150 years ago this past Sunday, Boston Corbett killed the assassin John Wilkes Booth at a farm in Virginia. According to this terrific piece in the Washingtonian, the backstory of the guy who killed the guy who killed Lincoln is suffused with religion. Corbett’s life began innocuously enough. He made hats for a living and got married. But then in his mid-20s, his wife died during childbirth. Corbett couldn’t recover from the tragedy and turned to drink to soothe his... Read more
This week’s column comes from my piece at The Washington Post – “Southern Baptists canceled an event with Ben Carson. Here’s why it matters.” Southern Baptists find themselves in the midst of political controversy again over the upcoming appearance – now canceled – of Dr. Ben Carson at their Pastors’ Conference. Carson is a celebrated neurosurgeon, conservative commentator, and likely presidential candidate. A number of Baptist pastors, especially those affiliated with Baptist21, spoke out against Carson’s appearance. Their concerns were... Read more
On Monday, April 20, Boston’s Archbishop, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, visited Gordon College, where I teach. It was an instructive time for the entire college community. His talk was entitled “Our Common Concern for the Least among Us.” Recognizing abiding differences between Catholics and Protestants, he nonetheless enjoined all Christians to pursue what we might call an ecumenism of compassion, a mutual devotion to serve the poor and outcasts in society. It was a timeless, bracing message, delivered by a man... Read more
Don’t blame the book, blame the reviewer. Kevin M. Kruse has a new book called One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (Basic Books, 2015). It’s a scholarly and well-researched work, on a significant topic. Kruse’s argument is that much of what we think of today as the fundamental institutions and ideologies of Christian America actually date to the 1950s. In that era, he stresses the corporate alliance with evangelical leaders, including Billy Graham, but also James... Read more
Having transitioned from Downton Abbey to Wolf Hall, PBS’s Masterpiece Theater has entered onto terrain far more religious and historically treacherous. George Weigel recently commented on the anti-Catholicism that he alleges permeates the thought and writing of Hillary Mantel’s novel that serves as the basis for the television series. I haven’t read the novels, but I would suggest that theologically stubborn Protestants do not come off overly well in the material either. The flexible and pragmatic Thomas Cromwell is the... Read more
Of the reading of journals, there is no end, and yet much reading of them is a weariness. -Ecclesiastes 12:12, MAV* In every vocation, some tasks bring joy while others seem like… work. For academics, keeping up with the latest scholarship in your field is a must. And yet sometimes the task feels like impossible work. At times, the pile of journals at the corner of your desk mocks you, challenging your scholarly worth even as the thought of reading them seems... Read more
Dr. Barry Hankins is professor of history at Baylor University, and the co-author, with Thomas Kidd, of the new book Baptists in America: A History. He recently wrote about the controversy over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, at the Waco Tribune-Herald. What’s really at stake with the Indiana religious freedom law? Before forming conclusions, a little history might help. In the infamous 1990, so-called “peyote case” out of Oregon, the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated its own “compelling interest” test. The compelling interest... Read more
A short post on an important topic. I have written a good deal on Eastern Christian communities, especially their interactions with early Islam. I am therefore delighted to see not just one but two new books on these matters by Michael Philip Penn. I have read neither as yet, but I know Penn to be a fine scholar, and I am very much looking forward to reviewing them. One is Envisioning Islam: Syriac Christians and the Early Muslim World (University... Read more
As I described in my last post, the Non-Jurors were a High Church movement within the Church of England, who refused to take oaths to the new regime after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Their leaders were pious and thoughtful, with a deep interest in church history and liturgy, and a special focus in the primitive church. As they tried to seek out an authentic church tradition to which they could attach themselves, they followed a path that closely foreshadows... Read more
In the 1970s, Latter-day Saint leaders began to quote C.S. Lewis in the semi-annual General Conference talks. Earlier this month, Mormon Apostle D. Todd Cristofferson made a rather striking reference to the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a discussion of marriage. Cristofferson quoted at length from a May 19, 1943 sermon that Bonhoeffer wrote while incarcerated in a high-security Gestapo prison: Marriage is more than your love for each other. … In your love you see only your two selves... Read more
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