Reading in a Streaming Age—On Limits and Academic Publishing

January 30, 2025 By Philip Jenkins

Today I have a guest post by Cade Jarrell, who is the Assistant Director of Baylor University Press. Baylor runs an excellent press mainly focused on religious themes, very broadly defined. And (full disclosure) I have published several titles with them through the years. Check out their lists here. Publishing is of course central to the academic world, and we are currently passing through multiple transitions that would have amazed earlier generations. It seemed like an excellent idea, then, to... Read more

Exorcists, Omens, and Heretics: Religion Horror in the 2020s

January 29, 2025 By Guest Contributor

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As a genre, horror cinema has always spoken to the broader fears and values of cultures and societies at particular moments in time. During the 1950s, the prevalence of monster films such as Godzilla and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms spoke to American fears over the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Similarly, films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Night of the Living Dead commented on American fears of communist infiltration and McCarthyism in the 1950s and white backlash to... Read more

What a Humble Presidential Inaugural Address Looks Like

January 28, 2025 By Daniel K. Williams

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I found myself thinking about presidential humility once again after I heard last week’s inaugural address. Its tone and pronouncements, of course, were about as far from Christian humility as one could imagine. (For instance, the first reference to God in the speech was the line “I was saved by God to make America great again”). But can a presidential inaugural address reflect genuine humility? Yes, it can. Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address was an exercise in a humble reflection... Read more

Was Carter a Progressive Evangelical or Centrist Politician?

January 25, 2025 By Guest Contributor

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When President Jimmy Carter died on December 29th, 2024, almost every obituary on the 39th president made some mention of his deep Christian faith. A New York Times article featuring seventeen objects that exemplify Carter’s extraordinary life included a wooden cross hanging in Maranatha Baptist Church, which Carter made himself. Carter’s identity as a born-again Christian was certainly no secret, either during his presidency or after, and it helped to shape his politics in a way that was distinctly different... Read more

Evangelicals, Charismatics, and Reformation Roleplay, Pt 1

January 24, 2025 By Jacob Randolph

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Evangelicalism and ecstatic Spirit-filled movements have long had an uneasy relationship. The inclusion of Pentecostal denominations into the newly-formed National Association of Evangelicals in 1942 meant that, on paper, Pentecostals were card-carrying members of conservative orthodoxy. Yet, the relationship between Pentecostals and midcentury evangelical power-brokers was often chilly. Pentecostals represented a threat to Neo-evangelicals’ self-perception as rationalistic, objective, and socially respectable. For their part, some Pentecostals saw the move into evangelical spaces as weighing into a cultural fight that wasn’t... Read more

Rebel on Main

January 22, 2025 By David Swartz

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Are memorials actual reflections of the past? What do we do with static memorials when interpretations of the past change? Read more

Oedipus and the Tragic Flaw of Self-Deception

January 21, 2025 By Adam Renberg

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I am pleased to welcome Dr. Aaron Johnson to the Anxious Bench today! Dr. Johnson is Professor of Classics and Humanities at Lee University (Cleveland, TN), specializing in Greek literature of the later Roman Empire, particularly in the areas of ethnic and religious identities and of Hellenism. He has held fellowships at Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies (Harvard University), the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago and the University of Tuebingen. His publications include a book entitled... Read more

What Evangelical Influencers Love About this Inauguration

January 20, 2025 By Erica Ramirez

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It’s the 20th of January and there is a lot going on today in Washington, DC. No doubt readers of The Anxious Bench are already receiving notifications about Trump’s inaugural executive actions, like instituting a federal two-gender policy and ending birth right citizenship. As with his first-term efforts to overturn Roe, these new policy-level initiatives will do something to address evangelicals’ anxiety about the place of the American family (and conservative gender politics) in public life and policy. We can... Read more

Windstorms and Wildfires: Finding Christ Among Devastation

January 17, 2025 By Verónica A. Gutiérrez

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As I sit down in the local library to write this post, I can see the ocean extending beyond the tree tops and red tiled roofs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Following the curve of the coast, I can see beach towns, most notably a collection of tall white buildings that must be Santa Monica, where I lived when I moved to SoCal in 2004. But then the buildings stop. Sweeping my eyes to the left there is an eerie... Read more