I had my students in a course called “Modern America” read David Chappell’s book, A Stone of Hope, that recounts the Civil Rights Movement through the idea of a particular kind of prophetic religion.  As many readers of this blog I am sure know, Chappell received grief from fellow historians who had also written about religion and the Movement but had not made the sort of grand claims Chappell did for his book. While my students and I worked through the book and the critiques, one point came through that seemed relatively beyond dispute, Chappell was the first historian to Read more