What 3 Conservative Denominations Decided About Women

Last updated on: July 24, 2024 at 2:31 am By Andrea L. Turpin

This summer three theologically conservative Protestant denominations held their annual conventions. All three made news for their decisions regarding women. But the three have radically different polity, which is to say they govern themselves differently. I’m fascinated by how polity seems to affect deliberations on the role of women in the church, even among churches that share a similar belief in the veracity of the Bible. All three denominations believe the Bible to be accurate according to what they understand... Read more

The Catholic Conversion of J. D. Vance

Last updated on: July 22, 2024 at 9:04 pm By Daniel K. Williams

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This blog post is reposted from Current: Now that he is the Republican vice presidential nominee, J. D. Vance is one of the most famous Catholic converts in the United States. He is now the tenth Catholic to win a place on a presidential ticket. But of these ten Catholic nominees, Vance is the only Catholic convert – the only one who did not grow up in the faith. As soon as his selection was announced, I read over his conversion... Read more

The ’24 Election Has Changed. Here’s What We Need To Do Now.

Last updated on: July 22, 2024 at 8:28 pm By Melissa Borja

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From an assassination attempt on a former president to the suspended campaign of a current president, Americans have faced a firehose of political news over the past few weeks. Many of knew that the 2024 election would be wild. But I personally didn’t imagine that it would be filled with so many plot twists that Aaron Sorkin himself would be writing about the connections between the political drama he scripted for The West Wing and the one we’re currently... Read more

Pastors Complaining About Church Attendance: A Tradition

Last updated on: July 21, 2024 at 11:22 pm By Jacob Randolph

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I’m old enough to remember going to Sunday evening services at my Baptist church growing up. Sunday mornings were the big event, of course, but Sunday evenings were for the die-hard church-goers, the hardcore Sabbatarians. Of course, it was a truism that church attendance was no sure indicator of eternal status. “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car.” At the same time, pastors emphasized church attendance was a... Read more

Kingdoms Of This World

Last updated on: July 12, 2024 at 6:48 am By Philip Jenkins

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I’m delighted to announce the publication of my new book, Kingdoms of This World: How Empires Have Made and Remade Religions (Baylor University Press, 2024). Here is the catalog description: Throughout history, the world’s great religions have been profoundly shaped by their encounters with successive empires. Secular empires have provided the means by which religions achieve their global scale, and any worthwhile historical account of those religions must reckon with that imperial dimension. In some cases, empires have favored and... Read more

Heroes and Villains: Gendered Discourses of Trafficking

Last updated on: July 15, 2024 at 10:39 am By David Swartz

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Whatever else might be true of the gendered portrayals in humanitarian rescue narratives, it seems worth noting that their patterns are conspicuously resonant with the very American evangelical Godly Manhood and Godly Womanhood scripts that many donors ascribe to. Read more

Mothers of the Church: Faltonia Betitia Proba

Last updated on: July 15, 2024 at 3:59 pm By Adam Renberg

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In 362, Emperor Julian effectively banned Christians from teaching pagan texts, such as Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid, in an attempt to minimize Christian influence on the education system. In response, a number of Christians started to compose works in classical style during the 360s onwards, such as Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Soul and Resurrection, Apollinarius of Laodicea’s translation of the scriptures into Homeric Verse, and Prudentius’ Psychomania. If they were not allowed to teach these works, they would... Read more

American Empire and American Religion

Last updated on: July 11, 2024 at 1:47 pm By Philip Jenkins

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I have been working on the topic of empires and their religious dimensions, and my new book Kingdoms of This World: How Empires Have Made and Remade Religions will be published next week. That book ranges very widely through time and space, but even so, it left a great deal to be said about one particular imperial setup, namely that of the United States. As I have argued in past posts at this site, it is impossible to understand the... Read more

Jürgen Moltmann (1926-2024): A (Hopeful) Reflection

Last updated on: July 8, 2024 at 6:58 pm By Michael Jimenez

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“People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience” (Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners, 78). I can still remember the thrill of starting my first classes at Fuller Theological Seminary. I never really drove... Read more

It’s a Big Country: Thoughts on America’s Masculinity Crisis

Last updated on: July 9, 2024 at 2:59 pm By Wyatt Reynolds

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This is my first piece as a regular columnist for the Anxious Bench, and I’m going to deviate a bit from most of what I have written thus far for this blog. About a year ago “the crisis of masculinity” became the problem of American society—the discourse™ became centered on the question of masculinity in America. There were a series of articles, videos, and news reels wrestling with the problem of men. One such piece happened to quote me about... Read more

What happened when the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant?