PUBLICATIONS
Books
Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism Between the Wars, University of Alabama Press, January 2017.
Rethinking Zion: How the Print Media Placed Fundamentalism in the South, University of Tennessee Press, 2006.
Articles
“African Americans Speak to Spectacle Lynchings,” Journal of Southern Religion 17 (2015): http://jsreligion.org/issues/vol17/Mathews.html.
“To Educate, Agitate, and Legislate: Baptists, Methodists, and the Anti-Saloon League of Virginia, 1901-1910,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (117: 3, Fall 2009), 250-287.
Op-eds
“U.S. Voters Do Care What Candidates Believe” (Title assigned by editor), Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, December 9, 2011.
“The Christian Church in America Marches On” (Title assigned by editor), Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, July 12, 2009. (The op-ed was picked up by the McClatchy Wire Service and appeared in papers such as the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the Fresno Bee, as well as the website, RealClearPolitics.com.)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND INVITED TALKS
Conference papers
“Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Politics and Race, Then and Now,” American Society of Church History, New York City, January 5, 2015
“Denominationalism and the Prohibition Movement in the South,” The Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, St. Louis, Missouri, November 1, 2013.
“‘What’s the Matter with White Baptists?’ African Americans’ Initial Encounters with Fundamentalism,” International Fundamentals Conference: Early Fundamentalism and the American Century, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, May 9-10, 2013
“Religion and the American Presidency,” Panel Chair and Respondent, American Society of Church History Spring Meeting, Portland, Oregon, April 5, 2013.
“‘Too frequently they are led astray’: White Fundamentalists and Race,” Southeastern Colloquium for American Religious Studies, University of Virginia, March 2, 2012.
“State of the Field: Fundamentalism,” American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California, November 21, 2011.
“‘Every Grace that Brings You Nigh’: African Americans, Early Fundamentalists, and the Great Migration,” Social Research Colloquium, University of Mary Washington, November 16, 2011. (Jepson Fellowship presentation).
“The Protestant Assumptions of the 19th Century: Or, Don’t Look to the Founding Fathers,” American Society of Church History, Spring 2009 Meeting, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; April 18, 2009.
“To Educate, Agitate, and Legislate: Baptists, Methodists, and the Anti-Saloon League of Virginia, 1901-1910,” draft delivered to the University of Mary Washington Social Sciences Research Colloquium, September 2007.
“American ‘Religion’: Toward a Definition and an Understanding,” The Arrogance of Power: Being American after September 11th, University of Mary Washington, April 2005.
“The Containment of Fundamentalism in the South: How Pundits and Writers Moved an ‘Anti-Modern’ Religion into a Geographic Region,” Virginia Humanities Conference, Bridgewater College, March 2004.
“Some Protestants Are More Equal Than Others: The Exclusion of White Southerners from the Protestant Mainstream,” Society for the History of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., January 2004.
“Little Children, Then Won’t You Be Glad? Slave Millennialism in Spirituals and Rebellions,” Third Annual Graduate Student Conference on Southern History, The University of Mississippi, March 1998.
Invited Talks
“Religion in American Politics,” Campus Christian Community of the University of Mary Washington, March 31, 2016.
“Religion and Sex in America,” Mary Washington ElderStudy, February 24, 2016.
“America’s Holy Warrior and Holy War: John Brown and the Civil War,” Mysterium Humanum Lecture, University of Mary Washington, March 7, 2016.
“Reading the Bible in the Civil Rights Struggle: Non-violence and Violence,” Mysterium Humanum Lecture, University of Mary Washington), January 18, 2016.
“Religious Freedom: Always Approaching, Never Reaching” Fredericksburg Coalition of Reason’s Religious Freedom Day celebration January 11, 2015.
“Evening with an Expert: And Freedom Marches On,” Invited Talk on African American Religion from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Civil Rights Movement, Fredericksburg Area Museum and Cultural Center, April 9, 2013.
A Morning with Mary Beth Mathews,” University of Mary Washington ElderStudy presentation on African Americans’ interpretations of fundamentalism, November 28, 2012.
“A Jewish President? Jews and American Political Culture,” Jewish Student Association/James Farmer Multicultural Center’s Jewish Cultural Celebration, November 12, 2012.
“America’s Landscape in the Religious Imagination,” Mysterium Humanum Lecture, University of Mary Washington, March 2012.
“How Religious Were Our Founding Fathers?” Encore Presentation for University of Mary Washington ElderStudy, November 16, 2011.
Moderator, “A Christian-Muslim Conversation on Jefferson’s Statute,” University of Mary Washington’s Celebration of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom,” January 21, 2011.
Panel Member, Martin Luther King Day Breakfast, University of Mary Washington, January 18, 2011.
Moderator, post-film discussion of “The Chosen,” Jewish Heritage Celebration, Hillel and James Farmer Multicultural Center, November 10, 2010.
“The Life of Congressional Staffers,” University of Mary Washington ElderStudy, October 20, 2010.
Panel Member, “Proposed Mosque Near Ground Zero?” University of Mary Washington, September 1, 2010.
“Religion and Culture in America,” Invited Speaker, Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Fredericksburg, June 27, 2010.
“Obama and African American Religions,” University of Mary Washington ElderStudy, November 18, 2009.
“Religion and the Presidency in the 19th Century,” Bruton Parish (Williamsburg) Adult Education Forum, September 24, 2008.
“Using Writing to Help Students Find a Voice,” University of Mary Washington Writing Intensive Program’s Summer Workshop, May 2008.
“How the Media Shapes Life as We Know It,” Panel Presentation at the Virginia Festival of the Book, Charlottesville, Virginia, March 2008.
Invited speaker, Fredericksburg’s Campus Christian Community’s Table Talk discussion of religion and politics in the United States, March 2008.
“The Varieties of Evangelicalism,” University of Mary Washington’s ElderStudy Program, November 2007.
Invited speaker, Fredericksburg’s St. Georges Episcopal Church’s Adult Education Forum on Mormonism in America, October 2007.
Invited speaker, Fredericksburg’s Campus Christian Community’s Table Talk discussion of tolerance among Abrahamic faiths, March 2007.
“Just How Religious Were the Founding Fathers?” University of Mary Washington ElderStudy Program, February, 2007.
“Religion and the Civil Rights Movement,” Open Class Lecture, University of Mary Washington’s Black History Month Celebration, February 2007.
“Look Who’s Talking: Revelation in American Religious History,” Mysterium Humanum lecture, University of Mary Washington, February 2007.
“Why Do We Think of the South as Fundamentalist? Blame the Media,” Lecture hosted by the University of Mary Washington’s Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion, November 2006
“Religion in Politics: Faith in Past and Present Presidential Campaigns.” Guest Speaker at the University of Mary Washington ElderStudy Program, October 2004.
“Fundamentalism Today.” Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Fredericksburg, September 2004.
“Fundamentalism in the United States.” Mary Washington College ElderStudy Program, March 2004.
The Politics of Religious Fundamentalism: Christian Fundamentalism,’” Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Fredericksburg, April 2003.
“W.E.B. DuBois: The Souls of Black Folk,” Open Class Lecturer, Mary Washington College’s Black History Month Celebration of W.E.B. DuBois, February 2003.
Book Reviews
Book review of Eric Gardner’s Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture; Journal of American History, forthcoming.
Book review of Julie J. Ingersoll’s Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction; Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, forthcoming.
Book Review: Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel; Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 83: 3 (September 2014), 796-798.
Book Review: Out of the Mouths of Babes: Girl Evangelists in the Flapper Era; Women and Social Movements in the University States, 1600-2000, Volume17 (1), March 2013.
Book Review: Digital Jesus: The Making of a New Christian Fundamentalist Community on the Internet; Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 16:2 (November 2012), 117-119.
Book Review: The Lure of Images: A History of Religion and Visual Media in America; The Journal of American History 95:4 (March 2009), 1156.
Book Review: It’s a New Day: Race and Gender in the Modern Charismatic Movement; Church History 78:1 (March 2009), 240-2.
Book Review: In the Beginning: Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and the Making of the Antievolution Movement; The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 105:3 (Summer 2007), 523-4.
“Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Baptists in Alabama,” Review of Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie, Religion and American Culture Series, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005; H-Net, Humanities and Social Sciences Online, January, 2007, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=127671174506822.
Book Review: Hope’s Promise: Religion and Acculturation in the Southern Back Country, H-Net, Humanities and Social Sciences Online, June 20, 2005, http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-south&month=0506&week=c&msg=hcAQJfhQuaG2HGqSmLbx0Q&user=&pw=.
Book Review: Strangers in Zion: Fundamentalism in the South, 1900-1950; Religious Studies Review 28 (3) (July 2002): 296.
