By Elesha Coffman, Baylor University In this semester of Coronavirus, we professors who are accustomed to face-to-face teaching have to think hard about what we did in the classroom and how to translate that work into an online environment. In a previous job, I taught in-person and asynchronous online sections of the same class during the same semester, so I’ve had a bit more time to ponder this than many of my colleagues. During that earlier experience, I came to… Read more
April 28, 2020
“Flying by Foy” in the classroom: face-to-face teaching as live theater, wires, pulleys, and all
April 28, 2020 By Kristin Du Mez
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April 27, 2020
A Mist That Appears For A Little While
April 27, 2020 By Philip Jenkins
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Plenty of Christians (and Jews) are asking a question right now: given our current crisis, where should we turn in our Bibles for guidance, instruction and comfort? I wrote about the powerful Psalm 91, with its explicit references to plague and pestilence, and Psalm 121 has its adherents. From lots of possible answers, I offer a personal favorite text, namely the Letter of James, and specifically one section. Through the centuries, this section has had a really remarkable appeal worldwide,… Read more
April 24, 2020
Contemplating the Religious Future After the Crisis
April 24, 2020 By Philip Jenkins
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Like many of us, I am thinking a great deal right now about the impact of our current virus crisis on religion and faith. Will our current constraints and limitations prove just a passing thing to be remembered grimly, or has the crisis massively accelerated a series of trends that were under way anyway? Are we already seeing a new normal? There are so many aspects to think about, obviously, so here are a couple of ideas that arise. Throughout,… Read more
April 23, 2020
The Geneva Bible
April 23, 2020 By johnturner
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From the Anxious Bench archives: From 1560 until well into the seventeenth century, the Geneva Bible was the most widely read translation of the Christian scriptures into English. Itself building upon but surpassing the prior efforts of William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale, the Geneva Bible exerted a strong influence on the language of the King James text and through it on English translations down to the present day. The Geneva Bible, as its name suggests, was a project conceived of… Read more
April 22, 2020
How the Liberal Arts Help Christians See War More Clearly
April 22, 2020 By Chris Gehrz
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During a hard week for his university, Chris thinks ahead to how two of his fall courses will use the liberal arts to help his students see more clearly through “the fog of war.” Read more
April 21, 2020
Why I Bake Bread in the Middle of a Crisis
April 21, 2020 By Chris Gehrz
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Like many others during the COVID-19 pandemic, Chris has found himself baking bread — and thinking about the historical and religious meanings of that activity. Read more
April 20, 2020
Precious Protector
April 20, 2020 By Thomas Albert Howard
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A Review of Alexander Norman, The Dalai Lama: An Extraordinary Life. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2020. 410pp. In the not-too-distant future, the current Dalai Lama will pass away and a new one will be selected. Beijing has already warned Tibet that China must approve of the choice and might possibly announce its own candidate. No doubt, this will be a sensational geopolitical and religious event full of palace intrigue, the resurfacing of ancient rites and customs, and the rueful remembrance… Read more
April 17, 2020
An Epidemic Sparks Racial Nightmares: Philadelphia in the 1790s
April 17, 2020 By Philip Jenkins
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Some twenty years ago, I was working on the writer Charles Brockden Brown, the first American to earn a successful living as a novelist. In 1798, he wrote the novel Arthur Mervyn, which has a setting that we today find relevant to the point of shocking. It concerns life in a US city during a dreadful epidemic, and how that experience spurs hideous racial fears and stereotypes. At the same time, that panic also laid an essential foundation for the… Read more
April 16, 2020
Searching for—and Not Finding—God in Outer Space
April 16, 2020 By David Swartz
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Why astronauts had trouble seeing God in outer space Read more
April 15, 2020
Because it is Time for Christian Patriarchy to End: A Reading List, Part One
April 15, 2020 By Beth Allison Barr
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Back when work clothes were still necessary for work and academics were doing normal academic things, like attending the lectures of guest speakers and participating in intellectual symposiums, I bought a new skirt–black with embossed blue roses that went beautifully with my strappy blue heels. I wore it for my presentation during a symposium I had organized through the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. The symposium was Women and the Bible: A Historical Perspective, and it was… Read more
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