Antebellum African Missions and the Evangelical South

Last updated on: January 10, 2014 at 3:50 pm By Thomas Kidd

I recently read Erskine Clarke’s remarkable By the Rivers of Water: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey, which tells the epic chronicle of John Leighton Wilson and Jane Wilson, antebellum southern missionaries to west Africa. Clarke is one of the most gifted historians of American religion, with particular mastery of the antebellum southern Christian mind. By the Rivers of Water is a natural sequel to his Bancroft Prize-winning Dwelling Place. As I have written earlier, the nineteenth-century American missions movement was often... Read more

ONIONS AND OLIVES

Last updated on: January 13, 2014 at 8:33 am By Philip Jenkins

I recently posted on Philip K. Dick’s book The Man in the High Castle, and what it suggests about the construction of historical memory. For historians of religion especially, we can learn a lot about the invention of history, and how new histories, new memories, come to be seen as solid fact. The godfather of the modern study of memory was French historian Pierre Nora, who claims that we are living through a kind of golden age of historical invention.... Read more

DOWN FROM THE HIGH CASTLE

Last updated on: January 9, 2014 at 1:35 pm By Philip Jenkins

As a historian of religion, I am haunted by Zippo cigarette lighters. Let me explain. As a teenager, I was stunned by reading Philip K. Dick’s novel The Man in the High Castle, originally published in 1962. The book’s theme seems almost commonplace in retrospect, as so many other works have used its central idea of “What if the Axis won the war?” Counter-factual history (“virtual history”) is now very much in vogue. At the time, though, Dick’s work was... Read more

Tweeting the Bible

Last updated on: January 10, 2014 at 5:50 am By johnturner

Is the Bible a funny book? Nearly a decade ago, I read David Maine’s winsome and witty novel The Preservationist, an imaginative retelling of Noah and the flood that is simultaneously irreverent and faithful toward the biblical narrative. Maine’s The Fallen, a novel about Adam, Eve, and their expulsion from Eden, proved a splendid follow-up. Lots of sex, crude behavior, and, of course, misbehavior. Jana Riess’s Twible is more upbeat but just as funny. The book is a compilation of... Read more

An Appalachian Revivalist in Queen Victoria’s South Africa

Last updated on: January 8, 2014 at 8:51 am By David Swartz

In 1866 William Taylor, a renegade Wesleyan evangelist from the Appalachians, arrived in the south of Africa. A tall six feet with a long, scraggly beard that draped down over a barrel chest, Taylor was “a Methodist preacher of the old school.” He was “adept at charming his hosts, delivering folksy sermons, deflecting opposition, spinning humorous anecdotes, and promoting his own ministerial exploits.” When he came over to South Africa, Taylor unleashed a wild style of revival that featured improvisation... Read more

Of Platforms and Publishing

Last updated on: January 6, 2014 at 9:35 am By Thomas Kidd

In my recent post on publishing, I noted that “To publish a book with an established press, you ordinarily need a “platform” from which to write a book – in the world of religious history, the most common such platforms are an academic position or a pastorate,” and that “Platform is a much bigger issue, increasingly connected to social media reach. Michael Hyatt does a great job explaining why a platform is essential, but Scot McKnight recently registered some important doubts about platform-based publishing.”... Read more

Waiting for the Christmas Witch

Last updated on: January 5, 2014 at 7:01 pm By Agnes Howard

After twelve days of feasting the Christmas Witch sneaks in to slip coal or candy into stockings. What? Not in your country? Perhaps you should be living in a different Nativity. The Nativity sets most us probably just packed away originate with St. Francis of Assisi, credited with making them part of Christian seasonal observance. Preaching in 1223 in the town of Greccio, St. Francis called townspeople to worship Jesus as He lay humbly in a manger. Now, Italians preparing... Read more

FROM ANGELS TO ARMAGEDDON

Last updated on: December 23, 2014 at 3:03 pm By Philip Jenkins

Over the past couple of years, I have been working on a book about the religious aspects of the First World War, to be published in this centennial year of 2014. It will appear this coming May, as The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade (HarperOne). It’s an ambitious work, which seeks to be global in its coverage – I draw heavily on original sources from all the major countries involved, especially Germany and... Read more

Year of Mercy-ing

Last updated on: January 1, 2014 at 3:46 pm By johnturner

I was struck by Jeremy Lott’s year-end piece at Real Clear Religion: “The Year of the Sinner.” Apparently, Pope Francis (it is so much easier for non-Catholics to have a pope without Roman numerals after his regnal name) caused a stir in some quarters by telling America that Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s basic identity is that of a sinner: “I do not know what might be the most fitting description…. I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It... Read more

Personality-Driven Leadership, Evangelicalism, and the NFL

Last updated on: January 18, 2015 at 10:19 am By Miles Mullin

The National Football League (NFL) playoffs begin this weekend. Over the next several weeks, twelve teams–six from each conference–will contend for a chance to play for the Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl XLVIII, held at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ. Holding a virtual monopoly on professional football in North America, the NFL manages its brand carefully, cracking down on both on and off-field violations it deems harmful to its image. Within its monopoly, it also runs a tightly-regulated... Read more