In the wake of the murder of Tyre Nichols and the continuing waves of violence in the world and in our communities, I regularly return to the ethical and political question of violence. I’ll go into more detail about this in my forthcoming book with Brazos Press (keep an eye out for Children of Mammon!) and I discuss it on my podcast, but it is important to note that my reflections were reshaped last year by a re-engagement with Martin... Read more
In one of my classes this spring, my students are reading one of the books that made me fall in love with medieval history: Eamon Duffy’s The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village. When we start our class discussion of this book, the first question I always ask students is what stands out to them. And the answer is almost always the same thing: the sheep. Detail of a miniature of sheep and ewes. From British... Read more
Last month, Eerdman’s Press published People Get Ready: Twelve Jesus-Haunted Misfits, Malcontents, and Dreamers in Pursuit of Justice, a collection of theological biographies of prominent figures in American life. Some are household names–Flannery O’Connor, Pete Seeger, Toni Morrison, while others–Sarah Patton Boyle, Ramon Dagoberto Quinones, Bruce Klunder–are widely unknown. But each figure offers a reflection of the relationship between faith and society, between the eternal and the personal, a messy concoction of people who insist on being of some use,... Read more
“Well done, thou good and faithful slave!” That is certainly not a common rendering of a very well known Biblical verse (Matthew 25.21), and it is not one people are likely to favor for tombstones, holy cards, wall posters, or indeed anything else. The word “slave” is just too shocking, but it is a correct translation, and arguably, the only correct one. Translation is a difficult and devious process. You can render the individual words used perfectly and precisely, but... Read more
Today we welcome a guest contribution from Michael Baysa. Baysa is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Religion at Princeton University. A scholar of religion and history, he is interested in the influence of cultural brokers, media management, and other publishing intermediaries on the material curation, production, and distribution of religious and racial discourse. Follow @MichaelBaysa on Twitter. Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) has dominated media conversations. In simplest terms, ChatGPT is a... Read more
Today we welcome a guest contribution from John T. Lowe, Ph.D.. Lowe teaches American History at the University of Louisville as a Senior Lecturer. His research focuses on the intersection of race and religion in early America. Follow @johntlowe on Twitter. Over the past several decades, Jonathan Edwards has become the centerfold of American religious history. This should come to no surprise though. With research centers on every habitable continent in the world, and his completed works freely available online,... Read more
Today we welcome back Allie Roberts as a guest contributor to the Anxious Bench. Roberts is a PhD student in the History department at Baylor University. Her research focuses on Black women’s leadership and grassroots activism during the twentieth century, particularly during the US civil rights movement. History goes blind and in darkness, neither sees nor is seen, nor is known except as a carrion marked with unintelligible wounds; dragging its dead body, living, yet to be born, it moves... Read more
Today we have the pleasure of welcoming James C. Ungureanu (PhD, University of Queensland) as a guest contributor to the Anxious Bench. He is an intellectual historian and teacher of Faith and Culture at Stony Brook School, Long Island, NY. He serves as Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. He is the author of Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), and... Read more
A recent post at this site concerned the history of American slavery, and like many other works on that subject, it quoted a New Testament verse that condemns “menstealers.” (1 Timothy 1: 9-10 KJV). I say right away that I am making no comment or criticism here about the post in question, but that particular word did intrigue me, as it raises all sorts of questions about translation and usage, and how we are to understand the earliest Christian attitudes... Read more
We commonly assume that American Protestants haven’t ever cared much about church history. Paul Gutacker’s new book shows us why that’s wrong. It’s one of the best kind of history books: it changes our understanding of something fundamental by exposing what was “hiding in plain sight” in the historical record. That’s why I’m delighted to share with you my recent conversation with Paul about The Old Faith in a New Nation: American Protestants and the Christian Past. Paul is well-situated... Read more
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