A visual sociologist chronicles the Asbury Revival Read more
A visual sociologist chronicles the Asbury Revival Read more
In her Women and Power: A Manifesto, historian and bestselling author of SPQR Mary Beard explains why language used to describe women’s voices (such as “strident,” “whiney,” or, in regards to my own experience, “shrill,” “high octane,” “emotional,”) matter. “Do those words matter? Of course they do, because they underpin an idiom that acts to remove the authority, the force, even the humor from what women have to say. It is an idiom that effectively repositions women back into the domestic sphere…;it... Read more
As an immigrant and Afro-Brazilian historian with a profound interest in the history of Christianity in the United States, I have been thinking about potential intersections between U.S. Black Church history and World Christianity. How race is imagined and discussed in U.S. Church History circles remains flagrantly limited to African American/White paradigms. I wonder if continuing to trace connections between U.S. Black Church history and World Christianity can help construct historical narratives that complexify the often-simplistic way race is framed... Read more
May my body be buried in the Church of San Gabriel in the said city of Cholula in the tomb that the father guardian or president of the said convento will indicate to me…. Bury me in the habit of the blessed one, San Francisco; it is for the said effect that I ask it. – doña María Tlaltecayoa, 1596 (Archivo de Notarías, Puebla, Cuaderno 18, No. 1276, folio 8r. Full doc: folio 7r-9v) During my first summer researching in... Read more
This is about a specific piece of art that powerfully illustrates the influence and reception of the Bible in Christian culture. It also gets to a much larger point about why we need to do a better job of incorporating the diverse aspects of that tradition, especially from Catholics, but also Orthodox. My new book is a “biography” of the many lives of Psalm 91, a vastly influential and much referenced text in Christian history. One of the most quoted... Read more
The history of women’s rights in the U.S. over the past century is often presented in both popular and academic narratives as inextricably connected to women’s sexual liberation, made possible by the Pill and by widespread access to abortion. Both, as the popular feminist arguments go, were non-negotiable for women’s ability to achieve any semblance of equality to men in both their professional and personal lives. For example, in her 2011 book, Bachelors and Bunnies: The Sexual Politics of Playboy,... Read more
Fisk University is a private, historically black university, founded in 1866 and located in Nashville, Tennessee. It opened its doors in the same year that a terrorizing race riot broke out in neighboring Memphis, Tennessee. The university is named for General Clinton B. Fisk, who had at one time been in charge of the Freedman’s Bureau in Nashville. The school grew rapidly in its early years, focusing on training educators for African-American schools throughout the South. Among Fisk University’s first... Read more
It’s a question that understandably vexes Latter Day Saints, but it lies behind an important LDS-evangelical dialogue that took place for many years beginning in the early 2000s. Spearheaded by the former president of Fuller Theological Seminary Richard Mouw and the LDS theologian Robert L. Millet, the dialogue is a model of interreligious engagement—irenic, candid, erudite, thoughtful, encouraging. Intervarsity Press published its fruit as Talking Doctrine: Mormons and Evangelicals in Conversation (2015), edited by Mouw and Millet. Having recently given... Read more
Everyone has their favorite holiday, season, or time of year. I love spring. I love the softness in the air, the energy it gives me, the way my garden grows. But I really only like it when we’ve had some really cold weather so that I feel like we “deserve” spring. So the dark and cold of winter, with the lovely Christmas lights, is perfect for a good set-up for spring—as long as it doesn’t take too long. I really... Read more
John Maiden is a very good British scholar, whose new book strikes me as really interesting. This is Age of the Spirit: Charismatic Renewal, the Anglo-World, and Global Christianity, 1945-1980, just out from Oxford University Press. Anyone interested in modern US Christian history will know about the dramatic rise of Pentecostal and Charismatic forms of faith since the mid-twentieth century, but it is really useful to have this kind of comparative transnational dimension, to prevent us trying to see and... Read more
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