This year marks a singularly grim anniversary in Christian history. In 2014, it is exactly four hundred years since the start of the horrific persecution that destroyed the once flourishing church in Japan. When we think of persecutions on this scale, we normally tend to set them in an ancient or medieval context. The world of 1614, though, was in some ways remarkably modern, not least in terms of its literature and culture. Shakespeare had just retired, and Cervantes was... Read more
As the Civil War ground to an end in early 1865, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. It was a gracious meditation. He noted that both the North and South read the same Bible and prayed to the same God. Invoking the mystery of God’s ways, he declared, “The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither have been answered fully. The Almighty has its own purposes.” He cited Matthew 7:1: “But let us judge not... Read more
Edward Gilbreath’s Birmingham Revolution: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Epic Challenge to the Church (InterVarsity, 2013) offers both a stirring challenge and a strong dose of hope to American evangelicals. Gilbreath, an editor at large with Christianity Today and executive director of communications for the Evangelical Covenant Church, focuses his gaze at King’s 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Along the way, however, he discusses the sometimes awkward relationship between black and white evangelicals, King’s plagiarism, racial profiling, and — of course... Read more
A friend and parent of preschoolers recently asked how my wife and I made the decision to homeschool our kids. As I have written previously, homeschooling is not for every family. There are any number of reasons parents might decide not to homeschool, including a simple lack of passion for doing it. But even for those who might be interested in the homeschool option, it remains a daunting prospect, especially if you have no background as an educator, or as... Read more
Good timing: January brought another round of Washington debate over immigration policy, and I found myself again in opening weeks of teaching a U.S. history survey course—1492-1846—just when Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States was released. By location, I could get away perfectly well with an eastern history of the U.S. My graduate training focused on New England, I studied in Virginia, and I teach at Gordon College in Massachusetts, spitting distance from many of... Read more
I’ve written a good deal about the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the era that in parts of Europe we commonly call a Dark Age. This was a remarkable time for Christian survival and growth in some areas – and of the destruction of the faith in others. This was for instance the great age of Celtic saints Patrick and Illtud. Another very important member of the group is all but forgotten today, or... Read more
I have been posting recently about how societies and groups construct their memories, and through that process, define their identities. When I say “constructing,” that need have no implication of deceit or forgery: rather, it means that multiple memories are available, and we choose to emphasize some rather than others. History is always being rewritten, and always will be. That story is particularly relevant for religions and religious traditions, which try to root themselves in antiquity. A large amount of... Read more
Molly Worthen’s Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism is a sobering encounter with an old friend. At first glance, one’s friend seems to have left some of his old ways behind. He’s more sophisticated, and more well-heeled than in his younger years. He thinks he’s changed a great deal. But when one sits down and chats for an hour, it becomes apparent that one’s friend has the same old problems. “Scratch a neo-evangelical,” Worthen diagnoses this... Read more
We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. ~Martin Luther King, Jr. When Martin Luther King, Jr. first drafted those now-famous in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, white and black Christians throughout the South were holding separate church services on Easter Sunday, 1963. While the celebration... Read more
In my recent post on platforms and publishing, I noted that certain “experts” seem to be mostly platform and little substance, and that evangelicals have a special fondness for these sorts of pop experts. Matthew Lee Anderson subsequently asked me to address the question “Why do you think evangelicals are especially vulnerable to ‘experts’?” I am not the first person to note the evangelical experts phenomenon – Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson devoted a provocative book, The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a... Read more
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