In this episode we talk with Wesleyan University historian Joseph Slaughter, author of Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in Early America. He offers a new account of the interplay between religion and capitalism in early American history by focusing on 19th-century Protestant entrepreneurs and how they infused faith into their business and, in turn, how those businesses shaped our capitalist economy today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

She was a privileged baby boomer who grew up on a horse farm in segregated Virginia. By her 21st birthday she had worked for peace in Communist Europe, traveled the country in the cause of racial justice, marched for voting rights in Selma, and led anti-Vietnam protests at Bryn Mawr College. Our guest in this episode is distinguished American historian and former Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust. She talks about her memoir, Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury. Learn more...

In his new book Bridge & Tunnel Boys, historian Jim Cullen discusses how Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen represented what he calls "the metropolitan sound of the American century." In this episode of the podcast, we talk with Cullen about how Joel and Springsteen were shaped by their lives on the periphery of New York City. Our conversation ranges across several subjects, including politics, cosmopolitanism, history, the culture of the 1980s, and even Taylor Swift! Learn more about your...

How did Ronald Reagan use the media to shape his evangelical vision for America, a vision rooted in political freedom, economic freedom, and religious freedom that is still with us today and continues to define the discourse of both of our political parties? In this episode we talk to Diane Winston, the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the University of Southern California, about her new book Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan's Evangelical Vision. Learn more...

Should professional historians write for the general public? If so, who is the "public" they are trying to reach? And when historians do write for the public how do they manage to make their work readable and accessible without sacrificing scholarly integrity? What role does politics, and even activism, play in popular history writing? These are questions that the historical profession, and in some respects, the nation, are currently wrestling with. Our guest today, historian Nick Witham,...

There was a profound difference between Christian Socialism and the so-called "Social Gospel." Janine Giordano Drake explains these differences in her new book The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement. Drake argues that Protestant reformers associated with Mainline Protestantism and the Federal Council of Churches undermined workers' efforts to bring about social democracy in the United States. Learn more about your ad...

Most Americans probably think of conservative evangelicals as climate change deniers who believe global warming is a hoax. If this is you, you would not be entirely wrong. But our guest today, Neill Pogue, author of The Nature of the Religious Right: The Struggle Between Conservative Evangelicals and the Environmental Movement, suggests that this story is much more complicated. We discuss how evangelicals moved from environmental stewards in the 1970s to opponents of global warming by the end...

What is fraternity? Our guest today, political scientist Susan McWilliams Barndt, discusses her father's 1973 magnum opus The Idea of Fraternity in America. We talk about the work of Wilson Carey McWilliams, the historical context in which he wrote his magisterial work of political theory and history, and why we still need his ideas today. The Idea of Fraternity was just re-released in a 50th anniversary edition with an introduction from McWilliams Barndt. Learn more about your ad choices....

If you've listened to this podcast over the years you know that we champion "historical thinking" as one of our best hopes for sustaining and preserving American democratic life. In this episode we talk with Zachary Cote, the Executive Director of THINKING NATION, a non-profit organization devoted to helping K-12 social studies students mature into citizens who are empowered to analyze information effectively, think historically, and write persuasively in order to build a better democratic...

What is American evangelicalism? In her new book The Evangelical Imagination, Karen Swallow Prior, one of the most careful observers of, and participants in, evangelical life, analyses the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounded the movement and unpacks some of its most deeply held concepts, ideas, values, and practices. Our conversation revolves around topics such as revivalism, wokeness, self-improvement, domesticity, consumerism, empire-building, and the Bible's...

Did you know the Jesuits were some of the largest slaveholders in colonial America? Our guest in this episode is Rachel L. Swarns, author of The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved And Sold to Build the American Catholic Church. We discuss the Jesuit's 1838 sale of 272 men, women and children for the purpose of saving Georgetown University and the implications of this sale for one enslaved family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode we talk to historian Larry Eskridge about the film "Jesus Revolution." Eskridge, the author of God's Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America, places the film in context, discusses the legacy of the Jesus People Movement for contemporary evangelicalism, and tells us a bit about his own experience with the movement. If you have seen "Jesus Revolution" and want to learn more, this episode is a must listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Have you ever heard someone say that they were "spiritual," but not "religious?" Our guest in this episode, Stephen Prothero, offers a "pre-history" of this idea. According to Prothero, the move from traditional/institutional/confessional "religion" to seeker "spirituality" runs through the Eugene Exman, the religion editor at Harper Brothers from 1928-1965. Throughout his long career, Exman published Harry Emerson Fosdick, Howard Thurman, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and others. Join...

If you want to learn more about the evangelical fascination with the rapture, Israel, the antichrist, and the prophetic books of the Bible you will enjoy this episode. Our guest is Daniel Hummel, author of The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation. We talk with Dan about John Nelson Darby, Plymouth Brethren, Dwight L. Moody, Dallas Theological Seminary, Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsey. John Hagee, and much more! Learn more about your ad...

The National Basketball Association is a multi-billion-dollar industry driven by Black athletes with global influence. But as our guest Theresa Runstedtler argues, the success of today's NBA players rests on the labor activism of 1970s NBA stars who fought with owners for economic control over their labor and a Black style of hoops born in the playgrounds of urban America. Runstedtler is the author of Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of...

In this episode we talk with historian and biographer Nancy Koester about her new book on nineteenth-century abolitionist and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth. Our discussion focuses on Truth's lifelong pursuit of a just society, a deeper knowledge of God, and a sense of community for her and her family. Koester's book is titled We Will Be Free: The Life and Faith of Sojourner Truth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode we explore the life, ideas, and writings of one of the 20th-century most influential American historians--C. Vann Woodward, author of The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Our guest is James Cobb, author if C. Vann Woodward: America's Historian. In our conversation we discuss Woodward's liberalism and how he balanced historical writing with social activism over a career that spanned nearly five decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The American revolution happened in the midst of a smallpox epidemic. In one of the timeliest history books of the publishing season, historian Andrew Wehrman visits the podcast to talk about what the patriots of the American Revolution and the founding fathers thought about public health. His book Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution is a must read for anyone who cares about the relationship between political liberty and the government's role in...

In this episode we chat with historian Jonathan Cohen about his edited collection Long Walk Home: Reflections on Bruce Springsteen and the current state of "Springsteen Studies." Is there any connection between Cohen's current book, For a Dollar and A Dream: State Lotteries in Modern America, and his work on Springsteen? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

According to historian Kathryn Gin Lum, Americans have long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term "heathen" fell out of common use by the early 1900s, but the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear. Americans still treat large swaths of the world as 'other' due to their assumed need for conversion to American ways. Lum is the author of Heathen: Religion and Race in American History and she...

Are you an educator? An administrator? A school board member? Does your life intersect in some way with a public school? If so, this episode is for you. We talk about the religion and transatlantic roots of American public education with historian David Komline, author of The Common School Awakening: Religion and the Transatlantic Roots of American Public Education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Does the American Left have religion problem? What can progressives learn from people like Dorothy Day, Ignazio Silone, Henry Wallace, Staughton Lynd, and Cornell West? Many of these thinkers and activists offered a powerful vision for a moral and just society--challenging conservatives, liberals, and Marxists to think differently about the world. In this episode we talk to Vaneesa Cook, author of Spiritual Socialists: Religion and the American Left. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Our guest on this episode, public historian Alena Pirok, explains how John D. Rockefeller's vision of Colonial Williamsburg eventually gave way to a vision of the site championed by an early 20th century clergyman who saw ghosts. Join us for a conversion on Pirok's new book, The Spirit of Colonial Williamsburg: Ghosts and Interpreting the Recreated Past.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Have you visited the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C.? How about the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina? In this episode, historian Devin Manzullo-Thomas, author of Exhibiting Evangelicalism: Commemoration and Religion's Presence of the Past, helps us make sense of these sites of evangelical heritage.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices