Essay at CC: Theodore Parker and America’s Religious Nativism

I wrote an essay for Christian Century‘s “Then and Now” column that, in the wake of #Brexit, looks at the unfortunate history of religious nativism. It looks at nineteenth-century minister Theodore Parker’s abolitionist theology to touch on how religion can serve to both unite and divide people. Here’s the key quote: Religion, within this particularly political sphere,…

Reflections on #MIBushman

This last weekend I had the great privilege to attend “Mormonism in the Academy: Teaching, Scholarship, & Faith,” a colloquium held in honor of Richard Bushman. You can read the full program and bios at this site. It was a mix of intellectual rigor, personal reflection, and charitable engagement–all hallmarks of Bushman himself. I went…

Christopher Grasso on “Religious” and “Secular” in the Early Republic

I’ve been thinking a lot about secularism lately. Not just because my own faith tradition seems to be grappling with it in new and interesting ways, but also because it has become a point of emphasis in my new book project on the political theologies of the Transcendentalists. (I argue that their beliefs offer a…

Reassessing KINGDOM ON THE MISSISSIPPI

Over at Juvenile Instructor I posted an essay looking at one of the classic texts in New Mormon History and a foundational book on the subject I’m currently engaging: Robert Flanders’s Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi. Besides evaluating its strengths and shortcomings I also gauge how the field has developed in the last half-century. Here’s the…

Coming to Terms with Arrington’s Legacy: My Remarks at #MHA2016

[This weekend I had the privilege of responding to a paper by Gregory Prince titled “Leonard Arrington and the History Division: Lessons to be Learned.” Greg’s paper was drawn from his brand-new biography of Arrington, which I’ve already highlighted here. Below is my response. Note that this isn’t necessarily a review of the book, as…

Mormon History Association Conference, Snowbird 2016

Tomorrow my wife and I will be flying out to Snowbird for the Mormon History Association’s annual conference. This is one of our favorite outings every year, and MHA is one of my favorite academic events. This year I had the great privilege to work with Melissa Inouye in putting together the program, aided of…

Questioning the “Age of Democratic Revolution”

Over at The Junto I have an essay on defining “Democratic” in the long-used title, “Age of Democratic Revolutions. An excerpt: In short, I tried to get my students to recognize the inchoate and contested nature of “democracy” during this crucial era. Far from a predetermined trajectory toward what we came to celebrate as democratic…

New Book: Nicholas Frederick, “The Bible, Mormon Scripture, and the Rhetoric of Allusivity” (FDUP)

I taught a summer course at BYU at the same time as Nick Frederick once and got to know him a bit. Besides being exceptionally kind he’s also immensely smart. One of the first products of the Claremont Mormon Studies Program, Nick now teaches religion at BYU full-time. This is his first book, of which…

Religion and the Founding: Part I of Probably Many

A couple of days ago there was a Twitter debate between historians Sam Haselby and Annette Gordon-Reed over Thomas Jefferson’s “Christianity.” Haselby wrote a great book on the origins of American religious nationalism, which I reviewed in William and Mary Quarterly, and recently wrote a provocative essay on the secularism of the American founding. Gordon-Reed,…

Normalizing Gun Violence on Campus

When I first read about the shooting incident on UCLA’s campus this morning I immediately feared that it was over a grade dispute. Especially at this time of the year, when final grades are being doled out, many professors live in fear of students literally fighting back over anything short of the perfect grade. This anxiety…