Caught a FOX News personality ridiculing outgoing NIH director Francis Collins, a card-carrying evangelical, for comparing the laboratory to a cathedral (I was watching TV at a relative's home). Collins sees his scientific vocation as doxological, as an act of worship. Sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund calls Collins a boundary pioneer who connects faith communities with science. Yet his comparison of the lab to a cathedral is precisely the metaphor that elicits mockery from FOX, the network that complains about the marginalization of faith.

"And there were shepherds in the same country abiding in the field, and keeping watch by night over their flock." digitalarchive.thelibrary.org/digital/collec…

A new book brings the trombone into American religious history. A largely forgotten figure, Homer Rodeheaver was Billy Sunday's right hand man. This may be first scholarly religious bio co-authored by a former member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/… A trombones in American religion syllabus would need to include the United House of Prayer's trombone shout bands folkways.si.edu/saints-paradis…

In December of 1972, Joe Biden lost his spouse and baby daughter in a car accident. A month later, he lost his composure at a covered dish supper and began to weep. According to Wilmington's Morning News, "Most of the audience, men and women and teen-agers, began to cry openly, some putting their heads in their hands."

Apparently, the Moral Majority once supported the wearing of face masks (to stop a disease that was not airborne). First ran across this when teaching about @anthonympetro's work on AIDS and American religion. The use of face masks was embraced by many religious groups during the flu epidemic of 1918. From @WordandWay (12/19/1918): "The Baptist Record of Iowa states that the convention held in Des Moines two weeks ago was a 'masked convention.'"

When influenza ravaged Minnesota a century ago, folks knew that #StayHomeMN was the way to be a good neighbor. Today @GovTimWalz is asking us to do the same. Stay safe, Gopher State. In 1918 Minnesota used social distancing to fight a global flu pandemic. Rules may vary by time and place, but #StayHomeMN is still good public policy.

Arguments against a statewide shelter in place order stress the differences between the cities and the country, but influenza devastated plenty of rural communities in 1918, as these clippings from Caruthersville, Missouri make clear. It was only a matter of time before the influenza epidemic reached rural areas. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, "Influenza spread to American cities and rural areas alike," killing 7,000 statewide. encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/flu-ep…

Vice calls the Christian Post's piece criticizing Christianity Today a "new schism" among evangelical media outlets. Though the gap has widened, it has a history. vice.com/en_us/article/… In 2018 Christianity Today published a story that looked at "Manhattan DA’s case involving the former heads of Newsweek and the Christian Post expands to include Olivet University" christianitytoday.com/news/2018/nove…