Picturing Pain

Last updated on: April 29, 2014 at 11:58 pm By David Swartz

Last week several dozen scholars of religion met at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom to discuss the global history of evangelicalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The conference, organized by Kendrick Oliver, whose research on religion and the space program you really must become acquainted with, was terrific. Papers ranged from religious broadcasting (Tim Stoneman, Georgia Tech Lorraine), charismatic Anglican short-term missions (John Maiden, Open University), World Vision (David King, IUPUI), and Carl McIntire, the ICCC,... Read more

An Interview with Philip Jenkins on The Great and Holy War

Last updated on: April 29, 2014 at 8:13 am By Thomas Kidd

My Baylor colleague and fellow Anxious Bench blogger Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History and Co-Director of the Program on Historical Studies of Religion at Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion. He is the author of many books, including The Lost History of Christianity, Jesus Wars, and The Next Christendom. He has published articles and op-ed pieces in The Wall Street Journal, New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. His latest book is The Great and Holy War: How World War I... Read more

Making Saints of Two Popes

Last updated on: April 27, 2014 at 9:19 pm By Agnes Howard

This weekend’s big event, the first-ever double papal canonization–two living popes making saints of two towering twentieth-century ones—wears its historical significance on its sleeve. In a New York Times article covering the event, Jim Yardley quotes 54-year-old Kansan Mary Ellen Watson: “This is a moment in the history of the church that has never happened and won’t probably happen again—with four popes!” Pope Francis I, remarkable in his own right as a “first,” was joined by the emeritus Pope Benedict... Read more

Moral Minority in Paperback

Last updated on: April 24, 2014 at 4:04 am By johnturner

Perhaps because he practices the Christian humility encouraged by Miles Mullin this past week, our colleague David Swartz has failed to inform readers of the Anxious Bench that his history of the Evangelical Left is now available in paperback. See my praise of David’s book here and here. Needless to say, Moral Minority is readable, informative, and humane in its treatment of both the Evangelical Left and its more conservative antagonists. As David writes on his own blog, if the... Read more

THE GREAT AND HOLY WAR

Last updated on: April 17, 2014 at 2:56 pm By Philip Jenkins

Not long since, I posted about my current book project on the First World War, and especially its supernatural and apocalyptic dimensions. That grew out of a long-standing fascination with the period roughly between 1890-1920, and a host of writers I loved – from Conrad, Joyce and Kipling through Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, Jack London and Frank Norris, G. K. Chesterton and H. G. Wells, John Buchan and W. B. Yeats, Robert Chambers and E. F. Benson, M. R.... Read more

Eucharistic Visionaries

Last updated on: April 24, 2014 at 3:53 am By johnturner

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been exploring the role of visions in the history of Christianity, specifically visions of Jesus. It was accepted by nearly all early Christians that men and women had been granted visions by the divine (and often of the divine), and it appears to have been widely accepted that at least some individuals continued to receive that gift. In the long wake of the New Prophecy, this rough consensus — about visions in general, not... Read more

Christian Humility? In Academia?

Last updated on: January 18, 2015 at 9:26 am By Miles Mullin

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ~Philippians 2:3-4 (NRSV) Considering others more important than yourself by looking out for their interests manifests Christian humility and demonstrates conformity to the example set by Jesus Christ. In competitive environments, the cultivation of this sort of Christian concern for others can prove difficult. And beginning (at the... Read more

Clemson vs. The Secularists

Last updated on: April 21, 2014 at 2:34 pm By Thomas Kidd

The football program at my beloved alma mater, Clemson University, has become the target of legal threats by the militant secularist/atheist group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation. This group trolls about the country, looking for evidences of religion in public life, and threatening lawsuits whenever such evidences are discovered. Clemson’s coach Dabo Swinney is an outspoken Christian, who is accused of employing a chaplain, sharing Scripture with his players, and inviting players to church. This pattern of behavior, the FFRF... Read more

WALKING ON THE WATER

Last updated on: April 20, 2014 at 8:49 pm By Philip Jenkins

I recently posted on Jesus’s Resurrection appearance in John 21, where the disciples meet him at the Sea of Galilee. I argued that this scene, or something like it, was the very oldest version of the Resurrection story as it would have been known, for instance, to Paul around 50AD, and that it long predated the familiar story of Jesus meeting Mary Magdalene in the garden. We miss this point because the present structure of the Fourth Gospel lets us... Read more

MERCY – SHUT UP!

Last updated on: April 16, 2014 at 6:49 pm By Philip Jenkins

Easter is a time for sober reflection on matters of death and Resurrection, and not, one would think, an occasion for humor. Throughout history, though, some Christians at least – including major cultural figures – have so relished the news of Christ’s triumph that they cannot contain their glee in declaring the good news. Without apology, then, I turn to one of the greatest medieval explorations of the Easter experience. I am referring to William Langland’s epic poem Piers Plowman,... Read more