Author Archives: jtfinley

There’s a Book Brewing

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As many of you know, I’ve been helping Noel Paul Stookey write his autobiography, which is about 80% finished. Now we’re starting a Substack newsletter about our book’s beginnings, our process, research, interviews, and stories that don’t appear in the book. In addition, there will be commentary on culture, faith, and social concerns. Here’s Noel’s announcement about Strings, which launched today.

There’s a book brewing…

I’m pleased to announce that there’s a Noel Paul Stookey biography (working title: FOR THE LOVE OF IT ALL) in the works. Jeanne Torrence Finley (a writer with a background in literature, culture, and religion) has been my collaborator in this project, which is about 80% completed in draft form.

The first third of FTLOIA (our shorthand title which Jeanne contends is harder to type than the full version) begins with the story of how my life wove its way through a rural childhood, moved into midwestern rock and roll sensibilities and arrived in Greenwich Village for the beginnings of Peter, Paul and Mary. As our performances, albums, and miles traveled multiplied, together we faced the political challenges of the 60s.

A life-altering spiritual decision resulted in a family move to the Maine coast where I became a gentleman farmer, a delivery person for my wife’s flower shop and built a recording studio that ultimately attracted musicians from as far away as Australia. This part of the book celebrates the reunion of the trio—for both its musical and political activity—as well as recognizes the creation of the Bodyworks Band and the spiritually reflective music that followed the popular success of the “Wedding Song.”

The third part of the book, which begins in the early 80s, finds me living in two worlds—of Peter, Paul, and Mary and of the Bodyworks Band–connecting with activists with strong spiritual callings such as Cesar Chavez, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and at the same time with TV evangelists Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker and the musicians of the fledgling Christian music industry. Neither world could easily understand what I was doing in the other.

Today Jeanne and I will launch our own Substack newsletter, called STRINGS, about the book. We’ll be writing about our process from its beginnings, share audio and video clips of interviews, dip into some of Jeanne’s background research, and provide commentary on faith, culture, and social change from the early 60s to the present. And on STRINGS we’ll be inviting your comments to add to our creative mix as we write the last fifth of the book. -nps

A Review of Passion Plays: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America

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by Randall Balmer
Hardback: University of North Carolina Press, 2022
The following review was originally published in Englewood Review of Books and is republished with permission. The author is Tell It Slant editor, Jeanne Torrence Finley

In Passion Plays Randall Balmer explores how religion connects with the origins and evolution of team sports in North America and why– especially among white males– the passionate devotion to sports has surpassed allegiance to traditional religious practice.

Passion Plays : How Religion Shaped Sports in North America

Balmer is the author of 17 other books, including last year’s Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right, in which he debunks what he calls the abortion myth, arguing that race– not abortion– fueled the growth of the religious right. A historian of American religion, he is the John Phillips Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College and a frequent commentator on religion, politics, and culture in an array of U.S. publications. Passion Plays is a departure from his other work, which is primarily about the history and politicalization of evangelicalism in America.

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Phone Call 9/11: A Poem, a Song

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Phone Call 9/11

Photo by Ged Lawson on Unsplash

It was the last phone call I’d ever receive from Mom, 
the one on that clear, burning-blue-sky morning in the Virginia mountains,
the same sky that looked down on buildings ablaze in Manhattan. 

“Something is happening in New York. Turn on your TV.”
She lived several more years in the assisted-care center
where over countless lunches I’d listen to her memories,
but about what took place that day she had no words.

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Know Your Place: Helping White, Southern Evangelicals Cope with the End of The(ir) World (A Review)

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Justin R. Phillips
Paperback: Cascade Books, 2021
Buy Now: [ IndieBound ] [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]

The following review was originally published in Englewood Review of Books and is republished with permission. The author is Tell It Slant editor, Jeanne Torrence Finley

In Know Your Place Justin Phillips examines the formative communities of his life: his racial community, white; his geographic community, southern; and his religious community, evangelical. He writes about how they shaped his racial imagination and about how the blind spots in each overlap and reinforce each other. The subtitle names both his main audience and his purpose:  “Helping White, Southern Evangelicals Cope with the End of The(ir) World.” He approaches his task as an insider who knows how to tell the truth in love to his fellow white, Southern evangelicals, and he does so with grace, eloquence, and vulnerability. As he wrote this book, he held in mind his childhood Sunday school teachers, the people he knew in the small northwest Tennessee community in which he grew up, the high school students he used to teach, and his grandparents, with whom he regrets not ever having a deep conversation about race.

A consummate scholar and storyteller, Phillips is the executive editor of The Other Journal. He holds an M.Div. from Duke Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Christian Ethics from Fuller Theological Seminary, where his focus was on how white evangelicals in the South responded to the Civil Rights Movement. He has taught at the high school, college, and graduate levels.

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Bad Faith: A Review

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Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right
Randall Balmer
Hardback: Eerdmans, 2021

The following review was originally published in Englewood Review of Books and is republished with permission. The author is Tell It Slant editor, Jeanne Torrence Finley

Randall Balmer’s Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right disabuses the commonly held notion that the Religious Right originally coalesced around what he calls “the abortion myth.” Balmer, professor of religion at Dartmouth College, knows the evangelical subculture as the son of an evangelical pastor, a graduate of an evangelical college and seminary, and the author of numerous books on the history of evangelicalism in the United States.

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