Anxious Bench - Page 4 of 211 - The Relevance of Religious History for Today

The Sky Pilots of the North Woods

September 10, 2019 By Chris Gehrz

Chris tells the story of Minnesota’s “sky pilots” — itinerant preachers whose ministry to lumberjacks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought them into conflict with labor organizers. Read more

Being Naked and Unashamed

September 9, 2019 By Agnes Howard

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Funny–our realtor did not point out the nudist camp around the corner from our new house when we were getting ready to sign the papers. Location, location. Lake o’the Woods dates from the 1933 when a group of Chicago-based investors settled their club on a parcel of farmland and marshy woods they bought in Valparaiso, Indiana, around some small, attractive lakes. Proud to be the second oldest nudist club in the US, the camp “advocates social and recreational outdoor nudity… Read more

The Decline of Death

September 6, 2019 By Philip Jenkins

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Whenever I taught my long-running course on World Religions, I would always greet my students on the opening day with a simple yet encouraging statement: “You’re all going to die.” Although some assumed that I was announcing a new and rather harsh grading policy, I soon explained my meaning. Death is inevitable, yet we cannot contemplate the extinction of our identities, and therefore – through most of human history – we contemplate various forms of survival or continuity. Awareness of… Read more

The Problem of Timeless Sexual Morality

September 5, 2019 By Kristin Du Mez

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It’s been a difficult stretch for traditional Christian sexual morality. Values once held dear are being tossed aside with abandon. One after another, Christians are “slipping from the grounded banks of orthodoxy into the current of the times,” as Andrea Palpant Dilley lamented in her recent editorial at Christianity Today. According to Dilley, two-thousand years of church history, the Holy Spirit, the words of Scripture, and “other forms of extra-biblical evidence” (i.e. rather dubious sociological and psychological findings) together form… Read more

The Weight of Words–Medieval Jangling to Modern Tweeting

September 4, 2019 By Beth Allison Barr

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I am so pleased to welcome back Lynneth Miller Renberg. Lynneth is an assistant professor of history at Anderson University in Anderson, SC. She teaches a range of courses, including classes on medieval Europe, Europe in the Reformation, and the history of women in the church. She is currently working on a monograph on dance, sacrilege, and gender in late medieval England and an edited collection on the tale of the cursed dancing carolers. I’ve been thinking a lot about words lately…. Read more

Red State Christians

September 3, 2019 By Chris Gehrz

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Chris talks to journalist-pastor Angela Denker about her new book, based on extensive interviews with evangelicals and other Christians who voted for Donald Trump. Read more

Shifting Images of Terror: The Road from Arlington Road

September 2, 2019 By Philip Jenkins

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This is the voice of historical memory speaking, through the channel of Professor Jenkins. Last time, I described how views of terrorism have shifted over time, between internal enemies (usually domestic far Right) and external (Communists or Islamists). Such oscillations are dangerous when they involve a kind of blindness toward the kind of terror we decide to underplay or ignore. In the 1990s, the total focus on white supremacist and far Right terrorism led to a catastrophic official neglect of… Read more

Shifting Images of Terror

August 30, 2019 By Philip Jenkins

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For some thirty years, I have written and taught about the topic of terrorism, including in my 2003 book Images of Terror. I talk about specific movements and actions, but more broadly about the larger issues of interpretation that are so vital in determining official responses. Centrally, how do we know what we think we know about terrorism? We presently stand at a critical turning point in attitudes to terrorism, although the core issues at stake are receiving nothing like… Read more

Wild Evangelicals

August 29, 2019 By johnturner

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As a teenager, I twice went to Young Life’s Saranac Lake summer camp. These were amazing weeks. Worship, fun and games, and talks by hip young speakers. The ostensible reason for the camp was evangelism. The talks culminated in an invitation for people to confess their sins to God and invite Jesus Christ into their lives as Lord and Savior. If we were already Christians, we should more fully devote ourselves to Christ. On the final night each year, the… Read more