MASONS AND CATHOLICS

Last updated on: May 23, 2014 at 7:55 am By Philip Jenkins

I have been posting on the pervasive influence of Freemasonry in Anglo-American culture. Usually, that tradition was very wide-open and generous in terms of its racial and religious attitudes, but there is one enormous exception to that rule, and that concerns Roman Catholics. Indeed, much of European and American politics over the past two centuries has involved a running and often bitter confrontation between Masons and Catholics. Why is that? As a social and political movement, modern Freemasonry developed in... Read more

German Pietism

Last updated on: May 22, 2014 at 4:10 am By johnturner

Most of us who think about the history of American evangelicalism are Anglo-centric. That is, if we think about the roots of American evangelicalism or about its subsequent development, we think about England (and perhaps Scotland and Wales) if we think outside of North America at all. Douglas Shantz, in An Introduction to German Pietism: Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of Modern Europe, reminds us that such a tack impoverishes our understanding of American religion. “German Pietism,” he states, “represents... Read more

A Review of David Swartz’s Moral Minority

Last updated on: May 20, 2014 at 9:34 am By Thomas Kidd

David Swartz is off this week – here is an excellent review of David’s Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism, from the Church History blog: It did not have to be. The Falwells, the Dobsons, the Reeds, the LaHayes, all those who may well have given more contours to the term “evangelical” than any theologians – they did not have to be the embodiment of evangelical public activism that goes down in history. There was another option. Maybe... Read more

An Interview with Steven Smith on Religious Liberty

Last updated on: May 20, 2014 at 11:04 am By Thomas Kidd

I recently interviewed Steven D. Smith about his new Harvard University Press book, The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom. Smith is Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego and Co-Executive Director of the USD Institute for Law and Religion. [Kidd] Thanks for taking the time for an interview, Professor Smith! You open your book by discussing the “standard story” of American religious freedom, and then offer a “revised version” of that story. Give us an... Read more

WHY MASONS MATTER

Last updated on: May 19, 2014 at 12:15 pm By Philip Jenkins

Recently, John Turner did an important post on the theme of American Religion and Freemasonry. My own interests in the topic go back a long way. My first academic article ever, back in 1979 (!) was on Masons. (I was seven at the time). I specifically discussed the overlap between Jacobites and Freemasons in eighteenth century British politics. As John Turner suggests for the United States, you couldn’t go far in British towns large or small in the late eighteenth... Read more

SEEING IT THROUGH

Last updated on: May 16, 2014 at 12:11 pm By Philip Jenkins

Here’s a question. I am going to quote a passage published in 1916 by a famous British novelist. Who was it? Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until a  man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end. He may have his friendships, his partial loyalties, his scraps of honour. But all these things fall into place and life falls into place only with God. Only... Read more

American Religion and Freemasonry

Last updated on: May 14, 2014 at 10:35 am By johnturner

Freemasonry is a tricky topic for historians of American religion, both in terms of classification and in terms of content. Masonry confuses, in part because of the many changes within its ranks over the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Still, good books exist on the topic, such as Stephen Bullock’s Revolutionary Brotherhood. David Hackett’s recently published That Religion in Which All Men Agree: Freemasonry in American Culture is a very helpful guide to those who still find... Read more

Where the Wind Leads

Last updated on: May 16, 2014 at 11:48 am By Miles Mullin

For the May 1st-15th Patheos Book Club In early 1979, Hoa Chung had a dream. Although plans were coming together to leave communist-ruled Vietnam for a better life elsewhere, this dream was not a daydream of hope, but a vivid sleeping-dream. In it, her husband Hoa and their eight children fell dead in the middle of a thriving Vietnamese market. Then, they were resurrected one-by-one through the ministrations of “a man dressed in a white robe, with long brown hair... Read more

Should Christians Date Online?

Last updated on: May 12, 2014 at 4:16 pm By Thomas Kidd

Our friend (and one of the fabulous Baylor history Ph.D. students) Paul Putz has a fascinating piece over at the Religion and Politics blog on the deep history of Christian matchmaking in America. After discussing the intriguing “matrimonial bureau” of Omaha pastor Charles Savidge in the early 20th century, Putz reflects on the contemporary relevance and challenges of online dating sites such as ChristianMingle. Putz says that Given the reality of our increasingly online, increasingly digital world, Christian niche dating sites serve... Read more

Nihilism and “The Book of Mormon”

Last updated on: May 12, 2014 at 7:58 am By Thomas Albert Howard

I refer to the blockbuster musical, not the sacred book of Mormons. Recently, I took a group of (mostly evangelical) students at Gordon College to see the play when it was staged in Boston. (No parents have complained—not yet anyway!) Much has already been written about the play. Still, after watching it, I could not withhold my two-cents. At many levels, it’s breathtakingly well done. The dances, the music, the set, the lighting, the dialogue, the wit brought the staid... Read more