Black religion and Vietnam

Last updated on: June 24, 2014 at 9:01 am By David Swartz

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. preached at Riverside Church in New York City. In his sermon (listen to it here) he publicly broke ranks with the policies of President Lyndon Johnson and the white liberal establishment (which still largely supported the war) as he condemned American involvement in Vietnam. King articulated what increasing numbers of Americans were beginning to feel—that Vietnam, civil rights, and economics were deeply interconnected. Just as the policies of Johnson’s Great Society had... Read more

Runaway Slave Ads and the Violence of Slavery

Last updated on: June 16, 2014 at 10:04 am By Thomas Kidd

In research for my colonial America book, I recently came across a runaway slave ad cited in Ira Berlin’s masterful Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. The ad appeared in the Maryland Gazette in 1766, one of countless such ads seeking the return of runaways from southern farms and plantations in the colonial and antebellum eras. Here’s the ad: Ran away from the subscriber living in Baltimore-Town, on the 7th of September last, a Negro Girl, named... Read more

Looking for a Good Hermit

Last updated on: June 22, 2014 at 6:18 pm By Agnes Howard

The Swiss city of Solothurn is advertising for a hermit. The location is a handsome, snug hermitage nestled in rock over St. Verena gorge. Job qualifications: must be outgoing, good with people, willing to dispense wisdom to passersby. A winsome Wall Street Journal piece this Thursday broadcast the opening to an even broader pool, though the town already has received plenty of applications. Maybe we are meant to snicker here, since a hermit, by definition, is someone who wants... Read more

MASONS AND MUSLIMS

Last updated on: June 15, 2014 at 5:53 pm By Philip Jenkins

I have recently been posting on the astonishingly widespread influence of Freemasonry both in Anglo-American culture, and in Continental Europe. But that global influence went even further, into some regions and contexts that today seem almost incredible. To illustrate this, I turn to the origins of modern Islamic thought. At the end of the nineteenth century, Islam worldwide was in a parlous condition, as the vast majority of the world’s Muslims fell under the rule of European empires. The largest... Read more

Have Visions Ceased?

Last updated on: June 18, 2014 at 3:46 pm By johnturner

In his published account of his first visionary experience, Joseph Smith reported that a Methodist preacher reacted to his report of his vision with utter contempt: “he treated my communication not only lightly, but with great contempt, saying it was all of the devil, that there were no such things as visions or revelations in these days; that all such things had ceased with the apostles, and that there would never be any more of them.” One of the more... Read more

Five American Religious History Books Every Evangelical Minister Should Read

Last updated on: January 17, 2015 at 4:53 pm By Miles Mullin

Traditionally, summer is the time for reading lists. In honor of that tradition, I present the following post. Among Anxious Bench authors, I am a bit of an anomaly. My colleagues on the blog–Agnes Howard, Tal Howard, Thomas Kidd, Philip Jenkins, David Swartz, and John Turner–all hold positions in history departments. I teach in a theological seminary, something that brings unique rewards but also concomitant challenges. Like all professors, I face the challenge of assigning books that will pique and... Read more

Phillis Wheatley and the Evangelical Anti-Slavery Movement

Last updated on: June 16, 2014 at 9:59 am By Thomas Kidd

When the evangelical poet Phillis Wheatley published an pamphlet-length elegy on George Whitefield upon the great itinerant’s death in 1770, she gained renown as the first published African American woman in history. She was still a slave in Boston at the time, and (perhaps predictably, if she was going to be published) there were only glimmers of anti-slavery sentiment in the elegy. Whitefield himself died a slave owner, and did not free his slaves upon his death. Wheatley, however, focused... Read more

FREEMASONS AND THE NEW AGE

Last updated on: June 16, 2014 at 11:37 am By Philip Jenkins

I posted recently on the importance of Freemasons in Anglo-American history – political, cultural and religious. Masonry had a substantial influence on mainstream churches, especially in what we call mainline denominations. But its impact was all the more obvious among more marginal groups, and in new religious movements. When we look at America’s esoteric and mystical movements, its New Agers and its experimental religions, not much makes sense without those core Masonic ideas and structures. As John Turner notes, we... Read more

MACHEN’S TERROR

Last updated on: June 17, 2014 at 8:28 am By Philip Jenkins

I recently published the book The Great and Holy War, about the supernatural dimensions of the First World War. In connection with that project, I have posted on some of the major books of that era, including works by George Moore and H. G. Wells. I am arguing that the war’s astonishing violence inspired both religious hopes and apocalyptic nightmares. We see similar themes in another powerful book of that era, The Terror, by the Welsh fantasy horror writer Arthur... Read more

Evangelicals Not Welcome

Last updated on: June 12, 2014 at 3:52 am By johnturner

It’s been a long time since most public and private universities and colleges in the United States desired the active presence of evangelical Christians in their midst. After the YMCA/YWCA and the Student Volunteer Movement backed away from their evangelical roots, groups such as Inter-Varsity, the Navigators, and Campus Crusade for Christ filled the vacuum. While some mainline Protestant ministries shrank in the wake of the sixties cultural revolution, evangelicals demonstrated new visibility and growth on many campuses. As I... Read more