Reading Robert Graves’s 1946 novel King Jesus is like undertaking an archaeological dig into intellectual history, as each new layer we excavate reveals changing ideas about Jesus and the Early Church. What makes the book so valuable is that it appeared on the eve of a thrilling new wave of discoveries – Nag Hammadi, the Dead Sea Scrolls – so that we see just how much was known and speculated about on the eve of those new revelations. I have... Read more
When I was in college, both my InterVarsity chapter and my local Baptist church (for clarification, I was never a baptized Baptist) liked to sing “This World Is Not My Home,” at a rapid clip with tambourine. I cannot imagine this anthem had much broad popularity beyond these local settings at the time, but it’s a catchy tune and we sang it with gusto. It has since occurred to me that proclaiming that we’re “just passin’ through” this world is... Read more
The image of Mennonites in popular culture is typically flattering. They are often seen as upright, conscientious, trustworthy, hard-working, frugal characters who can be forgiven their lack of patriotism because of their biblical earnestness. To some they have even become quintessential, pioneering Americans. This despite the fact that many Mennonites themselves seek to distinguish themselves from a theologically vacuous American Dream. This respectable reputation, however, is not universal. As Steve Carpenter shows in Mennonites and Media, Mennonites sometimes have been... Read more
I have been reading Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. This remarkable book came out in 2008 but had already pegged the significance of social media in uncanny ways. The cost of communicating quickly with large numbers of people has collapsed because of e-mail, blogs, and platforms like Twitter. This has profound consequences for newspapers, television, revolutionary movements, and more, but I want to focus here on the implications for professors’ role in the public sphere... Read more
Recent release of video footage showing Planned Parenthood official Deborah Nucatola describing collection and costs of fetal tissue has attracted attention and controversy. With this controversy playing out in background, the Wall Street Journal published a new report on the overuse of ultrasounds. The Journal article argues that low-risk pregnancies do not need the average 5.2 scans American women now receive in the months before delivery. Ultrasounds can help doctors assess fetal development and discover abnormalities, and some physicians may... Read more
I have been engaged in a debate of sorts with Bill Hamblin on the historicity of the Book of Mormon, over at his blog, Enigmatic Mirror. (For the uninitiated, he is a prominent figure in “Ancient Book of Mormon Studies”). He is a trooper about posting my stuff on his site, which I appreciate. Meanwhile, this posting of mine builds on recent debates. I think this present response is important because it gets to the heart of all the discussions we... Read more
I have been posting about Robert Graves’s 1946 novel King Jesus, which presented a wealth of ideas and speculations about early Christianity. I suggested that the book was well worth reading not because any or all of those ideas deserve to be taken as serious history, but for what they suggest about the state of opinion abut Jesus some seventy years ago. Often, we see that people were very well accustomed to “alternative” theories about Jesus that sound very much... Read more
Kevin Kruse’s One Nation Under God: How Corporate American Invented Christian America has received considerable attention since its release earlier this year. Deservedly so. I recently reviewed the book for Christianity Today and agree with some of the cautionary notes our Philip Jenkins sounded several months back. Philip suggests that reviewers’ excessively exuberant praise for Kruse’s contention that many of our expressions of civil religion are of relatively recent vintage betray an ignorance of the longer story of Christianity’s intersection... Read more
As the American colonies congealed into a new nation, the founders undertook a “lively experiment.”* The new nation refused to establish an official state church–or religion for that matter–allowing its citizens much greater freedom to determine their own religious affiliations than had been the case in Europe. The young nation codified this commitment in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. No longer would one particular religion–or denomination for that matter–be given an overwhelming competitive advantage over others. Rather, various... Read more
I recently spoke at the annual conference of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, as part of a panel on “What in American history is most important for teachers to pass on to our students?” The audience was largely from private Christian schools, including administrators and history teachers. I found the exercise quite challenging and thought-provoking, especially because I don’t think that history professors or teachers often give much thought to why they teach what they choose to teach.... Read more
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