Religion and the Victory of Same-Sex Marriage

Last updated on: April 10, 2013 at 10:58 pm By johnturner

About a decade ago, the historian David Chappell wrote a thoughtful book about religion and the civil rights movement, titled A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow. Among other ideas, Chappell presents the argument that the supporters of civil rights, ultimately, had religion on their side. In other words, while there were plenty of southern Christian opponents of the civil rights movement (including those Birmingham clergy who — fifty years ago this month — prompted... Read more

SILENCE IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY

Last updated on: April 1, 2013 at 8:26 am By Philip Jenkins

Any book on Christian history by Diarmaid MacCulloch is likely to be an important contribution. I was delighted then to read news of his latest book, Silence in Christian History (London: Allen Lane, 2013. To be published in the US in September). Lucy Beckett’s review in the Times Literary Supplement is particularly full. I stress that I am responding to these commentaries, not having yet got hold of the book. Many years ago, the great French historians of the Annales... Read more

Can North Carolina Make Christianity Its Official Religion?

Last updated on: April 8, 2013 at 4:17 pm By Thomas Kidd

North Carolina legislators recently made an ill-fated attempt to introduce Christianity as the state’s official religion. The move was precipitated by an ACLU lawsuit against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners, a board notorious for allowing people to utter Jesus’s name in prayers at their meetings. The establishment proposal generated a predictably breathless response from the left. WaPo’s Alexandra Petri sarcastically wrote, “The North Carolina state legislature can totally establish a state religion. The Founders specifically said so in Article III, in... Read more

WHY THE LOST GOSPELS WERE NEVER LOST

Last updated on: April 6, 2013 at 7:36 am By Philip Jenkins

In recent years, lost or hidden gospels have generated huge public interest, and every few years brings some new discovery: the Gospels of Mary and Judas, even (questionably) the tale of “Jesus’s Wife.” But the whole narrative of those alternative scriptures is based on a false assumption, or rather a myth. According to the common account, such Other Gospels proliferated in the early church, but were then suppressed, burned or buried, shortly afterwards the Roman Empire adopted Christianity. By 400... Read more

POPULAR GOSPELS

Last updated on: July 18, 2013 at 3:56 pm By Philip Jenkins

I have been posting recently about the apocryphal gospels, remarking on their vast influence on the lived Christian faith over many centuries. The amount of modern scholarship on these “Other” gospels is immense, but I find one earlier historian makes some excellent points about just why these texts became as popular as they did. He also makes a massive contribution to understanding the Christian world on the eve of the Reformation. Any history of modern Christianity notes the publication in... Read more

Moral Minority

Last updated on: April 3, 2013 at 10:08 pm By johnturner

I recently reviewed David Swartz’s Moral Minority for Books & Culture. Swartz is a gifted writer, and his book was a pleasure to read. David’s history of the evangelical left is a pleasure to read (and it should be so even for those on the opposite side of the partisan divide). Most attractively, he crafts a coherent narrative that weaves together portraits of a pantheon of progressive evangelical leaders: Jim Wallis, Richard Mouw, Sharon Gallagher, John Alexander, Samuel Escobar, John... Read more

THE ALPHA COURSE

Last updated on: April 1, 2013 at 7:00 pm By Philip Jenkins

The British newspaper The Independent has an article by Matthew Bell on the Alpha Course, which it describes, interestingly, as “British Christianity’s biggest success story.” Being the Independent, and standing at the far distant extreme of secularism, there are some inevitable digs. We learn, for instance, that “Twenty years ago, evangelical Christianity [in Britain] was a fringe activity, associated with loony American cults.” Well, no, the country was somewhat better acquainted with evangelical faith long before that, and a boom... Read more

“Great Pillars of Human Happiness”: How Religion Frames American History

Last updated on: March 30, 2013 at 9:01 am By Thomas Kidd

In February I spoke at Regent University’s annual Reagan Symposium. This year’s theme was religion and presidential rhetoric, and C-SPAN has posted video of the event, with lectures by others including historians Daniel Dreisbach, Richard Gamble, Paul Kengor, and Gary Scott Smith. In my lecture, titled “Great Pillars of Human Happiness”: How Religion Has Framed American National Experience,” I consider the ever-present role of religion in the rhetoric of the founding era, from Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech to... Read more

What is “Christian History”?

Last updated on: April 1, 2013 at 4:45 pm By Thomas Kidd

Over at Religion in American History, Mark Edwards has opened a fascinating discussion about the state of Christian history, with particular attention to John Fea et. al.’s Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian’s Vocation. Edwards says The book is a collaborative effort by several members and fellow travelers of the Conference on Faith and History, including its editors Jay Green, John Fea, and Christopher Lasch biographer Eric Miller. Since 1967, the CFH has concerned itself with primarily one... Read more

DANIEL SYNDROME

Last updated on: March 17, 2013 at 9:49 am By Philip Jenkins

I have been writing on some quite diverse topics recently, including “faith on the borderlands,” and Christianity in Early Britain. I hadn’t actually intended to bring them together, but they appear to be merging of their own accord. This may be a dumb question, but has anyone written a book on current and former slaves as vehicles for evangelization? I don’t just mean slaves becoming preachers or ministers in the land where they had always lived, but rather serving to... Read more