Beyond Left Behind: The Lost Legacy of Tim LaHaye

Last updated on: December 13, 2023 at 2:49 pm By Guest Contributor

Today we welcome Jared Stacy back to the Anxious Bench. Stacy is a PhD candidate in Theological Ethics at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. His research focuses on evangelicalism in the United States, right-wing politics, and neo-orthodox theology. Previously, he pastored in the United States both in New Orleans and near Washington D.C.. Currently, he lives in Scotland with his wife, Stevie, and their three kids. Evangelicalism has an apocalypse problem. Of course, the way you or I read... Read more

The Fragility of Religious and Racial Minorities

Last updated on: August 30, 2023 at 8:03 am By Guest Contributor

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Today we welcome Dr. Michel Sun Lee, an Assistant Professor of History and Political Studies and Director of the Southern Scholars Honors Program at Southern Adventist University. People sometimes ask, “What’s the most shocking thing you’re finding these days while doing research?” Just as often, I am bereft of a quick response. As any historian will attest, archival research and crafting a narrative can be ploddingly slow and sound even more so when described to those who don’t spend their... Read more

History’s Invitation to Belong

Last updated on: August 28, 2023 at 7:49 pm By Guest Contributor

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Today we welcome Holly Berkley Fletcher to the Anxious Bench. Dr. Fletcher is an American historian and the author of Gender and the American Temperance Movement of the Nineteenth Century (Routledge, 2008). For the past twenty years, she has worked for the US government on Africa issues and in her spare time writes on faith, missions, and cross-cultural identity. She is writing a forthcoming book on the missionary kid experience, which will be published with Broadleaf. You can find her on... Read more

Megachurch Pastor Canvasses The Frankfurt School

Last updated on: September 2, 2023 at 9:16 am By Erica Ramirez

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(Before I begin, I’d like to note that my last article has proven prescient: in response to the arrest of Trump, his supporters have embraced him as a anti-hero, an outlaw. Read here.) I am back this week with the first installment of a promised series about Texas megachurches. About 70% of the church-going public attends only 10% of existing churches– many of these are megachurches. Often evangelical and charismatic, often non-denominational, these hugely influential churches get left off landscape... Read more

The Evangelical Imagination: An Interview with Karen Swallow Prior

Last updated on: August 23, 2023 at 3:16 pm By Andrea L. Turpin

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One of the privileges of writing for the Anxious Bench is that when I read a book I appreciate, I sometimes get to interview the author! So I am thrilled to share this conversation with Karen Swallow Prior about The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis (Brazos, 2023). Karen Swallow Prior, Ph. D., is a reader, writer, and professor. In addition to writing The Evangelical Imagination, she is the author of On Reading Well:... Read more

Historicism Was a Greater Challenge Than Darwinism to Some Late 19th-Century Evangelicals’ Christian Faith

Last updated on: August 21, 2023 at 9:17 pm By Daniel K. Williams

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If you ask the average educated American Christian what new academic idea presented the greatest challenge to the faith of students at northeastern and midwestern colleges in the late nineteenth century, it’s quite likely they will say Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. After all, anyone who knows about the Scopes trial or who is familiar with any of the legal battles over intelligent design or creationism is aware that Darwin’s theory initiated a controversy among Christians that has only continued... Read more

My Body, Their Baby: Grace Y. Kao on the Christian Ethics of Surrogacy

Last updated on: August 22, 2023 at 3:43 pm By Melissa Borja

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While assisted reproductive technology has made it possible for many people to welcome children into their families, these technologies and the associated practice of surrogacy have been controversial. Grace Y. Kao, Professor of Ethics and Sano Chair in Pacific and Asian American theology at Claremont School of Theology and herself a surrogate mother, explores these complex issues in her new book, My Body, Their Baby: A Progressive Christian Vision for Surrogacy, published this month by Stanford University Press. As... Read more

Medieval Christians’ Most Burning Questions Answered: “Why do we say ‘Amen’ to end a prayer?”

Last updated on: August 18, 2023 at 5:09 pm By Jacob Randolph

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Have you heard the one about Bernard of Clairvaux, the peasant, and the horse? The abbot Bernard, so the legend goes, is riding down a country road one day when he meets a peasant. Now, being the friendly friar he is, Bernard strikes up a conversation with his new agrarian amigo, bemoaning the fact that his human condition, being incurvatus in se as they say, makes it hard to focus in prayer. “Not me,” the peasant boasts; “my heart’s good-to-go... Read more

World Values, Western Values, and the Fate of Religion

Last updated on: August 17, 2023 at 6:46 am By Philip Jenkins

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I have a long-standing admiration for the very influential scholar Ronald L. Inglehart. A couple of years ago, I posted at this site about Inglehart’s book on Religion’s Sudden Decline. My blog raved about the book, and Inglehart’s editor said he would pass it along to the great man himself, who would be pleased – not realizing that sadly, Inglehart had died just the previous day. That story has nothing directly to do with a recent media piece about Inglehart’s... Read more

Infinite Fountain of Light: Reclaiming Jonathan Edwards from the Theobros

Last updated on: August 16, 2023 at 11:52 am By David Swartz

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George Marsden explains that Jonathan Edwards preached other sermons. Read more