But Jesus said, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 19:14 KJV I realize I have written several blog posts about books. This betrays my enjoyment of world cinema. I am a firm believer in the power and persuasion of good films, and think they are a valuable tool to discuss faith and history. I have been somewhat fascinated by the Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky, first because... Read more
“And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.” This voiceover from Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel helps alert us to the problems facing Middle Earth at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring. It rhymes in a Twainian style with what war correspondent Gloria Emerson wrote about the United States in Vietnam: “We have always been a people who dropped the past and then could not remember where it had been put.” The problem in our own and... Read more
Do evangelicals like questions? I guess it depends. Personally, I like both asking questions and the challenge of answering questions. Both seem as natural as breathing to me. One of the things I like about questions is that they can be legitimately asked for the purpose of teaching the inquirer new information . . . or not. Sometimes questions are more about revealing something to the person being asked the question. I think I like asking questions so much because... Read more
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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