The murky history and theological power of one of the most familiar, mundane, and meaningful prayers in Christianity. Read more
The murky history and theological power of one of the most familiar, mundane, and meaningful prayers in Christianity. Read more
I have often posted on themes of history, memory, and forgetting, and some recent news stories brought that home to me powerfully – especially on all we have forgotten beyond hope of recovery. This issue of lost worldly glories seems appropriate for the Easter season. Earlier this year, Egyptian archaeologists made a spectacular find, a colossal statue of (probably) Rameses II, “found submerged in groundwater in a Cairo slum.” Rameses ruled from 1279-1213 BC, and is sometimes cited as the... Read more
A spectacular recent find in northern Africa throws new light on early church history, but at the same time it also points to the existence of a vast and forgotten Christian kingdom, and just how the faith – or indeed, any religion – fades and dies. The story makes for highly appropriate reading in the Easter season. The find in question was made at al-Ghazali on the Nile, in northern Sudan. This “massive” burial ground was apparently associated with a... Read more
Shusaku Endo’s Silence is a very grim novel, as is the much-discussed recent film adaptation by Martin Scorsese. It is Japan, roughly 1639. After decades of fruitful missionary work begun by Francis Xavier in 1549, decades of bitter persecution have followed. There are still many Christians in Japan, but they are hidden. Some Portuguese Jesuits have lost their lives, and one — Father Cristóvão Ferreira — has apostatized. Jesuit missionaries Sebastian Rodrigues and Francisco Garrpe go to Japan in part to... Read more
Guest blogger AnneMarie Kooistra reflects on teaching the history of sexuality as a professor at a Christian liberal arts university. Read more
As the U.S. enters the centenary of its entry into World War I, a look back at war's staunchest advocate among Christian fundamentalists: baseball player-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday. Read more
Between my own blog, this one, and a couple others, I’ve written about 1,500 posts in the last six years. I try to do it well, with a less formal tone and much greater pace than typical academic writing but still reflecting a reasonably careful degree of prior research. But I’m afraid that my haste sometimes leads me to sloppiness — worse yet, sloppiness on topics where I’m writing outside of my fields of direct expertise and already at risk of stepping heedlessly into... Read more
Bruce Feiler has put Adam and Eve back in vogue with his book The First Love Story: Adam, Eve, and Us, reading that couple’s story as a classic–no, as the classic love story. For Feiler it is not just classic but useful, the pair as role models for relationships today. He thinks theirs is a great love story because it is a tale told together, from what he calls the first “meet cute” to the joint, “long term practice of... Read more
This is a slightly updated post from my Anxious Bench archives. Happy Easter! I bought Easter candy for my students. It was a mistake. Although the students made a valiant effort to eat as much as possible, they left a few Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs (a particular weakness of mine) in the candy basket. Needless to say, they didn’t last long. Reese’s eggs are just one of many newer adaptations of older Easter traditions. Recent twitter posts have made me... Read more
How you can purchase or screen Come Before Winter, a new docudrama on the last days of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Read more
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