“Psychedelic Christians”: The Legacy of the Jesus People

Last updated on: October 25, 2013 at 11:56 am By Thomas Kidd

I recently had the pleasure of reading Larry Eskridge’s remarkable God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America (Oxford, 2013). [Full disclosure: Larry is a good friend and fellow Carolinian – though of the North Carolina variety – who has occasionally given me barbecue advice.] This book is the epitome of definitive, with rich, entertaining detail on all the key players and personalities that united 1960s/70s youth culture and evangelical Christianity. Anyone who has background in the Christian counterculture, the... Read more

Virtue and Vice and Everything …

Last updated on: October 25, 2013 at 3:02 pm By Thomas Albert Howard

One of the heartening things about our times has been the recovery, at least in some quarters, of the language of virtue and vice. At a popular level, this owes much to William Bennet and his concern for the moral formation of children, and at an academic level, the smoking gun points, above all, to Alasdair MacIntyre—especially his book After Virtue, which, ironically, has helped spawn a whole range of inquiries into the nature and possible recovery of virtue. Indeed,... Read more

ON FEEDING THE TROLLS

Last updated on: October 23, 2013 at 8:07 am By Philip Jenkins

Today’s blog is about blogging. If you blog on religious topics, you know that there are a couple of issues that are guaranteed to set at least some commenters off into paroxysms of rage. On a site like this, Islam and Mormonism are two prime detonators. I’m open to very wide ranging discussions on anything I write. But what do you do about comments that are so far beyond the pale that you can only see them on a clear... Read more

Luther and the Word of God

Last updated on: October 23, 2013 at 5:20 pm By johnturner

Martin Luther did not want to preach in Wittenberg’s city church. The year was — most likely — 1513. Luther later commented that he “was chosen against my will to preach here.” He was afraid of what he considered a great responsibility. “I shall not live a quarter-year,” he feared. Germany is currently just more than halfway through its “Luther Decade,” culminating with the five-hundredth anniversary of Luther’s posting of his ninety-five theses upon the Wittenberg church door on October... Read more

Blue Crabs and Evangelicals – Part 1

Last updated on: January 18, 2015 at 10:32 am By Miles Mullin

Next month, the sixty-fifth meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) will convene in Baltimore, Maryland. In between eating blue crabs and searching for book deals, members will present papers, discuss present and future projects, catch up with colleagues, and network with other evangelicals. Although the society maintains a pronounced focus on Bible and theology, a baffling array of topics will be covered in the planned sessions. For instance, on a typical day, participants might attend a paper on the identity-shaping... Read more

Interpreting Demonic Possession

Last updated on: October 21, 2013 at 9:49 am By Thomas Kidd

My graduate course recently read Brian Levack’s The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West (Yale, 2013). Levack, the author of a number of important books on witchcraft and possession in early modern Europe, notes from the outset that “demonic possession is a methodological landmine for historians.” That’s the truth! It is relatively easy to write about the history of theology or denominations, but what does one do when writing about the history of religious experiences like demon possession?... Read more

THE VERY PLACE WHERE IT HAPPENED

Last updated on: August 2, 2013 at 10:45 am By Philip Jenkins

I recently described the powerful medieval theme of rooting the events of the New Testament in the places and objects of the Old. I cited for instance the Syriac writer Solomon of Basra around 1220, and what we can only call a complex mythological system: As to the tree upon which our Redeemer was crucified, some have said that He was crucified upon those bars with which they carried the ark of the covenant; and others that it was upon... Read more

THE BIBLE’S DEEP HISTORY

Last updated on: October 11, 2013 at 10:01 am By Philip Jenkins

I have been spending a lot of time recently with the apocryphal texts of the Old Testament, the pseudepigrapha. This material can become obsessive! Through much of Christian history, the relationship between Old and New Testaments was very different from how most would imagine it today. Modern believers certainly see foretastes or prophecies of Christ in the Old, but on a very minor scale compared to anything understood by earlier generations. In early and medieval times, Christians found countless symbolic... Read more

The Issue of our Day

Last updated on: October 16, 2013 at 5:56 pm By johnturner

This week I read a news article that broke my heart and called me to repentance. In the midst of the fight over the budget and debt ceiling, in the midst of the ongoing saga of the “Bling-Bling Bishop” in Germany, and in the midst of football season, most of us (myself included) have been paying little attention to the ongoing war in Syria. For starters, the war has ground on long enough that it’s old news. The prospect of... Read more

Religious Liberty and Evangelical Identity Politics

Last updated on: October 15, 2013 at 9:47 pm By David Swartz

Last Thursday Baptist ethicist Russell Moore made a case for religious liberty in a way that perhaps startled critics who see conservative evangelicals as theocrats. He advocated on behalf of non-Christians. At a Washington, D.C., symposium entitled “Faith, Culture & Religious Freedom in the 21st Century,” Moore said that evangelicals have done a poor job of paying attention to the religious freedom of others. He declared, “One of the mistakes people made in the past is a kind of majoritarian... Read more