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The Way of Improvement Leads Home: American History, Religion, Politics, and Academic life.

John Fea

The Way of Improvement Leads Home: American History, Religion, Politics, and Academic life.

A Society, Culture and History podcast featuring John Fea
 1 person rated this podcast
The Way of Improvement Leads Home: American History, Religion, Politics, and Academic life.

John Fea

The Way of Improvement Leads Home: American History, Religion, Politics, and Academic life.

Episodes
The Way of Improvement Leads Home: American History, Religion, Politics, and Academic life.

John Fea

The Way of Improvement Leads Home: American History, Religion, Politics, and Academic life.

A Society, Culture and History podcast featuring John Fea
 1 person rated this podcast
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Best Episodes of The Way of Improvement Leads Home

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If our mailbox in the wake of the death of George Floyd is any indication, many listeners of this podcast and readers of The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog are making honest efforts to understand the meaning of phrases like “systemic racism
In this episode we talk with Wesleyan University historian Joseph Slaughter, author of Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in Early America. He offers a new account of the interplay between religion and capitalism in early American history b
She was a privileged baby boomer who grew up on a horse farm in segregated Virginia. By her 21st birthday she had worked for peace in Communist Europe, traveled the country in the cause of racial justice, marched for voting rights in Selma, and
In his new book Bridge & Tunnel Boys, historian Jim Cullen discusses how Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen represented what he calls "the metropolitan sound of the American century." In this episode of the podcast, we talk with Cullen about how
How did Ronald Reagan use the media to shape his evangelical vision for America, a vision rooted in political freedom, economic freedom, and religious freedom that is still with us today and continues to define the discourse of both of our poli
Should professional historians write for the general public? If so, who is the "public" they are trying to reach? And when historians do write for the public how do they manage to make their work readable and accessible without sacrificing scho
There was a profound difference between Christian Socialism and the so-called "Social Gospel." Janine Giordano Drake explains these differences in her new book The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Frac
Most Americans probably think of conservative evangelicals as climate change deniers who believe global warming is a hoax. If this is you, you would not be entirely wrong. But our guest today, Neill Pogue, author of The Nature of the Religious
What is fraternity? Our guest today, political scientist Susan McWilliams Barndt, discusses her father's 1973 magnum opus The Idea of Fraternity in America. We talk about the work of Wilson Carey McWilliams, the historical context in which he w
If you've listened to this podcast over the years you know that we champion "historical thinking" as one of our best hopes for sustaining and preserving American democratic life. In this episode we talk with Zachary Cote, the Executive Director
What is American evangelicalism? In her new book The Evangelical Imagination, Karen Swallow Prior, one of the most careful observers of, and participants in, evangelical life, analyses the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounde
Did you know the Jesuits were some of the largest slaveholders in colonial America? Our guest in this episode is Rachel L. Swarns, author of The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved And Sold to Build the American Catholic Church. We discuss the
In this episode we talk to historian Larry Eskridge about the film "Jesus Revolution." Eskridge, the author of God's Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America, places the film in context, discusses the legacy of the Jesus People Move
Have you ever heard someone say that they were "spiritual," but not "religious?" Our guest in this episode, Stephen Prothero, offers a "pre-history" of this idea. According to Prothero, the move from traditional/institutional/confessional "reli
If you want to learn more about the evangelical fascination with the rapture, Israel, the antichrist, and the prophetic books of the Bible you will enjoy this episode. Our guest is Daniel Hummel, author of The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism
The National Basketball Association is a multi-billion-dollar industry driven by Black athletes with global influence. But as our guest Theresa Runstedtler argues, the success of today's NBA players rests on the labor activism of 1970s NBA star
In this episode we talk with historian and biographer Nancy Koester about her new book on nineteenth-century abolitionist and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth. Our discussion focuses on Truth's lifelong pursuit of a just society, a deepe
In this episode we explore the life, ideas, and writings of one of the 20th-century most influential American historians--C. Vann Woodward, author of The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Our guest is James Cobb, author if C. Vann Woodward: America's
The American revolution happened in the midst of a smallpox epidemic. In one of the timeliest history books of the publishing season, historian Andrew Wehrman visits the podcast to talk about what the patriots of the American Revolution and the
In this episode we chat with historian Jonathan Cohen about his edited collection Long Walk Home: Reflections on Bruce Springsteen and the current state of "Springsteen Studies." Is there any connection between Cohen's current book, For a Dolla
According to historian Kathryn Gin Lum, Americans have long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term "heathen" fell out of common use by the early 1900s, but the ide
Are you an educator? An administrator? A school board member? Does your life intersect in some way with a public school? If so, this episode is for you. We talk about the religion and transatlantic roots of American public education with histor
Does the American Left have religion problem? What can progressives learn from people like Dorothy Day, Ignazio Silone, Henry Wallace, Staughton Lynd, and Cornell West? Many of these thinkers and activists offered a powerful vision for a moral
Our guest on this episode, public historian Alena Pirok, explains how John D. Rockefeller's vision of Colonial Williamsburg eventually gave way to a vision of the site championed by an early 20th century clergyman who saw ghosts. Join us for a
Have you visited the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C.? How about the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina? In this episode, historian Devin Manzullo-Thomas, author of Exhibiting Evangelicalism: Commemoration and Religion's Pr
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