Writings on American Exceptionalism
“White Evangelicals and the New American Exceptionalism of Donald Trump,” Religion and Politics (9/29/20).
“Dangerous Christian Nationalism? A conversation between Abram Van Engen and Os Guinness,” Patheos (8/20/20).
“Os Guinness, Eric Metaxas, and Their Dangerous Myths of American History,” Patheos (7/23/20).
“‘City on a Hill’ and the Making of an American Origin Story,” Religion & Politics (2/18/20).
“How America Became ‘A City Upon a Hill,’” Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities 41.1 (Winter 2020).
“What Does Thanksgiving Have to Do with the Impeachment Hearings?” LARB (11/28/19).
“Painting New Pictures,” Center for the Humanities (2/26/18).
“American Exceptionalism and America First,” Religion & Politics (1/9/18).
“Reagan called America a ‘city on a hill’ because taxpayers funded the humanities,” The Conversation (3/16/17), republished in Salon. Another version of this op-ed was republished in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch as “Saving History” (5/11/16).
“Clinton’s American exceptionalism puts a new twist on an old idea,” The Conversation (Sept. 7, 2016).
Other Public Writings
“Poetry for All,” Center for the Humanities (9/15/20)
“In Praise of Classrooms,” Avidly / LA Review of Books (May 2020), co-written with Peter Boumgarden.
“Painting New Pictures,” Center for the Humanities (2/26/18)
“Advancing God’s Kingdom: Calvinism, Calvin College, and Betsy DeVos,” Religion and Politics (1/30/17).
“Freedom and/of/from Guns,” Avidly / LA Review of Books (October 11, 2016).
“Dispatches from Paternity Leave,” Avidly / LA Review of Books (Nov. and Dec., 2013). (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
Review Essays Online
“Fear, Anger, and Finding Another Way,” review of Martha Nussbaum, The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis (Simon and Schuster, 2018), Comment (Oct. 24, 2018).
“The Law and the Gospel,” review of Baird Tipson, Hartford Puritanism: Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God (Oxford UP, 2015), Common-Place 17.3.5 (Summer, 2017).
“Legacies,” forum response to Kathleen Donegan, Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America (U of Pennsylvania P, 2014), Common-Place 15.2 (Winter 2015).
“The Good, the Bad, and the Puritans,” review of Sarah Vowell, The Wordy Shipmates (Riverhead, 2008), in Books&Culture (2008).
“Teaching Life, with Restraint,” review of Stanley Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time (Oxford UP, 2008), in Books&Culture (2008).