Three things are sacred in Texas, its history, the Bible, and football. Here the Alamo is a pilgrimage site, and High school football is almost equal in importance to Sunday church attendance.

This past summer, I integrated Texas History and the Bible in a dream elective course titled, “A Borderlands Reading of Deuteronomistic History.” Central to the course was a reading of Joshua to 2 Kings side by side with Texas borderlands history from the late nineteenth century through the early decades of the twentieth century. The primary topics of discussion were the intersecting themes of empire, conquest, exile, family, gender, and violence….