Randall Stephens

Vernon Burton's Clemson talk later this week. John Hope Franklin described Vernon's The Age of Lincoln book as: "A remarkable reconsideration of nineteenth century America [that] seamlessly recounts secession, Civil War, and Reconstruction and renders them newly relevant to the 21st century.”

I’ve written a chapter in an edited volume on it. That was a book on 1976 the Year of the Evangelical with LSU press. I have a couple other chapters in the pipeline.

I'm looking forward to giving this short talk next week at Clemson University. The roundtable will be to honor the work and career of Vernon Burton. Vernon will be giving a keynote on Thur night: “The First Amendment and Lincoln’s Constitutional Legacy.”

feeling compelled to post this new yorker reject from years ago, for some reason

New edited volume just arrived

From abolitionists to fundamentalists: the transformation of the Wesleyan Methodists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries This article analyzes the cultural trajectory of a small, but influential denomination that formed in 1843. Wesleyan Methodism first emerged as an abolitionist protest against the Methodist comprom...

On this day in US history (1784), John Wesley chartered the first Methodist church in the United States. For more on how Wesleyan Methodism developed in the long nineteenth century, why not check out this OPEN ACCESS article by @randalljstephens.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Live Updates: U.S. Attacks Iran as Trump Calls for Overthrow of Government

“The American-led campaign’s scope went well beyond the attack against Iran’s nuclear program last year that Mr. Trump oversaw. This time, Mr. Trump vowed ‘to raze their missile industry to the ground” and ‘annihilate their navy’…”

The Right-Wing Nonprofit Serving A.I. Slop for America’s Birthday Dennis Prager once wrote a two-part op-ed advocating that wives should have sex with their husbands even when they don’t want to. Now his right-wing organization, PragerU, is partnering with the Trump...

We the slopopagandists. “Last year, PragerU unveiled the Founders Museum, a ‘partnership’ with the White House and the U.S. Department of Education featuring A.I.-generated video testimonials from luminaries of the American Revolution.“

“We have several honorary Doctor of Law-and-Order degrees to confer...” Paul Conrad takes on Governor Reagan for his militant, culture war style and his targeting of California universities, June 1969.

Paul Conrad sums up America's shift to the right under Nixon, June 1969.

Letter to editor, Napa Valley Register, 6/26/1953, in support of McCarthy. Sounds familiar: "Senator McCarthy stands for Americanism and Christianity, and who has sufficient evidence to disprove that statement? His method may be crude, but he knows where he is going and no one has stopped him yet."

Gallup poll on civil rights from March 1965:

Do you think the Johnson Administration is pushing integration too fast, or not fast enough?

Too fast..................34%
Not fast enough....17%
About right............38%
No opinion.............11%

“Right—the Job Corps should be restricted to well-bred, well-to-do people like us.” Herblock on Nixon’s dismantling of LBJ’s Great Society programs, May 1969.

The cartoon shows a front room with a record sleeve that reads "law and order statements and other trumpet pieces by J. Edgar Hoover." Below that there's a record playing and a speaker blasting. In the back room sits J Edgar Hoover listening to "illegal FBI wiretaps." In the background are file cabinet drawers labeled with the names of Cassius Clay, Martin Luther King Jr., and Elijah Mohammed.

“Back room at the record shop.” Herblock on the hypocrisy of Nixon's rhetoric and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, with its law and order talk, doing illegal surveillance on African Americans, June 1969.

Right-wing cartoonist Vic Lockman depicting Kennedy and the liberal National Council of Churches in lockstep, 1963.

A fundamentalist view of a hippie, 1971.

Paul Conrad draws Reagan pointing at Nixon. Reagan is holding a rope leash in his hand that is attached to a goat. The goat has a sign on its back that reads, "Pat Brown is to blame for all my problems!"

“Get a goat and call it Lyndon…!” Paul Conrad depicts California Governor Reagan advising President Nixon about blaming his predecessor, April 1969. Pat Brown was governor of California before Reagan.

Casey Means, Critic of Mainstream Medicine, Poised to Become Nation’s Top Doctor

"She is skeptical of some vaccines & has repeated the debunked claim that they could be linked to autism. She has spoken out against bans on raw milk....She has frequently told Americans not to trust the medical system, titling one chapt of her best-selling book: 'Trust Yourself, Not Your Doctor.'"

"Sorry—we're feeding all the mouths we can." Herblock on Nixon's budget priorities, May 1969.

John Barron just wants you to know that the state of the union is tremendous and that, many people are saying, like nothing ever seen before.

You had me at “low-water toilets,” sir. [Tears streaming down face.]

Episode 88: Sonya Bonczek Gives Us the Scoop on Book Publicity Kate Carpenter interviews Sonya Bonczek, director of publicity at UNC Press, about how book publicity works and what authors can do to promote their books.

Usually, I chat with historians about writing. But this week we're pulling back the curtain on book publicity! @sonyabonczek.bsky.social, dir of publicity at @uncpress.bsky.social, joined me to demystify the work of publicists and give some advice to authors. Listen: tinyurl.com/sonyabonczek 🗃️ 📚

Trump to America tonight: "This is the new Wagon Queen Family Truckster. This is a damn fine automobile, if you want my honest opinion...You think you hate it now, but wait til you drive it."

FBI head Kash Patel defends ‘frat bro’ hijinks with US hockey team in Milan As multiple investigations unfold back at home footage emerged of Patel whooping it up with team in locker room

“The phone video…shows [FBI Director]Patel dressed in a white USA hockey shirt, gold medal slung around his neck. He chugs on a bottle and splatters beer spray around the locker room as the team sings Toby Keith’s Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.”

C-SPAN says caller that sounded like Trump wasn’t the president After a man with a speech pattern similar to the president's called C-SPAN using a pseudonym Trump once favored, speculation spread.

eu.usatoday.com/story/news/p...

Sounds like Trump, or a really good impersonator, called in to C-SPAN as “John Barron” to rant incoherently about the Supreme Court’s tariff decision. Something about the line “Chuck Schumer, who can’t cook a cheeseburger…” seems particularly on brand.

Martin Luther King, Jr. on GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, 7/17/1964: Goldwater "articulates a philosophy which gives aid and comfort to the racists. I think [his campaign is] obviously an attempt to appeal to all of the fearful, the insecure, prejudiced people in our society."

The Republican Party Has a Nazi Problem How did the GOP become a haven for slogans and ideas straight out of the Third Reich?

“The Dept of Homeland Security used an anthem beloved by neo-Nazi groups, ‘By God We’ll Have Our Home Again,’ in a recruitment ad. The Labor Dept hung a giant banner of Donald Trump’s face from its headquarters, as if Washington were Berlin in 1936, & posted…‘America is for Americans.’”

H. L. Mencken in 1922: the Ku Klux was...simply the secular arm of the Methodist Church....The intimate relations between church and Klan, amounting almost to identity, must have been plain to every intelligent American."

A reporter in the Af American St. Louis Argus on America's most famous evangelist in 1928: "the Billy Sunday meetings have had much to do with the revival of the Klan spirit in St. Louis...we all know that the spirit of the KKK occupied the front seats at Billy Sunday's meetings at the Coliseum."