How The American Empire Created Prophets and Messiahs

July 25, 2024 By Philip Jenkins

I have been working on the religious dimensions of American empire, and particularly some of the unintended consequences of that story. We all know about empires sponsoring missions among conquered peoples, but on occasion ideas spread from colonized and subjugated peoples to infiltrate the metropolis, where they might even establish a kind of spiritual bridgehead. I have mentioned this in the context of the New Age and esoteric ideas as they developed during the twentieth century. Native Prophets Spreading official... Read more

What 3 Conservative Denominations Decided About Women

July 24, 2024 By Andrea L. Turpin

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This summer three theologically conservative Protestant denominations held their annual conventions. All three made news for their decisions regarding women. But the three have radically different polity, which is to say they govern themselves differently. I’m fascinated by how polity seems to affect deliberations on the role of women in the church, even among churches that share a similar belief in the veracity of the Bible. All three denominations believe the Bible to be accurate according to what they understand... Read more

The Catholic Conversion of J. D. Vance

July 23, 2024 By Daniel K. Williams

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This blog post is reposted from Current: Now that he is the Republican vice presidential nominee, J. D. Vance is one of the most famous Catholic converts in the United States. He is now the tenth Catholic to win a place on a presidential ticket. But of these ten Catholic nominees, Vance is the only Catholic convert – the only one who did not grow up in the faith. As soon as his selection was announced, I read over his conversion... Read more

The ’24 Election Has Changed. Here’s What We Need To Do Now.

July 22, 2024 By Melissa Borja

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From an assassination attempt on a former president to the suspended campaign of a current president, Americans have faced a firehose of political news over the past few weeks. Many of knew that the 2024 election would be wild. But I personally didn’t imagine that it would be filled with so many plot twists that Aaron Sorkin himself would be writing about the connections between the political drama he scripted for The West Wing and the one we’re currently... Read more

Pastors Complaining About Church Attendance: A Tradition

July 19, 2024 By Jacob Randolph

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I’m old enough to remember going to Sunday evening services at my Baptist church growing up. Sunday mornings were the big event, of course, but Sunday evenings were for the die-hard church-goers, the hardcore Sabbatarians. Of course, it was a truism that church attendance was no sure indicator of eternal status. “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car.” At the same time, pastors emphasized church attendance was a... Read more

Kingdoms Of This World

July 18, 2024 By Philip Jenkins

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I’m delighted to announce the publication of my new book, Kingdoms of This World: How Empires Have Made and Remade Religions (Baylor University Press, 2024). Here is the catalog description: Throughout history, the world’s great religions have been profoundly shaped by their encounters with successive empires. Secular empires have provided the means by which religions achieve their global scale, and any worthwhile historical account of those religions must reckon with that imperial dimension. In some cases, empires have favored and... Read more

Heroes and Villains: Gendered Discourses of Trafficking

July 17, 2024 By David Swartz

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Whatever else might be true of the gendered portrayals in humanitarian rescue narratives, it seems worth noting that their patterns are conspicuously resonant with the very American evangelical Godly Manhood and Godly Womanhood scripts that many donors ascribe to. Read more

Mothers of the Church: Faltonia Betitia Proba

July 16, 2024 By Adam Renberg

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In 362, Emperor Julian effectively banned Christians from teaching pagan texts, such as Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid, in an attempt to minimize Christian influence on the education system. In response, a number of Christians started to compose works in classical style during the 360s onwards, such as Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Soul and Resurrection, Apollinarius of Laodicea’s translation of the scriptures into Homeric Verse, and Prudentius’ Psychomania. If they were not allowed to teach these works, they would... Read more

American Empire and American Religion

July 11, 2024 By Philip Jenkins

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I have been working on the topic of empires and their religious dimensions, and my new book Kingdoms of This World: How Empires Have Made and Remade Religions will be published next week. That book ranges very widely through time and space, but even so, it left a great deal to be said about one particular imperial setup, namely that of the United States. As I have argued in past posts at this site, it is impossible to understand the... Read more

Jürgen Moltmann (1926-2024): A (Hopeful) Reflection

July 10, 2024 By Michael Jimenez

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“People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience” (Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners, 78). I can still remember the thrill of starting my first classes at Fuller Theological Seminary. I never really drove... Read more