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
At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States was an exceptionally violent country, which really stood alone among advanced nations. I have been trying to account for this American Difference. As an illustration, let me take a series of events that occurred in the late 1890s, and which actually happened about a block from where I am writing presently. The affair really has little wider political significance, but it is a perfect illustration of the kind of violence... Read more
As you may have heard, Princeton Seminary decided to award Tim Keller the prestigious Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Witness. But then it revoked that honor after an outcry from faculty, students, and alumni who objected to Keller’s defense of complementarian theology and to his opposition to the ordination of women and LGBT individuals. All of this has raised a host of questions: Would Abraham Kuyper himself be eligible to receive an award named in... Read more
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