Tradition! (But What Is It?)

October 3, 2023 By Lynneth Renberg

This post is part of a series at the Anxious Bench on ‘Contested Ideas in the History of Ideas’, which brings debates from contributors’ respective fields to the fore. Look for more posts in the series throughout the month of October. It’s football season, and in the southeast (and for large parts of American society), that means traditions. Tailgates, lucky gameday attire, foods, gatherings… Even before we get to the holiday season, the fall is saturated with traditions that shape the... Read more

A Conversation with Dr. Andrew Whitehead

October 1, 2023 By Ansley Quiros

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Last month I had the privilege of talking with Andrew Whitehead, Associate Professor of Sociology at IUPUI and Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. He is award-winning author, most recently of the new book American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church. We had a great conversation about that book, his scholarly interests, and his hope for the American Church which follows below,... Read more

Who are Woke Christians and Have We Seen them Before?

September 29, 2023 By Dr. Janine Giordano Drake

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by Janine Giordano Drake If you peruse the new books section of Christian book catalogs these days, you’ll find yourself beset with jeremiads about false messiahs and the imminent collapse of the American church. First, there’s Ryan Burge and his team of pastors and political scientists who have been arguing that “We are experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in US History.” They use research going back about fifty years to claim that the number of Americans who do... Read more

The Oberlin Option: A Sending City on a Hill

September 27, 2023 By Andrea L. Turpin

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Can we create a perfect world? That was the title of a talk I gave last semester for “Tipsy Orthodoxy,” a “Theology on Tap” event put on once a month for the Waco community by the Brazos Fellows, a theological postbaccalaureate program hosted by my church. The subtitle was “Lessons from American Utopias.” When we ask whether we can create a perfect world, we can mean one of two things: Can we create a perfect entire world, which is to... Read more

Why Did Jonathan Edwards Think That Slavery Was Morally Right?

September 26, 2023 By Daniel K. Williams

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John Piper, the Minnesota-based Baptist pastor who has popularized Jonathan Edwards’s Calvinist theology for a new generation of the “young, restless, and reformed,” said that he read Edwards diligently for twenty years before realizing that the eighteenth-century New England theologian had ever owned slaves. When he found out that the man he venerated more than any other Christian theologian had treated human beings as property, he was “surprised.” He had read all of Edwards’s major works, many of his sermons,... Read more

“God is a God of Action”: A Conversation with Felipe Hinojosa on Latino Religious Politics, Scholarship, and the Public Good

September 25, 2023 By Melissa Borja

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The past two weeks—the opening days of National Hispanic Heritage Month—have been marked by intense public debate about how history museums should tell the story of Latinos in the United States. As discussed last week in TIME and over the weekend in the New York Times, at issue are two exhibits: “¡Presente!,” which offers an overview of Latino history and is currently on display at the National Museum American History, and a second exhibit about Latino civil rights activism... Read more

How The Ancient Christian Heresies Lasted A Thousand Years Longer Than We Think

September 21, 2023 By Philip Jenkins

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Historians sometimes have the bad habit of assuming that laws and edicts passed in bygone eras actually meant something. They note a law that prohibits Behavior X, and assume that this somehow suppressed that behavior, without noting that the same government continued to pass similar laws regularly and frequently over the following decades or centuries, suggesting that the original prohibition had little if any effect. In reality, ancient and medieval states were far weaker than we ever assume, and deviant... Read more

The Old Home Place: An Evangelical Conservative Mennonite Writes a 788-Page Novel

September 20, 2023 By David Swartz

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It’s a fascinating and lovely and disturbing book, and it made me think hard about how to pass on faith and tradition to my children. Read more

Mothers of the Church: Blandina

September 19, 2023 By Adam Renberg

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Enduring violence has long been part of the Christian story—Stephen was stoned (Acts 7:54-60), Paul was beaten numerous times (Acts 21:30-31; 2 Cor. 11:25), and Peter was crucified upside down according to tradition (1 Clement, Letter to Corinthians 5; Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 36). Indeed, the center of the Christian faith, Jesus Christ, endured horrible punishment and death on a cross, encouraging his followers to ‘take up their cross’ with him (John 16:24). And take up their crosses, they did.... Read more

“The World is an Insane Asylum”: Notes from a Texas Megachurch Visit

September 18, 2023 By Erica Ramirez

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Hi! I am a cultural sociologist on a tour of Texas Megachurches. Check out my first post here. For today’s post, I cover my recent visit to Cornerstone Church in San Antonio. ***************************************************************************************************************** Cornerstone Church, located at Stone Oak Parkway and North Loop 1604 West, is a sprawling complex with a 5,400-seat sanctuary, prayer chapel, gymnasium, classrooms, and a parking lot large enough for shuttle service. The entire operation boasts two church locations, a K-12 Christian school, a home for... Read more