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By RANDALL BALMER

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, a Religious Right organization, has a history of involvement with the Ku Klux Klan in his home state of Louisiana. In 1996, while running the unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of his friend and...

By RANDALL BALMER

Sometimes I’m asked how someone who grew up evangelical—a fundamentalist, really—became an Episcopalian and eventually an Episcopal priest. I typically reply with a semi-flippant answer: It was a reaction to the aesthetic deprivation of my...

By RANDALL BALMER

Early in my career, a senior colleague warned that funky things tend to happen during the first year of a college presidency. As a new president settles into the job, poor decisions and unforced errors seem to follow almost inevitably — although they...

By RANDALL BALMER

In the late 1980s, while I was teaching at Columbia University, I received an urgent request to attend a meeting at Union Theological Seminary. I don’t recall everyone who was in the room, but the half dozen or so in attendance included several...

By RANDALL BALMER

As a historian, I’ve long been fascinated by the parallels and the contrasts between the Roman Catholic papacy and the United States presidency.Let’s start with the obvious and the superficial. Both offices have been populated only with men, the...

By RANDALL BALMER

Dear Mr. Speaker:Congratulations on your selection as speaker of the House of Representatives. I can’t imagine why anyone would want the job, but it’s yours. When I was department chair, I often compared the job to herding cats, which I confess is not...

By RANDALL BALMER

Any honest appraisal of American Christianity in the twenty-first century is sobering. Survey data and anecdotal evidence agree that Christianity is losing its hold on American life. A majority of Americans still regard themselves as Christian, but...

By RANDALL BALMER

Is there anything discernibly “Christian” about the Religious Right? If the answer is no — and I think it is — why do journalists and pundits persist in referring to the political movement overwhelmingly populated with white evangelicals as the...

By RANDALL BALMER

Dear Groupon, please forgive me for not responding sooner to your kind invitation — actually, three invitations — to review the stamp dispenser I ordered. I’m teaching several courses right now, we’re in the process of moving and my in-laws are in bad...

By RANDALL BALMER

As we prepare to celebrate Independence Day, July Fourth, let’s consider the possibility of another holiday. The United States should designate Jan. 6 as an annual Day of Remembrance, modeled on Guy Fawkes Day in Great Britain.On Nov. 5, 1605, British...

By RANDALL BALMER

Stop me if you’re heard this before. A major Protestant denomination is splitting over issues of sexual identity and practice.In 2003, it was the election and consecration of V. Gene Robinson as the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire that prompted an...

By RANDALL BALMER

“You won’t like my campaign,” Jimmy Carter warned Vernon Jordan of the United Negro College Fund toward the conclusion of Carter’s second run for governor in 1970. “But you will like my administration.” When Carter was sworn in as governor on Jan. 12,...

By RANDALL BALMER

Last November, two governors, the Republican governor of Iowa and the Democratic governor of New Mexico, overwhelmingly won reelection. Each enjoys legislative majorities from her own party.The way each governor has chosen to exercise her mandate...

By RANDALL BALMER

As someone who studies religion in North America, I’m often asked if there are any non-evangelical megachurches. The answer is an emphatic yes. I recently spent a Sunday at one, St. Andrew United Methodist Church, in the suburbs of Denver.Many...

By RANDALL BALMER

Louie Gohmert, Republican member of Congress from Texas, announced last week that he was giving up his seat to run for attorney general in Texas.At the very least, this should be entertaining.Gohmert is widely considered the dumbest member of Congress...

By RANDALL BALMER

James Huntsman wants his money back. We’re not talking here about a refund for a defective car battery or food processor. We’re talking about millions of dollars that Huntsman claims to have donated to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...

By RANDALL BALMER

In case you hadn’t noticed, the televangelists are back. They may be less obvious than before, because they have taken advantage of a fractured media landscape. Whereas during their earlier heyday, the 1980s, they competed in a less crowded field and...