Avoid Christian Nationalism: Be A Little Bit Sectarian

Last updated on: February 6, 2025 at 11:22 pm By Lisa Clark Diller

When the End of Time comes, it’ll be other Christians who do the persecuting during the Time of Trouble before Jesus’s Second Coming. And the United States will be the nation that helps make this happen, providing the political power for the spiritual force known as the Anti-Christ. This is the story that sums up much of the traditional apocalyptic story for my denomination, the Seventh-day Adventists. There are more nuanced ways to lay out Adventist eschatology and Biblical interpretation... Read more

Rediscovering A Classic American Satire Of War And Empire

Last updated on: February 7, 2025 at 4:49 pm By Philip Jenkins

0 Comments

I have a discovery to report. My current book project focuses on the American empire through history, and its changing relationship to religion. When you study that topic, you inevitably spend a lot of time focusing on the years around 1900, when the country had a ferocious and wide-ranging debate over the propriety of imperial expansion. You can find any number of selections of work from that era, especially by such classic canonical figures as Mark Twain. But I have... Read more

How History Helps Us Stave Off Despair

Last updated on: February 3, 2025 at 12:46 am By Guest Contributor

0 Comments

For today’s post, I’m pleased to welcome Dr. Skylar Ray back to the Anxious Bench! Dr. Skylar Ray is an assistant professor of history at John Brown University. Her research interests center on the intersection evangelicalism, mental health, and modern psychology in American history. She is currently adapting her dissertation, Healing Minds, Saving Souls: Evangelicals and Mental Health in the Age of the Therapeutic, for publication. For academics and educators, the new year means a return to the rhythms and... Read more

In the Midst of a Theological Crisis

Last updated on: February 3, 2025 at 12:32 pm By Ansley Quiros

0 Comments

Years ago, I wrote a book that examined the civil rights struggle not only as a period of intense political and cultural division, but theological division as well. One of the response questions I was asked frequently –one that, to be honest, I never had a simple answer for–was: “was the conflict over civil rights *really* theological, or was it just political? It’s a fair question–and not uncomplicated. Often– confoundingly–people taking different positions on Black freedom were not only co-religionists,... Read more

Reading in a Streaming Age—On Limits and Academic Publishing

Last updated on: January 30, 2025 at 10:47 am By Philip Jenkins

0 Comments

Today I have a guest post by Cade Jarrell, who is the Assistant Director of Baylor University Press. Baylor runs an excellent press mainly focused on religious themes, very broadly defined. And (full disclosure) I have published several titles with them through the years. Check out their lists here. Publishing is of course central to the academic world, and we are currently passing through multiple transitions that would have amazed earlier generations. It seemed like an excellent idea, then, to... Read more

Exorcists, Omens, and Heretics: Religion Horror in the 2020s

Last updated on: January 29, 2025 at 12:32 am By Guest Contributor

0 Comments

As a genre, horror cinema has always spoken to the broader fears and values of cultures and societies at particular moments in time. During the 1950s, the prevalence of monster films such as Godzilla and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms spoke to American fears over the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Similarly, films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Night of the Living Dead commented on American fears of communist infiltration and McCarthyism in the 1950s and white backlash to... Read more

What a Humble Presidential Inaugural Address Looks Like

Last updated on: January 27, 2025 at 11:06 pm By Daniel K. Williams

0 Comments

I found myself thinking about presidential humility once again after I heard last week’s inaugural address. Its tone and pronouncements, of course, were about as far from Christian humility as one could imagine. (For instance, the first reference to God in the speech was the line “I was saved by God to make America great again”). But can a presidential inaugural address reflect genuine humility? Yes, it can. Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address was an exercise in a humble reflection... Read more

Was Carter a Progressive Evangelical or Centrist Politician?

Last updated on: January 25, 2025 at 1:53 am By Guest Contributor

0 Comments

When President Jimmy Carter died on December 29th, 2024, almost every obituary on the 39th president made some mention of his deep Christian faith. A New York Times article featuring seventeen objects that exemplify Carter’s extraordinary life included a wooden cross hanging in Maranatha Baptist Church, which Carter made himself. Carter’s identity as a born-again Christian was certainly no secret, either during his presidency or after, and it helped to shape his politics in a way that was distinctly different... Read more

Evangelicals, Charismatics, and Reformation Roleplay, Pt 1

Last updated on: January 24, 2025 at 12:11 pm By Jacob Randolph

0 Comments

Evangelicalism and ecstatic Spirit-filled movements have long had an uneasy relationship. The inclusion of Pentecostal denominations into the newly-formed National Association of Evangelicals in 1942 meant that, on paper, Pentecostals were card-carrying members of conservative orthodoxy. Yet, the relationship between Pentecostals and midcentury evangelical power-brokers was often chilly. Pentecostals represented a threat to Neo-evangelicals’ self-perception as rationalistic, objective, and socially respectable. For their part, some Pentecostals saw the move into evangelical spaces as weighing into a cultural fight that wasn’t... Read more