Why Is It So Hard to Do Pentecostal History?

Last updated on: September 17, 2025 at 10:42 am By Alex Mayfield

One of the biggest stories in 20th-century religious history is the rapid rise of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity around the world. By the World Christian Database’s estimate, almost 1 in 3 Christians around the world can be identified as Pentecostal or Charismatic. Other scholars, like Joel Cabrita and David Maxwell have pointed out that the birth of world Christianity is intimately intertwined with the spread of this fervent form of faith. Today, Pentecostal and Charismatic groups have a world fellowship,... Read more

I’m Only Human: Sin as the Rejection of Human Nature

Last updated on: September 15, 2025 at 8:25 am By Adam Renberg

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How should we think about our flaws and misbehavior? For some, flaws are something to be embraced: we should be loved ‘warts and all’. For others, imperfections are simply based on our birthdays, an unavoidable result of our zodiac signs (“sorry I am late, I’m a Pisces!”). Or most nefariously, sin is justified as a natural part of one’s sex — “boys will be boys” – and thus certain bad behaviors are deemed as normative. All of these answers have... Read more

Toward Healing? Teaching the Reformation in Mixed Company

Last updated on: September 12, 2025 at 3:58 pm By Verónica A. Gutiérrez

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Lisa Clark Dillon’s recent post, Teaching History in Hard Times: Denominational Colleges, addressed some things I’ve been thinking about this semester specific to teaching in a Christian institution. Most poignant were her description of discussions with colleagues about “how we have worked to introduce important ways of thinking and methods of scholarship in our classroom in faith-affirming ways. We talk about ‘tone’ a great deal, and how to use a vocabulary that reflects the values of our students while bringing... Read more

Science Fiction, Utopia, and Apocalypse in 1890s America

Last updated on: September 11, 2025 at 5:44 am By Philip Jenkins

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My current book project concerns America in the 1890s, particularly the religion and spirituality of that era, and with a focus on the amazing transitional year of 1893. The key event from which so much of that work proceeds is the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in that year, and other concomitant events such as the World’s Parliament of Religions. Both events were strongly future-oriented, in trying to offer the world patterns of how things could or should be... Read more

An Ecumenical Moment: Cesar Chavez & the 3 Faiths

Last updated on: September 9, 2025 at 10:16 pm By Michael Jimenez

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“All Jews, Christians and Moslems, the spiritual heirs of those slaves freed from Egyptian bondage, are bound by that law, whether they live in the Middle East, in New York — or in California.” Rabbi Joseph B. Glaser (Food & Justice, July 1986, 11). We are about a week away from the start of Hispanic Heritage month. However, lately in my reading I have been somewhat focused on Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations. How could I possibly write about all the above? I... Read more

Teaching History in Hard Times: Denominational Colleges

Last updated on: September 5, 2025 at 12:14 am By Lisa Clark Diller

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This week I’m engaging in a time-honored academic tradition: gathering with other scholars as we share our research through reading papers, and as we problem-solve challenges in our disciplines through workshops and panels. It’s a history conference. This time it is in one of the most beautiful places one could imagine doing scholarship—Rosario Beach, a marine life study center on the coast of Washington near the San Juan Islands. But the conversations are running fast and deep as we sit... Read more

Feminists, Lost Gospels, And A Lost History Of Christianity

Last updated on: September 3, 2025 at 12:46 pm By Philip Jenkins

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My current series of posts concerns what I call the first discovery of lost gospels and scriptures, which became a major force in both scholarship and religious life at the turn of the twentieth century – the start of that century, rather than the end.. Today, I look at a critical component of this sweeping cultural change, namely the vital role played by esoteric movements, and especially the Theosophical Society. To oversimplify, the ideas they presented in the late nineteenth... Read more

Theology, History, and Contexts for Reading Well

Last updated on: August 29, 2025 at 8:53 am By Lynneth Renberg

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Stepping under the 13th-century painted ceiling from the chancel of the church in Ål housed in Oslo’s Historical Museum is a breathtaking experience for a medievalist. The space is small, probably only 15 feet by 30 feet. The community that worshipped in this space was also small: while it is difficult to figure out exact population numbers, the entire population of Norway at the time was only a few hundred thousand people. Ål was not a major metropolitan center and... Read more

The Rediscovery, and Re-Forgetting, of the Lost Gospels

Last updated on: August 30, 2025 at 4:19 pm By Philip Jenkins

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I have been describing the abundant discovery of lost scriptures and gospels from the later nineteenth century, which is long before the time that most people think they became available. In fact, not only were such texts “found” after long periods of disappearance, but most were brought out in accessible vernacular translations. The pace of publication was deeply impressive, with scarcely a break from the 1880s through the 1930s. If you were interested in such matters, and had some middle-class... Read more

James Dobson’s Death Was the End of an Era

Last updated on: August 25, 2025 at 4:14 pm By Daniel K. Williams

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James Dobson’s death last week marked the end of a particular era in conservative evangelical politics. It was certainly not the end of the Christian Right, but it was the conclusion of a particular phase of it, because it was the death of the last evangelical leader who was a direct orchestrator of the Sunbelt-centered marriage of Reagan Republicanism and the culture wars that occurred in the late 1970s. For those who want to know more about Dobson’s career, I... Read more

Which book directly follows Joshua?