Last night I received an invitation to join a Facebook group for “Recovering Fundamentalists.” Though I rarely indulge in public polemic, this invitation has prompted me to respond to the confusion sown by recent defectors from the movement. I shall take as representative this idea of a support group for former Fundamentalists, a variation on the recently popular concept of “spiritual abuse.” [Read more »]

First in an occasional series

For almost every research project, my worst error has been picking a topic late. Without a firm idea for a topic, I’ve usually squandered much of the available time reading the secondary literature without much profit because I didn’t approach the sources with specific research questions. When the time came to start writing, I had only a superficial grasp of the historiography and little time left to read and analyze primary sources. For my master’s thesis, I vowed to reform. [Read more »]

This summer, Abby created a scrapbook that tells our story from the time we met until we were engaged. I’ve scanned the scrapbook so that you can see it online. Of course, looking at it on a computer isn’t the same, but we thought that people far away might like to see as much of it as they can. Please take a look at Abby’s engagement scrapbook.

This past Saturday Abby and I went to the Greenville library book sale and then went hiking at Table Rock. [Read more »]

My office, which I share with Stephanie Austin, provides a refuge from all manner of undesirables (students :), coldness, and other things). However, we do have a resident office menace. It terrorizes all items smaller than one inch across, randomly yawning its metal jaws to swallow the items. The menace is attached to the wall, so only things near it are at risk. Unfortunately, I tend to stack papers, books, and other small items on top of our menace, so a great many small things daily live in fear of being captured. [Read more »]