Duke University Press Log

Q&A with the editors of French Historical Studies

The incoming editors of French Historical Studies (FHS), Kay Edwards and Carol Harrison, discuss the future of the journal under their joint editorship, including information about forthcoming special issues and what topics they would like to see submitted to the journal. See the most recent issue here, and subscribe to the journal here.

How would you like to shape French Historical Studies in the future?

CAROL: In the future I think we’d like to continue some trends that we see in the field and that FHS is starting to reflect, publishing a lot about France and French history beyond the borders of metropolitan France. There will be more colonial material, which is where the field is going. We have exciting material on South East Asia and North Africa in the pipeline now that is being submitted.

KAY: We've also said that we've wanted to expand the chronological framework. FHS is open to anyone working in France or in these related fields over pretty much any chronology. But our submissions currently do tend to be much more modern. We want to get people who are doing medieval work or late antique work to think of us as well, since we definitely are a highly ranked scholarly publishing venue.

How do you see the journal developing over the next few years?

KAY: I would like to see us broadening the journal not just chronologically and in terms of international content, but also in terms of broadening it to more of an international academic audience. We currently are getting more and more submissions from German and Scandinavian lands, we've always gotten a few French, but we’d like to broaden our European, East Asian, African, Latin American base.

CAROL: I think we have a couple of ideas or projects on board now that are also about reminding the rest of the historical profession of how important French history is and how important French historians are to the rest of the profession. So I would say Michael Breen’s forum for instance. We have a group of articles by young French social historians that we’re arranging to translate into English to publish in the journal. I think this is important because social history is a much more lively tradition in France right now than it is in the Anglophone world. These are scholars who unless you work in French history and read French and keep up with things in France, you probably don’t know about. I think scholars outside of French history should read this forum to find out what’s going on in French history, and particularly in French social history. Similarly, we’ve got a special issue coming up in 2017 that we've just started planning on archives so we’re recruiting scholars who will be writing about archives not just as neutral repositories where the facts are, but as institutions that shape the way history is written, so as active participants in the writing of history. I think that’s the kind of special issue that will remind the rest of the profession that French historians are really crucial to shaping history.

Speaking of special issues, are there any other forthcoming special issues that you would like to talk about? How do you select special issues?

KAY: There is a French food special issue coming out that is primarily a project of the past editors. It is about food very broadly defined in French history. There is an article on coffee, another about WWII and food allocations and foraging, a wide variety of what defines food--not just a recipe book--particularly because France is so strongly associated with food culture.

CAROL: There will be articles on wonderful food, the introduction of coffee, there will be articles on lack of food, hunger, there’s an article on late 19th-century shop girls and their relationship to food, you know where they ate lunch and if they ate lunch. So that’s going to be a very exciting issue. And then further down the pipeline--this is more speculative--but 2018 is the 50th anniversary the events of May 1968. This is another one that I think will be important for FHS and I hope for non-French historians. Nineteen sixty-eight having obviously had a global reach, but the events in France were central. So that’s another one where we’d like to put together articles on France, on the Francophone world outside of France, and think about this anniversary. We would like FHS to lead the way a bit in talking about the German ‘68 and Mexico City ‘68 and Berkeley ‘68 and pull it together.

What would you like researchers to know about the submission process?

KAY: Don’t be afraid to send all different types of articles. Just because we’re FHS doesn't mean we only, as Carol said, do the metropol. There’s probably going to be a conception that we only do cultural stuff because that’s what France is. And the whole point is that we’re trying to get a wide variety of methodologies and subjects and approaches.

Who should be submitting to this journal that hasn't been?

KAY: A lot of early modernists and pre-modernists don’t think they should submit to FHS, in part because the name implies a very national framework that sometimes work and sometimes doesn't.

CAROL: They may be working on a territory that was not in fact called France. But if it’s Francophone, we’d like to see more early modern, medieval, and more French scholars! We do publish in French.

KAY: It does not have to be a translated work. In terms of material, I just want to see diversity. I really don’t want people to assume that because it’s French that it must be cultural or that it must have theoretical work. I have nothing against theoretical work, but I think there may potentially be stereotypes. I would like to see a reconstruction of environmental drainage, as long as this is something that hasn't been done.

CAROL: One thing our predecessors started that I think we want to continue is publishing more editorial pieces. Instead of very closely researched monographs, single author traditional research articles, FHS has been publishing these editorial pieces that are often reflections on the profession. We've published a recent one by David Bell that’s thinking about global history and reflections on the profession generally, on French history, and its role in the globalizing historical profession. I think there is room for developing that kind of editorial piece. We invite people to submit not just the research articles, but editorial articles that reflect the state of the field and the kind of the research that’s being done.

Jimmy Creech Celebrates Marriage Equality in NC

Former Methodist minister Jimmy Creech wrote about his experience fighting for marriage equality for same-sex couples in his book Adam's Gift: A Memoir of a Pastor’s Calling to Defy the Church’s Persecution of Lesbians and Gays in 2011. The book is new in paperback this fall. In this post he writes about his joy after a judge overturned North Carolina's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage on Friday afternoon, October 10. 

Like everyone, I didn’t expect and wasn’t prepared for the US Supreme Court’s history-making announcement on Monday, October 6, that opened the door to marriage equality in North Carolina. I expected the court to make a positive ruling, but not before June 2015.

In May, Joni and Gina invited me to officiate at a wedding ceremony for them on October 18. Their plan was to be legally married in the District of Columbia on the 17^th, and have a wedding ceremony the next day with their families and friends. While they badly wanted to be legally married in their home state, waiting until June 2015 was just too long a wait. When the US Supreme Court’s decision made their legal marriage in North Carolina a possibility, the three of us were excited that they might not have to wait. However, because The United Methodist Church had taken my credentials of ordination in 1999 because I violated church law by conducting a wedding for two men, someone else would have to conduct the ceremony on the 18^th for it to be legal.

On Wednesday, I returned home from an errand to find a message on our answering machine. Ken and Steve, and Michael and Mike, had called to ask if I would conduct a double wedding for them on November 15, should a federal judge declare North Carolina’s ban on same-gender marriage unconstitutional. I’ve known both couples for more than twenty years.  Ken and Steve have been together for twenty-eight years and Michael and Mike, for more than twelve. I couldn’t say no to them, and I really wanted to officiate at Joni and Gina’s wedding. But, I didn’t have the credentials.

It was deeply painful to me for many reasons when my credentials were taken away in 1999. Losing the ability to celebrate weddings with loving couples was an especially painful one. Without credentials, I could no longer pronounce a couple married or sign a marriage license. I agonized about what to do now that marriage equality was about to become a reality in North Carolina. I knew I could not regain my credentials from The United Methodist Church; so, I began to search for another way to get the credentials I needed. I discovered the American Marriage Ministries, a non-denominational interfaith church based in Washington State, and was able to obtain from it the necessary credentials to legally officiate weddings.

Friday evening, Chris and I were dressed to go to Durham for a production of The Phantom of the Opera, with our daughter, Natalia. It was late afternoon. We’d waited all day, anticipating an announcement regarding marriage equality in North Carolina. We’d been waiting all week for the announcement, which now seemed wouldn’t come until the following week.  Then the news broke a little before 6:00 PM that US District Court Judge Max Cogburn had declared that the North Carolina constitutional marriage amendment, denying same-gender couples the right to marry, was unconstitutional. When the amendment passed in 2012, the pain was excruciating. With the news of Judge Cogburn’s decision, the joy was extravagant! Dressed for the opera, we went down to the Wake County Justice Center where marriage licenses were being issued to same-gender couples. Phantom would have to wait.

As we approached the Justice Center entrance, we were surprised to find Ken and Steve walking just ahead of us. They were preparing to grill hamburgers when they heard the news. Even though they planned a November wedding and had plenty of time to get their license, they couldn’t wait. The day was too historic not to be part of. They left the hamburgers and hurried to the Justice Center. When Ken and Steve saw us, they immediately asked if I’d officiate their wedding as soon as they got their license instead of waiting so it would be legal right away. I enthusiastically agreed. And, so it happened: on the steps of the Wake County Justice Center, with Chris and Lewie Wells as witnesses, Ken and Steve spoke vows of love and fidelity to each other and I pronounced them married! This was the first legal marriage I’ve been able to do since 1999. Ken and Steve still plan to have their ceremony on November 15 for their families and friends, along with Michael and Mike. Now, I look forward to officiating at the marriage of Joni and Gina on October 18.

Chris and I went to the Justice Center to witness history and to be with the same-gender loving couples who had waited so long to enjoy the rights and protections – and respect – that marriage provides. It was an extraordinary scene, filled with laughter, smiles and tears! Ms. Laura Riddick, the Wake County Register of Deeds, graciously extended the hours of her office from its usual closing time of 5:15 to 9:00 PM to accommodate the couples. Her staff was fantastic, greeting the couples with smiles and patiently guiding them through the application process with sincere kindness. One staff person left her station to bring me a tissue so I could dry the tears from my eyes as I watched Ken and Steve fill out the marriage license application.

I’ve never doubted marriage equality would come to North Carolina, as it will come eventually to all fifty states. I just didn’t expect it to come so swiftly and in such a dramatically surprising way. It was ironic, with all the religion-based arguments in support of the NC marriage amendment, that the case upon which Judge Cogburn’s decision was based was a lawsuit brought by the United Church of Christ and other clergy from around the state. They argued that the marriage amendment denied them the free exercise of religion because it denied them the ability to conduct marriage ceremonies for same-gender couples. Not only did the amendment deny the right of same-gender couples to marry in North Carolina and legal recognition to couples married in other states, the amendment made conducting same-gender marriages a punishable illegal act for clergy.

Beyond being history-making, the advent of marriage equality in North Carolina inaugurates a reality of stability, security and protection for same-gender couples heretofore unknown on a personal level. Last night, I saw same-gender couples leaving the Justice Center, walking toward the heart of Raleigh holding hands with a newfound sense of freedom, equality and dignity. Bigotry dies hard and much more work is necessary to achieve full legal equality and social acceptance for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. A big step was taken in North Carolina toward its ultimate demise on Friday, October 10, 2014. We can celebrate!

 

Tikkun Wins 2014 Magazine of the Year Award

Tikkun Managing Editor Alana Price accepts the RNA 2014 "Magazine of the Year: Overall Excellence in Religion Coverage" award. Credit: Dawn Cherie Araujo.

Congratulations to Tikkun, winner of the prestigious 2014 "Magazine of the Year: Overall Excellence in Religion Coverage" award from the Religion Newswriters Association! The Religion Newswriters Association's awards recognize journalism excellence by measuring a magazine's grasp on a diversity of religion issues.

Tikkun, published quarterly, offers analysis and commentary that strive to bridge the cultural divide between religious and secular progressives. By bringing together voices from many disparate religious and secular humanist communities to talk about social transformation, political change, and the evolution of our religious traditions, Tikkun creates space for the emergence of a religious Left to respond to the influence of the religious Right and the distortions of global capitalism, while simultaneously critiquing reductionist views that sometimes prevail in liberal and progressive circles.

The most recent issue of Tikkun is available online here. To subscribe to Tikkun, visit www.tikkun.org.

To learn more about the award, please visit www.tikkun.org/rna.

 

Two Articles from French Historical Studies Win Awards

We are happy to announce that Richard C. Keller and Jaime Wadowiec have both won awards for their articles featured in French Historical Studies.

Richard C. Keller won the Koren Prize for his article, "Place Matters: Mortality, Space, and Urban Form in the 2003 Paris Heat Wave Disaster" (volume 36, issue 2). The William Koren Jr. Prize is awarded to the outstanding journal article published on any era of French history by a North American scholar in an American, European, or Canadian journal.

For her article, "Muslim Algerian Women and the Rights of Man: Islam and Gendered Citizenship in French Algeria at the End of Empire" (volume 36, issue 4), Jaime Wadowiec won the Berkshire Conference Article Prize. The Berkshire Conference Article Prize is for the best article in the fields of the history of women, gender, and/or sexuality by a woman who is normally resident in North America.

Read the articles, made freely available until the end of June.

Our congratulations to both the winners!

Remembering Robert Bellah at the AAR

The 2013 Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in Baltimore will be hosting a special session in memory of Robert Bellah, who died on July 30. “Remembering Robert Bellah (1927-2013)” will join students, distinguished colleagues, and friends of Bellah to share memories of his life and work. If you plan on attending, this session will take place on Sunday, November 24 from 5:00-6:30 p.m.

Robert N. Bellah was the Elliott Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He coauthored The Good Society and Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and has sold more than 500,000 copies. His other books include Imagining Japan, The Broken Covenant,and Beyond Belief. In 2000 President Clinton awarded Bellah the National Humanities Medal.

Perhaps best known for these bestselling books, Bellah was a truly visionary leader in the social study of religion. For more than four decades, he examined the role of religion in modern and premodern societies, attempting to discern how religious meaning is formed and how it shapes ethical and political practices. Duke University Press’s The Robert Bellah Reader (2006) brings together twenty-eight of Bellah’s seminal essays. Through critical and constructive inquiry, this Reader probes many of our deepest social and cultural quandaries, quandaries that put modernity itself, with all its immense achievements, at mortal risk. Through the practical self-understanding such inquiry spurs, Bellah shows how we may share responsibility for the world we have made and seek to heal it.

Professor Steven M. Tipton, co-editor of this work and one of the panelists for the AAR session, teaches sociology and religion at Emory University and its Candler School of Theology, where he is a Professor and Director of the Graduate Division of Religion. In a recent piece about Bellah’s legacy, Tipton explains that “Bellah illuminates the often implicit moral visions we hold and contest in the modern world . . . . Deep is the well of the past, and from it Robert Bellah drew living water. Bright and clear and encompassing, the flow of his work will go on through ever-widening waves of resonance in our thinking and arguing over religion.”

We’re excited that the AAR session and its distinguished panelists will help pay tribute to Bellah’s outstanding intellectual contributions. If you cannot attend, please consider picking up a copy of the Reader in order to enjoy Bellah’s legacy.

Farewell to Robert Bellah

We are sad to learn of the death this week of sociologist Robert N. Bellah. He was 86. We were proud to publish The Robert Bellah Reader in 2006. Perhaps best known for his coauthored bestselling books Habits of the Heart (1985) and The Good Society (1992), Bellah was a truly visionary leader in the social study of religion. For more than four decades, he examined the role of religion in modern and premodern societies, attempting to discern how religious meaning is formed and how it shapes ethical and political practices.

Bellah taught at the University of California, Berkeley, for more than thirty years. The Berkleyan ran an interview with him when we published The Robert Bellah Reader. An active commenter on politics and religion, he was both hopeful and cautious about the future: "I believe very much in the unity of human beings, that we are all part of a common project, and that we need all the resources we can get, because we're faced with challenges in the modern world that threaten our extinction as a species. My effort is to go all the way back to the Paleolithic and look at how human beings have tried to understand the world. That's my broadest definition of religion - it's the way human beings have tried to understand the world."

Read additonal appreciations of Bellah in Christianity Today, First Things, and Black, White, and Gray.

Mexico's Religious Question: Ben Fallaw on Catholicism and the State

As millions of Catholics in Latin American prepare to celebrate Easter under a new Pope, we're pleased to present a guest post by Ben Fallaw, Colby College professor of Latin American Studies and author of the new book Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico and Cárdenas Compromised: The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán. 

Eleven years ago, I went to Mexico City to research Mexico’s “religious question” of the 1930s:  the political role of the Church after an anticlerical revolution in a Catholic country. Not long after I arrived, the city virtually shut down as millions flocked to greet Pope John Paul II.  He came to canonize Juan Diego, the Nahua
shepherd who witnessed the Virgin of Guadalupe’s apparition in 1531. A few weeks later, my archival work uncovered why the campaign to make Juan Diego a saint was championed by Bishop José de Jesús Manríquez beginning in 1939. Manríquez and his priests had just beaten back attempts by federal teachers to turn his diocese of Huejutla (Hidalgo state) into a revolutionary laboratory for land reform and indigenous empowerment. For them, Juan Diego symbolized the pure “Indian Church” menaced by “the Beast” of the state. This was but one of many historical connections between Mexico’s postrevolutionary religious question and Church-state tensions today. 

Two months after the publication of Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico, Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first Latin American pope. North Americans (non-Catholics among them) celebrated the choice, lauding the Argentine’s simplicity, devotion to the poor, and New World origins. The latter was hard to miss: the backdrop for an early public appearance as Francis I featured a large image of la Guadalupuana. Reaction to Francis I in Latin America was much more divided. 

While some North Americans see Bergoglio as a fierce critic of what John Paul II famously called savage capitalism, many Latin Americans see in him a bitter foe of the new left. Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is a nemesis of the IMF, but she also championed birth control and marriage equality. Bergoglio denounced the latter as “a destructive attack on God’s plan.” They and their supporters often view each other through the lens of history: Fernández remembered the silence of the Argentine Church’s hierarchy during the Cold War dictatorship, Conservative Catholics charged Fernández was prejudiced by leftist anti-Catholicism dating back to the nineteenth century. The conflict has underscored the Latin American Church’s paradoxical position as an institution both non-partisan and politicized, both very influential yet feeling persecuted by the postcolonial state.   In Mexico, I chronicle how the postrevolutionary state’s consolidation created many lingering historical grievances among Catholics. For instance, Bishop Manríquez’s counterrevolutionary jeremiads were provoked in part by federal teachers’ destruction of hundreds of sacred images in Huejutla on 3 June 1935.

Of course, Mexico in the 1930s and Argentina today are profoundly different. Among other things, Argentine Catholics never rebelled against a revolutionary state as did Mexico’s cristeros in the late 1920s. Nevertheless, the election of Francis I has reopened wounds in Mexico, too. Some are quite recent. As I was writing the conclusion to Religion and State Formation in August 2010, the mayor of Mexico City sued the Archbishop of Guadalajara for libel after the prelate denounced legalization of same-sex marriage in the capital, and the press was reporting on the jailing of six young women charged with seeking abortions in the conservative Catholic state of Guanajuato. Just last year, the PRI, the party that claims to have institutionalized the revolution, returned to the presidency a dozen years after its presumed demise in part by courting important bishops. At the moment, new president Enrique Peña Nieto is negotiating with the Vatican, reportedly offering the return of Church influence over public schools in return for a visit by Francis I.

The PRI’s willingness to abandon its heritage of revolutionary secularization in return for political advantage reflects one of Religion and State Formation’s main concerns: the ability of Catholics and Catholicism to impede the revolutionary transformation of society in the 1930s. The Church refused to allow a political party or insurgency to act in its name. However its organizational matrix, its ideology, and its lay (and in a few cases clerical) leadership galvanized grassroots-level resistance to postrevolutionary state-making. The Vatican endorsed this “radial strategy” which successfully turned much of Mexican civil society against the revolutionary state, but it was in many ways a strategy that emerged from the base. In Campeche, caciques led syncretic gremios (confraternities) to oppose peasant cooperatives and elect sympathetic candidates. In Guerrero, Catholic women mobilized male voters, and catechists and priests convinced peasants to reject federal teachers and land reform. Some even supported the sporadic attacks against schools and ejidos (land grants) termed the Second Cristero War (c.1932-38). In Guanajuato, congressman and army reserve officer Salvador Azaña collaborated with cristero insurgents, catechists and allied politics to block agrarian reform.  Again and again, the Church’s radial strategy stymied revolutionary change.

  Historians long assumed that President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-40) put to rest Mexico’s vexing
religious question though negotiation and compromise with Catholics, ending anticlerical regulations in return for Catholic support. I found that the clergy and much of the laity saw Cárdenas’s détente as the opportunity for a strategic shift rather than acquiescence to the postrevolutionary regime’s hegemony.   After 1940, Catholic leaders formed the right-of-center opposition party known as the PAN that eventually ousted the PRI from the presidency in 2000. The Church also “rechristianized” Mexican society in part by encouraging Catholics to marry sacramentally, zealously defending its social teachings from a state still seen as anti-Catholic. Indeed, Catholics opposed federal schooling because it was coeducational and allegedly mandated sexual education.

Seen in this light, contemporary Church-state tensions in Argentina and in Mexico result not just from national traumas like the Dirty War and the Mexican Revolution but also from deeper conflicts over the definition of marriage and human  sexuality. The direction and outcome of these conflicts has profoundly shaped and will continue to profoundly shape everyday life and politics in the region. In many ways the Church in Latin America prevailed for close to two centuries.  Under Francis I it confronts an uncertain future, one clouded by the same problems that beset the Church in Europe and North America as well as the region’s unresolved religious questions.

 

Gay Marriage: Continue the Fight for Equal Rights, Says Creech

Congratulations to the thousands of gay couples getting married in New York this week! We loved this series of beautiful portraits of the couples in the New York Times. But it's important to remember that gay couples in most states are still not allowed to marry, and that clergy continue to be condemned when they perform same-sex marriages. Jimmy Creech was an early crusader for the rights of same-sex couples and lost his credentials in the Methodist Church over the issue. He recounts this story in his recent book Adam's Gift. In this interview with Gay.com, he explains that the Bible does not condem homosexuality. People had no understanding of sexual orientation at the time the Bible was written, he says, and the book condemns specific acts that might apply to heterosexuals as well. Creech is optimistic about the future of gay marriage, saying, "mainline Christian communities will fully embrace the LGBT community with equal standing and participation in the near future. Christian communities actually have come a long way toward this goal in a relatively short time." Creech adds that we all have a responsibility to fight bigotry: "those of us who are straight must challenge anti-gay bigotry and malice whenever we encounter it and challenge elected officials who perpetuate persecution. An unjust world belongs to all of us, and all of us have an obligation to end the injustice."

Upcoming Author Events in the Triangle

On Friday, July 8th from noon-1:30pm (free, no ticket required, BYO lunch) stop by Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC for "Lunch with the Author: Jimmy Creech, former United Methodist minister discusses his memoir Adam’s Gift."  

Note: Attendees are encouraged to bring their own lunch or call Foster's Market next door and they'll make up a boxed lunch for you. Call in advance or the day of event: 919-967-4383.

 

On Saturday, July 16th at 2pm (open to the public) stop by Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, NC. Author Jimmy Creech will lead a discussion (book club format) of his book, Adam's Gift: A Memoir of a Pastor's Calling to Defy the Church's Persecution of Lesbians and Gays. How often do you have the author (and subject) of a book lead your club meeting?

 

On Sunday, July 17th from 3-4:30pm stop by the Durham County Library in Durham, NC for "Meet the Author: Karla Holloway." Dr. Karla FC Holloway, James B. Duke professor of English at Duke University, will read from her book, Private Bodies, Public Text: Race, Gender and a Cultural Bioethics. A book signing will follow the reading.

 

Gay Marriage Stays in the News

As New York state legislators are debating legalizing same-sex marriage in their state, the issue makes news in other venues, too. The New York Times reported this weekend that President Obama's views on the issue are "evolving." He plans to host a Gay Pride reception at the White House later this month and has been raising money in the gay community. But Jimmy Creech, author of Adam's Gift and a former Methodist minister who lost his credentials for performing same-sex marriages, recalls meeting with Obama's staff when he was a senator. Creech expected Obama to be sympathetic to gay marriage. "But he said the conversation turned frosty when same-sex marriage came up. 'We talked about this as an expression of bigotry, using religion to justify discrimination,' Mr. Creech said. 'They did not like that; the word 'bigotry' was inflammatory to them."

Just as President Obama's views are evolving, the Associated Press reports that "a growing number of pastors in the United Methodist Church say they're no longer willing to obey a church rule that prohibits them from officiating at same-sex marriages, despite the potential threat of being disciplined or dismissed from the church." Jimmy Creech plans to attend the trial of Reverend Amy DeLong in Wisconsin this week. She faces the loss of her credentials for admitting to being in a lesbian relationship herself and for marrying a lesbian couple. While the outcome of the trial is far from certain, clearly the Methodist church has come a long way since Creech's own trial. The AP reports that "hundreds of pastors from states including Illinois, Minnesota and New York have signed statements in recent weeks asserting their willingness to defy the rule."

And in one last sign of changing times, ministers of various denominations in Omaha, Nebraska, where Jimmy Creech was pastor when he was tried by the United Methodist Church in 1999, unveiled a proclamation callling for an end to religious and civil discrimination based on sexual orientation. KETV reports, "Rev. Eric Elnes, pastor of Countryside Community Church, said the proclamation was created because, 'we were just fed up with the popular notion that the Christian point of view is anti-gay.'" Creech will be preaching in Omaha in October.

In his book, Creech describes the struggle against discriminiation in the church and in society as ongoing. He is ever hopeful that progress is being made. "What gives hope its power is the confidence that whatever the present situation is, it is not final. Injstice and evil are temporary, not eternal. The future is always open to change and new realities (p. 336)." Clearly change has come since Creech's 1999 trial, thanks in no small part to activists like him.