Church History articles from December 2003

Church History archives from December 2003

Introduction.(Editorial)
December 1, 2003... From the early nineteenth century through the middle twentieth century, foreign and domestic missionaries ranked among the most conspicuous figures of American religious history. In many quarters they still do. "Don't apologize," one academic...

Orthodoxy or decorum? Missionary discourse, religious representations, and historical knowledge (1).
December 1, 2003... In 1873 an exhausted Catholic priest who had completed a successful mission reported to his bishop. Pleased with his priest's achievement, the bishop mused, "now that they are all in the grace of God, drown them in the river before they lose...

"Friends to your souls": Jonathan Edwards' Indian pastorate and the doctrine of original sin (1).
December 1, 2003... In the summer of 1756, Jonathan Edwards preached a simple yet extraordinary sermon to his Indian congregation at Stockbridge, Massachusetts where he had served as missionary for five years. He counseled his listeners that God "advises us to be...

"Is it worse to follow mahomet than the devil?" Early American uses of Islam.
December 1, 2003... In the last public act before his death, Benjamin Franklin parodied a proslavery speech in Congress by comparing it to a fictitious proslavery address "anno 1687" by a North African Muslim, a pirate named Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim. Like proslavery...

The new divinity and the origins of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1).
December 1, 2003... The theological influence of the New Divinity in the formation and character of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) is uncontested among scholars of American religious history and missions. Since the mid nineteenth...

"Cameras 'never lie'": the role of photography in telling the story of American Evangelical Missions (1).
December 1, 2003... In her controversial novel, No Graven Image (1966), former missionary and best-selling evangelical author Elisabeth Elliot described the visit of a zealous missions executive, Mr. Harvey, to observe her main character, missionary Margaret...

Pearl S. Buck and the waning of the missionary impulse (1).
December 1, 2003... He had come to the Far East with a message that he was on fire to give, but in the process of transmission the East had spoken its message to him. He had gone out to change the East and was returning, himself a changed man. (2)...

Gnosis, Theophany, Theosis: Studies in Clement of Alexandria's Appropriation of His Background.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Arkadi Choufrine. Patristic Studies 5. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. x A+ 230 pp. $55.95 cloth. The history of religions school set about finding sources for early Christian ideas, noting who influenced whom, and where ideas pooled to...

God and the Goddesses.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Barbara Newman. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. xvi + 446 pp. $42.50 cloth. Barbara Newman's substantial book is a discussion of what she terms "allegorical goddesses," female...

The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and their Pasts in the Middle Ages.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Andrew Jotischky. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. xi + 370 pp. $85.00 cloth. Like the Augustinians and Servites, the Carmelites are the oft-forgotten mendicants, overshadowed by the Preachers and Little Brothers. Theirs were not...

Salvation: Scenes from the Life of St. Francis.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Valerie Martin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. xii + 268 pp. $24.00 cloth. The flurry of publications on Francis of Assisi continues unabated. At the last known count, some forty years ago, there were some 575 works in four languages....

Biblical Poetics Before Humanism and Reformation.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Christopher Ocker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xvi + 265 pp. $60.00 cloth. Ocker's magisterial study, a widely comparative investigation of the theory and praxis of rate medieval biblical exegesis, began with a...

Divine Rhetoric: the Sermon on the Mount as Message and as Model in Augustine, Chrysostom and Luther.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Jaroslav Pelikan. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2001. xiv + 167 pp. $12.95 paper. Jesus as rhetorician? Well, the Sermon on the Mount was a sermon. Jaroslav Pelikan brings together his interest in ancient rhetoric and...

Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in Southwest Germany, 1550-1750.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Marc R. Forster. New Studies in European History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xiv + 268 pp. $59.95 cloth. The Reformation affected southwest Germany in a gradual fashion. In the middle of the sixteenth century it was not...

Original Sin: Origins, Development, Contemporary Meanings.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Tatha Wiley. New York: Paulist, 2002. viii + 276 pp. $19.95 paper. This clearly written overview of the development of the Christian doctrine of original sin seeks to trace the doctrine's classical formulation and demonstrate its...

Christianity in England from Roman Times to the Reformation: III, from 1384 to 1558.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Kenneth Hylson-Smith. London: SCM Press, 2001. xxii + 354 pp. $19.95 paper. With this volume Kenneth Hylson-Smith, who recently retired from his position as bursar and fellow of St. Cross College, Oxford, completes his three-volume...

Wisdom and Wasteland: Jeremy Taylor in His Prose and Preaching Today.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Thomas K. Carroll. Dublin: Four Courts, 2001. 288 pp. $45.00 cloth. Jeremy Taylor (1613-67) was a Caroline theologian, pastor, bishop, and eloquent preacher. Opponent of Presbyterians and of Roman Catholics, he strove to keep the Church...

God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Jeremy Waldron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xii + 263 pp. $60.00 cloth; $22.00 paper. Based on the Carlyle Lectures given at Oxford in 1999, this lively book is chiefly a work of political philosophy, not history, though...

The Works of John Wesley: Volume 24, Journals and Diaries VII (1787-1791).(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Edited by W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater. Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 2003. xii + 719 pp. cloth, $55.00. This final seventh volume of John Wesley's Journals and Diaries was initiated in 1988 with the publication of Volume 18...

Pilgrimage. The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Edited by Colin Morris and Peter Roberts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xvi + 268 pp. $ 60.00 cloth. Pilgrimage is a collection of nine articles concerning pilgrimage within and from England from about 1100 to the seventeenth...

The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Todd M. Endelman. Jewish Communities in the Modern World, 3. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. xii + 347 pp. $55.00 cloth; $22.50 paper. The Jews of Britain is a historical survey written by Todd Endelman, William Haber...

The Nationality Question in the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1918-1939.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Mikko Ketola. Publications of the Finnish Society of Church History, 183. Helsinki: Finnish Society of Church History, 2000. 361 pp. Using heretofore inaccessible documentary resources from Estonian archival and library repositories,...

A Woman's Way: the Forgotten History of Women Spiritual Directors.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Patricia Ranft. New York: Palgrave, 2000. x + 254 pp. $39.95 cloth; $21.95 paper. Patricia Ranft has written a challenging survey and analysis of women spiritual leaders in Christian history. She introduces her work with methodological...

Christianity, the Other, and the Holocaust.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Michael R. Steele. Contribution to the Study of Religion, 70. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2003. xiv + 184 pp. $64.95 cloth. Sixty years after the mass murder of the European Jews, commonly known as the Holocaust, debate still continues...

Puritanism and Its Discontents.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003. 264 pp. $45.00 cloth. Had this anthology been published sans title and introduction, not every reader would conclude that "discontents" was its organizing theme....

The Dawn of the New Cycle: Point Loma Theosophists and American Culture.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By W. Michael Ashcraft. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002. xviii + 258 pp. $35.00 cloth. Ashcraft begins by noting three streams of influence upon Point Loma Theosophists: (1) Western esotericism, (2) late Victorian culture,...

The Jesus Road: Kiowas, Christianity, and Indian Hymns.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Clyde Ellis, Luke Eric Lassiter, and Ralph Kotay. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. xiv + 152 pp. $24.95 paper. The Jesus Road: Kiowas, Christianity, and Indian Hymns is a collaborative project by historian Clyde Ellis,...

When Church Became Theatre: the Transformation of Evangelical Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Jeanne Halgren Kilde. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. xiv + 310 pp. $45.00 cloth. The exterior and interior designs of church structures testify not only to economic standing and technological advances; they also witness to...

Christabel Pankhurst: Fundamentalism and Feminism in Coalition.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Timothy Larsen. Studies in Modern British Religious History 4. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydel and Brewer, 2002. x + 156 pp. $75.00 cloth. Christabel Pankhurst (1880-1958) was a leader of the Women's Social and Political Union in England, the...

The Zinzendorf-Muhlenberg Encounter: a Controversy in Search of Understanding.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Walter H. Wagner. Bethlehem, Penn.: Moravian Church of America, 2002. vi + 174 pp. $22.95 paper. Many American Moravians and especially Lutherans believe that a tense, face-to-face dispute between Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf...

History of New Testament Research. Vol. 2, From Jonathan Edwards to Rudolf Bultmann.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By William Baird. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2003. xxii + 565 pp. $40.00 cloth. With the appearance of the second of a projected three volumes, William Baird extends his historical review of New Testament research from the midpoint of...

The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Valarie H. Ziegler. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2001. xiv + 241 pp. $39.95 paper. One of the great ironies of reform movements, which seek a fuller embodiment of love and justice in society, is that they frequently experience...

A Controversial Spirit: Evangelical Awakenings in the South.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Philip N. Mulder. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. x + 233 pp. $45.00 cloth. In A Controversial Spirit, Philip Mulder explores the religious identities of Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists in North Carolina and Virginia...

Avenues of Faith: Shaping the Urban Religious Culture of Richmond, Virginia, 1900-1929.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Samuel C. Shepherd, Jr. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2001. xiv + 414 pp. $49.50 cloth. Avenues of Faith is a valuable exploration of the Protestant contribution to the developing urban fabric of Richmond, Virginia....

Seventh-day Adventism in Crisis: Gender and Sectarian Change in an Emerging Religion.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Laura L. Vance. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. xii + 261 pp. $39.95 cloth; $18.95 paper. In Seventh-day Adventism in Crisis Laura Vance, associate professor of sociology at Georgia Southwestern State University, applies sect...

Catholicism and American Freedom: a History.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By John T. McGreevy. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. 431 pp. $26.95 cloth. McGreevy's book is ambitiously conceived, prodigiously researched, and beautifully executed. Although it spans a century and a half, and explores features of the...

In Search of An American Catholicism: a History of Religion and Culture in Tension.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Jay P. Dolan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. viii + 312 pp. $28.00 cloth. Jay P. Dolan's most recent book, In Search of An American Catholicism, rooted in his groundbreaking Autumn 1981 article in The Wilson Quarterly, "A...

A. J. Gordon: an American Premillennialist.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Scott M. Gibson. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2001. xxx + 367 pp. cloth $55.00. Adoniram Judson Gordon, one of the most outstanding leaders of American Protestantism at the second half of the nineteenth century, is today...

Portraits of a Generation: Early Pentecostal Leaders.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Edited by James R. Goff, Jr. and Grant Wacker. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2002. xviii + 430 pp. $34.95 cloth. Portraits of a Generation: Early Pentecostal Leaders is one of the best edited volumes I have ever read. Every...

Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion and Popular Culture in America.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Tona J. Hangen. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. x + 220 pp. $39.95 cloth; $18.95 paper. Turn your radio on (turn your radio on) And listen to the music in the air Turn your radio on (turn your radio...

The Lost Soul of American Protestantism.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By D. G. Hart. American Intellectual Culture Series. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. xxxiv + 197 pp. $37.50 cloth. Students of American religious history are familiar with the general narrative of American Protestantism: During the...

Gender and the Social Gospel.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Edited by Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards and Carolyn De Swarte Gifford. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. xiv + 241 pp. $49.95 cloth; $21.95 paper. For several decades now, scholars have employed the category of gender in their...

Alone Before God: the Origins of Modernity in Mexico.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Pamela Voekel. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002. viii + 336 pp. $64.95 cloth; $21.95 paper. Scholars who attempt an interpretation of the Mexican reality are undertaking a daunting task. The Mexican academy, with its strong...

Narrative, Religion and Science: Fundamentalism versus Irony 1700-1999.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Stephen Prickett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. vii + 281 pp. $65.00 cloth. This historical study of modernity is a richly documented, yet highly personal, assessment of the cultural present. In addition, it offers a...