askhistorians

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How old is the idea held by some American evangelical Christians that Christianity is not a religion, but a "relationship with God," and that religion means "false belief system"?	3
What were teddy-bears called before Teddy Roosevelt? Did plush bear dolls even exist before his name was lent to them?	3
IIRC, most witch-burnings happened in Protestant countries, so why is Spain (& Catholic Europe generally) still seen as the epitome of Early Modern religious repression? Has the term "Protestant Inquisition" gained any currency to convey that Draconian religious enforcement was common to both sides?	3
All four of the five US presidents of the Revolutionary generation who had a university education got their degrees at American universities. Were they looked down upon by their European contemporaries for not having studied at established, centuries-old European institutions instead?	3
How was Lee Harvey Oswald able to return to the US after having defected to the USSR?	3
I assume most of the earliest Hollywood actors came from a theatre background in some capacity. Were they usually from less respectable theatre genres? Was there a sense that Hollywood was first peopled by the "dregs" of the stage who had nothing to lose?	3
When were Gothic novels first referred to as such? Was there an earlier name for this broad literary genre?	3
Can modern Mexican government corruption be traced in any way to colonial Spanish governing practices?	3
How was Japanese culture different prior to Chinese influence?	3
Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene contains affected Middle English diction that would've been as archaic to him as Shakespeare's diction is to us now. Earlier than that, did any Middle English authors attempt to write in a way that invoked pre-Norman Old English?	3

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