Lecturer
Office: TMH 107
Email: ebx27@txstate.edu
Education:
B.S., Journalism, Abilene Christian University, 2004
M.A., History and Theology, Abilene Christian University, 2016
Ph.D., American Religious History, Florida State University, 2026
Primary Focus:
US History
Specialty:
History of Religion, News Media
Biography:
Paul A. Anthony is a historian of religion in the United States, focusing particularly on new religions, fundamentalism, and other conservative movements in the long 20th century. He is completing his PhD in American Religious History from Florida State University, where his dissertation explores the history of fundamentalist Mormonism and its relationship with the news media, especially during Texas's raid of the Yearning for Zion Ranch in 2008, which he covered as a newspaper reporter.
Paul’s peer-reviewed publications include studies of anti-Equal Rights Amendment and anti-evolution advocacy among Churches of Christ, the origins of Christian Contemporary Music, and news media coverage of communal religions in the 1970s and '80s
Select Publications
Peer Reviewed Publications
“Idyllic, Exotic, Dangerous: Race, Gender, and the Frontier in News Coverage of Communal Religions,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 29, no. 4 (May 2026), 100–25.
“Less Power to Ya: Materiality and Sublation in Early Christian Rock Music,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 36, no. 3 (October 2024), 164–78.
“‘Is Humanism Molesting Your Child?’ Lottie Beth Hobbs, the Death of the ERA, and the Birth of the Religious Right,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 93, no. 3 (September 2024), 565–86.
“An Evolving Approach: The Public Response to Darwinism at Abilene Christian University, 1935–1989,” Stone-Campbell Journal 20, no. 2 (Fall 2017), 173–88.
“‘Drenched with Evolution’: Reuel Lemmons and Churches of Christ in the Texas Textbook Controversy of 1964,” Restoration Quarterly 59, no. 4 (4th quarter 2017), 213–23.
“‘Untruths and Propaganda’: Surveying the 1985-86 Abilene Christian University Evolution Controversy,” Restoration Quarterly 58, no. 1 (1st quarter 2016), 39–53.
Essays and Public Scholarship
“Between Church and State: Fundamentalist Mormon Life in the Shadow of Depression, War, and the FBI,” Mormon Studies Review 13, no. 1 (March 2026), 37–54.
“Who Will Save You from the ‘Cult’?” ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera (March 2026).
“Religion or Cult? Journalism, History, and the Challenge of New Religions,” Perspectives on History (August 2024).
“‘Lies from the Living’: Wrestling with History When You Were Part of It,” Perspectives on History (July 2024).