A few things online that caught my attention this week:
Michael Lynch reviews Kevin Phillips, 1775: A Good Year for Revolution. Jim Cullen reviews it here.
The Battle of Cowpens
Katy Lasdow askes: "When does a museum stop being a museum and become something else?"
Heath Carter reviews David Swartz, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism
Obama's use of Scripture
Hustling historians
J.L. Bell on the 27th Amendment
The Giglio affair and the Democratic Party's outreach to evangelicals.
Charles Marsh on Martin Luther King Jr.
Marketing your book
God and presidential inaugurations
John Turner on Manti Te'o's imaginary girlfriend (sarcasm alert).
What are the 10 most important documents in American history?
The spirit of vocation
The first day of the U.S. survey course
Dartmouth will no longer accept A.P. credits
1 comment:
The Giglio affair and the Democratic Party's outreach to evangelicals
The comments were the interesting part:
Jim Reed • 3 days ago −
Rather than the Democrats outreach to Evangelicals, there should be an Evangelical outreach to Democrats. They need to repent of being Republican, and change.
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Frank • 2 days ago
As long as one side supports the culture of death (abortion) I doubt any committed real Christian will ever side with the Dems. Abortion and Jesus do not go together.
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This observer, although appreciative of Anabaptist [and American Baptist, at that] traditions of strict separationism of church and state, must also posit the difference between political rights and natural rights.
I can see a Reformed theology that is indifferent toward political rights, but in the American scheme especially, certain rights are natural, that is to say, pre-political---the freedom of religion, of religious conscience, is claimed by Reformed theology as a natural, not merely a political right. America was founded on that.
Political rights are "conventional," by agreement but not necessarily of [shall we say] gospel truth. What is the proper amount of taxation? Whatever Caesar says, and we are to give to Caesar what is Caesar's.
Abortion and Jesus do not go together.
I found this rather sobering, actually. On the question of abortion, I cannot see abortion as a "natural" right.
Neither can I imagine Jesus saying--had his milieu been different-- Give to Moloch what is Moloch's.
If the evangelical left is to disdain the pro-life GOP in the name of Jesus and Beatitudism, of "social justice," it cannot ignore its responsibility to remind the left of its other responsibilities to human dignity, to the protection of natural rights.
[Unless one believes there is indeed a natural right to abortion, and therefore a political right to perform abortions. These are some very tall weeds of moral calculus, but they must be negotiated by your 20% who didn't vote for Romney, John.]
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