Presenting on "The Catholic Hour" at the 2025 Meeting of the Southeastern American Studies Association

This spring, I headed to New Orleans to present a paper, “Forgotten Frequencies: Network Religious Radio and the Rise of Tri-Faith America.” The paper focused especially on NBC’s The Catholic Hour in the 1930s. The popular program emerged during an era rife with nativism and Protestant nationalism, and it powerfully demonstrated that Catholics could be both fully American and fully Catholic. Yet, to package Catholicism for a mass audience, Catholic organizers had to make strategic compromises that maintained Catholicism’s distinctiveness but didn’t offend non-Catholic listeners. This balancing act, I argued, helped pave the way for for Americans during and after World War II to see Protestants, Catholics, and Jews as co-equal pillars of American religious life.

Here’s a short Randolph News article about my paper: Kenaston Presents at Southeastern American Studies Association Conference.

Methodism and Racial Justice with William & Mary Wesley Foundation

I was recently invited to give a talk about Methodist history and racial justice to the William and Mary Wesley Foundation. While the first half focused on standard denominational history, the second half I focused in on lessons we can draw from the Student Christian Movement, using my Modern American History article. Overall, the experience was a lot of fun, and I’m thankful to Rev. Ryan LaRock for inviting me!

Review of _Dixie Heretic_ by Tennant McWilliams

My review of Dixie Heretic: The Civil Rights Odyssey of Renwick C. Kennedy by the late Tennant McWilliams is in the December 2024 issue of the Journal of American History! The book is a deeply researched biography of white Southern minister Renwick Kennedy and his (often unsuccessful) efforts to change his fellow white Christians’ attitudes about race and poverty.

You can read my review here.

Randolph Votes

This fall I spearheaded and served as the de facto chair of the nonpartisan #RandolphVotes initiative. Our aim was to boost voter participation and foster civil discourse on campus during the 2024 Presidential election. #RandolphVotes ensured Randolph College fulfilled its obligation under section 487(a)(23) of the Higher Education Act to make a “good faith effort” to distribute voter registration forms to their students.

As part of our initiative, promoted voter registration, organized transportation ot the polls, hosting voter education events, and promoted voter information on our Instagram and TikTok.

In a democracy, civic engagement is essential. Electoral politics shape the well-being of our communities. As I said in this interview, “participating in the democratic process is a vital way to maintain Randolph’s mission to engage the world, live honorably, and experience life abundantly.”

Feel free to check out our step-by-step voter registration guide.

News about the American Culture Program

Check out this great new article about my time leading the American Culture Program.

Co-leading the American Culture Program has been a blast! The program is unique to Randolph College and is a great example of what makes Randolph special – small classes, experiential learning, and focused on ideas that matter.

For the last two years, we explored the intersection of labor, leisure, and music in the US. We traveled across town in Lynchburg, as well as to Charlottesville, DC, Knoxville, the Highlander Folk School, Memphis, and Nashville and met some amazing labor organizers, activists, musicians, politicians, scholars, and more! We several thought-provoking films, read some excellent books and articles, and had many lively conversations. The theme, “Working for the Weekend,” provided us all with the opportunity to reflect on what we want from our lives and how we can help make the world we want to live in. But it was also a lot of fun – I often described the American Culture Program as an opportunity to design my own “nerd vacation.”

Huge shoutout to my wonderful colleague Julio Rodriguez, our logistics expert Luisa Carrera, and to two great cohorts of students. And a massive thanks to the MANY people who we met with and learned from over the last two years.

You can listen to our collaboratively-created “Working for the Weekend” spotify playlist, review our 2024 syllabus, or see some more pics from our travels on our Insta.

Presenting "The Greatest Story" at the 2024 Meeting of the Business History Conference

A few years back, I spent a few days at the University of Akron library digging into the Advertising Files of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. I wanted to learn more about “Greatest Story Ever Told,” a religious radio program from the late 1940s and early 1950s that was later made into a TV program and a biblical epic. When Greatest Story emerged in 1947, it differed from all other religious radio programs at that time because it was sponsored by a commercial company.

As I was looking through Goodyear’s records, I came across several speeches and letters where Goodyear officials explained why they thought sponsoring a religious radio program was a good idea for their business. I was struck by how Goodyear used the tools of the advertising industry (eg, case studies, surveys, ratings, etc) along with an interfaith religious advisory committee (kind of like this one from the Coen brothers’Hail Caesar!) to tell the story of the Christian New Testament in a way that appealed to the mass market. As I was looking through the archive, I remember thinking, “Wow! I don’t know how to make sense of this yet, but this is really interesting!” Not long after that archive visit, however, I realized I needed to wrap up my dissertation prior to the start of WWII. So I set my findings on Goodyear and The Greatest Story aside.

I decided to return to those materials this fall, however. I wanted to test the waters to see if I wanted to stretch the timeline of The Big Three into the 1940s. I co-pitched a panel called “The Business of National Patrimony” to be presented at the Business History Conference in Providence, RI. My wonderful co-presenters were Dael Norwood and Whitney Martinko, and we were lucky to have Wendy Woloson as our commeter and Seth Rockman as our panel chair. Shout-out to Dael for doing most of the legwork in regards to getting the panel together!

My paper, “The Greatest Story: Commercial Radio and Religion in the American Century,” argued that Greatest Story Ever Told helped facilitate the rise of an imagined liberal consensus on religion during the Cold Year. At the same time, I also showed how the program’s well-publicizied innovative sponsorship model helped convince the FCC that commercial program could serve the public interest, leading to a foundational 1960 FCC ruling that enabled the rise of televangelism. I received some excellent feedback from both Dr. Woloson and from the audience that will help me revise.

This was my first time attending the Business History Conference, and I really enjoyed it. Special thanks to Randolph College’s Professional Development Committee for supporting my trip to Providence!

Signs of Faith Against Fascism

This week, I had the pleasure of hosting my dear friend, Eric Martin, as he talked about some of the ideas in his new book about religious responses the Unite the Right Rally in Charllotesville in 2017. The event went exceedingly well, and I encourage all of you to buy The Writing on the Wall, published by Wipf and Stock publishers.