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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

For Christians, the season of Advent, the four Sundays leading up to Christmas, is the season of hope and anticipation. It is a glorious time, one seemingly at odds with the calendar itself because it coincides with the shortest days of the year (in...

By RANDALL BALMER

“Religion and Christianity are the two biggest things missing from this country,” Donald Trump declared.Despite (or perhaps because of) the messenger, the argument for Christian nationalism has been amplified in recent years, and Christian nationalism...

By RANDALL BALMER

While the eyes of the nation remain focused on the presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, equally riveting dramas are playing out in various states, including here in New Hampshire.The nation’s governors and gubernatorial...

By RANDALL BALMER

Faithful America, the activist organization associated with mainline Protestantism, has issued what it calls its “most important list of top Christian-nationalist False Prophets ever.” What is Christian nationalism? After hearing the refrain about the...

By RANDALL BALMER

After the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the candidate declared, “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”Trump’s acolytes agreed. Franklin Graham credited “God’s hand of protection” to spare the life of the former...

By RANDALL BALMER

As someone who was reared as an evangelical, I resisted for decades the charge that white evangelicals were racist. Sure, I knew about segregation academies and places like Bob Jones University, but I was also aware that many evangelical megachurches...

By RANDALL BALMER

Like many campuses across the nation, Dartmouth College has been roiling with unrest over the war in Gaza.On May 1, the college’s president called in local police and state troopers with riot gear to arrest 89 students, faculty, staff and community...

By RANDALL BALMER

I wish I could say that the death of Beverly LaHaye on April 14 signaled the end of an era, but I’m afraid that’s not the case.Please understand that I’m not reveling in her demise (or anyone else’s), but she together with antifeminist Phyllis...

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...