15 March 2024

COVID Aftermath and Scholarly Research

Earlier this year, I received a couple of journal issues from historical societies of which I'm a member, the Conference on Faith and History and the Baptist History & Heritage Society. The former generally publishes two issues per year; the latter generally publishes three. 

I spent much of 2023 wondering when their journals would arrive. The lone 2023 issue for both arrived in early 2024. The Editor's note in Fides et Historia, the journal for the CFH noted that there was a lack of articles in its pipeline at present to publish the normal two issues in 2023. She pointed that Fides was not the only journal in this predicament. 

The lack of access to archives was one suggestion as to why there were fewer article submissions, and this makes sense. I had personally planned to spend Spring Break in 2020 visiting the West Virginia State Archive to undertake research on a topic that I've been working on for a few years (and will hopefully become a book). However, that research trip did not take place, and I spent the week at home in northwestern Kansas. The archive closed. 

I had also received a small grant to visit an Appalachian archive at West Virginia University just before the pandemic hit. I believe I was the first person allowed to access this archive when I finally made my visit in June 2021. Masks were still required. I had intended to visit a presidential library or two, as well, but these were still closed into 2022. 

The lack of access to archives limited the topics which researchers could access. However, online repositories were still available, and the Chronicling America database from the Library of Congress was a major source for my article on Spanish flu that appeared in North Dakota History. Much of that research will appear in my upcoming book on the same topic, and much of my perusal of the secondary literature took place via online repositories to which I have access through a library at an R1 institution.

I also spent a productive week at the North Dakota State Archive for this research. However, that research took place in the summer of 2022. I flew into Bismarck after the removal of mask requirements for flights (although some passengers continued wearing them), and there was no such requirement at the ND State Archive. 

Articles can take months (sometimes years) to write, depending upon the amount of background research needed before writing up the paper. Then, the review and revision process can take a year or more, depending upon a journal's publishing schedule. A big gap in research might lead to fewer articles in the near future, but one would assume this should reverse in relatively short order. 

01 January 2024

What I'm Reading: American Gospel

 Today is New Year's Day, so Happy 2024. I spent a bit of the late morning/early afternoon finishing up a read of Jon Meacham's American Gospel. As this book came out in 2007 and considering the fact that I focused on American religious history in my doctoral program (and my later ThM program), I'm surprised that I had not read it yet. 

The book was very readable, although it felt a bit dated because of its origin in the era of George W. Bush, a somewhat less contentious time in American history. Of course, those who remember those days understand that many of the undercurrents that presently engulf social media and the political landscape existed at the time. But this was before the last eight or nine years and the increased emphasis in Christian nationalism by some on the right of the religious landscape, which has largely been accompanied by an increasing hostility to religion by some on the left (although this is not a necessary feature of the American left and some otherwise right-leaning Americans oppose religion as well; additionally, not all on the political right adhere to Christian nationalism). 

Meacham borrows the concept of a civil religion (what he generally refers to as public religion) that Robert N. Bellah articulated in his important essay on "Civil Religion in America". I first became aware of this concept when reading Harry Stout's Upon the Altar of the Nation, a book that the author framed as a moral history of the Civil War. Stout pointed to Bellah's influence on his won work. I probably read Stout's work around 2007 or 2008.  

Meacham correctly points out that the Founding Fathers attempted to navigate the space between reason and religion and came up with a public religion that focused upon God. While theistic, the "God of Nature" referred to by Jefferson was quite ambiguous. He (or it) was not God the Father of the Holy Trinity, as Meacham notes on more than one occasion. This God (or god) was active in human affairs; some Founders like Washington referred to Providence. However, such a higher being will not meet the theological understanding of very devout, and orthodox, Christians who hold to the deity of Christ and a belief in the Holy Trinity.  

The wisdom of the Jeffersons and Adamses of the early Republic lay in the fact that they understood the religious nature of their society and did not wish to overturn it. Indeed, they believed in the deity, albeit in a heterodox way. Yet, they also understood the problems that come with extreme sectarianism when wedded to the power of the state. The Constitution's First Amendment and state statutes like the one supported by Jefferson and Madison in Virginia were attempts to protect religious minorities from persecution which had all too often reared itself in the colonial era, including in Virginia. 

This compromise has largely held throughout American history, and even those presidents who would not currently be popular with those on the political (or religious) right felt the need to compose public prayers and bring religion into the public sphere. These included well-known liberals like FDR and LBJ. Meacham basically argues that the "center" of the American populace is happy to allow for religious expression in the public sphere, as long as there is not too much emphasis on specificity or a requirement of a specific view of Christianity (or any other religion). Of course, there have been examples of politicians who have attempted to add explicitly Christian verbiage to the Preamble to the Constitution or otherwise return the US to its Christian roots. The latter are more focused on, to borrow language from John Fea, nostalgia, rather than good history.

American Gospel also notes that the Civil Rights movement largely used religious arguments in making the case for the end of Jim Crow. Martin Luther King Jr. noted the "moral arc of the universe" in arguing for justice, for example. Meacham points to the religious motivations behind John Lewis and the others who endured a severe beating on the Pettus Bridge. Figures on the right and the left have long utilized religious and biblical imagery in making important points.   

Meacham effectively provides a narrative account of this "American Gospel". He emphasizes the significance of true religious liberty in American history, pointing to the ways in which Jewish and Catholic Americans have advocated for the concept from the nation's founding. However, it would be interesting to see how an updated edition might view the last fifteen years and the increased desire for dominionism or Christian nationalism that has increasingly become a part of the political and religious discourse. Regardless, it's worth a read.   

20 September 2023

Recent Presentation

 I wrote earlier this year regarding some research I've done on the Spanish flu and how it intersected with religious bodies in North Dakota. I was able to give a broader talk on the state of my research recently in Colby, Kansas, at the Max Pickerill Lecture at Colby Community College. The college recorded the talk and put it up on its YouTube Chanel. Here is the video of the talk: 


22 May 2023

First Post-COVID Conference Presentation

The COVID-19 pandemic upended academic conferences, much as it did industry conferences outside of the profession, along with many other activities we took for granted. I attended a couple of conferences virtually while social distancing precautions were in place, but they did not really have the same vibe, even though the sessions were generally informative. 

I attended the Conference on Faith and History for the first time in March 2022. I'd been a member of this professional organization in grad school and rejoined in late 2020. I was living in Kansas at the time, and I flew to Waco to take in some of the sessions. While there, I ran into a professor I'd shared a session with at the now-defunct Missouri Valley History Conference back in 2013. I met some more historians in one of my major fields of interest, i.e., religious history. A few folks wore masks and they were still required on flights, but otherwise, it was very similar to my previous conference experiences. 

This past week, I attended the Baptist History & Heritage Society's annual conference. I've been a member since about 2008, before I started my doctoral studies. I'd attended this conference in person a couple of time previously, including one in Sioux Falls in 2014 and the last face-to-face meeting in Raleigh, NC, in 2019. This year, the society held the conference in San Antonio, and I decided to submit a paper proposal, which was accepted. The paper was title "The Landmark Influence on the Ecclesiology of Jack Hyles," and it looked how the ways in which Hyles's teachings largely agreed with earlier Landmark Baptists who believed that the Baptist Church, or rather, Baptist churches, descended in basically a straight line directly from Jesus Christ himself. 

The presentation received no negative comments, although the session was sparsely attended outside of the participants and the moderator. We were also limited in terms of time because a lunch session went a few minutes over. This presentation was a part of a longer paper that I'd written on the authoritarian leanings of Hyles and their broader impact on the independent fundamental Baptist (IFB) movement. The major impact came through the status Hyles held as the pastor of the church with the World's Largest Sunday school, along with his annual Pastors' Conferences and his unaccredited Bible college. All flowed from his theology, and this ecclesiology was a major component.

My paper was a capstone for a ThM program I completed late last year, and I decided to submit the entire paper to a journal after tidying it up a bit during an unexpected overnight layover at Chicago's O'Hare airport (in a hotel comped by United Airlines). It will likely be weeks or months before I hear from that journal, if past experience is any guide. I've never published through this journal before, so I'm not entirely sure of the speed at which my submission will progress. If it's not accepted by my first choice, I have a couple of additional journals in mind, although I may have to cut some of the paper for length purposes. Different journals required differing manuscript lengths.  

Overall, the conference was an enjoyable experience. I was able to reconnect with a couple of people I'd met before, including one who had also done a dissertation on North Dakota Baptists, and I met a few other folks from a university that's in the neighboring state of Kentucky. I met a couple of editors who I'd worked with in getting a couple of my articles and book reviews through the society's journal, Baptist History & Heritage. Talking history in general, and Baptist/Christian history specifically, with people who are sympathetic with most of my beliefs is aways a positive experience. 

31 March 2023

Spanish Flu and North Dakota Churches

 Since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, I've been researching the way North Dakota experienced the Spanish flu. North Dakota History published an article that I wrote in 2021. This article looked at how North Dakota's newspapers provided coverage of the Spanish flu to residents of the state. At first, I thought an article would encapsulate basically everything I wanted to address, but there was way more information available the deeper I dug. 

Therefore, I decided to keep digging and prepare a book manuscript (a draft of which is already completed and submitted to a potential publisher). One of the chapters deals with how religious groups in the state dealt with the flu. Laura Spinney's Pale Rider and a few other secondary sources have noted that many parts of the world took a religious approach to explain the appearance of the deadly contagion. One bishop in Spain asked for a series of prayers to appease the wrath of God. This impulse was not terribly different than the one that drove medieval flagellants to beat themselves in light of the Black Death. God is mad; we must appease him. 

However, when looking at some of the major denomination in North Dakota, there was no real reflection, other than the people lost to the disease (some pastors were among this number) and the ways in which the flu kept the churches from carrying out their organizational plans for the year. There was no attempt to tie the Spanish flu to God's wrath, nor was there any question as to what God might be attempting to tell the world. I found this interesting, given the fact that the world was engaged in a war that was among the more senseless in world history. 

Additionally, this varied from the response by Christians to more recent tragedies that have caused some ministers to claim that some natural or man-made calamity was the punishment of God against wayward people. For example, Pat Robertson claimed that Hurricane Katrina was the result of God's wrath, tying this to abortion and the appointment of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. 

My primary question for the chapter revolved around the ways the churches reacted to the Spanish flu. The article noted above found that churches were a part of the ban on public meetings. Grand Forks was effectively closed for about seven weeks in the fall of 1918, and churches did not meet from early October to late November. Some churches in the town were actually concerned over the possibility of large meetings when the city's health officials decided to allow for public meetings to resume. Schools in the town did not reopen until January. This reaction to the flu in Grand Forks differed from the one evident in Fargo, where ministers petitioned the city to end the public meeting ban before it did in late October. 

Needless to say, these findings were interesting, and they tended to provide some interesting historical context for the actions that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

05 November 2017

Recent Read--Benjamin Franklin:The Religious Life of a Founding Father

As an academic, it's probably not terribly surprising that one of my favorite pastimes is reading. I recently completed reading a spiritual biography of one of America's founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin. This particular work was written by the eminent Baylor historian, Thomas S. Kidd, who has written extensively on the era of the American Revolution.

In his Autobiography, which is itself an interesting read, Franklin claimed to be a deist. Deism was a term that could describe a range of religious or irreligious beliefs. Franklin called for prayer at the Constitutional Convention, which would indicate that he believed that God was active in human affairs. This contrasts with the commonly taught depiction of deism as a "religion" that viewed God as a cosmic clock maker who built the universe and then stepped away and allowed it to run according to natural law. 
Kidd argues in the introduction of his work that Franklin was one of the first to follow a moralistic, doctrine-free form of Christianity that is common in much of American life. Kidd then pointed to Joel Osteen and Oprah Winfrey as a couple of modern-day examples of this religious point of view. 

This book draws extensively from the Autobiography as a source of Franklin's beliefs, but it goes into many other sources such as his other publications and correspondence. Franklin, who grew up in a staunchly Puritan home, was far from orthodox in his beliefs. While he believed in a deity who superintended over human affairs, he questioned many of the tenets of orthodox Christology. 

Kidd points out quite well that Franklin had little interest in Christian doctrine. He was more concerned with action than belief. This action usually involved the service of others, and Franklin undertook such activities for the public good. These included the foundation of the Philadelphia Academy (forerunner of the University of Pennsylvania) and one of the first public libraries in the American colonies.

This book included an assessment of Franklin's correspondence with evangelicals such as his sister Jane Mecom an the noted evangelist George Whitefield, the subject of another work by Kidd. Franklin was not above making money publishing both Whitefield's works as well as documents that criticized the English divine. Both Mecom and Whitefield frequently questioned Franklin regarding the state of his soul, to no avail. Franklin would go to his grave maintaining his unorthodox beliefs.

Overall, this is a very engaging read that utilizes a range of primary sources to craft an interesting analysis of Ben Franklin's religious beliefs and how they changed over time (he appeared to in some ways become less skeptical over time). It contextualizes Franklin's life in the social and religious milieu of his day.

Thomas S. Kidd, Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). 

06 April 2015

William Henry Sheppard and King Leopold's Congo Free State

I'm currently teaching a course in World History since 1600, and when working up the syllabus, I decided to have the students read Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost, (2006 Mariner edition) which is a story of terror in the Belgian Congo during the decades that straddled the turn of the twentieth century. I read this book a few years ago, but because I had assigned it for this class, I decided to reread it to refresh my memory. The appalling nature of what went on at the time was not a surprise for me to say the least, and my memories were pretty fresh regarding most of the events.

To make a long story short, King Leopold was a king who felt his lack of an empire made his little country of Belgium, well, little. Wanting to increase his standing on the world stage, he was able to use people like Henry Morton Stanley to work his way into the Congo and get the United States to recognize his own personal colony. What followed in this attempt to "improve" the region was a level of death and destruction that ranks up there with that perpetrated by some of the more famous butchers of history. Hochschild and other writers have estimated that nearly 10 million Congolese lost their lives at the hands of the Force Publique and other minions of a variety of companies that traded, first in the ivory, and then in the rubber, that the region produced.

Of course, in addition to civilizing the Congolese, many people in Belgium appreciated that Catholic missionaries would be let in. In many instances, these priests did little to stop the atrocities in the early years. Some of the biggest outcries against the regime came from Protestant missionaries. One of the earliest to attempt to bring attention to Leopold's personal colony of what he termed the Congo Free State (an ironic name considering that forced labor was the rule, rather than the exception in the colony) was a Presbyterian missionary from the United States, William Henry Sheppard.

Sheppard was an African American who endeared himself to the Congolese among whom he worked. He was paired with Samuel Lapsley for the Southern Presbyterians. When his superior, Lapsley, died, Sheppard effectively took over the mission in a capacity he would not have been afforded in his home country. Over time, he became aware of the violence that occurred daily and published an account for his denomination. As it was published in the Congo Free State, Sheppard was guilty of breaking the law, but he was acquitted in the trial. His report, along with others by missionaries and secular humanitarians, eventually contributed to the transfer of the colony to the Belgian people. Sheppard will probably not come up in many of the leading general works on American church history, but his impact on the Belgian Congo was quite important.