This post offers suggestions for beginning a research project of any kind, and particularly in the kind of historical and/or religious history topics that I work on. Based on my own experience, I think these tactics or approaches are very useful indeed, and many conversations through the years suggest they are not widely known. If these remarks seem obvious to you, no problem. If they are of use, that would be great. Suppose I am undertaking a project on (say)… Read more
April 16, 2021
Amazon, Wikipedia, and Scholarly Research
April 16, 2021 By Philip Jenkins
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April 15, 2021
The Cost of Staying Silent
April 15, 2021 By Kristin Du Mez
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It was more than a decade ago, but I still remember that moment vividly. It was one of the few times in my life where I found myself genuinely speechless. My husband and I had been visiting a church near our home, which happened to be pastored by my former childhood pastor. My childhood church was fairly large, and I’d had little personal connection to this pastor. He’d been a respected authority figure, a friend of my dad’s, a genuinely… Read more
April 14, 2021
It’s A Small, Small (Complementarian) World
April 14, 2021 By Beth Allison Barr
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“Dr. Barr, I don’t know where to look?!” Twelfth-century columns soared high over our heads, fanning across the vaulted ceiling. I had tilted my head as far back as I could, trying to see the reds and blues and golds of the carved stone bosses in the arches above. That is–until the uneasy edge of her voice pulled me back. I turned to see four pairs of eyes staring at me. We were abroad that summer. I was teaching with… Read more
April 13, 2021
The Conversion That Never Happened
April 13, 2021 By Chris Gehrz
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Chris shares an outtake from his forthcoming religious biography of Charles Lindbergh. (Just be sure to read carefully…) Read more
April 12, 2021
A Marginal Majority: Women, Gender, and a Re-imagining of Southern Baptists
April 12, 2021 By Philip Jenkins
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Today is a guest post. My Baylor colleague Elizabeth Flowers has a new co-edited collection of essays (with Karen K. Seat) entitled A Marginal Majority: Women, Gender, and a Reimagining of Southern Baptists (University of Tennessee Press, 2020). As that speaks to many current concerns in American religion, I have invited the two to describe the book and its arguments. A Marginal Majority It would be an understatement to claim that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has a complicated past… Read more
April 9, 2021
Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America
April 9, 2021 By Philip Jenkins
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Today I welcome a guest blogpost from Crawford Gribben, who has published extensively on the history of Puritanism. That includes his notable 2016 book John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat. His new book is strictly contemporary in subject matter, addressing as it does Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford University Press, March 2021). I will leave him to describe the project: Evangelicalism and its Discontents by Crawford Gribben It didn’t take… Read more
April 7, 2021
Supposing Him to Be the Gardener
April 7, 2021 By johnturner
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This is a lightly revised post from last summer, placed where it belongs, at Eastertide. One of my newly favorite Easter season texts is Rudyard Kipling’s concise and poignant short story, “The Gardener.” If you’ve never read it, it doesn’t take long, but perhaps refresh your memory of John 21 first. “The Gardener” narrates the grief and anguish of an Englishwoman named Helen Turrell, who for years has pretended that her out-of-wedlock son, christened Michael, is really her nephew. The… Read more
April 7, 2021
The Savage My Kinsman: Wheaton Wrestles with the Language of Mission
April 7, 2021 By David Swartz
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Wheaton College Wrestles with Its Discourse of Missions Read more
April 6, 2021
Science as Faith: Arctic Martyrs and the Open Polar Sea
April 6, 2021 By Chris Gehrz
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Chris explains how the tragic story of an Arctic expedition illustrates why, “for some Westerners in the late 19th century, science was a religion — as capable as any traditional faith of inspiring fanaticism and, ultimately, martyrdom.” Read more
April 5, 2021
Asian American Religious Institutions Are Targets of Racist Attacks – And Also Sites of Resistance
April 5, 2021 By Melissa Borja
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Last week, on one of the holiest days of the Christian year, over 120 families at a predominantly Asian American church in New Jersey gathered for their Good Friday Service to pray, sing, and commemorate the crucifixion of Christ. But the peaceful online service was interrupted by Zoom-bombers, who blasted pornographic images across the screen and assailed listeners with ear-splitting screams and racist slurs, including cries of “I hate Asians!” and “Chinks!” A member of the congregation described the incident… Read more
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