Texts of Terror, and Damned Races

Last updated on: August 28, 2022 at 7:22 am By Philip Jenkins

Jews and Christians have long wrestled with the Bible passages that command the annihilation of rival races, notably the Canaanites and Amalekites. As I have noted, those passages proved very useful for the new and aggressive kinds of Euro-American colonialism that emerged in the nineteenth century. Even more pernicious was the merger of those Biblical ideas with emerging eugenic theories, which postulated the existence of degenerate “damned races.” Well into the twentieth century, Christian apologists defended the Biblical texts, and... Read more

The Annales Movement (Part One): Working Across Social Science Disciplines

Last updated on: August 26, 2022 at 10:27 am By Joey Cochran

“Tell me, daddy. What is the use of history?” (Bloch, 3). This is the opening line of Marc Bloch’s methodological work on historiography, The Historian’s Craft. This piercing question asked by a young boy to his historian father is innocent yet profound. Bloch traced the implications of this question to two parallel spheres: an epistemic sphere, where history serves the function of intellectual inquiry that builds a base of knowledge on the past, and a pragmatic sphere, where history serves... Read more

Professor Albright, Biblical Archaeology, and the Virtues of Genocide

Last updated on: August 24, 2022 at 1:25 pm By Philip Jenkins

I have been posting about the Bible’s genocidal texts, which have most recently been discussed in Charlie Trimm’s book The Destruction of the Canaanites: God, Genocide, and Biblical Interpretation (Eerdman’s 2022). So obvious were the flaws and dangers of these texts as to make them a gift for critics of religion in general and the Bible in particular, and fundamentalists struggled to defend them. I particularly note one individual who undertook such a defense, as this was such a prestigious... Read more

Dated and Overrated: A Review of Jonathan Pokluda’s Outdated

Last updated on: August 24, 2022 at 1:25 am By Andrea L. Turpin

Today’s guest post is by Cara Hoekstra. Cara is a recent graduate of Baylor University, where she studied Sociology, History, and Political Science in the University Scholars program. Since graduating with her BA in 2021, she has participated in the Brazos Fellows program, a part-time residential fellowship studying theology and church history in community through Christ Church Waco. She has also continued working on various projects related to the intersection of marriage and the family and religion. A new Christian... Read more

It Wasn’t the Religious Right That Made White Evangelicals Vote Republican

Last updated on: August 22, 2022 at 6:42 pm By Daniel K. Williams

The Gospel Coalition’s article earlier this month critiquing Randall Balmer’s claim to have discovered the “real origins of the Religious Right” has brought to the forefront once again the question of what prompted the Religious Right to emerge in the 1970s. But while this can be an interesting question, it doesn’t really provide much of an answer to the separate question that too many people conflate with it – the question, that is, of why the overwhelming majority of white... Read more

Religion, Race, and “Never Have I Ever”: A Roundtable Discussion on Season Three

Last updated on: August 22, 2022 at 6:41 pm By Melissa Borja

Mindy Kaling’s comedy Never Have I Ever returned to Netflix for a third season earlier this month, and as with the first two seasons, there’s much to discuss about how the show portrays Asian Americans, religion, and race. In a follow-up to the roundtables organized for Season One and Season Two, I brought together five scholars to reflect on different aspects of the newest season of NHIE: Dr. Shalini Shankar considered themes of class and caste, Dr. Swapnil... Read more

I Am A Historian: On Presentism

Last updated on: August 26, 2022 at 12:05 pm By Malcolm Foley

This probably should have been my introductory piece, but now it has been precipitated by a recent piece by the president of the AHA, Dr. James Sweet. In this piece, Dr. Sweet lamented, alongside Lynn Hunt from twenty years ago, that the entire academic discipline of history seems to be pressing toward presentism, perhaps best understood as viewing the past through the lens of the present, especially, as Sweet names, through the categories of “race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, and capitalism.”... Read more

Google’s Revolution in Historical Research

Last updated on: August 18, 2022 at 8:25 am By Philip Jenkins

I research and publish a lot in history. The more I do, the more struck I am – astounded would be a better word – at the revolution wrought by Google and other search engines. Literally, they allow you to find things that a hundred well-trained and -funded research assistants could never have dug up just a couple of decades ago. Having said that, there is a certain art in using this resource. Excuse me if I am stating the... Read more

Exhibiting Evangelicalism: An Interview with Devin Manzullo-Thomas

Last updated on: August 17, 2022 at 1:11 pm By David Swartz

I’m pleased to welcome Devin Manzullo-Thomas to the Anxious Bench. He is assistant professor of American religious history, director of the E. Morris and Leone Sider Institute for Anabaptist, Pietist and Wesleyan Studies, and director of archives at Messiah University. What follows is a conversation we recently had about his new book, Exhibiting Evangelicalism: Commemoration and Religion’s Presence of the Past, which looks at how evangelicals have narrated themselves in museums. —David R. Swartz *** DRS: What led you to... Read more

Down with the Patriarchy! Remembering the Medieval Mary Magdalene

Last updated on: August 16, 2022 at 3:37 pm By Beth Allison Barr

“Where does it say that?” he asked. I handed him my iPad. We stood on the staircase, me traveling down to my office while he traveled up to his. I casually mentioned how the medieval sermon I was currently reading contradicted the resurrected Christ’s directive to Mary Magdalene in John 20:17: whereas the Latin Vulgate records Christ saying “noli me tangere” (do not touch me), the sermon recorded that Christ, “when he rose from death to life, he appeared to... Read more