Lawrence, “Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern...
Bruce Lawrence, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age (1989) Review by A.T. Coates Lawrence’s Defenders of God argues fundamentalism needs to be understood comparatively....
View ArticleJoel Robbins, “Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua...
Joel Robbins, Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society (2004) Review by A.T. Coates Robbins’s Becoming Sinners explores the concept of cultural change through the...
View ArticleHal Lindsey, “The Late Great Planet Earth” (1970)
This generation will probably witness the end of the world. My used copy of Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth boasts almost 3.8 million copies of the book exist in print. It’s from 1974. One...
View ArticleJoel Osteen, “Your Best Life Now” (2004)
Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential (Warner Faith, 2004) Review by A.T. Coates Osteen’s Your Best Life Now! exudes positive thinking, affirming words, supernatural...
View ArticlePaul Gutjahr, “An American Bible”
Paul Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777-1880 (Stanford Press, 1999). Review by A.T. Coates Gutjahr’s groundbreaking work An American Bible examines the...
View ArticleJason Bivins, “Religion of Fear” (2008)
Jason Bivins, Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism (2008) Grant Wacker insists that students in his seminars learn to distinguish between what is important and what...
View ArticleRise of the Nones
Teaching a class on the “rise of the nones” tomorrow. Found this great 2012 video of Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about his personal attitudes toward religion. I think it nicely illustrates some of the...
View ArticleA Fundamentalist Temperance Song
Homer Rodeheaver served as song leader for the famous fundamentalist revivalist Billy Sunday. “Rody,” as friends called him, was one of the first people ever to record gospel music. Believe it or not,...
View ArticleVintage Advertising – Christmas Candy, 1910
With the holiday season in full stride, I present this lovely Christmas ad from 1910. The font is pretty illegible, but it’s an ad for Huyler’s candies, a company that operated a chain of candy and ice...
View ArticlePhonograph Pastors, 1919
Thoughts on the phonograph and techno-preachers from Literary Digest, 1919. After comparing a Presbyterian conference to H.G. Wells’s “The Sleeper Awakes,” the author suggests that phonographic...
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