Not All Turkey and Touchdowns
My Thanksgiving column, from the Patheos archives: The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony weren’t the first Europeans to settle in North America, nor were they the first permanent English colonists. But...
View ArticleThe Forgotten Virtue of Gratitude
Nothing new from me this week, but here is an article on gratitude that I wrote in 2008. It originally appeared at Inside Higher Education. Happy Thanksgiving! –JF It was a typical 1970s weekday...
View ArticleGiving Thanks
Professors tend to be a grumpy lot. The pay is not exactly stratospheric. University bureaucracies can be a nuisance. My own personal gripe is that I have to pay for the privilege of parking. I would...
View ArticleFree Food!
“My reading of the Bible finds plenty of reminders that it’s better to teach someone to fish than to give them fish if they’re able,” said Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker shortly after his most recent...
View ArticleThis Thanksgiving, Stop Idolizing the Pilgrims
A couple of years ago at Christianity Today, I reviewed Robert Tracy McKenzie’s excellent book The First Thanksgiving. Here’s a sample: In 1623, Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford proclaimed the...
View ArticleThe Thanksgiving before the First Thanksgiving
The Mayflower pilgrims anchored at what is now Provincetown Harbor on the south side of the Cape Cod hook on November 11, 1620 (November 20 by our calendar). When a party waded ashore, William Bradford...
View ArticleLincoln’s Thanksgiving: A Call to Gratitude, Humility, and Empathy
In the wake of a divisive election, we should revisit Abraham Lincoln's original 1863 proclamation of a national day of Thanksgiving. We'll find not only gratitude, but the virtues of humility and...
View ArticleAugustine and Thanksgiving
In Augustine’s Confessions, at the end of a discussion of infancy and childhood, there is a beautiful passage about thankfulness. [Note the quotations that follow are from Maria Boulding’s...
View ArticleA Liturgy for Thanksgiving
There is enough fixity to the Thanksgiving menu to require a certain order in order to make it turn out right.
View ArticleLincoln’s Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving started in 1863 with Abraham Lincoln, who urged not just gratitude but humility and empathy on a nation in the midst of civil war.
View Article“Take an Indian to Lunch”
In “Take an Indian to Lunch,” Freberg sings about an early Puritan politician who strategically takes an Indian out to eat in order to secure the Native American vote.
View ArticleRefugee Politics and a Tale of Two Thanksgivings
Nearly forty years ago, a minister, a rabbi, and two priests went to the White House, and together with the President and other religious leaders, they planned a special series of Thanksgiving...
View ArticleThanksgivings Past
Thanksgiving is a good holiday for historians, because it gives us a ready opportunity to deflate myths. This task doesn’t tend to win historians many friends, but it’s an important part of the job,...
View ArticleGiving Thanks for The Anxious Bench
For Thanksgiving, our blogmeister pauses to give thanks for those who write — and read — our posts at Anxious Bench.
View ArticleThanksgiving: History and Meaning
It’s easy to sort out the actual history of what nineteenth-century Americans began calling the “First Thanksgiving.” There is only one source, but it’s a great one: a letter written by Mayflower...
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