Your Body and God

Last updated on: December 17, 2014 at 1:03 am By Miles Mullin

I recently had the privilege of pre-reading Rob Moll’s forthcoming book, What Your Body Knows About God (November 2014, IVP). In it, Moll distills difficult scientific research, making sense of it in light of historic Christian practices–particularly those targeting personal transformation. Moll’s own ministry experience and anecdotal accounts season the chapters, adding personal interest to this smoothly-written work. Few authors can bring scientific studies, personal interviews, and theological analysis together with the ease. Moll does. Moll’s interest in the topic emerged as he researched... Read more

A Family Guide to Visiting Philadelphia

Last updated on: August 11, 2014 at 11:01 am By Thomas Kidd

There are few better cities in America for a history-themed visit than Philadelphia. We recently returned from a week and a half visit to Philly and Princeton, where I was a faculty leader for a wonderful Witherspoon Institute seminar. (I highly recommend their excellent seminars, which range across topics in law, history, and religion.) Whenever possible, I try to bring my family along for such trips, and we got a full dose of history – and historical graveyards! – in... Read more

ENDING THE DRAFT

Last updated on: August 10, 2014 at 12:43 pm By Philip Jenkins

For obvious reasons, historians concern themselves with writing about things that happened, rather than others that did not exist, or that ceased to happen. In one instance though, we can learn a lot about modern America from tracing the long-term cultural impact of something that finished over forty years ago, namely the military draft. Odd as the linkage might initially sound, that absence still casts a substantial shadow on American religion. No history of twentieth century America can underplay the... Read more

PICTURING THE GREAT WAR: A WORLD ON THE CROSS

Last updated on: July 20, 2014 at 7:09 am By Philip Jenkins

In my book The Great and Holy War, I write at some length about the propaganda imagery of the war, and how thoroughly it drew on Christian imagery, especially Christ himself, and the Crucifixion. Posters and cartoons depicted whole nations as the victims of crucifixion. Usually they were depicted in the form of women, and commonly nude. One of the war’s most influential propaganda images concerned the Canadian soldier crucified by the Germans in 1915. (Long thought to be a... Read more

A Time to Mourn

Last updated on: August 6, 2014 at 4:03 pm By johnturner

There are so many things that compete for our attention. Gaza, Ukraine, and Ebola, deservedly so. Celebrity cheating rumors, royal baby rumors, not as important as wars and rumors of wars. Perhaps as it need be, most of us are consumed with our own jobs, our own families, and our own churches. For a short time in June, the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria grabbed the attention of American newspapers and news programs. There were horrifying... Read more

Scripture as Usable History II

Last updated on: August 5, 2014 at 1:44 pm By David Swartz

In my last post I described the pushback from some American evangelicals against God-and-country Bibles like the Patriot’s Bible or the Bicentennial Bible. Another woefully understudied, but potentially significant, source of dissent is global evangelicalism. To my knowledge Mark Noll is one of the few to analyze foreign perspectives on America’s treatment of Scripture. In one of the most striking chapters of The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, entitled “Opinions of Protestants Abroad,” Noll surveys how nineteenth-century European Christians... Read more

How Violent Was American Slavery? Colonial Slave Codes

Last updated on: July 25, 2014 at 11:59 am By Thomas Kidd

Last week I wrote about the challenges colonial American missionaries faced when trying to evangelize slaves without fundamentally challenging the institution of slavery. Starting in the eighteenth century, growing numbers of Christians began to express concerns about the immorality of slavery, at least slavery as practiced in the Americas. But when they turned to Scripture, these antislavery Christians were perplexed to find little support for an argument against slavery “in the abstract.” Given the existence of slavery in the Bible,... Read more

Satan, that Insidious Whisperer

Last updated on: August 4, 2014 at 10:18 am By Thomas Albert Howard

It goes without saying that Islam and “the West” have had a distressed relationship in recent decades. One can be forgiven for clinging to the hope of improved relations in the decades ahead and for inroads of genuine democracy in Muslim-majority Middle Eastern states. But this hope should be tethered to a sober historical understanding, which suggests that the path will be uphill. I was reminded of this recently when I happened upon an assessment of France after the French... Read more

Christians and the Death Penalty

Last updated on: August 1, 2014 at 6:08 pm By johnturner

Why should Christians (and other Americans) oppose the death penalty, at least as currently practiced in the United States? Not because it is unbiblical. Several months back, Mark Tooley rather helpfully corrected a post of mine on this point. Prior to the particular laws given to Moses, God told Noah and his sons: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” One could debate the extent to which... Read more

Evangelicals and Immigration–1940s Style

Last updated on: January 17, 2015 at 2:02 pm By Miles Mullin

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! These words, ascribed on a bronze plaque affixed to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, were penned by American poet Emma Lazarus. Originally written to help raise money to fund pedestal construction, “The New Colossus” portrays the statue as the “Mother of Exiles” whose... Read more