Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter, Part 1

Last updated on: January 17, 2015 at 11:50 am By Miles Mullin

When Marge Simpson forgets to pay for a bottle of rum at the Qwik-E-Mart, she ends up serving thirty days in jail for shoplifting. Without Marge’s famous marshmallow squares to sell, Springfield’s Beautify Our Parks Bake Sale falls short of its goal, forcing the town to purchase a statue of Jimmy Carter instead of Abraham Lincoln. Furious, someone in the crowd cries, “He’s history’s greatest monster,” and the townspeople riot, eventually using the statue of Carter as a battering ram... Read more

“A Decision of Startling Breadth”? Reflections on Hobby Lobby

Last updated on: June 30, 2014 at 11:52 am By Thomas Kidd

This week’s Hobby Lobby decision from the Supreme Court brings good news and bad news. The good news is that the majority made the right decision, on sensible grounds, namely that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) should protect “closely held” businesses from acting against the dictates of conscience, especially when the government has not demonstrated that their policy is the “least restrictive means” to advance some compelling interest. The HHS Mandate is so called because the Department of Health... Read more

CULT ALTERNATIVES

Last updated on: June 30, 2014 at 7:07 am By Philip Jenkins

I recently asked “Where have all the cultists gone?” – that is, why do we no longer have cult panics like we have had so frequently throughout US history, but so floridly and sensationally in the 1970s and 1980s. I suggested that small controversial groups might be less likely to be formed and grow in our more secular society, but let me offer two alternative explanations, or rather to other forces that might be at work over and above that.... Read more

WHERE HAVE ALL THE CULTISTS GONE?

Last updated on: December 23, 2014 at 2:47 pm By Philip Jenkins

One of the most enjoyable academic conferences on religious studies is CESNUR, the Center for the Study of New Religions, and this past month we hosted the group’s annual meeting at Baylor. I spoke on a topic that I have addressed before, namely the sharp decline in public concern (or panic) about dangerous religious cults in the United States. As I will suggest, I believe this might mark a significant social trend, and perhaps even a bellwether for secularization. Throughout... Read more

Fully Divine, Fully Human Word of God

Last updated on: June 23, 2014 at 4:40 pm By johnturner

When Christianity Today editor Harold Lindsell identified a Battle for the Bible in 1976, he spoke to a conflict that had been roiling American Protestants for more than two centuries and that had been splitting conservative Protestants for many decades. In The Erosion of Biblical Certainty (not exactly bargain priced, so the Anxious Bench pursues its vision of social justice by summarizing it for you here), Eastern University’s Michael J. Lee narrates the early period of this story, revising what... Read more

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