Church History back issues from December 2007:
Defining the boundaries of orthodoxy: Eunomius in the anti-Jewish polemic of his Cappadocian opponents.
Dec 01, 2007; ... Scholars have long recognized that the theological arguments of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa against their opponent Eunomius helped to shape the development of Christian orthodoxy, and thus Christian self-definition, in the late fourth-century Roman Empire ....
Guardians of the sacred: the nuns of Soissons and the slipper of the Virgin Mary (1).
Dec 01, 2007; ... What could it mean to a medieval monastic community to own a valuable object? Certainly, property in general was crucial to the survival of a stable community, ideals of poverty and the thirteenth-century Franciscan experiment in radical poverty notwithstanding. More specifically, what did ...
Let the children come: the religion of the protestant child in early America (1).
Dec 01, 2007; ... In 1844, the Congregationalist minister Enoch Pond in Bangor, Maine, reminded his fellow clergy that they had been commissioned not only to feed the sheep of their flocks but also to nurture the lambs. Under no circumstances, he cautioned, would a good minister neglect the children, for ...
Mormons study "abroad" Brigham Young's romance with American higher education, 1867-1877 (1).
Dec 01, 2007; ... Because Mormons could never fully realize their separatist dreams of a visible Zion in North America, the history of Mormonism has involved highly complex contacts and negotiations with non-Mormons. (2) In their attempts to convert, resist, or appease outsiders, Mormons have engaged in a ...
Urbanization and the end of Black churches in the modern world.
Dec 01, 2007; ... Historian Wallace Best argues in his Passionately Human, No Less Divine: Religion and Culture in Black Chicago, 1915-1952 (2005) that historically "we have been more accustomed to think of religion as spontaneous and supernatural." Best maintains that we have seen religion as "something ...
Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch. By Jaclyn L. Maxwell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xii + 202 pp. $85.00 cloth. In this thought-provoking book, Jaclyn Maxwell combines social and intellectual ...
Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices. Edited by H. A. Drake. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate. xxii + 400 pp. $99.95 cloth. Violence in Late Antiquity is the product of the fifth biennial Shifting Frontiers Conference, which took place at the University of California at ...
The Body in St. Maximus the Confessor: Holy Flesh, Wholly Deified.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The Body in St. Maximus the Confessor: Holy Flesh, Wholly Deified. By Adam G. Cooper. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. xii + 287 pp. $125.00 cloth. The body has become a "hot topic" over the past decade and a half, with a number of scholarly ...
Celi De in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Celi De in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages. By Westley Follett. Studies in Celtic History. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell & Brewer, 2006. xii + 259 pp. $85.00 cloth. The Celi De or Culdees, as the phrase has usually been Anglicized, have been understood ...
Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages.(Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages, Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World)(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages. By Jonathan Elukin. Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007. xii + 196 pp. $24.95 cloth. Jonathan Elukin has ...
Thomas Becket and his Biographers.(Thomas Becket and His Biographers: Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, vol. 28)(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Thomas Becket and his Biographers. By Michael Staunton. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 28. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2006. viii + 249 pp. $80.00 cloth. The first thing to say about this monograph is that it provides a model of clarity of organization for such a ...
The Privilege of Poverty: Clare of Assisi, Agnes of Prague, and the Struggle for a Franciscan Rule for Women.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The Privilege of Poverty: Clare of Assisi, Agnes of Prague, and the Struggle for a Franciscan Rule for Women. By Joan Mueller. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. x + 192 pp. $40.00 cloth. Joan Mueller seeks to correct what she perceives as a problematic ...
Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240-1570.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240-1570. By Eamon Duffy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006. xiv + 202 pp. $35.00 cloth. Eamon Duffy's newest book, Marking the Hours, lends new meanings to the definition of a "used book." In the history of ...
Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture. By Manuele Gragnolati. The William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies 7. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. xvii + 283 pp. $50.00 cloth; $25.00 paper. Experiencing the ...
Captives and Their Saviors in the Medieval Crown of Aragon.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Captives and Their Saviors in the Medieval Crown of Aragon. By Jarbel Rodriguez. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. xxiv + 231 pp. $64.95 cloth. As its introduction admits, this revised dissertation enters a crowded field. Its English-language ...
Beyond the Reformation? Authority, Primacy and Unity in the Conciliar Tradition.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Beyond the Reformation? Authority, Primacy and Unity in the Conciliar Tradition. By Paul Avis. London: T and T Clark, 2006. xx + 236 pp. $120.00 cloth. This book, together with Francis Oakley's The Conciliarist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), marks a watershed ...
A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II: 1500 to 1900.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II: 1500 to 1900. By Samuel Hugh Moffett. American Society of Missiology Series 36. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2005. xxvi + 743 pp. $35.00 paper. The first doubt the reader has regarding Moffett's two-volume work may well be whether it is ...
Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations. Edited by Ronald K. Delph, Michelle M. Fontaine, and John Jeffries Martin. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 76. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2006. xiv + 266 pp. $49.95 cloth. ...
Angels in the Early Modern World.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Angels in the Early Modern World. Edited by Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xiv + 328 pp. $99.00 cloth. Few other subjects in the study of early modern European religion can seem as insubstantial and flighty as that of angels, ...
Separation and the Sword in Anabaptist Persuasion: Radical Confessional Rhetoric from Schleitheim to Dordrecht.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Separation and the Sword in Anabaptist Persuasion: Radical Confessional Rhetoric from Schleitheim to Dordrecht. By Gerald Biesecker-Mast. The C. Henry Smith Series 6. Telford, Pa.: Cascadia, 2006. 311 pp. $22.95 paper. From his disciplinary background in communication, ...
Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529-1629.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529-1629. By Amy Nelson Burnett. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. xii + 449 pp. $74.00 cloth. This deeply researched social and institutional history of Basel's ...
John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer.(John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History)(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer. By Gary W. Jenkins. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2007. viii + 303 pp. $99.95 cloth. Cynics should celebrate this book about the Elizabethan bishop John ...
Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724. By Liam Matthew Brockey. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. xiv + 497 pp. $35.00 cloth. This insightful and elegantly written book has many virtues. I strongly recommend it for ...
Remember, Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Remember, Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day. By James Sharpe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. v + 232 pp. $19.95 cloth. British children have long knocked on doors on the eve of November 5, requesting "a penny for the guy"; this book narrates the ...
The Shaping of Ulster Presbyterian Belief & Practice, 1770-1840.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The Shaping of Ulster Presbyterian Belief & Practice, 1770-1840. By Andrew R. Holmes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. xvi + 379 pp. $99.00 cloth. Andrew Holmes begins this volume with two questions: "How should historians characterize Ulster Presbyterianism, and what ...
New Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.(New Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, Studies in Christian Mission, vol. 32)(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... New Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Edited by Heleen Murre-van den Berg. Studies in Christian Mission 32. Leiden: Brill, 2006. xii + 341 pp. $134.00 cloth. From at least the time of Constantine, Western ...
China's Millions: The China Inland Mission and Late Qing Society, 1832-1905.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... China's Millions: The China Inland Mission and Late Qing Society, 1832-1905. By Alvyn Austin. Studies in the History of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007. xxxii + 509 pages. $45.00 paper. The history of Christian missions in China remains one of the most ...
Protestant Missionaries, Asian Immigrants, and Ideologies of Race in America, 1850-1924.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Protestant Missionaries, Asian Immigrants, and Ideologies of Race in America, 1850-1924. By Jennifer C. Snow. Studies in Asian Americans: Reconceptualizing Culture, History, and Politics. New York: Routledge, 2007. xx + 179 pp. $95.00 cloth. While a growing body of scholarship ...
The Bishop of the Old South: The Ministry and Civil War Legacy of Leonidas Polk.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The Bishop of the Old South: The Ministry and Civil War Legacy of Leonidas Polk. By Glenn Robins. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2006. xii + 245 pp. $35.00 cloth. Pervasive evangelicalism has long been a common description of religious life in the Old South. Many scholars ...
Reliving Golgotha: The Passion Play of Iztapalapa.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Reliving Golgotha: The Passion Play of Iztapalapa. By Richard C. Trexler. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. xiv + 280 pp. $35.00 cloth. Richard C. Trexler provides us with an innovative perspective on the annual passion play that originated at the end of the ...
Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America. By Mel Piehl. Originally published, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982. Reprint, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. xvi + 302 pp. $29.95 paper. Twenty-five years after its ...
Sanctuary Cinema: Origins of the Christian Film Industry.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Sanctuary Cinema: Origins of the Christian Film Industry. By Terry Lindvall. New York: New York University Press, 2007. x + 307 pp. $45.00 cloth. Terry Lindvall's survey of the history of American Protestants' engagements with and contributions to early cinema is a welcome ...
In the Beginning: Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and the Making of the Antievolution Movement.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... In the Beginning: Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and the Making of the Antievolution Movement. By Michael Lienesch. The H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman Series. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. xii + 341 pp. $34.95 cloth. Everyone knows about the ...
The South's Tolerable Alien: Roman Catholics in Alabama and Georgia, 1945-1970.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The South's Tolerable Alien: Roman Catholics in Alabama and Georgia, 1945-1970. By Andrew S. Moore. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. xiv + 211 pp. $35.00 cloth. The study of Roman Catholicism in the American South is a rather small field of study, due in ...
A. Philip Randolph: The Religious Journey of an African American Labor Leader.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... A. Philip Randolph: The Religious Journey of an African American Labor Leader. By Cynthia Taylor. New York: New York University Press, 2006. xii + 293 pp. $39.00 cloth. This volume breaks new ground in twentieth-century African American religious history. First, the author ...
The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s. By Amy L. Koehlinger. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. x + 304 pp. $45.00 cloth. Everyone in my generation remembers the sisters at Selma. Out of the blue, or so it seemed, women religious emerged ...
Lutherans and the Longest War: Adrift on a Sea of Doubt about the Cold and Vietnam Wars, 1964-1975.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Lutherans and the Longest War:Adrift on a Sea of Doubt about the Cold and Vietnam Wars, 1964-1975. By David E. Settje. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. x + 222 pp. $55.00 cloth; $25.95 paper. Poet W. H. Auden once wrote of the common citizen that when there was peace, ...
From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Millenarianism and Popular Culture.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Millenarianism and Popular Culture. By Patricia R. Pessar. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004. xiv + 273 pp. $79.95 cloth; $22.95 paper. In 1973, Patricia Pessar, then a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of Chicago, ...
Pulpit and Politics: Clergy in American Politics at the Advent of the Millennium.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Pulpit and Politics: Clergy in American Politics at the Advent of the Millennium. Edited by Corwin E. Smidt. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2004. xiii + 353 pp. $39.95 paper. American clergy are a variegated lot. They come from different places socially, economically, ...
Satan: A Biography.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Satan: A Biography. By Henry Ansgar Kelly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xiv + 365 pp. $65.00 cloth; $19.99 paper. This is a highly idiosyncratic book on a classic subject. Apparently directed at devout but uncritical Protestants and Catholics who have swallowed a ...
Mariam, the Magdalen, and the Mother.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Mariam, the Magdalen, and the Mother. Edited by Deirdre Good. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. xviii + 244 pp. $50.00 cloth; $22.95 paper. The essays in this volume were first presented at a conference on the figure of Mary Magdalene organized by Deirdre Good in June ...
The Oxford History of Christian Worship.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The Oxford History of Christian Worship. Edited by Geoffrey Wainwright and Karen B. Westerfield Tucker. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. xxx + 918 pp. $55.00 cloth. Commensurate in ambition to its topic, this colossal volume provides a treasure trove of information on ...
God's Joust, God's Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... God's Joust, God's Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition. By John Witte, Jr. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2006. xiv + 498 pp. $30.00 paper. According to John Witte, law and religion "are two great interlocking systems of ideas and institutions, values and beliefs" ...
The Marketplace of Christianity.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The Marketplace of Christianity. By Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., Robert F. Hebert, and Robert D. Tollison. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. x + 357 pp. $29.95 cloth; $12.00 paper. How can microeconomics explain the development of religious communities? Such is the question asked by ...
Saints and Their Cults in the Atlantic World.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Saints and Their Cults in the Atlantic World. Edited by Margaret Cormack. The Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World Series. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007. xvi + 281 pp. $49.95 cloth. This volume emerged from a multidisciplinary conference on "Saints ...
The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past. Edited by Catherine A. Brekus. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. x + 341 pp. $59.95 cloth; $19.95 paper. American religious historians fail to include women sufficiently in their historical ...
In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism. By James Hudnut-Beumler. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. xx + 268 pp. $29.95 cloth. James Hudnut-Beumler has written a thought-provoking book on the literature of ...
Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature. By Tracy Fessenden. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007. xii + 339 pp. $35.00 cloth. Literary scholars typically assume that American belles-lettres after the Puritans has been largely a ...
Sound in the Land: Essays on Mennonites and Music.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Sound in the Land: Essays on Mennonites and Music. Edited by Maureen Epp and Carol Ann Weaver. Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press, 2005. 228 pp. $25.00 paper. The Mennonites exemplify the church historian's maxim that with religious communities, less is often more. A small ...
Books received.
Dec 01, 2007 ... Ascalone, Enrico, Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians. Translated by Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia. Dictionaries of Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Ayoub, Mahmoud, A Muslim View of Christianity: Essays on Dialogue by Mahmoud Ayoub. Edited ...