Richard T. Hughes
Richard Hughes serves as Scholar in Residence in both the Center for Christianity and Scholarship and the College of Bible and Ministry at Lipscomb University. He has worked at the intersection of religion and American culture over the course of a 50-year career, specializing in the history of Churches of Christ, religion and American identity, religion and race in America, religion and American higher education, and the role of Christian primitivism in American life. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 18 books including Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America (Eerdmans, 1996); Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories that Give Us Meaning (University of Illinois Press, 2018); and The Grace of Troublesome Questions: Vocation, Restoration, and Race (Abilene Christian University Press, 2022).
Article
Discerning Vocation through Loss, Suffering, and Death
Volume 1 | June 6, 2022
Theme: Pedagogy, Suffering and Death, Vocation
Discipline: Religious Studies, Theology
In September of 2002, exactly one year after the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, essayist Mark Slouka reflected on how those events had challenged the American psyche, defined for so long by the myth of happy endings. Here in the New Canaan, in the land of perpetual beginnings and second chances,…
Video
Biblical Studies: An Asset or Liability for People of Faith?
Volume 1 | June 6, 2022
Theme: Biblical Scholarship, Debate
Discipline: Religious Studies
One of the touchstones of Protestant traditions like the Churches of Christ is the importance of the Bible. Within churches, the Bible is read as Holy Scripture that discloses divine will. Within seminaries and universities, the Bible is read through the lens of biblical studies, and it is evaluated critically. Does biblical studies as a…
Book Review
Review of Jason Mahn, Neighbor Love through Fearful Days: Finding Purpose and Meaning in a Time of Crisis
Volume 1 | June 6, 2022
Theme: Suffering and Death, Vocation
Discipline: Religious Studies, Theology
If a sacrament is something ordinary that becomes a vehicle of grace—something like water, bread, or wine—then Jason Mahn has written a deeply sacramental book. Begun as a daily journal during six of the darkest months of 2020, this is a book of stories—stories that chronicle ordinary acts of courage, of neighbor helping neighbor, of…
Article
The Blinders that We Wear: When Biblical Scholarship Becomes a Liability for People of Faith
Volume 1 | June 6, 2022
Theme: Biblical Scholarship, Debate
Discipline: American Religious History
When Dean Greg Sterling asked me to help explore whether biblical studies are an asset or a liability for people of faith, I thought to myself, “Why, they are both, of course.” I have always prized biblical studies for their ability to illumine the biblical text. Yet, when biblical scholarship becomes an end in itself,…
Video
Christian Higher Education: Questioning Assumptions and the Asymptote of Truth
Volume 1 | June 6, 2022
Theme: Christian Higher Education, Religion & Politics
Discipline: American Religious History
Video
Vocation and Suffering: The Paradox of Lament and Appreciation
Volume 1 | June 6, 2022
Theme: Vocation
Discipline: Religious Studies, Theology
Video
White Evangelical Alignment with Political Forces of Our Time
Volume 1 | June 6, 2022
Theme: Religion & Politics
Discipline: American Religious History
Article
“The Myth of the Eternal Return”: From the Primitives to American Religion and Politics and Points In Between
Volume 1 | June 6, 2022
Theme: Religion & Politics
Discipline: American Religious History
The noted phenomenologist of religion, Mircea Eliade called it “the myth of the eternal return”—the attempt on the part of those he describes as primitive people to escape their own profane time, their own historical moment, and to live in the beginning of time, in the primordium, in the time of creation. When Eliade uses…