Importing Christianity

Last updated on: March 19, 2015 at 8:48 pm By Philip Jenkins

In the third century, Christianity spread into the Persian Empire, where it became a powerful presence. The means by which this auspicious event occurred are startling and even humbling for anyone who thinks in terms of deliberately planned missionary efforts. At least at first, many, perhaps most, of the Christians who found themselves under Persian rule really had no wish whatever to be there. Man proposes, and God disposes. I described the major Christian growth on the Empire’s western borderlands,... Read more

Jesus, Time, and Calendars

Last updated on: March 18, 2015 at 11:27 pm By johnturner

A funny thing has happened to time during my adult lifetime. When I began college, it was customary to use the abbreviations “BC” (Before Christ) and “AD” (Anno Domini, or in the year of our Lord) in the rather tricky task of keeping track of years. Thus, the Babylonians destroyed the first Jewish temple in the year 586 BC and the Romans destroyed the second temple in AD 70. By the time I started graduate school, those old ways of... Read more

The Entrepreneurial Evangelicals

Last updated on: March 17, 2015 at 10:02 pm By David Swartz

The title refers not to Sam Walton of Wal-Mart fame or to George Pepperdine, who started Western Auto Supply and used the money to found Pepperdine University. The new entrepreneurial evangelicals are from the Majority World. Esteemed Anxious Bench contributor Philip Jenkins has a great line in The Next Christendom: “If we want to visualize a ‘typical’ contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria, or in a Brazilian favela.” The centers of Christianity... Read more

Handling Rejection in Academic Writing

Last updated on: February 20, 2015 at 6:19 am By Thomas Kidd

Today’s guest post is by Dr. Beth Allison Barr, Department of History, Baylor University. You can follow Dr. Barr on Twitter at @bethallisonbarr Recently I wrote an odd sort of thank-you note. It was to a journal editor who had rejected one of my articles. The careful critique he had provided helped me reconceptualize my argument and revise the article into acceptance with a different journal (you can read this ‘revised’ article in the recent Journal of Religious History volume 39:1,... Read more

Is This the Kind of Lent I Desire? The Fast and the Cleanse

Last updated on: March 11, 2015 at 5:53 pm By Agnes Howard

When Lent begins early, as it did this year, calls to prayer and fasting come right up against the New Year’s barrage of juice-cleanse ads promising atonement for holiday indulgence. From pulpits and religion blogs Lent brings annual reminders that “it’s not about” giving up chocolate or beer. Just skipping chocolate for six weeks won’t do much for your soul or for any one else. Often offered instead are lists of things from which to fast. The “fast” might... Read more

Persia’s Christian Roots

Last updated on: March 10, 2015 at 7:33 am By Philip Jenkins

I have been exploring the history of Christianity within the Persian Empire, a subject very well known to specialists working on that area, but less so to their counterparts who study the story in its “mainstream” (Mediterranean and European) forms. Before writing about this in any more detail, it’s important to understand the geographical setting, which means locating some very famous names. Geography may or may not be destiny; but it is very important indeed for the fate of religions.... Read more

Lone Star Religion

Last updated on: March 8, 2015 at 11:35 am By Miles Mullin

Review of Robert Wuthnow, Rough Country: How Texas Became America’s Most Powerful Bible-Belt State (Princeton University Press, 2014). I grew up in Texas in the 1970s and 1980s. During my childhood, Texas was a purple state. Both major parties represented us in the Senate, and the governorship oscillated between Democrats and Republicans. Things have changed quite a bit. In November 2014, Republicans swept the mid-term elections throughout the United States. In Texas, the margin of victory was surreal, with Republican Governor-Elect... Read more

“The Enlightenment” and Its Relevance Today

Last updated on: March 9, 2015 at 5:43 am By Thomas Kidd

I am skeptical about “The Enlightenment.” It is an ideologically loaded term that implies that much of the western intellectual tradition before The Enlightenment was “dark.” Much of that tradition was, of course, Christian. “The Enlightenment” presupposes an arc of history toward secular democratic scientific liberalism. There is something to this presupposition, of course. Even the most devout believers today, at least in Europe and America, live in mental worlds that are much more secular than people in, say, the... Read more

Do We Pay Too Much Attention to Radical Islam?

Last updated on: March 8, 2015 at 6:16 pm By Philip Jenkins

Judging by media coverage over the past few years, it would be easy to assume that the West is locked in a death struggle with radical Islam. Against that view, I want to make two arguments. Although the first is (or should be) strictly non-controversial, the second may be surprising. To begin, let us agree on the nature of the violent Islamist terror movements, such as ISIS, the Islamic State. ISIS is utterly evil, and its members are criminals, fanatics... Read more

From Qumran to the Gnostics

Last updated on: January 1, 2015 at 6:13 pm By Philip Jenkins

I have been describing the emergence of some key ideas of sectarian Judaism that continue into Christianity, and to some extent in Rabbinic Judaism. My argument is that the era in which those ideas appear, roughly the last two centuries BC, is one of the most creative and influential in Western religious thought. Many of these continuities are obvious from Gnosticism. When we read the account of early Gnostic thinkers, as reported in the Christian writer Irenaeus c. 175 AD,... Read more