I plan some posts today from the Conference, although not in order of presentation.
I intend to blog this session so John Fea can’t post on it first. He is on the panel. I am pretty sure I will get this out first.
John Fea, Chris Gerhz, and Paul Putz are sitting on a panel where they are displaying their blogs and discussing their efforts on social media. John Fea was live tweeting it as it took place.
Jon Den Hartog is setting up the panel now and asking good questions. One, do Christian historians bring certain virtues to the discussion of history? Another question, what is the direction from here with historians and social media.
John’s model for blogging is the Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. He started it to help promote his work, and it has become his online vita. Sunday night Odds and Ends has become a regular feature of the blog. Another is: So What Can You Do With a History Major?
John’s virtual office hours is a hit on the blog. His blog has become a legitimate piece of his scholarly work with full support of Messiah college.
Is blogging scholarship? Not in the traditional manner, according to Fea. However, he says it is a form of public engagement and service.
Chris Gerhz is up now and is talking about his 3 years of blogging and his 5 (!) blogs. He also started blogging to extend his scholarly work and perhaps has written enough in 3 years to fill a book.
He has used a blog to assist with a class; and another to promote his department. He also promotes what history majors can do with their major. I think I need to start doing that with psychology majors. What can you do with a BA/BS in psychology? Might be short and repetitive but I might be surprised. Chris also runs a research oriented blog.
Writing History in the Digital Age is a book featured by Chris in his talk.
Chris learned to write via blogging, and thinks out loud about projects and topics of interest; blogging as “pre-argument.”
Now Paul Putz. Paul was a teacher and has become a historian. Paul was converted to become a historian via the Religion in American History blog. The power of blogging.
Social media takes up a lot of time and won’t make you an historian, Paul says, but it is a public expression of what he is doing as a grad student. Blogging gets his work out there where it could actually be read by other historians. My words, blogging is a high wire act; high risk, possibly high reward. Write something good and someone might notice.
As a graduate student, blogging allows Paul to join the online community of scholars and find community. I certainly agree with this point.
Paul’s paper is so good that I kind of missed the end of it. One of the cool exhortations was to promote other people with your blogging which is a good way to avoid fluffy self-preoccupation.
Now Jon Den Hartog is opening it up for questions.
Question: Should you put up content on the blog which will later be in a book? Will people buy it if they can get it on the blog. The panel members don’t do that with the exception of a book Fea did where he build chapters around some blog posts. I know from experience that the book is always going to be worth buying.
Lots of conversation about the meaning of online community ended the session.
Grove City College’s Gary Scott Smith chimes in with a question about writing op-eds and columns for major newspapers. Way to represent GCC GSS! Most of the responses indicate that social media blends seamlessly into print media opportunities. I have certainly found this to be true.
Category: history
Conference on Faith and History: Allen Guelzo on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Last night I attended the opening address of the Conference on Faith and History with the keynote speech provided by Civil War historian Allen Guelzo. Guelzo gave an excellent talk on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. He noted several misconceptions (for instance, Lincoln did not write the speech on the way to the ceremony honoring the dead at Gettysburg) and noted the inspiration for the content of Lincoln’s remarks. He presented numerous points but here are a few:
- The Gettysburg address is almost “anorexic” in verbal expression with so much packed into 272 words.
- The address marked the transition from classical speech in American politics to “middling” speech which was a more common form of oration.
- Lincoln clearly declared the importance of those who died at Gettysburg as the guardians of democratic principles worth dying for. Democratic ideals survived at Gettysburg even as many soldiers did not.
- We would not remember the elegance or importance of the address if the North had lost the war. If the South had won, the North might have faded into a “Scandinavian irrelevance.”
- In his second inaugural address, Lincoln delivered a speech which recognized that the North and South had their “hands in the toilet over slavery.” Noting that Lincoln asserted that God’s judgment had been delivered on both sides, Guelzo referred to the end of Lincoln’s address:
Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Guelzo’s speech was worth the price of admission and was a wonderful beginning to the conference.
Blogging from the Biennial Meeting of the Conference on Faith and History
Heading out to Pepperdine University to attend the Conference on Faith and History. I will present a brief paper at the conference on faulty history in the public square.
Primarily I will draw on my experience taking on David Barton’s work, and the subsequent efforts to confront advocacy history among related religious right groups (e.g., National Religious Broadcasters, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and others). Looking forward to speaking along with Fred Beuttler, Jon Wilsey in our session. Dwight Brautigam is the chair and Jon Boyd will provide reactions to the presentations.
The CFH describes itself as
…a community of scholars exploring the relationship between Christian faith and history. We welcome members from a variety of Christian traditions around the world. We also seek to learn from scholars outside the Christian tradition. Our primary goal is to encourage excellence in the theory and practice of history from the perspective of historic Christianity.
I intend to write some posts from the Conference. Watch John Fea’s blog as he will be doing the same thing.
Texas Textbook Wars Enter New Phase
Now it gets serious. Textbooks written according to Texas’ curriculum standards are slated to be evaluated in public hearings amid criticism from liberal groups, according to Politco’s Stephanie Simon.
According to Simon:
Texas students may soon be reading in their history textbooks that the American system of democracy was inspired by Moses, segregated schools weren’t all that bad and taxes imposed for programs like Social Security haven’t measurably improved society.
Those passages are among dozens of biased, misleading or inaccurate lessons identified on Wednesday by a panel of scholars commissioned by a liberal advocacy group to analyze dozens of new history, geography and civics textbooks up for review by the state Board of Education.
Unfortunately, the process appears to be about winning a political battle rather than historical accuracy. Might be time for the coalition of Christian historians to get involved. I definitely plan to raise this issue at the Conference on Faith and History later this month at Pepperdine University.
An Apologetics Conference That Should Apologize
To my way of thinking, this (click link) is an incoherent lineup for an apologetics conference. I don’t know all of the speakers but Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet seem out of place with David Barton, Todd Starnes, Tim Wildmon, and Ray Moore. Put on by Alex McFarland, the Truth for a New Generation conference to be held September 5-6 should issue a disclaimer that attendance will be hazardous to your intellectual health.
The Colson Center has a place in the program. One can find content from Stonestreet and the Center which correctly oppose Barton’s revisionist history. However, at this conference, Barton is labeled an “historical expert.” Words truly have no meaning in this alternative reality.
People who attend these meetings may get some good and accurate information in some of the sessions. However, on balance, those who attend will be less able to defend Christianity. This is one of the great tragedies of revisionist history. People come away thinking they have information to defend their faith but they are actually set up to fail. Those outside of this parallel universe know better and use the false information as a reason to dismiss the redemptive message of Christianity.