In Catholic intellectual circles right now, the peripheral has become quite central. Since his term in office began, Pope Francis has turned often to the concept of the periphery, a term that for him has a rich assemblage of meanings. You can expect to hear the word surfacing repeatedly in religious discourse – and we are only beginning to understand how radical some of the implications might be. I have a special interest in this topic because much of my... Read more
At first glance, books about religious magazines should not be especially interesting, yet I find them rather irresistible. As a graduate student, I remember being very impressed by Mark Hulsether’s fine study of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christianity & Crisis. Now, I’ve just finished reading Elesha Coffman’s outstanding history of The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline. Rather than a formal review, here are a few bullet-point thoughts: ▪ As a historian, I love religious periodicals and newspapers (this... Read more
It’s easy to love Pope Francis. In one of his first acts as pope, he stopped by the hotel where he stayed before the conclave to settle his bill himself. With no fanfare he melts into the dark streets of Rome at night to hang out with the homeless. Shunning the official Papal Apartment of the Apostolic Palace, he lives in the less extravagant digs of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the so-called “Vatican hotel.” He has said he wants his... Read more
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, the implications of “all men are created equal” for America’s slaves was uncertain, at least to the delegates to the Continental Congress, many of whom (like Jefferson) owned slaves themselves. There was no doubt about the Declaration’s meaning to many free and enslaved African Americans, however. Lemuel Haynes was a former indentured servant, a Massachusetts minuteman and Continental soldier, and a Calvinist evangelical who was born to a white woman and African-American... Read more
No. In an ideal world, you should send him or her to Gordon College. Its robust blend of faith and intellect, its ideal location near Boston, and its commitment to the liberal arts ideal—all make it the only choice any right-minded Christian parent would opt for. (The fact that I teach at Gordon and my high opinion of it, I should note, are strictly matters of coincidence!) However, if your high-school senior is bound for a secular, state university next... Read more
I have been describing the Japanese campaign against Christianity, which peaked in the early seventeenth century. That story has a bizarre and quite moving aftermath. Notionally, the Christian church was utterly destroyed by about 1650, and the authorities sought out possible underground believers by making them defile the cross. Yet their success was not as total as they believed. Japanese isolation ended in 1853, when a US warship forced the nation to open to external trade and contact. Christian missionaries... Read more
Even some seventy years after the Second World War, when one is in Germany one receives reminders of the Holocaust. Here in Heidelberg, vacant space and an understated memorial mark the 1938 destruction of the Jewish synagogue. That permanent emptiness reminds one of the enduring cost of evil. Most Heidelberg Jews died in Auschwitz. A new synagogue was built in Heidelberg in the 1990s. Most westerners know of and acknowledge the basic facts of the Holocaust, but fewer know about... Read more
As the mid-twentieth century American evangelical renaissance bloomed, a whole host of evangelical ministries intent on engaging the world for Christ emerged. Youth for Christ adopted trendy new methods to evangelize teenagers beginning in 1944, Mission Aviation Fellowship began serving missions in remote locations the year the World War II ended, and Fuller Seminary opened its doors to young ministers-to-be in 1947. Committed both to seeking the conversion of others and engaging the culture, the neoevangelical impulse that birthed these ventures... Read more
A friend recently asked me about my writing practices – in particular, how do I keep track of notes as I am preparing to write? This allows me to make a recommendation that I hope you won’t find too peculiar: When writing, don’t take notes. Don’t make outlines. Just write. Let me clarify. What I recommend, and try to practice myself, is wasting as little time as possible in the writing process. With all due regard to our personal dispositions... Read more
I posted about the deadly Japanese persecution of Christians in the thirty years or so after 1614, and how this violence effectively destroyed organized Christianity in that nation. In 2014, we are commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the worst of the persecution. In describing Japanese acts against the Christians, I am not of course denying that contemporary Christians could be just as brutal in their way. Coincidentally, 1614 also marks the culmination of Spain’s expulsion of... Read more
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