The Washington Post recently decided to create a radical church-based social movement. According to the headline, “Churches Make A Drastic Pledge In The Name Of Social Justice: To Stop Calling The Police” (The story was by Julie Zauzmer). Now, further examination reveals that we are dealing with a tiny handful of churches, most of which are in the San Francisco Bay area, where normal rules of consensus reality do not apply. In no sense is this some kind of widespread... Read more
An aspiring scholar of English literature once bumped into W.H. Auden on Oxford’s High Street. Jay Parini at the time was troubled. “I wondered if God existed,” he recalls, “or if he was simply a human creation.” Parini struggled not only with religious doubt, but anxiety and depression. He needed “courage to continue.” Auden helped him find it. The poet could tell that Parini “wasn’t in good emotional shape” and invited him to his home. He “suggested gently that few... Read more
After writing eulogies for three colleagues in the last three years, Chris reflects on what he has learned about death, resurrection, and his calling as a historian. Read more
Did evangelicals kidnap the word "evangelical" from other Christians? If so, says Chris, they were repeating an old pattern. Read more
Life is hard. Sometimes it is very hard, pain beyond the ordinary forecast for the walk through this vale of tears. A death warrant served by cancer on a 35-year-old professor, wife, and new mother. An ultrasound that predicts possible disability for an expected, beloved son. Such news makes two questions urgent: what could God be doing, and what am I supposed to do about it? Figures in the history of American religion have provided some answers, few more feisty than those... Read more
On April 1, 2018, the usually stolid hierarchy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints descended into upper room chaos not present since the 1877 death of Brigham Young. The cause was the addition of two men to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, men Latter-day Saints regard as prophets, seers, and revelators who hold the earthly keys to the Kingdom of God. I wrote about the changes to LDS leadership in a piece for the Wall Street... Read more
Some of the greatest events in human history simply fail to register in popular consciousness. Last year, we rightly heard a terrific amount about the Reformation, or at least, about its early Lutheran phase. But the Spring of 2018 actually marks the 400th anniversary of the outbreak of the Thirty Years War, another critical event that was at least as significant as the Reformation. The war raged for a full generation, and claimed some eight million lives. As to its... Read more
Is Focus on the Family a church? It depends who you ask. And it depends when you ask, apparently. Back in 2016, Focus on the Family reportedly asked the IRS to classify the organization as a church, in order to dodge the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate and secure other regulatory exemptions. Understandably, the IRS was initially skeptical, according to documents obtained by RightWingWatch. But lawyers for Focus on the Family “insisted that the organization meets most of the tax... Read more
As prominent evangelical leaders gather this week at Wheaton, IL, to discuss how the Trump era “has unleashed [a] ‘grotesque caricature’ of their faith,” historian James Bratt of Calvin College joins us today at the Anxious Bench to weigh in with some thoughts on Christianity and Evangelicalism, and the death (and resurrection) of a movement. I recently attended a conference at Notre Dame honoring the career of Mark Noll. As one of the most accomplished scholars of American religious history,... Read more
Today I am pleased to welcome Jonathan Root to The Anxious Bench. Jonathan Root is currently a postdoctoral teaching fellow at the University of Missouri. He received his PhD in history in spring 2016 at Mizzou. His dissertation is a history of the relationship between the prosperity gospel and American popular culture. The phrase, “I’m going to beat this case like a rented mule,” is not one you would expect to hear at a church service, let alone an Easter... Read more
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