This is by way of a rave recommendation. If you have any taste for podcasts, or radio, there is a spectacular new series available on the history and symbolism of religion. Free! Some years ago, Neil MacGregor did a wildly successful series called A History of the World in 100 Objects. (I had the pleasure of being the expert commentator on one of these objects). The list of MacGregor’s original 100 objects that appears on the Wikipedia page I linked... Read more
Sola gratia. By grace alone. With the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Protestants around the world have been revisiting this revolutionary concept. And rightly so. But with the festivities behind us, let’s set grace aside for a moment, and focus on sin. From my vantage point in the American church, it seems as though a thorough reckoning with the pervasiveness of sin may be in order. Not the sin of others, primarily—American Protestants have generally done fairly well on that... Read more
I both love and hate conferences. I love them because of the free-flowing ideas and high energy. I love them because of the networking opportunities. I love them because they force me to finish critical pieces of my own research projects. Conferences are exciting, intellectually stimulating, and productive. They can also be advantageous for budding careers in academia. Like twitter, you never know who is listening at a conference; you never know who you might run into at a book... Read more
On this 500th anniversary of Luther's 95 Theses... some of the best Anxious Bench writing on the subject of the Protestant Reformation. Read more
That many people can’t remember what the Protestant Reformation was all about might not please scholars. But at least it appears to be serving the cause of Christian unity. Read more
I recently posted on the question of Christian numbers around 200 AD. Since then, I have read a new book that is a significant contribution on the subject, namely Thomas A. Robinson, Who Were the First Christians: Dismantling the Urban Thesis (Oxford University Press, 2017). This blogpost offers some reactions to that book and its thesis. Most scholars of early Christianity agree that it was an overwhelmingly urban religion, and some major writers who have advanced numbers based on that... Read more
The 500th anniversary of the Reformation offers plenty of opportunity to commemorate, but also to consider the uses and misuses of history. In my 2014 book The Great and Holy War, I discussed the “last time around,” namely the 400-year commemoration of Luther’s Reformation in October 1917, at the height of the First World War. My fellow blogger Tal Howard has also discussed the various Luther commemorations in his Remembering the Reformation: An Inquiry into the Meanings of Protestantism (Oxford University... Read more
More than a half-century ago, the great church historian Jaroslav Pelikan described the Reformation as a "tragic necessity." Read more
Reflections on evil and the Holocaust Read more
How should we remember the Protestant Reformation? Read more
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