Is it Time for Fundamentalism Again? A Review of Owen Strachan’s Christianity and Wokeness

Last updated on: August 18, 2021 at 4:54 pm By Andrea L. Turpin

It was the title that first caught my eye. Evangelical theologian Owen Strachan named his recent book, Christianity and Wokeness, after the classic 1923 fundamentalist critique of liberal Protestantism, Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen. As a fellow author, I know that writers don’t always get to choose their own book titles. But Strachan leans into this parallel within the book’s text. In his introduction, Strachan writes of Christianity and Liberalism that “Machen famously defined liberalism [liberal Protestantism] not... Read more

Why My New Book Is More Than My Work

Last updated on: August 16, 2021 at 9:24 pm By Chris Gehrz

Chris has a new book out today... but realized that "thinking of this book as 'mine' can obscure much about how books are written, published, and read." Read more

Andrew Walls: The Most Important Scholar You Didn’t Know

Last updated on: August 15, 2021 at 7:05 am By Philip Jenkins

This past week, Andrew Walls died, aged 93. As a pioneering scholar of Global/World Christianity, he has already attracted some deeply appreciative encomia, not least from my friend Tommy Kidd at the Gospel Coalition, and there will be plenty of other tributes. But here, let me suggest that even such appreciations will fall short of the mark in offering an accurate view of the man that Christianity Today described back in 2007 as “the most important person you don’t know.”... Read more

Writing The Cold War: What Surprised Me – Continued

Last updated on: September 1, 2021 at 9:27 am By Philip Jenkins

I have described my forthcoming book on The Global History of the Cold War, and talked about some of the things that struck me as novel or surprising. I am continuing that theme today, looking at how the information and research that we now have available has transformed what we knew, or thought we knew, about that era. Specifically, let me look at the theme of what we might call cuddly dictators – Communist rulers who were actually far more... Read more

What Happened When I Taught Historical Thinking at Church

Last updated on: August 11, 2021 at 8:48 am By Chris Gehrz

Guest blogger Jonathan Wilson suggests how historians can "help our fellow citizens" — including fellow church members — "understand what history’s all about in the first place." Read more

Who Will Be Saved? – The Question That Divides Evangelicals from Mainline Protestants

Last updated on: August 11, 2021 at 7:08 am By Daniel K. Williams

How can we tell whether a particular Christian is likely to feel more comfortable in a mainline Protestant church than in an evangelical congregation? The finding last month by the Public Religion Research Institute’s (PRRI) 2020 Census of American Religion that white mainline Protestants now outnumber white evangelicals in the United States generated a spate of headlines about the new appeal of mainline Protestantism for a younger, more progressive crowd of white Christians who have become fed up with the... Read more

The American Christians Who Couldn’t Worship in Their Own Language

Last updated on: August 3, 2021 at 9:57 am By Chris Gehrz

When the United States entered World War I, reports Chris, it wasn't just German Americans who suffered the effects of xenophobia. Swedish, Dutch, Czech, and other immigrant churches were prevented from worshipping and teaching in their own language in the Midwest and Great Plains. Read more

Was Lenin the Buddha?

Last updated on: August 3, 2021 at 3:14 pm By Thomas Albert Howard

In the ebb and flow religious history, reformist movement are often necessary, especially perhaps in the modern age as they help religious communities better understand and adapt to changing times. Sometimes, however, they are blithely accommodationist, even obsequious to regnant powers, rendering well-meaning souls craven in their desire to become au-courant and accepted in the corridors of the bien-pensant. The allure of academic stature and media attention is often the culprit for the scholarly set. But I’ve recently come across... Read more

Writing The Cold War: What I Learned, and What Surprised Me

Last updated on: August 5, 2021 at 8:43 am By Philip Jenkins

I am presently in the production stage of my new book on A History of the Global Cold War 1945-1991. Whenever I write a book, I always learn through the process of researching and writing, and this is particularly true in a sweeping project like this. I have already described, for instance, that the project left me with a much higher opinion of Nikita Khrushchev than when I started. From a wide range of possible options, let me just offer... Read more

Why Baylor Will Never Be Notre Dame: Ecclesiastical Polity and College Football

Last updated on: August 4, 2021 at 10:30 pm By johnturner

Hunter Hampton is Assistant Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University. Hunter earned his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri in 2017, and he’s at work on his first book,Man Up: Muscular Christianity, College Football, and the Making of 20th-Century American Religion. In the midst of conference realignment chaos, Hunter explains why the nation’s most prominent Baptist university cannot replicate the football fandom of its Catholic and Latter-day Saint counterparts. The most anxious bench in all of Baptist-dom... Read more