John Fea
John Fea teaches history at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and is the author of Why Study History: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past (Baker Academic). He blogs daily at The Way of Improvement Leads Home.
On Sunday, after a tragic week of race-related killings in Dallas, Minneapolis, and Baton Rouge, I took a seat in my white evangelical middle-class megachurch in central Pennsylvania. I didn’t know what to expect, but as the sermon began I found myself pleasantly surprised. My pastor used his scheduled sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) to address the issue of race in America.
Historian with a cause
Martin Duberman delivers the first biography of Howard Zinn since Zinn’s death in 2010. He treats Zinn with kid gloves but does not completely shy away from criticism.
The original separationist
The phrase "separation between church and state" does not appear in the Constitution. Nor does the concept originate with Thomas Jefferson.
