One of the accomplishments I’m most proud of during my tenure at the Anxious Bench is recruiting Melissa Borja to join our ranks. All of this led me to ask why Trump was polling so highly with white evangelicals:Īre there insights religious historians can offer here? Whereas Clinton spoke explicitly and reverently about her Christian faith in the speeches analyzed, Trump referenced God twice (once irreverently), while referencing himself 850 times. We uncovered a number of fascinating findings, particularly in comparing their rhetoric about God and faith. Together with my research assistant Katelyn Guichelaar, I published a linguistic analysis of Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s campaign speeches. My second post was a harbinger of what was to come. I loved the community of historians covering a wide swath of topics and perspectives, all interested in exploring “the relevance of religious history for today.” My first post was a reflection on attending the past and future of Christian feminism in light of attending a conference featuring women like Letha Scanzoni, Diana Butler Bass, Cherice Bock, Grace Ji-Sun Kim, and Austin Channing Brown. When Beth invited me to join Anxious Bench, it seemed like a perfect fit.

Sometimes just Facebook posts, sometimes on blogs like Dordt’s in all things. But I also saw that the substance of my research and writing was of real interest to people who were not academics, especially to Christian women-few of whom had pursued careers in academics. As much as I love a good academic book, I understand that for many people, reading 300+ page footnoted academic monographs isn’t part of their daily routine. I wrote a brief piece and discovered rather quickly that in all likelihood more people would read that one post than would ever read the book itself. One of my first forays was at the request of Oxford University Press, who asked me to promote my 2015 book A New Gospel for Women on their OUPblog.

At that time I’d just begun to blog, only very sporadically.

Needless to say, a lot has happened in the past five-and-a-half years. It was Beth Barr who first recruited me tojoin back in the summer of 2016. The time has come, though, and so I thought I’d take some time to reflect on my years here at the Anxious Bench. If I’m honest, I haven’t exactly been contributing regularly for the past few months, but I put off crafting this farewell post because I was reluctant to make it official. This is my last post as a regular contributor to the Anxious Bench.

Kristin kobes du mez books