How mainline Protestants got involved in urban renewal
Mark Wild complicates the conventional account of postwar white flight.
The formation of Martin Luther King Jr.
Motivated in part by the whitewashing of a radical legacy, Patrick Parr explores King's seminary years and the roots planted there.
Woodrow Wilson’s troubling faith
Wilson adopted a brand of social Christianity that justified white supremacy and more.
Neighborhoods real and imagined
Ideas about the ghetto matter. They always have.
Native Son
In the last six weeks police officers have killed at least five unarmed African American men: Eric Garner, John Crawford, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, and Michael Brown. This does not include Kajieme Powell, who was carrying a steak knife when two officers gunned him down just a few miles away from the site of Brown’s death. As much as some commentators might want to dismiss the protests as the cynical work of “screamers” and “race hustlers,” there is no doubt that the unrest sprung in large part from a righteous indignation at this nation’s long and persistent record of state violence against black men.
How we got here
Were liberal democracies ill equipped to manage the crises of the 1930s? It was a genuine question, as Ira Katznelson underscores in this engrossing book.
Health and wealth
Kate Bowler chronicles how millions of Americans came to see not just wealth but also health as a birthright of the born again.
The rapid "revitalization" of American cities
Don’t be fooled by the news out of Detroit: cities are cool again. One of the big takeaways from the 2010 census was that, after a century-long love affair with suburban subdivisions, affluent Americans are jumping back on the (worldwide) urbanizing bandwagon. For a new generation of hipsters, yuppies and retirees, city living is not only aesthetically and culturally preferable. It is an essential piece of a progressive lifestyle.
This sensibility springs from a degree of historical consciousness.
The moral contours of our new Gilded Age
When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio announced his papal name, he stoked hopes for a season of reform in the spirit of St. Francis. In the weeks since, the Argentinian pontiff, who was shaped in part by his experiences in Buenos Aires’ villas miserias, has not disappointed.
Pope Francis has garnered headlines with his simplicity, as well as with his calls for a “Church for the poor.” The surprise his actions have met reflects, among other things, this: that when it comes to the matter of the haves and have nots, Christians these days tend not to rock the boat.
Moral Minority, by David R. Swartz
David Swartz recovers the story of the unlikely coalition forged by progressive evangelicals in the 1960s and 1970s.