Church History articles from December 2002

Church History archives from December 2002

The blood of Christ in the later Middle Ages (1).
December 1, 2002... In one of our earliest descriptions of meditation on the crucifix, Aelred of Rievaulx (d.1166) described the body on the cross, pierced by the soldier's lance, as food and urged the female recluses for whom he wrote not only to contemplate it...

"The same cause and like quarell": Eusebius, John Foxe, and the Evolution of Ecclesiastical History (1).
December 1, 2002... In 1563, just five years after Elizabeth ascended to the throne, John Foxe published the first edition of his Acts and Monuments. Part ecclesiastical history, part martyrology, part English chronicle, and entirely Protestant, this enormously...

Historical and systematic theology in the mirror of church history: the lessons of "ordination" in sixteenth-century Saxony.
December 1, 2002... Leopold von Ranke is probably best known for his dictum that written history must mirror the past wie es eigentlich gewesen. Practicing historians nonetheless know that even the greatest masters of their craft inevitably bring their own...

The imagined crusade: the Church of England and the mythology of nationalism and Christianity during the Great War (1).
December 1, 2002... The Church of England, being the state church of an imperial nation of diverse peoples and creeds, had to contend with provocative controversies in the early twentieth century leading up to the First World War. Perhaps the greatest was...

Conservative social Christianity, the law, and personal morality: Wilbur F. Crafts in Washington.
December 1, 2002... In 1895, Wilbur F. Crafts opened on office in Washington, D.C. and proclaimed himself a Christian lobbyist. Over the next quarter century, until his death in 1922, he mobilized churches and individual Christians to pressure Congress on behalf...

Without comment or controversy: the G.I. Bill and Catholic colleges (1).
December 1, 2002... In a 1999 speech at the Yale Law School, former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed was asked to explain how school vouchers could be constitutional. The questioner argued that voucher programs that allowed government money to be...

Post-secularism marginalizes the university: a rejoinder to Hollinger. (Perspectives *).(David A. Hollinger, Church History, vol. 70, p. 132, 2001)
December 1, 2002... Like David Hollinger I think that the history of secularization, or as he prefers, de-Christianization, has been unduly avoided and might well be at the center of contemporary American historiography. As he says, this ought to bring religious...

Why is there so much Christianity in the United States? A reply to Sommerville.(C. John Sommerville, Church History, vol. 71, p. 848)
December 1, 2002... If we are going to explain the slow pace of de-Christianization for the United States relative to other industrialized societies in the North Atlantic West, we might well begin with the church-state relationship. The absence of an established...

The Early History of Heaven.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By J. Edward Wright. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. xviii + 318 pp. $35.00 cloth. Edward Wright sets out to trace "how the many early Jewish and Christian depictions of heaven and the structure of the universe evolved and how...

Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Daniel Boyarin. Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999. xi + 247 pp. $49.50 cloth; $16.95 paper. In this revised, augmented, and annotated version of lectures delivered at Lancaster...

The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order: Concepts and Images of Authority in Paganism and Early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Allen Brent. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 45. Leiden: Brill, 1999. xxii + 369 pp. $121.00 cloth. This well-named book invites specialist readers to (re)consider concepts and images of authority in both the Roman Empire and...

The Churches and Catacombs of Early Christian Rome: a Comprehensive Guide.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Matilda Webb. Brighton, U.K.: Sussex Academic Press, 2001. xxvi + 324 pp. $45.00 paper. The publication of this guidebook to early Christian archaeology and architecture in Rome to the ninth century A.D. is certainly a welcome addition...

The Shaping of Christianity: the History and Literature of Its Formative Centuries [100-800].(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Gerard Vallee. New York: Paulist, 1999. xiv + 265 pp. $21.95 paper. Two Britons--Henry Chadwick and W. H. C. Frend--have written the most popular patristics surveys now in use. While these texts may be useful for British students, the...

Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives: John Chrysostom's Attack on Spiritual Marriage.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Blake Leyerle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, xvi + 244 pp. $45.00 cloth. This fascinating book, the outgrowth of a doctoral dissertation at Duke University, has its inception in two treatises of John Chrysostom (ca....

Aspects of the Mind of Byzantium: Political Theory, Theology and Ecclesiastical Relations with the See of Rome.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Milton V. Anastos. Edited by Spyros Vryonis, Jr. and Nicholas Goodhue. Variorun Collected Studies Series. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. xvi + 342 pp. $105.95 cloth. This collection of essays by Milton Anastos is the second collection of his...

Subtle Bodies: Representing Angels in Byzantium.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Glenn Peers. The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, 32. Berkley: University of California Press 2001. xvi + 235 pp. $37.50 cloth. Subtle Bodies, a revision of Peers's doctoral dissertation, explores the problem of images, their...

Decline and Fall of the Roman City.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. xviii + 479 pp. $99.00 cloth. In the early Roman Empire the central administration was relatively small, and cities had flourished. In the later Roman Empire the size and...

God and Reason in the Middle Ages.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Edward Grant. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. x + 397 pp. $64.95 cloth; $22.95 paper. Beginning with what seems an old-fashioned historical model, Grant surprises the reader with this in-depth and fascinating study of the...

Mendicants, Military Orders, and Regionalism in Medieval Europe.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... Edited by Jurgen Sarnowsky. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. xiv + 334 pp. $78.95 cloth. A few years ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine, a young scholar from southern France. I asked him whether he approved of the rise of the European...

Religious Life for Women, c. 1100-c. 1350.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Bernice Kerr. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Clarendon), 1999. xx + 299 pp. $75.00 cloth. This is a carefully nuanced study of the evidence for the thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century economic lives of English nuns, as evidenced...

Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Walter Simons. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. xvi + 335 pp. $65.00 cloth. Walter Simons offers a long-needed and rich study of the beguines, the much debated but little understood women who...

A Concise History of the Crusades.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Thomas F. Madden. Critical Issues in History, 105. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. xii + 247 pp. $22.95 cloth; $16.95 paper. The conciseness of Thomas Madden's account of the crusades presents both advantages and drawbacks....

The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... Edited by Jonathon Phillips and Martin Hoch. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. xxii + 234 pp. $74.95 cloth; $27.95 paper The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences, is a compilation of essays gathered from the 1998...

The Spiritual Franciscans: from Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By David Burr. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001, xii + 427 pp, $45.00 cloth. Two recent scholars on the history of early Franciscanism characterized it as the story of a "difficult heritage" (R. Lambertini and...

The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... Edited by Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xiv + 324 pp. $64.95 cloth; $24.95 paper. The themes of death and remembrance have attracted increasing numbers of historians, especially since Philippe...

The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Robert Bireley, SJ. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1999. vii + 231 pp. $39.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. Robert Bireley's overview of early modern Catholicism immediately invites comparison with Jean Delumeau's Catholicism...

Heresy and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Paris: Francois Le Picart and the Beginnings of the Catholic Reformation.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Larissa Juliet Taylor. Studies in Late Medieval and Reformation Thought, 77. Leiden: Brill, 1999. xviii + 332 pp. $125.00 cloth. Among the influential and intriguing preachers of the sixteenth century in pulpit and print, Francois Le...

Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O'Malley, SJ.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... Edited by Kathleen M. Comerford and Hilmar M. Pabel. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. xxxiv + 325 pp. $70.00 cloth; $27.50 paper. At seventy-five, John O'Malley remains an extraordinarily productive and influential scholar. This...

Religious Currents and Cross-Currents: Essays on Early Modern Protestantism and the Protestant Enlightenment.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Johannes van den Berg. Edited by Jan de Bruijn, Pieter Holtrop, and Ernestine van der Wall. Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 95. Leiden: Brill, 1999. xiii + 284 pp. $102.00 cloth. All sixteen essays in this useful collection...

Igniting King Philip's War: the John Sassamon Murder Trial.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Yasuhide Kawashima. Landmark Law Cases and American Society. Peter Charles Hoffer and N. E. H. Hull, series editors. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. xii + 201 pp. $29.95 Cloth; $14.95 paper. Yasuhide Kawashima's volume...

Religion and Revolution in France, 1780-1804.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Nigel Aston. Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000. xii + 435 pp. $44.95 cloth; $24.95 paper. Nigel Aston's ouvrage de synthese has followed soon after a magisterial study by Aston's mentor, John McManners, Church...

Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi Plays.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Sarah Beckwith. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001. xvii + 294 pp. $35.00 cloth. Despite what the scholars say on the back cover of the book (indeed, is it not the time to review the marketing strategies of the academic...

John Foxe and His World.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... Edited by Christopher Highley and John N. King. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. xix + 298 pp. $99.95 cloth. This collection of essays is derived from papers presented at "John Foxe and His World: An Interdisciplinary Colloquium" (Ohio State...

John Donne: Man of Flesh and Spirit.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By David L. Edwards. London: Continuum, 2001. xiv + 368 pp. $29.95 cloth. This book by a British provost, dean, canon, and chaplain, now retired, is targeted at a general, not a scholarly, audience and thus contains neither primary...

Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560-1660.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... Edited by Peter Lake and Michael Questier. Studies in Modern British Religious History, 2. Suffolk: The Boydell, 2000. xx + 296 pp. $90.00 cloth. Whither Church History in postmodern times? This is a question much debated these days: in...

Protestant Identities: Religion, Society, and Self-Fashioning in Post-Reformation England.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... Edited by Muriel C. McClendon, Joseph P. Ward, and Michael MacDonald. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999.xvi + 371 pp. $55.00 cloth. This engaging collection of essays was written in response to the revisionist view of the...

Amazing Grace in John Newton: Slave Ship Captain, Hymnwriter, and Abolitionist.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By William E. Phipps. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2001. xxiv + 270 pp. $35.00 cloth. This book is about a famous hymn, its writer, and the relationship between them. In a new biography of John Newton, William E. Phipps argues that...

The Moravian Church and the Missionary Awakening in England: 1760-1800.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By John C. S. Mason. A Royal Historical Society publication. Studies in History, New Series. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell, 2001, xvi + 229 pp. $75.00 cloth. The Moravian Church in England in 1750 was in a desperate situation. Reckless...

Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-Century England.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Susan Thorne. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999. xvi + 247 pp. $49.50. The "missionary spirit" was a defining characteristic of nineteenth-century England. Through sermons, prayer meetings, bazaars, weekly and monthly...

The Catholics of Ulster: a History.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Marianne Elliott. London: Penguin, 2000. xliv + 642 pp.; 11 maps, 29 photographs or illustrations. $35.00 cloth. Elliott's canvas is huge, from prehistoric times to the present. Her agenda is complex, nothing less than shattering myth,...

William J. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, 1841-1921: No Uncertain Voice.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Thomas J. Morrissey, SJ. Dublin: Four Courts, 2000. xii + 404 pp. $65.00 cloth. This is the first biography of Archbishop Walsh to be written for over seventy years. It is therefore able to take advantage of the developments in...

The Universalist Movement in America 1770-1880.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Ann Lee Bressler. Religion in America Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. x + 204 pp. $35.00 cloth. Most people who have heard of Universalism at all are likely to think of one of two loci of the name's appearance. Today's...

Francoise Blin de Bourdon: Woman of Influence. The Story of the Cofoundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Jo Ann M. Recker, S.N.D. de N. New York: Paulist, 2001. iv + 215 pp. $14.95 paper. Drawing from the letters, memoirs, and spiritual writings of Francoise Blin de Bourdon (1756-1838), Jo Ann Recker, S.N.D. de N., presents a biography of...

A Black Patriot and a White Priest: Andre Calloux and Claude Paschal Maistre in Civil War New Orleans.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Stephen J. Ochs. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000. xxiv + 304 pp. $39.95. This book relates the stories of two remarkable men: Andre Calloux, a slave-born Creole who became a free person of color, an artisan, and a...

Science, Race, and Religion in the American South: John Bachman and the Charleston Circle of Naturalists, 1815-1895.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Lester D. Stephens. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000. xx + 338 pp. $39.95 cloth. Lester Stephens has written an interesting book on a little known topic, the history of science in the Old South. He challenges...

Time Full of Trial: the Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony, 1862-1867.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Patricia C. Click. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001. xxvi + 302 pp. $49.95 cloth; $18.95 paper. Time Full of Trial is a narrative history of a sanctuary for black refugees who were transported by the Union from...

Free Love in Utopia: John Humphrey Noyes and the Origin of the Oneida Community.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... Compiled by George Wallingford Noyes, edited and with an introduction by Lawrence Foster. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. lviii, + 371 pp. $39.95 cloth. Lawrence Foster, known for his comparative studies of the Shakers, Oneida...

A Search for Identity: the Development of Seventh-day Adventist Belief.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By George R. Knight. Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald, 2000. 223 pp. $9.99. George Knight's clear and insightful introduction to the historical development of Seventh-day Adventist beliefs is the first published attempt at a...

Phillips Brooks: Pulpit Eloquence.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By David B. Chesebrough. Great American Orators, 30. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2001. xxii + 188 pp. $77.00 cloth. In nineteenth-century America, the sermon was an immensely important form of public address. Phillips Brooks was one of its...

The Life of Selina Campbell: a Fellow Soldier in the Cause of Restoration.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Loretta M. Long. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001. xi + 235 pp. $34.95 cloth. Long has immersed herself in the life and writings of Selina Campbell (1802-97), wife of restorationist Alexander Campbell. She also knows the...

The Methodist Church on the Prairies, 1896-1914.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By George Emery. McGillQueen's Studies in the History of Religion. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001. xxi + 259 pp. $55.00 Can. cloth. Where Methodism in the United States, to use Nathan Hatch's well-known term, remains an...

African American Religion.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Albert J. Raboteau. Religion in American Life, Jon Butler and Harry S. Stout, general eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 142 pp. $22 cloth; 9.95 paper edition (2001) under title Canaan Land. A Religious History of African...

1950: Crossroads of American Religious Life.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Robert S. Ellwood. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2000. xii + 244 pp. $18.95 paper. In 1950: Crossroads of American Religious Life, author Robert S. Ellwood forefronts the year 1950 as the eye of a twentieth-century storm in...

Flannery O'Connor's Religious Imagination: a World with Everything Off Balance.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By George A. Kilcourse, Jr. New York: Paulist, 2001. viii + 328 pp. $24.95 paper. Flannery O'Connor once wrote that, "Being Catholic has saved me a couple of thousand years of learning to write." In this fine book, Kilcourse has given us...

The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Lee Griffith. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2002. xvi + 399 pp. $29.00 cloth. The catalogue of books on the subject of terror has grown large in recent years. (1) Grappling with the religious origins and implications of...

Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Bill Ellis. Louisville: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000. xx + 332 pp. $27.50 cloth. This book sets out to provide a folkloristic understanding of anti-Satanism in our time, and it is a book only a folklorist could love. Ellis,...

Noble Powell and the Episcopal Establishment in the Twentieth Century.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By David Hein. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 2001. xii + 184 pp. $29.95. Noble Cilley Powell was elected Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of Maryland on May 28, 1941, and was ordained and consecrated to that position on October 17,...

Myths in Stone: Religious Dimensions of Washington, D.C.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Jeffrey E. Meyer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. xi + 344 pp. $35 cloth. Myths in Stone surveys the national myths of the United States as they have been encoded in the monumental buildings and sculptures of the...

Clean Living Movements: American Cycles of Health Reform.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Ruth Clifford Engs. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000. xiv + 312 pp. $69.50 This comprehensive and informative history of health reform movements that were aimed at purging the physical and spiritual body of its impurities and restoring...

Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880-1920.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Clifford Putney. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. x + 300 pp. $39.95 cloth. Clifford Putney, in a book more aptly subtitled Manhood and Fitness in Protestant America, explores turn-of-the-century Protestantism's...

Authority Vested: a Story of Identity and Change in the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... By Mary Todd. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2000. xvi + 336 pp. $20.00 paper. Insider Todd asserts that the LCMS currently faces "four interrelated issues...: ministry, women, scripture, and church polity" (260), with a common...

Syncretism: the Religious Context of Christian Beginnings in Korea.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By David Chung. Edited by Kang-nam Oh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. xiv + 263 pp. $19.95 paper. Presented as a doctoral dissertation in the Department of Religion at Yale University in 1959 and recommended by its...

African Apocalypse: the Story of Nontetha Nkenkwe, a Twentieth-Century South African Prophet.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Robert R. Edgar and Hilary Sapire. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000. xxvi + 190 pp. $20.00 paperback. The influenza epidemic of 1918 swept through the African subcontinent with devastating effect and profound religious consequences....

A Brief, Liberal, Catholic Defense of Abortion.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... By Daniel A. Dombrowski and Robert Deltete. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. 158 pp. $19.95 cloth. Daniel Dombrowski and Robert Deltete, both philosophers at Seattle University, have collaborated upon a book that it behooves...

Memory and History in Christianity and Judaism.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... Edited by Michael A. Signer. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. xvi + 231 pp. $40.00 cloth; $19.00 paper. This volume comprises papers and responses from the Crown-Minow Conference at Notre Dame, devoted to...