Gregory Who?

Last updated on: March 8, 2024 at 11:38 am By Thomas Albert Howard

When Pope Francis named the Armenian monk Gregory of Narek (c. 951-1003) the thirty-sixth universal doctor of the Catholic Church in 2015, many were caught off guard. Gregory who, from where, joining the company of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas? This was my response too. But reading Gregory, prompted by research trip to Armenia, has convinced me of the pope’s rationale—this and the fact that the Vatican’s actions deliberately coincided with the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide,... Read more

On Olaudah Equiano and the Nature of Truth

Last updated on: March 8, 2024 at 6:56 am By Lisa Clark Diller

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In 1789 a sailor who had been enslaved, bought his freedom, and become part of the abolitionist movement penned his autobiography: The Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African. This was a very effective campaign tactic for the abolition movement and for convincing the English-speaking Atlantic that the slave trade was cruel and should be abandoned. Equiano was an evangelical Christian as well, and the book functions as a spiritual autobiography in which he traces the ways that... Read more

From You No Secrets Are Hid

Last updated on: March 5, 2024 at 4:31 pm By Philip Jenkins

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This post concerns a prayer of which I am fond, and which should be better known. It also offers a good argument for liturgy, for set forms and words echoing through the centuries. But above all, it supplies an ideal way to approach the Lent season. The Collect for Purity I am writing here about a kind of prayer called a collect. In all the liturgically oriented churches, a service begins with a number of standard rituals, declarations, and prayers,... Read more

Baylor’s Reckoning Has Begun: Memorial to the Enslaved

Last updated on: March 6, 2024 at 3:20 pm By Malcolm Foley

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Unlike a number of my colleagues at the Anxious Bench, I’m not currently a professor. I’m an administrator, spending my days as an advisor to Baylor’s president, Linda Livingstone, considering issues of equity, justice, and community engagement. Throughout the last few years, I had the privilege of working on a project that will shape Baylor’s future by more justly articulating and reckoning with its past. On February 23, 2024, we gathered on Founders Mall on Baylor’s campus to break ground... Read more

Seats at the Table: Lessons from a Medieval Queen’s Policies

Last updated on: February 26, 2024 at 1:08 pm By Lynneth Renberg

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Framed as just another part of the long and interesting reign of Margrete I, the panel pictured below from the Akershus Fortress Museum discusses religion’s role in policy during her later reign, after the dynastic disputes of the late 14th century had been settled and the kingdoms of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden united under a single crown. It was perhaps meant as a throwaway statement during the broader narrative, but the reference to a women’s fund for those ‘violated or... Read more

What Happened with Rosaria Butterfield?

Last updated on: March 1, 2024 at 2:44 pm By Ansley Quiros

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Several weeks ago, while browsing at my local public library, I came across Rosaria Butterfield’s new book, Five Lies of our Anti-Christian Age. I hadn’t heard of it. But like so many other evangelicals, I had heard of Butterfield. I read The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith (2012), her popular conversion narrative, and listened to her narrate her account of the winsome, generous Rev. Ken and Floy Smith, of persistent... Read more

The New Contours Of Ancient Christian History

Last updated on: February 29, 2024 at 6:48 am By Philip Jenkins

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I recently posted about the superb new Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity (henceforward CHAC), edited by my two Baylor colleagues Bruce Longenecker and David Wilhite. I have been exploring the book in some detail to prepare for a forthcoming symposium we are holding around it at Baylor University on March 27 (See the full event program here). Reading the book gave me a lot of ideas not just about the specific essays in that book, but more generally about the... Read more

Women of the Super Bowl: Taylor Swift vs. Marabel Morgan

Last updated on: February 28, 2024 at 3:33 am By Andrea L. Turpin

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I don’t often think about Marabel Morgan, but when I do, it’s while watching the Super Bowl. If you’ve heard of Marabel Morgan, you are probably either a religious historian or an evangelical of a certain age. No longer a common name in the American church, Morgan was a superstar in the 1970s. In 1973, Morgan published The Total Woman. Here’s historian Emily Suzanne Johnson’s description of this wildly popular book, from her own thoughtful and balanced work This is... Read more

Civil Religion Is Different from Christian Nationalism

Last updated on: June 2, 2025 at 10:00 am By Daniel K. Williams

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When Politico reporter Heidi Przybyla said on MSNBC last week that what “unites” all Christian nationalists is a belief that their rights “come from God” rather than from any “earthly authority” such as Congress or the Supreme Court, numerous Christians rightfully pushed back by pointing to the Declaration of Independence. Surely all those who believe the Declaration’s statement that people are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” are not by default Christian nationalists, are they? Przybyla’s comments accentuate... Read more

Christian Imperial Feminism: An Interview with Gale Kenny

Last updated on: February 26, 2024 at 11:00 am By Melissa Borja

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In recent years, the role of Christianity in the development of American empire has received significant attention from both observers of current events and scholars of United States history. Books such as Christian Imperialism by Emily Conroy-Krutz and Religion and U.S. Empire, a collection of essays edited by Tisa Wenger and Sylvester Johnson, reveal the complex ways that Christian beliefs, practices, individuals, and institutions have supported the expansion of American power abroad. And, as scholars like Kathryn Gin Lum and... Read more

True or False: According to 1 John, God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God.