I recently posted on oddly profound theological currents in Western films. This past February, Scottish novelist and screenwriter Alan Sharp died. Among his many scripts was the 1971 film The Hired Hand, directed by Peter Fonda, a film that includes one of the oddest religious moments in cinema. Hired Hand is typical of its era in that it is lyrical and very slow moving, infuriatingly so for many, but it has acquired a cult following. It begins with three characters... Read more
This coming week we are welcoming Miles Mullin of the J. Dalton Havard School for Theological Studies (Southwestern Baptist Seminary) as the latest addition to the Anxious Bench’s blogging roster! From Miles’s faculty profile at SWBTS: Miles S. Mullin, II is Assistant Professor of Church History at the J. Dalton Havard School for Theological Studies, Southwestern Seminary’s campus in Houston, Texas. He grew up in the Rio Grande Valley where he played tennis, soccer, and excelled in school. He was educated... Read more
I recently posted on the wide range of alternative scriptural materials that survived in the early Irish church – and apparently, in very few other places in the Christian world. But it is in the realm of gospels that Ireland produces the most surprising findings. Throughout the Middle Ages, scholars across Western Europe make startling references to gospels otherwise thought lost, often presented under the guise of a Jewish-Christian gospel. We can debate at length what exactly they might have... Read more
God reveals Godself… My ears pricked up during a recent sermon at a local Presbyterian church. I’ve heard “Godself” used by mainline ministers with some regularity since I went to seminary some dozen years ago, but I’m not used to it. I’ve long been fascinated by the liberal Protestant quest to neuter God. I sat among students in seminary who would render male Greek words into gender-neutral alternatives. In my mind, this simply led to mistranslation, because the language of... Read more
The latest issue of The Weekly Standard includes a rant against Twitter by Matt Labash, who does not have a Twitter account. I am on Twitter, and I like it a lot. Of course, it has its vapid and vicious aspects, but all in all, I find that Twitter is the most useful means of staying apprised of a ideologically and geographically wide range of opinion and news, and simultaneously the easiest means of connecting with like-minded folks. It is also... Read more
In 2005 some visitors to a German museum accidentally found themselves in an exhibit called “Crown and Veil,” a dazzling collection of art and artifacts from women’s monastic houses. Perhaps guessing the title would hold out to them something glamorous and familiar—princesses? wedding dresses?—the guests expressed their dismay upon discovering what it held: “Oh dear, it’s nuns.” An intriguing, if embarrassing, combination of attitudes often greets mention of women religious: flat uninterest, discomfiture, lurid curiousity. Nuns figure significantly in the... Read more
No, the title isn’t a typo. From my earliest years, I have always had a special affection for Western films, and a few of these at least make powerful religious statements. Westerns after all are set in a particular period of US history, roughly 1870-1900 or so, a time when religion broadly defined played a huge part in American life. The best films amply reflect the social history of the period. Some directors, above all John Ford, make wonderful and... Read more
I have been working recently on the survival of ancient alternative gospels and other scriptures through the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. Ireland especially was a staggeringly rich treasury for “lost” early Christian texts. This would be so important because of the critical role that Irish monks played in the conversion of England and Scotland in the sixth and seventh centuries, and their activity through much of Western Europe over the next two hundred years. This influence reached its... Read more
There are certain columns those with an interest in the history and present of American Christianity should read. The Wall Street Journal‘s weekly Houses of Worship essay (see the recent pieces on Jackie Robinson and Robert Edwards). Our own Philip Jenkins’s essays at Real Clear Religion (see his recent column on the anniversaries of Waco and Oklahoma City). Naturally, there are many high-quality blogs on the history of Christianity, too many to mention. Here’s another regular column to add to... Read more
I am thinking of founding a Museum of Religiously Incorrect Art. We presently live in a world of broad ecumenism and toleration: just think of reactions to the new Pope Francis. It’s instructive, then, to recall how much religious debate through the centuries has been so extremely confrontational and downright nasty, and this is especially true of conflicts within faith traditions. No church or denomination has any monopoly on this rhetoric. We think readily enough of the rich anti-Catholic tradition... Read more
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