The Myth of Puritan Intolerance (Part II)

Last updated on: May 22, 2019 at 2:45 pm By johnturner

A few weeks ago, I suggested that the “myth” of puritan intolerance is “not very useful for understanding the history of seventeenth-century New England” in part because “it implies that New England’s leaders were outliers within the trans-Atlantic world they inhabited.” The reality is that the Congregational ministers and magistrates of New England “were quite ordinary in their desire for religious uniformity and their determination to punish stubborn heresy.” In this week’s post, I will flesh out these suggestions. It... Read more

The Latin American Evangelical Left: An Interview with David Kirkpatrick, Part II

Last updated on: May 3, 2019 at 4:48 pm By David Swartz

David Swartz interviews David Kirkpatrick about his new book on the Latin American evangelical left. Read more

Rachel Held Evans, Beth Moore, and the Power of Evangelical Coalitions

Last updated on: May 20, 2019 at 11:38 am By Kristin Du Mez

As news spread of Rachel Held Evans’s death, one quote continued to pop up in my social media feed, a quote from her book Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church: But the gospel doesn’t need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out. It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace, committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting, “Welcome! There’s bread and wine. Come eat with us and talk.” This... Read more

Again with the Evils of E-cigarettes

Last updated on: May 20, 2019 at 9:59 am By Agnes Howard

Someday, soon perhaps, the Juul e-cigarette will pass into the heap of cast-off youth fads and we may breathe sighs of relief that that’s over. Until then, fuel for wild-eyed screeds against the product needs to come from somewhere. Religious and moral opposition to smoking has a long and varied pedigree, from the “Counterblaste to Tobacco” of England’s King James I, to the seventeenth-century papal rulings against tobacco use at Mass, to calls by long-skirted ladies of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.... Read more

The Missing Paul

Last updated on: May 17, 2019 at 5:43 am By Philip Jenkins

Not long ago, I posted about the Book of Acts, suggesting that some very early reader of that text went out and collected what all later ages now know as the collection of Paul’s letters. Specifically, I suggested the collector responsible was “Theophilos,” either the actual name or pseudonym of the person to whom Luke dedicated his writings. Following up on that, I returned to one of the very best scholarly works on Acts, which is of course by Ben... Read more

Don’t Balance Budgets on the Back of History

Last updated on: May 15, 2019 at 8:22 pm By Chris Gehrz

Chris writes his first letter to a member of the U.S. Congress. Read more

Because Christian Patriarchy Isn’t Christian

Last updated on: August 3, 2021 at 2:45 pm By Beth Allison Barr

In 215 B.C., a defeated and cash-strapped Rome passed a new law. The context was their greatest military defeat ever. As the first century Roman historian Livy cried, “For according to the reports two consular armies and two consuls were lost; there was no longer any Roman camp, any general, any single soldier in existence; Apulia, Samnium, almost the whole of Italy lay at Hannibal’s feet. Certainly there is no other nation that would not have succumbed beneath such a weight... Read more

When Churches Were Left in Ruins

Last updated on: May 14, 2019 at 9:56 am By Chris Gehrz

About a month after the fire that nearly destroyed Paris' Notre-Dame cathedral, it's clear that medieval church will rise again. But some of the churches obliterated in the two world wars were left in ruins, as memorials. Read more

Jesus, Hosea, and the Third Day

Last updated on: May 11, 2019 at 6:38 am By Philip Jenkins

Early Christians believed that Jesus had predicted his Resurrection, and associated that event with the third day. They also suggest that such a belief should have been obvious enough to anyone who searched the scriptures. That latter statement is puzzling, as there really is no very clear statement that associates the Messiah with such a third day chronology. Where would you even begin searching? Let me suggest a passage that people might have had in mind when developing these ideas.... Read more

A New Hope For Evangelical Women

Last updated on: May 19, 2019 at 1:17 pm By Beth Allison Barr

My phone buzzed. I glanced quickly, then my brain clicked. I turned the car off and picked my phone up. Had Beth Moore just called complementarianism misogyny? Sexism? Had she just called it out as as more about arrogance and power than following Scripture? Named it sin? Read more

True or False: Balaam's donkey spoke to him.