That Was The Week That Was
October 26 - November 1, 2025
This week I reaffirmed my Protestantism, reflected on an Iowa harvest, hoped that history could renew democracy, and shared a video of my recent talk on the women’s history of a Christian university. Elsewhere:
• A recent visit to the Vatican troubled one Protestant writer on Substack. Not so much because of theological differences, but because it prompted her to ask, “Is the entire history of the church a series of rises to power and corruptions?”
• I’m not all that interested in the debate over Christian use of contraception, but I was interested that it prompted a Christian historian to warn that “when Christians appeal to history for support of moral teachings, to history they must very well go. But they had best learn to do so carefully, in a manner that abets serious theological reflection instead of bypassing it.”
• Liberal, conservative, or anything else: Christians should be reading Eugene Peterson.
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• It’s an old theme for this blog, but well worth revisiting: can we respect human rights without honoring human responsibilities?
• At a time when more Americans are talking about the need for a “national divorce,” a political scientist explained why “there is no way to disentangle red and blue America without tremendous violence.”
• Among the many other problems facing the Democratic Party: its “‘religion problem’ is deeply entangled with race.”
• Both the mainline editors of The Christian Century and evangelical writer Peter Wehner looked at this country and found it “ever harder to avoid connecting the authoritarian dots.”
• A leading American historian advised that American history offered no especially helpful analogies for the current president.
• Evangelical Christians didn’t have to end up supporting Donald Trump, argued John Fea, who described several “forks in the road, moments in time where different choices could [have been] made” that would have led evangelicalism in other political directions.
• However belatedly, is it possible that some evangelical and Catholic churches are “quiet quitting” MAGA, by helping “members to disengage from Trump’s movement”?
• I should write more about this later, but for now: I’m grateful to see the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities refusing to support the Trump Administration’s “compact” with higher education.
• The president of one CCCU institution, Pepperdine University, encouraged Christian higher ed to follow “the Daniel Option” as the academy becomes increasingly “postsecular.”
• I’m not shocked to see a rethinking of history curricula this year, but it is surprising (and troubling) that the first year of the second Trump presidency has also seen a steep decline in teachers’ use of a popular, nonpartisan civics curriculum.
• I’m trying to figure out how to respond to generative AI in ways that enhance learning. But is it possible that giving even an inch in this area risks diminishing our students’ capacity to think?
• It never occurred to me that astronomers might not have a clear definition for what counts as a moon.
• Finally, in honor of my favorite singer-songwriter announcing a new tour with his full band, here he is singing and chatting with Norah Jones on her Playing Along podcast.