What’s Going on Right Now: Sex, Race, Politics, & Power with W Robert Godfrey (7)

R. Scott Clark

on December 16, 2021

This is the seventh session of Bob Godfrey’s Adult Sunday School series at the Escondido URC. In this session he explores the challenges faced by Christendom due to the Enlightenment and how it took shape in America. He argues that Christianity as . . . Continue reading →

The First Huguenot Thanksgiving In 1564 At Ft Caroline (Florida)

R. Scott Clark

on November 25, 2021

In 1562, Jean Ribault, a naval officer under Admiral Gaspard de Coligny and a Huguenot, began a voyage to the land that is now southeastern United States. He established a colony on Parris Island, South Carolina called Charlesfort. The settlement failed in . . . Continue reading →

The 1619 Project Privileges Narrative Over Facts

by R. Scott Clark on November 9, 2021 3 Comments

According to a significant number of scholars of American history, one of the most serious weaknesses in the self-described 1619 Project, which argues that racism and slavery was a central motivation for the origin of the American Republic, is that it is factually inaccurate. Continue reading →

Wilentz: Taking Down Jefferson Is A Symbolic Take Down Of The Declaration

R. Scott Clark

on October 27, 2021 | 4 Comments

Removal of the David D’Angers statue of Thomas Jefferson from City Hall would be a direct attack on a symbol of the democratic values New Yorkers hold dear. The statue specifically honors Jefferson for his greatest contribution to America, indeed, to humankind: . . . Continue reading →

Another Salvo (This One From The Left) Against The 1619 Project

R. Scott Clark

on September 23, 2021

On a hot, drowsy August Saturday, a copy of the New York Times Magazine devoted entirely to something called The 1619 Project landed on my doorstep, and immediately grabbed my attention. It took me little time to comprehend the project’s purpose, or . . . Continue reading →

Wilfred McClay: The 1619 Project Is Historically False And Morally Corrosive

R. Scott Clark

on August 12, 2021 | 3 Comments

The 400th anniversary of the first landing of enslaved Africans at Jamestown could have been a great and unifying moment for America. It could have reinforced the assertion of African American scholar W.E.B. DuBois that “before the Pilgrims landed we were here,” . . . Continue reading →

New In Print: Survival And Resistance In Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction In The Pacific Northwest

R. Scott Clark

on March 26, 2021 | 3 Comments

The publisher’s blurb says: Over the last thirty years, conservative evangelicals have been moving to the Northwest of the United States, where they hope to resist the impact of secular modernity and to survive the breakdown of society that they anticipate. These . . . Continue reading →

The Myth Of The Bell Rope

R. Scott Clark

on March 2, 2021 | 1 Comment

Events described by the author of the Savage manuscript, in other words, provide an opportunity to reimagine Edwards as an active promoter of the most radical dimensions of the evangelical new birth experience—a figure who, during the early months of the Awakening, . . . Continue reading →

The First Great Awakening: “A Confus’d But Very Affecting Noise”

R. Scott Clark

on March 1, 2021 | 4 Comments

It is difficult to imagine. Jonathan Edwards countenancing the “Confus’d, but very Affecting Noise” that erupted in Suffield, Massachusetts, on July 6, 1741. Yet there he stood, his loud voice rising in prayer above the din that emanated from an assembly of . . . Continue reading →

Did Public Education Really Introduce Mass Literacy?

R. Scott Clark

on February 22, 2021 | 3 Comments

Most Americans were illiterate before the creation of our public education system in the 1830s. That seems to be a popular assumption, but is it true? If you’re looking for statistics, they’re notoriously hard to get when it comes to literacy rates . . . Continue reading →

Heidelcast 172: With D. G. Hart On American Catholic: The Politics Of Faith During The Cold War (Updated)

Heidelcast

on January 25, 2021 | 11 Comments

What can confessional Presbyterian and Reformed folk learn from the history of Roman Catholicism in America? Quite a lot as it turns out. We are continuing our brief hiatus from the series, As It Was In The Days of Noah to talk with . . . Continue reading →

Of QAnon, Calvin, And the LA Times

R. Scott Clark

on January 20, 2021 | 13 Comments

It is a deep animus that would seek to tie John Calvin (1509–1564) to the QAnon-fueled wackos who stormed the American capitol earlier this month but that is what Richard Hughes tries to do in a recent editorial in the Los Angeles . . . Continue reading →

Heidelcast 171: What American Christians Can Learn From Black History

Heidelcast

on January 18, 2021 | 2 Comments

For much of the history of North America, Christianity has been the dominant religious group and a major culture-shaping force. In the USA it, as I have noted regularly here, until quite recently people spoke of the USA as a “Christian nation” . . . Continue reading →

Angela Davis Is Not A Hero

R. Scott Clark

on November 28, 2020 | 2 Comments

A hardline Communist, Davis supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and relished being a guest of Fidel Castro in Cuba — where she went immediately following her acquittal. But her greatest love was for the Soviet Union and the Eastern . . . Continue reading →

The Strange Persistence Of Theocracy In America

R. Scott Clark

on November 12, 2020 | 18 Comments

It is a deeply-held conviction among more than a few American Christians that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that it was such until relatively recently. Further, it is widely thought that if only there were a religious . . . Continue reading →

The 1619 Project Is Bad History And Boring

R. Scott Clark

on October 27, 2020 | 1 Comment

Thus to speak of America’s “founding” at all is necessarily to speak of what makes Americans a “people.” When Abraham Lincoln said that the nation was “conceived in liberty” four score and seven years before the dedication of Gettysburg Cemetery—that is, in . . . Continue reading →

Stephens On The 1619 Project

R. Scott Clark

on October 10, 2020

The 1619 Project is a thesis in search of evidence Continue reading →

National Association Of Scholars: Revoke Pulitzer Prize For 1619 Project

R. Scott Clark

on October 7, 2020 | 1 Comment

The Project as a whole was marred by similar faults. Prominent historians, most of them deeply sympathetic to the Project’s goal of bringing the African American experience more fully into our understanding of the American past, nevertheless felt obliged to point out, . . . Continue reading →

Another Podcast Recommendation: The Black History Fashion Show

R. Scott Clark

on May 9, 2020

I have been reading Lester Cahill for years and and I have been listening to his podcast since it began. Lester is one of my favorite contemporary writers and thinkers because he is independent, intelligent, passionate, and challenging. I always learn something from him. In one of his recent episodes (linked in the post) Lester critiques the recent Netflix series on Madam C. J. Walker and, in another, he introduces us to the founder of an early Black American entrepreneur. Continue reading →

Princeton Historian Rebukes 1619 Project: The Facts Still Matter

R. Scott Clark

on January 22, 2020 | 2 Comments

No effort to educate the public in order to advance social justice can afford to dispense with a respect for basic facts. In the long and continuing battle against oppression of every kind, an insistence on plain and accurate facts has been . . . Continue reading →

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American History