Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. (Zechariah 9.9) Many years ago, when velociraptors roamed the earth (okay, it was about 1971), I read a book that did a lot to shape my thinking. I stress: it was not necessarily a good book, but it bristled with amazing and… Read more
April 3, 2020
Jesus, Robert Graves, and the Mount of Olives
April 3, 2020 By Philip Jenkins
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April 2, 2020
The Wounds of Racism and the Pandemic of Anti-Asian Hatred
April 2, 2020 By Melissa Borja
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On March 14, an Asian American father brought his two young sons, ages two and six, on a mundane weekend errand: a Saturday trip to the store. But their visit to Sam’s Club in Midland, Texas, turned into a bloody nightmare when a nineteen-year-old man attacked the family, slashing the father and one of his sons across the face. According to the FBI, which has investigated the incident as a hate crime, the stabber had attempted to kill the… Read more
April 1, 2020
Learning in Coronavirus Time: Rereading C.S. Lewis’s Famous Sermon
April 1, 2020 By Andrea L. Turpin
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On October 22, 1939, C.S. Lewis ascended the pulpit of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. From there he delivered to the university’s students his now-famous sermon “Learning in War-Time.” It was, of course, quite an extraordinary time to be a college student in England. Less than two months earlier, on September 3, the United Kingdom had declared war on Germany after Hitler had invaded British ally Poland. Lewis addressed the elephant in the room: why bother… Read more
March 31, 2020
The Christians Who Didn’t Take Communion… for 350 Years
March 31, 2020 By Chris Gehrz
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As COVID-19 temporarily keeps millions of Christians from taking Communion, Chris recalls the story of the Schwenkfelders, a small movement that declined to take that sacrament for about 350 years. Read more
March 30, 2020
Silent Apocalypse
March 30, 2020 By Philip Jenkins
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Both Chris Gehrz and myself have recently been thinking back to the horrendous circumstances of 1918, in light of all the disease and epidemic related news going the rounds today. The influenza pandemic of 1918 especially produced a highly apocalyptic mood in that earlier period. It’s often forgotten what a long shadow that mood cast over the artistic production of the following decade, which among other things produced some of the greatest films ever made. I’ll focus here on one… Read more
March 28, 2020
Virtual Field Trips for Your Kids
March 28, 2020 By Chris Gehrz
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While we’re all stuck at home, Chris has some suggestions for how children interested in the past can take virtual field trips to museums and historical sites around the world. Read more
March 27, 2020
The Plague Village
March 27, 2020 By Philip Jenkins
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As Chris Gehrz remarked recently, many Christians right now are avidly looking for texts and stories that illuminate the response to plague and pestilence through the ages. There have been so many blogs and columns on many sites about the Cyprianic plague in the third century, about Luther and Zwingli in the sixteenth, about the influenza crisis of 1918. Here is another story, and, I would say, one of the most powerful. It is very famous indeed in Britain, but… Read more
March 26, 2020
The Mercy of the Pelican
March 26, 2020 By johnturner
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From the Anxious Bench archives: Whenever I’m in Salt Lake City, I like to stop at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. On one of my visits, I noticed something that will no doubt be common knowledge to students of medieval Christianity but was new to me. In two paintings — on the central mural behind the altar and in one of the stations of the cross — is an image of a pelican with her young chicks. A pamphlet informs that… Read more
March 25, 2020
Spirits Eat Ripe Papaya: A Book Recommendation
March 25, 2020 By David Swartz
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It’s ok to read for distraction. Read more
March 24, 2020
The Importance of History During a Pandemic
March 24, 2020 By Chris Gehrz
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Whether they’re writing about the history of infectious disease or other topics, historians have an important role to play during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more
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