Sorting by

×
Skip to main content
All Posts By

James Bratt

James Bratt is professor of history emeritus at Calvin College, specializing in American religious history and especially the connections between religion and politics. Starting in Fall 2016 he took a break from blogging on The Twelve to teach in China and on the Semester at Sea, which venues afforded him some welcome distance from the USA’s descent into its current mortal illness. But now he’s back in the States, looking for hope. His most recent book (which he edited and completed for the late John Woolverton) is  “A Christian and a Democrat”: Religion in the Life and Leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Sojourner Truth

As an escape from the terrorists--that is, from the obsessive coverage designed to keep us in fear, the media in…
November 21, 2015

Confidence Game

by James Bratt Two weeks ago, in his post “Ordinary Dust,” Jason Lief memorably described one of those bad teaching…
October 24, 2015

Casablanca

What makes a movie memorable? So memorable that we can watch it on almost infinite repeat? Well, it has to…
September 11, 2015

Doctor Zhivago

For this fourth in a series on the five films I could watch forever, I get to talk about David…
August 29, 2015

Godfather I

I first saw The Godfather in May 1972, three months after its release and right on the heels of my…
August 15, 2015

Chinatown

Here’s the second installment, gentle reader, in my series on five favorite films—more precisely, five movies that I’ve found worthy…
July 31, 2015

The Big Sleep

A while back I came across one of those on-line teasers: name five movies that you can watch again and…
July 18, 2015