Chris reexamines his own skepticism about miraculous healing — and looks back to the relationship between miracles and medicine in medieval Christianity. Read more
Chris reexamines his own skepticism about miraculous healing — and looks back to the relationship between miracles and medicine in medieval Christianity. Read more
Zachary (Zac) Wingerd is a colleague of mine in the History Department at Baylor University. He recently asked me to endorse the book that he has written with Brad Hoff entitled Syria Crucified: Stories of Modern Martyrdom in an Ancient Christian Land (Ancient Faith Publishing, which is due out next month). I happily agreed to do so, and the more I read, the more impressed I was, and the more enthusiastic I am about getting the word out to a... Read more
My most recent book, Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith How Changes in Climate Drive Religious Upheaval, describes how climate-driven disasters sparked a variety of religious movements, whether apocalyptic, revolutionary, or revivalist. But there are circumstances when the climate smiles happily on the world, and that too has its religious consequences. This raises major questions about how how we write different kinds of religious history, and how much attention we pay to those underlying material factors. From the late eleventh through the... Read more
Today we are so pleased to welcome a guest post by Verónica Gutiérrez, associate professor of Latin American History at Azusa Pacific University and Director of Undergraduate Research. Earlier this week, on October 4, we celebrated the feast of St. Francis of Assisi according to the General Roman Calendar of the Catholic Church. Traditionally, on or around this day, Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, Lutheran, and other Christian churches across the United States invite parishioners to bring in their pets for a... Read more
The Aegean beach vacation seemed perfect at first, a welcome respite, a break from the hard labor that they knew was looming ahead. But as the days of waiting turned into weeks, the vacation turned into a nightmare from which they could not escape. Walks on the beach, so magical at first, were now just one mindless activity that they still did, just to feel like they were doing something. Sometimes, it appears, it takes the excess of leisure to... Read more
Chris pays tribute to Anxious Bench co-founder John Turner, who retired from our blog last week after writing over 300 posts... many of them reviews of books and interviews with authors. Read more
What follows is a book review of Zena Hitz’s Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (Princeton University Press, 2020). In my opinion, it is one of the finest defenses of the intrinsic value of liberal education to appear in quite awhile. The review was originally published in Touchstone magazine (Summer, 2021). *** Even before the depredations and indignities of Covid slouched into our lives, American colleges and universities were in a bad way. Leaving soaring tuition... Read more
It’s imminent. My Global History of the Cold War 1945-1991 will be out from Palgrave Macmillan later this month. As with any book, it’s a pleasure to see it actually in print, but I have special reasons for welcoming the culmination of this particular project. I am following on here from recent posts by Chris Gehrz about the process of writing his Lindbergh book, and how that has intertwined with his own life. Let me go one step further and... Read more
This is my final regular post for the Anxious Bench after nine years on its roster of writers. That’s a long time to stay on any bench, let alone an anxious one. But it’s been a wonderful resting place for me, because of the friends who have sat on it with me. I’m grateful to them and to Patheos for the liberty I’ve enjoyed to fill this space with what moves me. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints “finds itself... Read more
“This is both an important and a frustrating book.” It was 2009 when I read these words in an academic review–ten years before I would agree to write The Making of Biblical Womanhood; seven years before my husband was fired; five years (give or take) before I realized I no longer believed in complementarianism; and one year after I was hired as an Assistant Professor of History at Baylor University. Katherine L. French, one of the foremost scholars in my... Read more
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