Tomorrow, July 22, celebrates St. Mary Magdalene, a figure who in modern times has become the center of a powerful myth about Christian origins. If that standard mythology can be dismantled pretty easily (which it can), finding the truth is a much tougher project. Mary’s story contains some real mysteries that we are a long way from solving. And no, I’m not referring to the world of Dan Brown. The Myth of Mary Magdalene Modern accounts of Mary Magdalene usually... Read more
How evangelicals abet a culture of masculine aggression Read more
I’m so pleased to welcome Katherine Goodwin back to The Anxious Bench. Katherine is. PhD candidate in the Baylor History department studying religion and culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Last spring she had the opportunity to teach for a semester in Maastricht with a Baylor abroad program and today she shares about a memorable side trip into the forgotten history of medieval beguines. In the middle of the Belgian city of Liège is a church that is forgotten. Its... Read more
My current work on icons and iconoclasm has reacquainted me with an old friend, namely the Constantinople patriarch Nikephoros (died 829), who played in a critical role in those ninth century controversies. At the time, he was beyond question the world’s most influential Christian leader, presiding over the greatest church. But Nikephoros is also associated with a document that is of great interest to anyone concerned with Christianity as a whole, and not just that particular historical controversy. That document... Read more
Some years ago, James Noyes published his book The Politics of Iconoclasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image-Breaking in Christianity and Islam (2013). At the time, Islamist movements around the world were committing many notorious acts of destruction against historic monuments of other faiths, and it seemed quite shocking to draw any analogies with the Christian tradition. However, as I have learned all the more clearly doing my current work on the history of Byzantine iconoclasm, the two faiths... Read more
Forty-one years ago, Alasdair MacIntyre published his prophetic After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. MacIntyre’s foundational observation that “There seems to be no rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture” is an apt way to summarize the vast gamut of reactions to the repeal of Roe. Even more so (and that is my focus here today), this is an apt summary of the divergent reactions to the litany of troubling revelations and stories that have dominated the... Read more
My mother nurtured the vital habit of literacy in me from an early age. She daily read children’s books to me, and we frequented the public library, so I could participate in a story-hour for children. I have fond memories from childhood of floating in an innertube in our backyard pool and reading The Three Investigators, The Hardy Boys, or one of the many series of fantasy fiction books I enjoyed. When I became interested in spiritual matters my sophomore... Read more
If you get to name a controversy, then your side is well on the way to winning the contest. That observation occurs to me as I pursue my present book project, on the theme of the great Iconoclast debate that tore apart the Roman/Byzantine Empire of the eighth and ninth centuries. In many ways, that whole affair was not about iconoclasm at all. It was about much more than that, and in fact gets to many issues that still speak... Read more
I have been a reader of the Anxious Bench since its beginning. The first post from Thomas Kidd that caught my attention was Slavery, Historical Heroes, and “Precious Puritans.” So when the Anxious Bench approached me about becoming “blogmeister,” I was thrilled. I immediately felt the weight of responsibility for editing the Anxious Bench, and a little bit of anxiety too, especially concerning what my first post would be. The first post sets a tone. It reflects and projects what... Read more
I am so pleased to welcome Joey Cochran to The Anxious Bench today–not as a guest contributor, as in the past, but as our new blog editor (or blogmeister as we fondly call the position). He is the fourth editor of the religious history blog, following Tim Dalrymple (who dreamed up the blog and served as editor from 2012-2013), Tommy Kidd (2013-2016), and our longest serving blogmeister Chris Gehrz (2016-2022) who just stepped down last month. Chris recently wrote a three-part... Read more
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