One of my favorite academic societies, the Conference on Faith and History, holds its biennial meeting in a couple weeks and I’m excited for the line-up! This society is a group of historians of faith rather than historians who study faith, although many of us do. This year’s theme is “Christian Historians and their Contexts.” The Conference on Faith and History features a lot of panels on historical topics of interest to me. But I also really enjoy the fact... Read more
When Pope Francis observed recently that both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are “against life,” and that American Christians will therefore have to vote for the “lesser of two evils,” it confirmed what many pro-life Christians have been thinking for a while: neither candidate fully represents their values. Millions of American Christian voters – whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox – will therefore cast their ballots for a choice that they consider far from ideal in the belief that they must... Read more
Back in 2020, I met a local politician who asked for my advice about how she could better serve the Asian Americans in her district. During our conversation, this politician mentioned a large Korean American church perched prominently on a hill on a main thoroughfare in the city. Who are the people in this church? she asked. Do they even care about the election? In her view, these Korean American Christians were a cloistered community completely disengaged from American politics.... Read more
I have been preoccupied over the last few months by the subject of tradition in the Reformation—how it is constructed, where it is appropriated, and where the self-conscious breaks occur. As part of that preoccupation, I’ve turned numerous times to the question of transmission. How is the faith being passed on to the next generation when new beliefs and new ways of being Christian appear in the 16th century? One way this transmission happened frequently was in the writing and... Read more
I have been posting on the religious dimensions of empire in American history, and I have stressed how the nation’s imperial expansion from earliest times must be seen in that imperial context. Over the past decade, one very influential approach to that story has been the idea of “Vast Early America,” which is commonly represented as a hashtag, #VastEarlyAmerica. Today I will describe the core idea and the debates that it has inspired, and next time, I will look at... Read more
That Anabaptism could turn half a millennium old would have shocked early Anabaptists. Read more
We were crammed into a large storage space retrofitted with old couches and Newsboys posters, sweaty and out of breath after the game of dodgeball we just played. What better time could there be to talk about sex? An older couple from the church arrived to speak to the youth group, discussing in awkward detail how amazing sex is, so long as you wait for marriage—if you don’t, your marriage will be broken, or at least not as good as... Read more
She balances her petite frame on a pedestal perched above the altar in a little sixteenth-century church set atop an ancient Mesoamerican pyramid-mountain known as the Tlachihualtepetl, or Mountain Made by Hand, in the city of Cholula, Mexico. Often sporting traditional blue, her dress color will change based on her calendar of events: the processions she will lead, the churches she will visit, the feast days she will celebrate, her birthday. A FB photo of her posted at 6:35pm this... Read more
I posted last time about the importance of Freemasonry for understanding American history, American empire, and its religious dimensions. It is a lengthy story with large implications that stretch beyond Christianity. It also reminds us of a time in that history – only yesterday, in fact – when religion played a central role in politics. Masons and Toleration As a social and political movement, modern Freemasonry developed in the British Isles in the early eighteenth century. It was devoted to... Read more
“Since we cannot study the future yet, we need the past to help us see the present more clearly.” C. S. Lewis Rarely does research result in the desire to be a better person. I recall one book from seminary on history method that said the researcher should strive to be objective and neutral. I found, however, this was difficult to maintain as I listened to testimony after testimony from friends, colleagues, and family about Dr. Jesse Miranda this summer.... Read more
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