Religion and Violence: A Book Review

Last updated on: December 27, 2020 at 7:58 pm By Thomas Albert Howard

Mark Juergensmeyer, God at War: A Meditation on Religion and Warfare. Oxford University Press, 2020. 107pp Since 9/11, a veritable industry has arisen in the academy seeking to explain “religious violence.” A new journal, the Journal of Religion and Violence, seeks to study the topic indepth. Hefty reference tomes such as The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence (2011) and the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence (2015) reflect the trend, as do numerous conferences, courses, and symposia held on... Read more

Katherine Anne Porter, Sam Peckinpah, and the Swallow’s Flight

Last updated on: December 29, 2020 at 10:25 am By Philip Jenkins

Christmas is a time to look back on the year almost passed by, and the findings and discoveries of that year. So what was new or unexpected? In 2020, the short answer was: a huge amount of the unexpected, and virtually none of that good. As Charles Dickens said, it was the worst of times, it was the … oh wait, no, it was just the worst of times. Having said that, on a personal level, I have a literary... Read more

On Pandemic Christmas Eve

Last updated on: December 24, 2020 at 5:14 pm By Kristin Du Mez

For many of us, this is a Christmas without family celebrations, mall Santas, rousing performances of Handel’s Messiah, and Christmas Eve candlelight services. All is not lost, however. Starbucks has come through with a lovely selection of red-and-green holiday cups, one of which contains the word “merry,” thank goodness. Because of course in the midst of everything, we can once again say “Merry Christmas,” and as a reminder, feel free to secure your own (free, with a $45 donation) ornament... Read more

The Christmas Beginning of Making Biblical Womanhood

Last updated on: December 23, 2020 at 12:29 pm By Beth Allison Barr

On December 14, 2016, I published this post as The Peace of Christmas During the Pain of Life. It was a critical moment for me. If you decide to read my forthcoming book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth, you will read about this moment in the introduction. It is the moment I affirmed my belief in the Gospel. It is the moment I admitted my complicity in perpetuating oppressive systems that run contrary... Read more

God’s Christmas Gift To Women, Revised

Last updated on: December 23, 2020 at 11:34 am By Beth Allison Barr

One year ago, in my post God’s Christmas Gift to Women, I reflected on how a nativity sermon written by the late medieval preacher John Mirk reveals the significance of God choosing Mary. As I wrote, “the Christmas story tells women we are more. Because God used Mary to be the mother of Jesus, God made sure that women would always have a seat at the Christian table. Because of Christmas, women can never be written out of God’s story.” ... Read more

The Christian Eyewitnesses to Hiroshima

Last updated on: December 18, 2020 at 11:06 am By Chris Gehrz

While less than 1% of the Japanese population followed Christ when John Hersey's account of Hiroshima was published in 1946, Chris is struck that three of his six eyewitnesses were Christians. Read more

Reading Churches and Reading American History

Last updated on: December 19, 2020 at 2:01 pm By Philip Jenkins

This is another in my posts on “reading” churches and their denominations to find what they can tell you about local and regional history, with a strong emphasis on ethnicity. Although I will focus on one area, namely in Central Pennsylvania, a lot of what I say (I think) has much wider application. When I was growing up in Wales, churches supplied me with a very large part of my education. These were the long lost days before the dark... Read more

Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism. And Rabbits.

Last updated on: December 18, 2020 at 7:58 am By Philip Jenkins

Through the years, I have posted repeatedly at this site on religious images in art, and what they can tell us about ideas and debates in earlier eras. Scholars still pay insufficient attention to the incredible resources that lie in such visual imagery: we can be a very text-bound lot. As an example, I offer William Hogarth’s astonishing picture of religious fanaticism in eighteenth century England, his 1762 response to the Methodist Revival – and every point applies to the... Read more

God’s Law and Order: A Conversation with Aaron Griffith

Last updated on: December 16, 2020 at 3:10 pm By johnturner

Aaron Griffith is assistant professor of history at Sattler College and the author of God’s Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America, just published by Harvard University Press. Thank you, Aaron, for stopping by The Anxious Bench to discuss matters that are both persistently relevant and timely. Let’s start with some big-picture questions, and I apologize for the deluge! The United States has a prison and jail population of more than two million people and the world’s highest incarceration rate.... Read more

Brown Church

Last updated on: December 16, 2020 at 12:13 pm By David Swartz

As the “Make America Great Again” movement demonstrates, the need for resistance remains. Read more