Top Ten Posts of 2022
Here's a highlight reel of what readers found most helpful. It's a great place to start or catch up on my Footnotes newsletter!
Scan the Top 10 list below. Do you find any of these articles interesting or helpful? Want to see more? Consider becoming a paid subscriber today!
As a historian, one of my favorite activities is looking back. Usually I’m looking back over the course of decades or centuries, but at the end of each year I enjoy reviewing just the past 12 months.
When it comes to this newsletter, we hit a lot of milestones. January 2022 marked one full year of the Footnotes newsletter on Substack. October 2022 was the one year anniversary of when I began offering paid subscriptions. And so far thousands of people have signed up to receive this newsletter.
In total, I published 108 posts (including subscriber only). Of more than 100 posts in 2022, here are the Top Ten most-read. These posts are a great place to start or catch up on my Footnotes newsletter.
Marjorie Taylor Greene said Christian Nationalism is not a threat. Here's why she's wrong.
Christian nationalism is the most urgent threat to democracy and the peaceful transfer of power in the United States. But public figures like MTG are trying to redefine the term and make it a good thing. This is so wrong. Read more HERE.
White Christian Nationalists Are Scrambling to Respond to Public Criticism of their Ideology
An event hosted by the ultra-conservative Family Research Council and Regent University reveals their confusion and ignorance about what to do. I also got name-checked at length by one of the speakers. Fun! Read more HERE.
A Conversation about Christian Nationalism on NPR’s 1A
Christian Nationalism has become so ubiquitous in segments of the church and the political sphere that many of its adherents don’t know the difference between their ideology and the Christianity of Christ. National news media is finally catching on. I got to talk about it with sociologist, Andrew Whitehead, and investigative journalist, Katherine Stewart, on NPR. Read more HERE.
My New Job at Simmons College
I’m a professor! Learn a bit more about what's new and what will stay the same as I begin this position in Louisville, Kentucky. Read more HERE.
Maximalists for Love
I’ve been criticized by many, but this time it comes from another historian who I know and respect. He did so with questionable analysis and zero evidence. Here’s how the latest pronouncements about Christian discourse ignores the Black Christian tradition. Read more HERE.
Trayvon Martin's Murder and the Death of the Evangelical Racial Reconciliation Movement
I consider this my most significant post of 2022. I give my evaluation of how reactions from white evangelicals to Trayvon Martin's murder foreshadowed the end of an interracial era. Read more HERE.
This Is the article on Critical Race Theory I've been waiting for.
The true origins of the war on Critical Race Theory are in white evangelical churches and organizations. Yet in the attempts to explain the anti-CRT crusade, too many ignore its religious roots. But this article broadens the conversation. Read more HERE.
The People Who Don't Have Any Questions
Faith and doubt are not contradictions. Indeed the questions that arise from our doubts are often whey you need faith in the first place. So what does it say about a group of religious people who seem to have an answer for everything and no questions about the most sensitive and urgent social issues of our day? This is a meditation on a general statement about white evangelicals. Read more HERE.
Racial Compromise and Complicity at Grove City College
Sad to say it, but the pointed attacks on me and the faculty and staff at Grove City College, a fundamentalist Christian school in western Pennsylvania, got a lot of attention from me and others this year. But I didn’t want them to spew their slander and libel in secret or without accountability. Here is the saga of racism, a chapel message, and the anti-CRT Crusade. Read more HERE.
An Open Letter to the Board of Trustees at Grove City College
Even though many have disagreed with my messages of racial justice, this is the first time those critiques/attacks have risen to the level of official institutional policy. Here’s my personal yet public address to the Board in light of their formal adoption of a flimsy anti-CRT report. Read more HERE.
#5, I just re-read it again.
Found you through someone else here in Pittsburgh and became a subscriber thanks to your thoughts and response to GCC's treatment of you and the message you delivered. As an alum, I wish they had been able to do better. Glad to be a paid subscriber to help support you.