Book Review of Daniel Philpott, Religious Freedom in Islam: The Fate of a Universal Human Right in the Muslim World Today (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). After revoking the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and with it the civil and religious liberties that the law had afforded Protestants in his realm, Louis XIV boasted that France had become the most intolerant land in Europe. At the time, intolerance was seen as a political virtue—akin today to the notion of “zero... Read more
I’m putting the finishing touches on a history of Plymouth Colony and have been thinking through a cluster of issues regarding names. In a draft of my manuscript, I referred to the seventeenth-century Pokanoket sachems as Massasoit, Wamsutta (son of Massasoit), and Philip (son of Massasoit). These individuals lived at Sowams and then Mount Hope (present-day Warren and Bristol, Rhode Island, respectively), and they exercised regional leadership over many Wampanoag communities in what is now southeastern Massachusetts. The first of... Read more
You might have noticed a recent news story concerning the Amazon Prime series Good Omens, based on the novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. A group of conservative Christian activists became a laughingstock when it collected tens of thousands of signatures to petition Netflix to cancel a program made by the rival company of Amazon Prime. This caused widespread hilarity, and the Twitter threads from Gaiman fans are pretty funny. Tongue firmly in cheek, Netflix UK declared, “OK, we... Read more
It has been a tumultuous June in Hong Kong, where a proposed bill that would allow China to extradite fugitives has prompted widespread protest. Seeing the measure as a tool for apprehending political dissidents and a threat to Hong Kong’s freedom, opponents of the bill have taken to the streets, with over one million people participating in marches this month. The protests have been peaceful, but tensions have risen, to the point that on June 12, police clad in riot... Read more
I love to study people who don’t fit in boxes. These people explode our assumptions about which ideas or which actions go together. They help us think outside our own boxes in productive ways, whether we totally agree with them or not. To a certain extent, everyone I study as a historian doesn’t fit in my boxes: people in the past had different assumptions about the world than we do today. But I particularly like to study the people who... Read more
To this point it’s primarily been mainline denominations like the United Methodist Church and Anabaptist groups like the Mennonite Church USA that have faced schism over sexuality and same-sex marriage, what religion journalist Richard Ostling calls “Protestants’ most divisive issues since slavery.” But evangelicals’ turn is fast approaching. Last week the 2019 synod of the Christian Reformed Church in North America debated the interim report of a committee tasked “to explore biblical conceptions of sexuality and gender,” with a final vote... Read more
Through writing about church history in many different eras, I have acquired a long standing interest in apostates and apostasy. In so many ways, apostates stubbornly refuse to fit into our normal assigned categories. We spend a huge amount of time addressing why people convert to particular faiths and causes, but rather less on why they leave. In the history of Christianity, this latter angle is actually a vast topic, and one that hugely occupied the minds of church councils... Read more
I am so pleased to welcome Dr. Melody Maxwell to the Anxious Bench today. Melody’s post today will add to our growing conversation on the Anxious Bench about how evangelicalism, at least in some ways, has evolved differently in Canada–first Chris Gehrz’s post on Hockey and the Future of Evangelicalism and second my recent post on Canadian Baptists. Melody is an Associate Professor of Church History at Acadia Divinity School in Nova Scotia. Acadia is the official seminary for the Canadian... Read more
In 1815, John Quincy Adams purchased six small busts of classical philosophers and poets: Cicero, Homer, Plato, Virgil, Socrates, and Demosthenes. They stayed with him for the rest of his long life, sitting on the White House mantel and eventually resting in the Stone Library on the family’s Quincy property. Referred to by generations of Adamses as their Household Gods, they inspired the title for Sara Georgini’s portrait of one family’s centuries-long religious journey. Georgini’s story begins with the decision... Read more
Translation is a bugbear of mine. In many types of literature, I don’t worry too much if translators play a little fast and loose with the original, but in sacred texts, where the author’s intent matters so much, that does bother me. This point came to mind when reading a recent post by the fine classicist, Mary Beard. It made me think of a word that I would like to see more widely used, namely, “paraphrase.” Beard was specifically addressing... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In