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Columbia University Professor Lectures on
Faith and the Presidency
Wed, March 26, 3:30 pm, Shrader 15
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On
Wed, March 26, 3:30 pm, distinguished historian Randall
Balmer will lecture on “God in the White House: Faith and the
Modern  Presidency.” The talk will be in
Shrader 15 and is free and open to the public. Balmer is
Professor of American Religious History at Barnard College, Columbia
University, and a visiting professor at Yale University Divinity
School. He has published a number of books and articles for the
scholarly and popular press. Balmer is an editor for Christianity Today, has written for
the New York Times Syndicate,
and has produced PBS documentaries on Billy Graham, creationism, and
American evangelicalism. His three-part TV documentary, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey
into the Evangelical Subculture in America, was nominated for an
Emmy.
Balmer’s latest work, God in the White House: How Faith Shaped
the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush
(HarperOne, 2008), will form the basis for his ENC lecture. In
that book, Balmer traces the growing significance of religion to the
nation’s highest office. He analyzes “presidential religiosity in
the last half of the twentieth century—from Kennedy's 1960 speech that
proposed an almost absolute wall between American political and
religious life to the soft religiosity of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great
Society; from Richard Nixon's manipulation of religion to fit his own
needs to Gerald Ford's quiet stoicism; from Jimmy Carter's introduction
of evangelicalism into the mainstream to Ronald Reagan's co-option of
the same group; from Bill Clinton's covert way of turning religion into
a non-issue to George W. Bush's overt Christian messages, Balmer
reveals the role religion has played in the personal and political
lives of these American presidents.”*
The lecture is sponsored by ENC’s DeFreitas Foundation.
Past
ENC History Dept. Lectures
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The
James R. Cameron Center for History, Law, & Governrnent |
Eastern
Nazarene College | 23 East Elm Avenue | Quincy, Massachusetts
02170
| Phone: 1-617-745-3000 | email: r a n d a l l . s t e p h
e n s @ e n c . e d u
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