Following on from my book The Great and Holy War, I have been working on the religious and apocalyptic aspects of the First World War, and have recently posted on some major popular culture items from that time. I find myself concentrating on 1916, the year of Mr Britling Sees It Through and The Brook Kerith. The religious upsurge of that year when we consider the massively rising casualties, and the seemingly endless nature of the struggle. Barring divine intervention,... Read more
The Joseph Smith Papers Project website (josephsmithpapers.org) is one of the very best electronic resources pertaining to the history of religion in the United States. It is a companion to the printed volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers, which have set an outrageously high standard for documentary editions because of their clarity of transcription, extensive annotations, and other forms of scholarly apparatus. I like the published volumes, but I love the website, which will eventually contain all of the material... Read more
From the Archive In light of the upcoming annual meeting of the largest (for now) Protestant denominations taking place in Baltimore, MD next week, it seemed appropriate to re-run my two-part series from last summer, “A Primer on the Southern Baptist Convention.” The first part will run today, the second will run on Saturday, June 7th. Relevant updates and emendations have been made. They are indicated by italics. Next week, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) will hold its annual meeting in Baltimore, MD. ... Read more
In anticipation of the 2014 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, the SBC’s LifeWay Christian Resources issued its annual report on church statistics, and for the seventh straight year, the SBC’s overall membership declined. (Here’s my coverage of the 2013 report and annual meeting for WORLD Magazine.) The University of North Carolina’s Molly Worthen, in an important essay on the decline, has asked whether the denomination’s Conservative Resurgence has “failed.” (The Resurgence was Southern Baptist conservatives’ campaign to regain... Read more
In my new book The Great and Holy War, I argued that the catastrophe of the First World War transformed the world’s great religions. I continue to think through some of the implications of this story, for what it might tell us about the history of religions more generally. (I have already posted a couple of items about the relationship between war and religious change). The First World War’s impact on faith and faiths was immense. Reacting to the war’s... Read more
I recently published the book The Great and Holy War, about the religious and apocalyptic dimensions of the First World War era. Looking at the best-selling books of those years gives us a sense of the strong and diverse religious interests of that time, and the results are often surprising. Who for instance would think that even H. G. Wells would pen something like a spiritual classic, in his 1916 title Mr. Britling Sees it Through? But 1916 also brought... Read more
Anna Vetter grew up amid the poverty of the Thirty Years War. After marrying, she gave birth to seven children. Around the age of thirty, she grew ill and nearly died. Her husband abused her. A daughter died shortly after birth. Then her visions began. Anna Vetter saw God, angels, and Jesus Christ. In one vision, she was present at a wedding at which Jesus turned water into wine and then “invited her to dance with him.” In other vision,... Read more
One beautiful spring afternoon four years ago, I came across a horrifying scene in my living room. One of my two-year-old sons was standing on the back of the couch with his legs spread and his arms outstretched. My other two-year-old son stood facing him with an imaginary hammer in his hand and a determined look on his face. He proceeded to pound imaginary nails into his twin brother’s hands and feet. He was crucifying his twin brother. I had... Read more
In my small group at church we have been discussing the spiritual disciplines, and one of the recent topics was “unplugging,” or fasting from technology. Fasting is, of course, an ancient practice, but in the past fifty years or so it has been applied more and more to electronic devices, from the radio to the smart phone. My group really resonated with the need to take intentional, periodic breaks from the internet, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, as well... Read more
Though America’s religious history is lively and contains record of fidelity, courage, even sanctity, previous generations of Christians here—even recent ones—built some awful-looking churches. Churches that look like gymnasiums or strip malls, churches made of corrugated steel or dun-colored brick, churches crusted with decoration or lurid with lives of the saints: they make us ask what it means to “look like a church.” Bethe Dufresne’s article, “Sermon in Stone,” in the current issue of Commonweal magazine, follows liturgical designers Lawrence... Read more
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