The Scopes trial, one of the most famous court cases in United States history, was held one hundred years ago this month. Though it may seem irrelevant to twenty-first-century Christians, the trial in the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, had a lasting impact on the dynamics of Christianity in America. No one was more aware of the enduring legacy of the Scopes trial than one of Dayton’s residents, the late Rachel Held Evans. Evans moved to Dayton in 1994, where... Read more
Have you ever used the words heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or masochistic? Or talked about sadomasochism? Have you ever expressed concern about child sexual abuse, or pedophilia? Then in linguistic terms as much as conceptual, you owe a sizable debt to a cultural revolution that occurred in the United States in and around the year 1893. I have argued that the year 1893 marked several critical turning points in American history, broadly defined, and especially in matters of religion. This was... Read more
“The task of city design involves the vaster task of rebuilding our civilization.” Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities In the wee hours of the morning of January 1, 1900, civil engineer Burton J. Ashley stood among hundreds of his brothers and sisters in Zion Tabernacle. They were tired from the all-day consecration service that had begun at 6:30 a.m. on the previous day. Ashley, however, felt energetic. His moment had come. Just before the pause for refreshments at 2... Read more
For today’s post, I’m going to focus a bit more on some of the theological frameworks I have been working on for an article– a “first look”, as it were, at the full article that’s due out this year. It may be a bit more theological than usual, but in thinking about how figures in the fourth century talk about Christ and how to read scripture, there’s still a lot for us to think through. Throughout the Gospels, Christ’s weaknesses... Read more
Lynneth Miller Renberg’s discussion of archival silences and archival shouting in Listening to Archival Silence: History and Hidden Voices last month started me thinking about how we extract information from the archives. We can’t find what’s not there of course, but even when materials are present, finding them depends on how or whether they’ve been categorized, per the example of Sor Juana de la Cruz in the Karin Wulf article Renberg cites. Various factors affect archival research, like institutional collecting... Read more
In 1893, Congregationalist minister Josiah Strong (1847-1916) was a leading figure in the Social Gospel movement that was such a prominent feature of American Christianity in the late nineteenth century. The great church historian Sidney Ahlstrom calls him “a legend in American history, as both a religious and a secular figure.” But by modern standards, his ideas combined two approaches that to us seem utterly irreconcilable, of radical social reform and scientific racism. His story epitomizes a critical moment in... Read more
Last month’s post I briefly discussed the topic of summer reading. Before that post, I also wrote about how I plan on using historical fiction to craft a faith integration project. In about a month, I will be presenting that model at a conference. An essay that I looked at to help prepare my upcoming presentation is writer Vanessa Chan’s “It’s Time to Rewrite the Rules of Historical Fiction.” According to Chan, whose debut novel The Storm We Made just... Read more
We love a nice round number—and 250 years since the U.S. War of Independence began is too significant to pass up. Somehow in fifty years of living on the East Coast, I haven’t toured Philadelphia’s historical sites, and doing so this year seemed appropriate. While at the Museum of the American Revolution, a well-organized museum and very accessible—highly recommend!—I was struck with what an opportunity this celebration is for us to join together across the culture wars and political divide.... Read more
Dealing as it does in broadly national and patriotic themes, I think the following post is appropriate for the day before Independence Day! My recent blogposts have concerned the transformational developments that occurred in the US in 1893, which increasingly emerges as one of those years when the world changed utterly. That was especially true in terms of the US empire, another topic on which I have written a good deal of late. Virtually all accounts of that empire focus... Read more
On a recent trip to Turkey and Greece, where I loved the churches, mosques, and museums we were able to tour, my daughter had a very different highlight for her trip: the feral cats found in abundant number everywhere we went. While these cats marked every stop on our trip (much to her delight), on Cyprus, these cats came with a fascinating story that overlapped with church history, much to my delight. According to legend, Helena, the mother of Constantine,... Read more
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