Shall a Nation be Born in a Day? Megachurches on Gaza

Last updated on: December 19, 2023 at 1:13 am By Erica Ramirez

Hi! I am a sociologist on a tour of Texas Megachurches. Check out my first post here. When I first began this tour, I set out looking to document how Texas churches do (or do not) advance what sociologists call Christian Nationalism. Per sociologists Sam Perry and Phil Gorski, “Christian nationalism is an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of American civic life with a particular kind of Christianity.” At its core, Christian Nationalism expresses a priority for Christianity... Read more

Before You Came to Birth: Grieving Children Lost in the Womb

Last updated on: December 15, 2023 at 4:06 am By Verónica A. Gutiérrez

0 Comments

I have been struggling lately. Grief that generally rests quietly in my heart has been swelling up at unexpected, inauspicious moments. It began at the end of Divine Liturgy on the third Sunday in November. Sorrow had filled my heart that morning, though I wasn’t sure why. When our priest came out to name those whose anniversary of “falling asleep in the Lord” occurred in November, I stiffened. Glancing in my direction, he mentioned Ana Verónica, the daughter I lost... Read more

The Year Jesus Was Born

Last updated on: December 17, 2023 at 7:46 am By Philip Jenkins

0 Comments

Well, this is not the kind of subject matter that people normally address when planning their Christmas sermons, but bear with me… Scholars differ on the exact birth-date of Jesus of Nazareth, though a fair consensus holds that it was not in the year 1. Many favor a date in or around 4 BC, and for the sake of argument, let us take that as accurate. If so, the birth occurred during or near a truly dreadful time in the... Read more

2023: My Year in Books

Last updated on: December 12, 2023 at 9:37 pm By Nadya Williams

0 Comments

This has been a year of very big changes for the Williams family, as my oldest graduated high school, I walked away from academia after 15 years, and then Dan began a new job. This last development also necessitated our move from Carrollton, Georgia to Ashland, Ohio. Sure, some families would have also thought that this would be a great time to get a puppy too—because, why not? Rest assured; we still had enough sanity left to say: that’s a... Read more

Please Think Better about Race

Last updated on: December 12, 2023 at 3:49 pm By Malcolm Foley

0 Comments

I shouldn’t be surprised by now but I still am. As both a pastor and a scholar, I continue to face what I can only describe as sloppy modes of thinking about race. I’m sure you see it too. It came to my mind recently in considering the controversy over the statements of university presidents concerning the Israel/Hamas war, but specifically Michael Harriot’s tweet (yes, I will continue to call them tweets and I will call the platform Twitter): I... Read more

Donald Trump, Evangelicals, and the 2024 Election

Last updated on: December 13, 2023 at 12:08 pm By Paul Thompson

0 Comments

They say confession is good for the soul, so I am going to confess that as a “never Trumper” I’m getting pretty worked up about the 2024 presidential election, and I need to use this post to process some of my thoughts. In addition to Trump’s continual non-presidential sounding rhetoric and attitude, trial delaying tactics, and just plain craziness, there is a spate of recent and forthcoming articles issuing dire warnings about a second Trump term. My problem is that... Read more

Memoir, History, and the Historian

Last updated on: December 8, 2023 at 1:32 pm By Lisa Clark Diller

0 Comments

I’m 50 my next birthday, and it seems a time for taking stock and for thinking a bit about the arc of my life, for locking down a bit of my personal archive. This has been harder than I would have thought. In spite of the ways we are always digging through the files of other lives, considering our own in this way isn’t as straight forward. In fact, it appears that memoir doesn’t always come easily to the historian.... Read more

The Friar and the Maya

Last updated on: December 7, 2023 at 7:05 am By Philip Jenkins

0 Comments

Today we have a guest post on an important historical topic, to which I will offer a short introduction. I have blogged before on debates over the European settlement of the Americas, and the religious nature of those conquests. One of the greatest turning points in the history of Christianity came with the Iberian conquests in the New World during the sixteenth century, and the spread of the new faith across the whole of those vast continents. Unquestionably, the whole... Read more

Evangelicals Behaving Badly

Last updated on: January 10, 2024 at 1:14 am By Joey Cochran

0 Comments

[Article Updated, December 19, 2023: Some words have been added/altered to recognize that Stackhouse disputes the charges against him. A paragraph has also been added to clarify that this article is not about Stackhouse himself or alleges, accuses, or defames him. Rather this article focuses on a certain kind of history writing and history that never gets told about evangelicals. All changes are bracketed [ ], as a service to those who are curious about how this article has been... Read more

Joy in the Waiting: Medieval Plays and Advent Reflections

Last updated on: November 29, 2023 at 11:34 am By Lynneth Renberg

0 Comments

Tinsel halos and cardboard wings, bathrobes and blankets and staffs, giggles, somewhat out-of-tune singing, and general chaos around a manger: we can likely all imagine the scene in our heads if we’ve ever seen a nativity play, whether in person or in a movie. Christmas plays or pageants are a staple of the Christmas season, today often performed by the young people of a church or community. And perhaps there is a reason that plays are particularly fitting during Advent,... Read more