Rebecca Rawson

Last updated on: October 24, 2018 at 1:32 pm By johnturner

UPDATE: Since writing this post, I learned of D. Brenton Simons’s Witches, Rakes, and Rogues: True Stories of Scam, Scandal, Murder, and Mayhem in Boston, 1630-1775, which contains a chapter about Rebecca Rawson and Thomas Rumsey. My suspicions about the story (and thus, the below-mentioned caption) turned out to be entirely wrong. I correct myself in this post. There’s a charming set of paintings on the seventh floor of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society Library in Boston. It’s a rather... Read more

Willow Creek, the Catholic Church, and Perils of Organizing Religion

Last updated on: August 15, 2018 at 8:00 pm By Chris Gehrz

In light of yet more abuse scandals in different churches, Chris wrestles with the costs and benefits of Christianity as a highly organized religion. Read more

Rainn Wilson, Dwight Schrute, and the Search for Meaning in Postmodern America

Last updated on: August 14, 2018 at 8:56 am By David Swartz

In its radical individualism and stress on tolerance, Baha’i appears to be a religion invented for the twenty-first-century West. Read more

Why We Teach: Inspiration for the Start of a New School Year

Last updated on: August 14, 2018 at 8:59 am By Chris Gehrz

Before the start of another school year, Chris has some words of advice and inspiration for teachers of all kinds. Read more

College Parties and Christian Ethics

Last updated on: August 12, 2018 at 5:09 pm By Agnes Howard

Can theology fix the college-party scene? In a recent book, College Hookup Culture and Christian Ethics, Jennifer Beste, Koch Chair for Catholic Thought and Culture at the College of Saint Benedict, proposes theology as the remedy for what’s wrong with the boozed-up, buttoned-down way of doing weekends on campus. “Theology” here does not here mean rules that reserve sex for the marriage bed. Instead Beste proposes insight from a book dear to her and her students, Poverty of Spirit by Johann Metz. For Metz, becoming... Read more

The Painter, the Magi, and the Global Church

Last updated on: August 11, 2018 at 5:44 am By Philip Jenkins

If you have ever visited a major art gallery, you have undoubtedly seen many, many, classic pictures of Christian religious themes – the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Virgin and Child, various miracles – commonly European works from that long era of production and patronage from the fifteenth through the eighteenth century. So commonplace are many of these items, so standardized in theme and presentation, that we might tend to skip over them. In many cases, that would be a grave... Read more

History and the Search for Meaning: The AB at CFH 2018

Last updated on: August 9, 2018 at 2:56 pm By Chris Gehrz

The Conference on Faith and History is celebrating its 50th anniversary this October, with a conference that features plenty of Anxious Bench connections. Read more

Evangelicalism is an Imagined Religious Community

Last updated on: August 9, 2018 at 8:31 am By Kristin Du Mez

Perhaps you’ve heard. One month ago, evangelical women “hit pause” on the culture wars. It might surprise you to hear that this olive branch was extended in response to President Trump’s proposed Supreme Court pick. While many evangelicals were celebrating this victory, “evangelical women” raised a voice in protest. The strategy to dominate the court, they contended, “will result in a loss for the pro-life movement and for people of color sitting in the only growing segment of the evangelical... Read more

Here We Go Again: Willow Creek and Pastoral Accountability

Last updated on: August 7, 2018 at 9:44 pm By Beth Allison Barr

I was sitting on a picnic bench outside of the Navajo Nation capital when I read Scot McKnight’s tweet about Willow Creek. His comment that, “mismanagement, powermongering, threatening, and offering money for silence” should be themes “central to church leadership discussions” in seminaries really caught my attention. If you have followed my blogs for a while, then you know that pastoral accountability is important to me. For Christians who loudly proclaim the “priesthood of all believers” and that “all have... Read more

“Education Is a Life”

Last updated on: August 6, 2018 at 11:01 pm By Chris Gehrz

As many of us prepare for the start of another school year, guest blogger Rachel Neiwert introduces us to the educational philosopher Charlotte Mason — and her notion that "education is a life." Read more

Which New Testament book quotes Psalm 110 to describe Jesus as the eternal High Priest?