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Lauren Turek Although this year's annual Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations meeting featured fewer panels and roundtables addressing American religion than previous conferences, there were still a number of noteworthy presentations. Particularly exciting was Panel 64: Terms of Endearment: U.S. Sympathies towards Israel, 1960s-1980s , which Melani McAlister chaired. This panel included two papers that shed light on American religious leaders and the dynamics of the U.S. relationship with Israel: “Rabbi Balfour Brickner and the Interreligious Challenge to American Zionism, 1967-1982," by  Doug Rossinow and "Israel, Lebanon, and the Conservative Politics of Religious Persecution, 1978-1983," by Daniel Hummel . Rossinow's paper used Rabbi Balfour Brickner's activism and writing as a means for exploring how liberal Jewish Zionism grew more contested in the shadow of the Six Day War in 1967 and the Vietnam War. Rossinow suggested that Rabbi Bri...

Cushwa Center The Cushwa Center is pleased to announce that one of its postdoctoral research associates, Benjamin Wetzel, recently accepted a position as assistant professor of history at Taylor University (IN).  As Ben transitions into his new role, the center is pleased to welcome Maggie Elmore as a new postdoctoral research associate.  Maggie works on Latino/a Catholicism in the 20th century and comes to us from the University of California, Berkeley--you can read more about her here ! Cushwa Assistant Director Shane Ulbrich recently interviewed Ben about his research projects, his perspective on what the genre of biography can do for historians, and his thoughts on the state of the academic job market.  An excerpt of that interview is below, with the full transcript available on the Cushwa Center webpage . Image Credit: Luzerne County Historical Society SU : We've kept you busy at the Cushwa Center this year writing book reviews and event recaps, managing the center's...

By Karen Johnson. How have Catholics, especially black Catholics in the North, navigated race in twentieth century America?  Today I want to explore this question using three new books: Tim Neary's Crossing Parish Boundaries , Matt Cressler's Authentically Black and Truly Catholic , and my own One in Christ: Chicago Catholics and the Quest for Interracial Justice .   Throughout the twentieth century, racial and religious geographies were key contexts for how Catholics experienced race.  The migration of African Americans from the rural South to northern cities coupled with post-World War II suburbanization framed their experiences in profound ways. Black Catholicism is, as Tim and Matt argue, a story of conversions.  African Americans became Catholic often through the Catholic schools, which required parents to participate in religious education.  As students and their parents practiced the rituals of Catholicism, many of them found themselves becoming Catholic....

Historians of evangelicalism are very interested in defining evangelicalism. It would seem obvious that scholars of a certain field would be dedicated to defining their object of study, but historians of evangelicalism go about this task with an admirable gusto. The act of defining is central to the field. Historian David Bebbington’s famous definition, the Bebbington Quadrilateral – evangelicalism as biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism – has framed the conversation since 1989. As I listened to the excellent papers delivered by historians at the Noll Conference in March 2018 , I began to wonder why Catholic historians do not seem so interested in defining their object of study, Catholicism. Certainly we do not have quadrilateral. But should we have one? Two answers to the question about the lack of enthusiasm for defining Catholicism pop up immediately. First, Catholicism does not appear to be as controversial in American politics, and as a result, the stakes of d...