Magic, Miracle, Science, and Understanding Religious Claims

Last updated on: September 24, 2025 at 9:30 am By Philip Jenkins

This post grows out of my recent work on the huge vogue in late nineteenth century America for predicting the near future – for utopian and (broadly) science fiction literature. As people projected that future, with its startling technology, they commonly predicted the growth of what we can call human superpowers, which were occult in nature as much as scientific. Through my research on that era, I keep encountering these themes. Originally, this is something I dismissed as the quirk... Read more

The Gen-Z Religious Revival in Its Historical Context

Last updated on: September 22, 2025 at 5:06 pm By Daniel K. Williams

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The ink was scarcely dry on the newly released books lamenting young Americans’ inexorable rejection of religion before a new rash of survey data appeared proclaiming Gen-Zers’ new embrace of traditional Christianity. In fact, the Barna Group notes in a report released earlier this month, churchgoing Gen-Z adults (that is, Americans born in 1997 or afterwards – and who are therefore 28 years old or younger) are more faithful in their church attendance than are church members of their parents... Read more

The Charlie Kirk Memorial: a Funeral, a Revival, a Rally

Last updated on: September 22, 2025 at 2:28 am By Joey Cochran

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On Sunday, September 21, 2025, thousands of people attended the Charlie Kirk Memorial at State Farm Stadium in Phoenix, Arizona. They gathered to pay tribute to a man who tragically fell victim to a heinous assassination attack on September 10, 2025, during a Turning Point USA public debate at Utah Valley University. Estimates indicate that over 100,000 people attended the memorial service at the stadium and various overflow locations in the vicinity. Over 550,000 and at times up to 625,000... Read more

The 1890s: Predicting the Futures of Religion

Last updated on: September 11, 2025 at 5:45 am By Philip Jenkins

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Americans in the 1890s lived in a golden age of utopian and futuristic speculation, and those visions inevitably included visions of the religious future. Consciously or otherwise, we all speculate about the future, and we make assumptions about how the world will develop in coming decades. Usually, we just project our present realities. In the 1960s, for instance, many informed people envisaged something like the coming Secular City, when old religious forms would fade away. In the 1890s, American visions... Read more

Why Is It So Hard to Do Pentecostal History?

Last updated on: September 18, 2025 at 8:57 am By Alex Mayfield

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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

What’s the name of the garden where Adam and Eve lived?