In 1602, the Italian painter Caravaggio completed one of the most moving paintings of the early Baroque period, The Incredulity of Saint Thomas. The subject matter was common enough. The image depicts the apostle Thomas meeting the risen Christ in John’s Gospel. Thomas, upon hearing the news that Christ had risen from the dead, fearing it too good to be true. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands,” Thomas said, “and put my finger in his... Read more
Whatever be historical Christianity, it is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this. … To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant. Well, that is an explosive sentiment if ever there was one. I’ll come back to that quote shortly – it’s from Cardinal Newman – but let me explain why I ran up against this issue quite recently. I faced a challenging question in an Episcopal church group aimed at... Read more
One of America’s greatest poets and bards, Billy Joel, told us only the good die young. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the good and about dying young. This was triggered, you might say, by two events. Last semester, I had a fascinating conversation with one of my favorite professors about dying young. Many figures in the 19th century died young and often not in the ways one might expect. Nearly every person of color in the period... Read more
Christian liturgical practices have remained constant as much as they have changed. As early as the first century, we have a ‘manual’ of sorts, the Didache, which teaches Christians how to perform basic Christian rites and practices such as the eucharist, baptism, fasting, prayer, and ordination. Importantly, these practices not only take on a unique importance in different periods, but also take on unique forms. For instance, the way in which one should be baptized is discussed in the Didache:... Read more
If the last eight years have shown anything, they’ve shown that the media, academics, religious leaders, and think tanks can collectively render Donald Trump profane, but they cannot make him less popular. Still, they try. Theologian Wayne Grudem, over on the Christian Post, offers ten reasons to vote for Ron DeSantis, one of which is: “Trump fatigue.” Over at Christianity Today, at this late hour (8pm CT), the leading story is still a piece that asks whether another influential Iowan... Read more
Earlier this week I announced my departure from the Anxious Bench. Today, it is my privilege to introduce my successor, Dr. Michael Jimenez, Associate Professor of History at Vanguard University, an involved member of the Conference on Faith and History, and the author of Remembering Past Lives: A Historiography from the Underside of Modernity and Karl Barth and the Study of the Religious Enlightenment: Encountering the Task of History. In other words, as the above list shows, Mike brings an... Read more
Guadalupe & the Flower World Prophesy: Did an Ancient Indigenous Tradition Prepare the Americas for Millions of Conversions to Christianity? Part I A month ago today, on December 12, just as dawn began to break, Catholics around the world sang “La Mañanitas” to Our Lady of Guadalupe to commemorate her appearance as an indigenous maiden to a Nahua reed mat seller named Juan Diego on a Mexican hillside in December 1531, leaving her image on his tilmatli, or maguey-fiber clock;... Read more
The Civil War and Reconstruction continue to fascinate Americans. Recently, witness the blowback against alleged presidential candidate Nikki Haley when she refused to identify slavery as a cause of the war. Just in the past couple of months, we also note the full special issue of the Atlantic on the theme of “To Reconstruct A Nation,” or Adam Hochschild’s review essay in the New York Review of Books on how pro-Confederate sympathizers established the orthodoxy that secession and war arose... Read more
Nepotism brought me here. You see, back in summer 2021, as I was just starting to write some essays for the public, Dan (my husband) graciously ran a couple of them as guest posts here at the Bench. The very first one, in fact, seems remarkably apt now. It was about “Israel and Immigration: A Christian Reflection on the Consequences of Past Sins.” That fall, Dan approached then-blogmeister Chris Gehrz and proposed giving me one of his two monthly slots.... Read more
One consolation of spotty education is the opportunity to read texts later in life that you wish you had read much earlier, but which fell through the cracks until you were mature enough to appreciate them more fully. Such was the case for me reading Gregory of Nyssa’s charming, instructive The Life of Moses, an account of the Christian life read into the Exodus story through the actions of its chief protagonist, Moses. A bishop of Cappadocia (in modern-day Turkey),... Read more
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