing disappointment in his pastor, Croslow began to question everything he had learned from him. This questioning led Croslow to study the historical origins of scripture and then of the Christian church itself. Eventually he concluded that Catholicism in its current form is the closest iteration of the early church fathers’ intentions. He asks, “If Saint Augustine showed up today, could we seriously think that he’d attend a Southern Baptist church in Houston?” The answer, to Croslow, is a resounding “No.”

Croslow’s belief that the Catholic Church most accurately reflects the intentions of the early church fathers is echoed throughout the movement as other evangelicals seek a church whose roots run deeper than the Reformation. Further, due to the number of non-denominational churches that have proliferated since the Jesus Movement, many evangelicals’ knowledge of their history runs only as far back as the 1970s. These are the young believers who are attracted to a Church that sees itself as the direct descendant of the religion founded by Saint Peter and the apostles.

It seems to me that wherever one finds thoughtful and conservative evangelicals, the temptation to convert to Catholicism will be there. What fascinates me, however, is that most evangelicals convert to a traditionalist, conservative, First Things brand of Catholicism. I wonder if any evangelicals are converting to a more social-justice, liberal, Dorothy Day brand of Catholicism?

Sleeping in Slave Cabins

That is what Joe McGill, a program officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is doing to preserve South Carolina slave cabins.

Check out this story from the AP wire. Here is a taste:

McGill, a program officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, will spend Saturday night in a cabin at Hobcaw Barony near the coastal community of Georgetown.

It will be the fifth night this year that he has slept on a cabin floor, trying to attract attention to the need to preserve the structures and the history they hold.

McGill, who is black, is also a reenactor with the 54th Massachusetts, the black Union regiment that fought at Battery Wagner on Charleston Harbor during the Civil War. He said spending the night in the cabins helps him connect with his ancestors.

He first slept in a cabin at Boone Hall Plantation near Charleston a decade ago as part of a program for The History Channel entitled "The Unfinished Civil War" which focused on the dispute over the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina Statehouse.

He returned to the cabin project this year, meeting reporters wherever he goes to draw attention to the buildings. He said preserving the cabins requires local efforts and his goal is to encourage people to save the ones that are left....

Amazon's Hardball Tactics

Over at Inside Higher Ed, Scott McLemee has a very interesting article on the relationship between Amazon and university presses. It seems as if Amazon is to book publishers as Walmart is to virtually every consumer product on the market. Here is a snippet:

While you might not be thinking about Amazon, rest assured that it is constantly thinking about you. That is one of the points to take away from a recent article by Colin Robinson in The Nation that deserves wide attention. (A very condensed version is also available on video.)

Robinson (formerly an editor at various presses, and founder of the new OR Books imprint) describes the cumulative and carefully-strategized impact of Amazon on publishers. Books now account for only a quarter of Amazon’s revenues, but this is the area where its power may be the most worrisome.

I wondered how people in the university publishing world would respond to the article. The first person to come to mind to ask was Sanford Thatcher, a former director of Penn State University Press, who is also past president of the Association of American University Presses. (These days he is an independent contractor, acquiring books for a couple of scholarly publishers.)

“I would describe the relationship of university presses to Amazon,” he told me by e-mail, “the same way I would describe their relationship to chain stores and Google: love/hate. There is no question that the development of these three phenomena, combined with the gradual disappearance of serious book reviewing from major newspapers, has transformed the landscape of both trade and academic publishing enormously over the past two decades.”

In the 1990s, chain bookstores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble were viewed with favor by university presses as many of them began trying to publish “trade” books as well as monographs. “But the bloom went off the rose quickly,” he says, “once presses realized that standard operating procedures like the 90-day inventory turnover ended up creating lots of returns and not enough sell-through.”

That is, a new title had about three months to sell before a chain could return it. With the decline of general-interest venues for book reviewing, “not enough of these many new trade titles got reviewed in general media so that people would even know to look for them in the chain stores before they were returned in the 90-day cycle....”

More Advance Praise for Was America Founded as a Christian Nation

Today's endorsement for Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction comes from Stanley Hauerwas, the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University Divinity School and the man who Time Magazine named in 2001 as "America's Best Theologian."

Writing with a calm, analytical clarity and profound knowledge, John Fea has given us a book that should be the last word for all who would claim America as a Christian nation. This book not only deserves to be widely read, it must be widely read if the misinformation surrounding the question of a Christian America is to be challenged.

Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School, author of Resident Aliens and The Peaceable Kingdom

The book will be published in February 2011 with Westminster/John Knox Press.

New Online Exhibit on the History of Reading

I strongly encourage you to check out the American Antiquarian Society's new online exhibit: "A Place for Reading: Three Centuries of Reading in America." It includes everything from early book catalogues and images of children reading to presidential libraries and Civil War-era newspapers.

This blog post at Past is Present offers a nice introduction to the exhibit.

The Religious Right Is Not Going Away Anytime Soon

Or at least this is the argument made by Frederick Clarkson in a recent article published at Religious Dispatches.

Here is a snippet:

The claims that the end of the culture wars is at hand or that the Religious Right is dead are closely related, but they are not the same thing. Following from Buchanan, if a religious war is being fought on cultural fronts it stands to reason that the Religious Right, a movement dominated by conservative evangelicals and conservative Catholics, is one of the belligerents. And of course, the precipitous decline or demise of the Religious Right would be decisive in the outcome. But there has, to date, been no credible analysis published anywhere (to my knowledge) to show that such a decline or demise is even remotely in process. Thus it should come as no surprise that every historic element of the culture wars remains hot and that the Religious Right is playing a prominent and active role.

Read the entire article here.

What Kind of Hotels Does Bob Greene Stay In?

I was struck by Bob Greene's New York Times op-ed on sleeping in hotels. As someone who stays in a fair amount of hotels, I could not help but wonder why I have never encountered the amenities he describes when I frequent the Hampton Inn in Huntsville, Alabama or the Country Inn and Suites in Millville, New Jersey.

Here is a taste:

THE kit — a small mesh bag, reddish-purple in color — was perched seductively atop the hotel-room bedspread. On one bleary-eyed traveler’s most recent visit, identical kits were in every room, not just at this establishment in Minnesota but throughout the hotel chain’s far-flung locations, to greet each arriving guest.

Hotels have for decades selected their amenities with the anticipation of travelers’ most delicious fantasies in mind. There was the age of sumptuous self-indulgence: shampoos made of mink oil, soaps concocted from coconut, bath gels in multiple fragrances and hues.

There was the pre-recession era of let-them-eat-cake gluttony: minibars with seven kinds of $8 candy, 24-hour room service offering crab cakes and lobster bisque at 3 a.m., hospitality suites beckoning with finger sandwiches at sundown and beers of the world at bedtime.

The new allurement — the enticement meant to flutter the secret heart of today’s hotel guest, to provide a luxury so lusted-for that it feels almost illicit — was inside the gauzy bag on the bed: tools and advice on how to achieve that all-but-impossible dream, a decent night’s sleep.

There was a pair of noise-blocking earplugs.

A black mask to be worn through the night.

A CD of a detailed lecture by a “renowned sleep expert.”

A squeeze bottle of lavender linen spray to spritz onto the pillows, imbuing them with a somnolence-inducing scent.

And an instruction sheet, somewhat stern in tone: “Remember the purpose of the bed. Avoid TV, eating and emotional discussions while in bed ... No drinks after 8 p.m. ... Opt for foods that promote sleep, such as milk, tuna, halibut, pumpkin ....”

There were two oversized plastic clips with which to clamp the curtains shut, in case a sliver of space allowed dreaded illumination into the room.

There was a written guarantee, promising — swearing — that wake-up calls would ring at the requested hour, and vowing that if the call were not to come, the night’s stay would be free. The guarantee was intended to relieve the guest’s anxiety that the wake-up call would be forgotten — anxiety, the hotel’s management had deduced, that could cause restless nights.

None of this was a gag. In American business, nothing happens by coincidence.

Maybe some day we will all be successful enough to stay in a hotel with "the kit." In the meantime, I will keep aspiring to a life worthy of a reader of the New York Times.

(Actually, Greene's op-ed has some pretty good insights on sleep-deprived business travelers).

University of Minnesota Professor Defends the Liberal Arts

Eva von Dassow, a professor of Classics and New Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota, was given three minutes before the university Board of Regents to defend the liberal arts amid university-wide budget cuts. This is what she said:



For more on the context see this article in Inside Higher Ed.

New Resource on the Social History of Eighteenth-Century London

AHA Today has called our attention to a new website: "London Lives 1690-1800: Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis." This looks like a wonderful resource for both students and scholars interested in the social history of eighteenth-century London. It offers access to 240,000 manuscripts from eight different archives, including the records of churches, labor guilds, criminal proceedings (Old Bailey Proceedings), and hospitals. The focus is on resources related to the poor, working classes, criminals, and the sick.

I have only browsed the site, but it includes a great guide to reading eighteenth-century manuscripts that could be used with students in research seminars or other history courses.

Revolutionary War Touring in New Jersey

If you want to take a great tour of under-rated but very important Revolutionary War-era sites check out this post by Patrick Murray at My Historic New Jersey.

On July 4 Murray and his posse went out in search of the American Revolution in central New Jersey. Their visits included Princeton Battlefield, the Stonybrook Meetinghouse at Princeton, the Trenton Battle Monument, St. Michael's Church, the Old Barracks Museum, and Washington Crossing.

Quote of the Day

From Niall Ferguson:

The whole point about historians is that we are really communing with the dead. It's very restful - because you read. There's some sociopathic problem that makes me prefer it to human interaction.

Jill Lepore's New Tea Party Book

Jill Lepore, the Harvard historian and prolific writer, has just churned out a new book entitled The White of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History.

Here is the promotional material from Princeton University Press:

Americans have always put the past to political ends. The Union laid claim to the Revolution--so did the Confederacy. Civil rights leaders said they were the true sons of liberty--so did Southern segregationists. This book tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation's founding, including the battle waged by the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and evangelical Christians to "take back America."

Jill Lepore, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, offers a wry and bemused look at American history according to the far right, from the "rant heard round the world," which launched the Tea Party, to the Texas School Board's adoption of a social-studies curriculum that teaches that the United States was established as a Christian nation. Along the way, she provides rare insight into the eighteenth-century struggle for independence--the real one, that is. Lepore traces the roots of the far right's reactionary history to the bicentennial in the 1970s, when no one could agree on what story a divided nation should tell about its unruly beginnings. Behind the Tea Party's Revolution, she argues, lies a nostalgic and even heartbreaking yearning for an imagined past--a time less troubled by ambiguity, strife, and uncertainty--a yearning for an America that never was.

The Whites of Their Eyes reveals that the far right has embraced a narrative about America's founding that is not only a fable but is also, finally, a variety of fundamentalism--anti-intellectual, antihistorical, and dangerously antipluralist.

You can also read about the book in this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. It will be available in September.

Advance Praise for Was America Founded as a Christian Nation

The endorsements for Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction are starting to roll in to Westminster/John Knox Press. I will try to post one here every now and then. Today's blurb comes from historian and writer Thomas Fleming, the award-winning author of dozens of books on early American history and the American Revolution:

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation explores this controversial question with remarkable objectivity -- and admirable scholarship. This is a book that every intelligent reader should have in his library.

--Thomas Fleming

Author of The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation will be out in February 2011.

Claude Fischer Responds

Last week we did a post on Claude Fischer's Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character. The post was triggered by Sarah Igo's review of the book in The American Prospect. In that review, Igo connected Fischer's argument for a "American character" with an older, but still very much alive, "consensus" view of American society.

Fischer recently contacted us at The Way of Improvement Leads Home with a brief response to our post, which he has graciously allowed us to publish:

I would plead guilty to trying to resurrect national character studies.

I'm not sure I would accept that as the same as "consensus" history. If consensus history is the story of the end of division and the emergence of harmony -- something political scientist Robert Lane explicitly applauded in the 1960s -- I don't think Made in America qualifies. Indeed, one can read my account as quite the opposite: the empowering of women, minorities, and youth in the 20th century empowered them to demand, contest, and conflict with the old, white, male powers-that-be. Anti-consensus history!

Thanks, Claude!

Now go out an get your copy of Made in America!

The Problem With Baseball

When it comes to baseball, I am a traditionalist. Perhaps this is why I thoroughly enjoyed Darryl Hart's recent reflection on the death of George Steinbrenner.

Toward the end of the essay Hart starts to riff:

The problem is that most fans do not have the resources that Steinbrenner did and so find it difficult even to find money that will allow them to enjoy the athletes under contract with George and his fellow owners. Among the many features of MLB that callers to sports talk radio complain about are these:

Cliff Lee playing for (at least) five different teams withing three years (four if the Rangers sign him in the off season).

Franchises like Cleveland and Pittsburgh functioning as a quadruple-A minor league system for big market teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs and – dare I say – Phillies.

World Series games being played on Reformation Day (aka Halloween).

World Series games starting at 8:45 pm on the East Coast.

World Series games ending after midnight on the East Coast.

Middle-aged fans on the East Coast being unable to stay up for World Series games.

Seven-dollar beer.

Four-dollar pretzels (it’s only dough!).

Advertisers competing with pitch counts on auxiliary score boards.

Photographs of players competing with advertizing logos on the main scoreboard during said player’s at bat.

Team caps and uniforms produced in colors other than the official hues of the franchise (which is akin to the chaos of state license plate designs and the quest for individuality that fuels them).

Though I still cheer hard for that other New York baseball team, Hart's essay explains why these days I am more likely to be found watching the Harrisburg Senators at City Island than I am the Mets at Shea.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things online that caught my attention this week:

Jim Cullen reviews American Slang, the latest album from The Gaslight Anthem.

The metaphysical meaning of baseball.

Why do so few college provosts want to be college presidents?

Springsteen and E Street band art work in Hoboken.

Virginia DeJohn Anderson reviews Jack Rakove's Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America.

Interesting take on "progressive cosmopolitanism."

A 2300 calorie kids meal?

The most and least religious states in America.

Farming is the hip thing to do.

Is the tea party movement unbiblical?

Great colleges to work for. Where is Messiah College?

Landing a job at a small college.

Steve Benen on David Barton

Wilfred McClay on the sources of American renewal.

A Sense of Place in Greenwich

People from Greenwich love Greenwich. The sense of place here is palpable. Whether it be a native whose family has lived here for generations or a relative newcomer, the people I am interviewing often use words like "special" or "great place to live" or "great sense of community" to describe this small town on the Cohansey River. Things have not changed much since the time of Philip Vickers Fithian. For some, the "way of improvement" has led them home after a long period away from the shores of the Cohansey. Others, who never left to pursue their "way of improvement," have a connection that is just as strong, if not stronger.

There is a lot of nostalgia here, not to mention a very rosy spin on the so-called "sense of community," but there is defintely something about this town worth exploring. This has proven to be a wonerful labratory for the links between history and memory in American towns. Want to learn more or receive updates on what we are doing here, join us at the "Greenwich Tea Burning Project" on Facebook.

Today I interviewed a single mother raising a son in Greenwich, a former member of the school board in town, and two men who either owned or worked in general stores. It has been a productive day.

I am now off to eat some fresh Jersey corn on the cob! Stay tuned.

Greenwich Tea Burning Project Update

I am back in Greenwich, New Jersey conducting interviews for the Greenwich Tea Burning Project, the name we have given to the team of researchers helping me with what I hope to be a book about the history and memory of the American Revolution in this place. (Feel free to check us out or join us at our Facebook Page ("Greenwich Tea Burning Project").

So far I have had some great interviews with local and former residents and will be continuing with these conversations throughout the weekend. Once again the staff of the Cumberland County Historical Society and the Warren Lummis Library have graciously provided me with access to the library to conduct these interviews.

I continue to be struck by the deep sense of historical memory in this place, much of which revolved around the destruction of East India tea that happened here in 1774. Keep reading the blog for future updates.

I am off to dinner at a restaurant on the Cohansey River!

Do You Want a Crash Course in Evangelical Eschatalogy?

OK--some of you may not know what "eschatology" means. Just think "end times," as in the LaHaye and Jenkins Left Behind novels or Hal Lindsey's The Late, Great Planet Earth. (Of if you want hard core eschatology try to find a copy of the 1972 evangelical "thriller," A Thief in the Night). Eschatology is a fancy theological term for the study of what the Bible teaches about God's future plans for humankind.

When I was in divinity school, eschatology was all the rage. How to interpret prophetic biblical books like Daniel or Revelation made for intense lunch discussions in the snack shop. Some day I want to write a reflection about the "end times" culture of evangelical divinity schools and seminaries and how all those discussions of when "the rapture" was going to occur kept evangelicals from thinking about other, more important, things.

If you want a basic understanding of how some evangelicals think about the "last days" then head over to Evangel and check out Joe Carter's recent post, "Jesus is Coming Back When?"

A New Consensus?

Some of my students or former students reading this blog might remember me harping in class about the "Consensus View" of American history. Consensus scholars--the political scientist Louis Hartz and historian Daniel Boorstin come immediately to mind--tended to focus on the ideas that defined a uniquely American character. Those ideas usually boiled down to some form of economic (capitalism) or political (freedom) liberalism.

The Consensus view of America is still with us today and it experienced a bit of a revival in the wake of September 11, 2001. The followers of the late Samuel Huntington, author of the controversial Who Are We" The Challenges to America's National Identity come to mind, but I am sure you can think of others.

In academic circles this view of American history was crushed by social historians and New Left historians in the 1960s and 1970s who began seeing national character as problematic. These historians focused more on diversity and pluralism. By concentrating their scholarly attention on African-Americans, women, the working-class, native Americans, farmers, and other people who were not part of the Consensus story, a new, more complex narrative of American life emerged.

The liberalism of Hartz, Boorstin, and others was also challenged by a group of historians--led by Bernard Bailyn, J.G.A. Pocock, and Gordon Wood--who suggested that it was actually civic humanism or "republicanism" and not liberalism that was at the core of the American character. Unlike the New Left historians, the historians of civic humanism did not deny the existence of a distinct American character, they just thought it rested in an intellectual tradition that found it roots in the city-states of Renaissance Italy and not in the liberalism of the English or French Enlightenment.

I decided to revisit this lesson in historiography because the Consensus view of American life is making another comeback in the form of sociologist Claude S. Fischer's Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character. (We have blogged about this book before). Here is a snippet from an excellent review of the book by Vanderbilt historian Sarah E. Igo:

Concerned as it is with the contours of American character as well as culture, it is hard to read Fischer's book as other than an argument for consensus history. If Made in America is a reminder of the perils of that tradition, it also brings to mind what is compelling about it: clear storylines with the power to shape what Commager might have called the national imagination. There is an audience for such work and thus an opportunity for it to enter into public conversation and understanding. It is on this score that Fischer's accessible book is most valuable, upending much conventional wisdom about American history, from the religiosity of the founding generation to the lack of community spirit in our own.

It is Not the Policy of the Anglican Church to Give Communion to Animals

So wrote the Anglican bishop of Toronto when a priest at St. Peter's Anglican Church gave holy communion to a dog.

From the Toronto Star:

St. Peter’s Anglican Church has long been known as an open and inclusive place.

So open, it seems, they won’t turn anyone away. Not even a dog.

That’s how a blessed canine ended up receiving communion from interim priest Rev. Marguerite Rea during a morning service the last Sunday in June.

According to those in attendance at the historical church at 188 Carlton St. in downtown Toronto, it was a spontaneous gesture, one intended to make both the dog and its owner – a first timer at the church — feel welcomed. But at least one parishioner saw the act as an affront to the rules and regulations of the Anglican Church. He filed a complaint with the reverend and with the Anglican Diocese of Toronto about the incident – and has since left the church.

“I wrote back to the parishioner that it is not the policy of the Anglican Church to give communion to animals,” said Bishop Patrick Yu, the area bishop of York-Scarborough responsible for St. Peter’s, who received the complaint in early July. “I can see why people would be offended. It is a strange and shocking thing, and I have never heard of it happening before.

“I think the reverend was overcome by what I consider a misguided gesture of welcoming.”

Finish the article here.

Can Reading Good Literature Transform Criminals?

Is the study of literature "one of the most underused tools in the criminal justice system?" The folks from the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth who have created the "Changing Lives Through Literature" (CLTL) program seem to think so. The program is in place in Massachusetts, Texas, Arizona, Maine, New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. It has the support of state governments and the National Endowment for the Humanities. If the CLTL website is any indication, the program has proven, in some cases, to be an alternative to incarceration.

Here is the philosophy behind this program:

Changing Lives Through Literature is based on the idea that literature has the power to transform. Although it sounds simple - it's essentially a reading group that meets over a period of weeks and that is attended by an instructor, probation officer, judge, and students - CLTL has the ability to allow us to make connections with the characters or ideas in a text and to rethink our own behavior. The phrase "Changing Lives" may sound grandiose and, in a way, it is. This program can be the first step toward permanent change or an additional step on the path to a new way of being in the world. CLTL contends that through literature, we can more deeply understand ourselves and our human condition. But what is it about literature that allows this to occur? And why do many of us who are involved with CLTL feel that it is one of the most underused tools in the criminal justice system?

As Professor Robert Waxler, co-founder of the program, said, when we talk about literature, we are not just talking about "the words on a page or a book sitting peacefully on a shelf." We are talking about what it is in the material itself that engages us deeply and what it is that takes us inside a story, that which enables us to be part of the tale. This way of relating to literature is active. It takes imagination. It takes a willingness to participate. It may not necessarily take advanced reading skills, and it certainly doesn't take a college degree. Even those who have not finished high school have found success in CLTL programs. But opening up the heart and mind is, for many, as difficult as anything they have ever accomplished. We believe that this is often the first step toward change and toward believing. As Kit, an ex-offender said, "There are other ways of living than the streets."

This process - which often creates epiphany - depends on material that engages us. It depends on the old-fashioned idea of a good story. It also depends on whatever it is that happens to us when we read a worthwhile book or immerse ourselves in a short story. If we were blessed with parents who read to us when we were young or if we had success in school, we may easily find our way inside a story...

But what of readers who have not read much or have had poor experiences with school? Many CLTL students struggle through books and think they have retained little of the text. They often are the first ones to say the book had no meaning. But in our discussions, where we sit around the table talking about the text and together recreate the story, where we refashion its travails and its successes, look into why the characters do what they do, and reconsider their actions, these readers often find that, far more than they imagined, a book stays inside them. A character touches a familiar chord, or a story allows them to rethink their own experiences.

Through reading, we see; through discussion, we hear. The CLTL discussion is as important as the reading. With literature, the imagination comes alive through an engagement with language. In the classroom, language can lead to better verbal skills and to better listening. As we hear others talk about their experience of the text, and as we talk about the characters with others who may see the world far differently than we do, we experience a paradox: we begin to see other perspectives than our own and, at the same time, realize that we are not alone. A good story not only calls on us to exercise our minds, it asks us to reach deep into our hearts and evoke compassion for the characters, for each other, and for ourselves.

Much has been written about how stepping inside the shoes of another allows us to be free. We are able to consider even the most awful of human actions through a character and come to grips with the most dreadful of our own experiences through someone else's story. There is safety in the CLTL classroom precisely because the story seems to be about someone else. The word "seems" is important here. Whether we identify fully or just see parts of ourselves and those we know in the characters we meet, the CLTL discussion enables us to process our own experiences without confessing. Another paradox: CLTL is not therapy, but the process of learning about our lives can be therapeutic. This is what we mean by transformational. This is what we mean when we say that CLTL is based on the idea that literature has the power to transform lives.

How about adding the study of history to the curriculum?

HT: Alan Jacobs

In Defense of the Cassock

Rev. Jonathan Mitchican wonders why Christian priests no longer wear cassocks. Is this recent trend in priestly fashion representative of larger cultural changes in American life? Mitchican explains:

...But what I lament isn’t so much the loss of the cassock itself as the loss of the whole cache of cultural symbols of which it was once a part. The cassock once communicated the universal reality of priesthood to the local communities in which priests served. Every town once had a doctor, a butcher, a sheriff, as well as a priest. The child who grew up in each town was able to see the doctor’s stethoscope and identify it with the healing arts not just in some abstract sense but in the way that good old Doctor Smith administered them. The symbols that denoted these universal practices were intimately connected with the people who practiced them. The cassock was a symbol not just of priesthood. It was a symbol of Father Jones who baptized my children and was at my father’s bedside as he lay dying. And seeing these different symbols, such as the cassock and the white coat and the sheriff’s gold star badge, gave the child a sense that he wasn’t just growing up in a cluster of random people but in a community, a living organism in which each person played an important and unique role in the lives of others.

Ironically, it’s the very quest for uniqueness, for freedom of expression and freedom from unnecessary constraint, that has lead to the tyranny of homogeneity that we experience today. I have no idea whether there’s a butcher or a doctor living in my town. Everyone wears the same thing. We all express ourselves the same way, in the same button down shirts and slacks bought off the rack at Sears. The fact that we happen to live in proximity to each other is simply coincidence. There’s no purpose to it.

The universal symbols are gone, replaced by the universality of brand names and box stores. In the process, that which is unique to each local expression of community has become obscured. I’ve lived in different parts of three different states. Every time I move to a new place, I’m asked by the locals, “How do you like living here?” I’m never quite sure how to answer that question, and for the longest time I didn’t know why. And then one day it dawned on me, I couldn’t answer the question because I couldn’t figure out what the difference was between one place and the next. I ate at the same chain restaurants and bought my clothing at the same strip malls everywhere I went. The fact that it was eight degrees colder in New Haven in the winter time than it had been in the suburbs of Baltimore was hardly enough to give me a real sense that there was something that separated the two.

We need symbols, not just brands. We need symbols that speak to our hearts and that communicate deep truths about who we are and how we live. We need to know that there are differences between us that go beyond whether or not we happen to prefer PCs over Macs or Cheerios over Corn Flakes. We need to learn again that there is such a thing as calling and vocation, that each of us can be called upon to serve our communities in a special way, not simply by consuming but by producing the goods that hold our communities together, whether or not those goods are tangible.

Should Dark or Light Clothes Be Worn on Hot Days?

This is the title of a July 17 1910 article in The New York Times. It is posted at Sunday Magazine.

It seems as if the United States government spent a lot of time and money to find an answer to this question.

Here is a snippet:

The problem of the undergarments has been taken up by the Federal Government very seriously of late and exhaustive tests have been made. The experiments have been carried out on an elaborate scale recently in the Philippines, where a thousand men have been used in the tests which have been carried on for upward of a year. If the soldier can be made to march further, carry more weight, and fight better in hot weather merely by changing his shirt, naturally the United States Government wants to know all about it.