Church History articles from December 2005

Church History archives from December 2005

Jonathan Edwards, enthusiast? Radical Revivalism and the Great Awakening in the Connecticut Valley (1).(EXTENDED ARTICLE)(Biography)
December 1, 2005... It is difficult to imagine Jonathan Edwards countenancing the "Confus'd, but very Affecting Noise" that erupted in Suffield, Massachusetts, on July 6, 1741. Yet there he stood, his loud voice rising in prayer above the din that emanated from an...

Of locustae and dangerous men: Peter Damian, the Vallombrosans, and eleventh-century reform (1).
December 1, 2005... In a letter to the people of Florence in the early part of 1067, the ardent reformer, Peter Damian, denounced a group of monks as locustae. (2) These unnamed monks--whom it has long been accepted were the Vallombrosans--had been waging a...

Mary or Michael? Saint-switching, gender, and sanctity in a medieval miracle of childbirth (1).
December 1, 2005... Medieval pilgrims making the dangerous journey from the Norman-Breton coast to the island monastery of Mont-Saint-Michel would have passed a tall stone cross rising out of the sands about halfway between the mainland and the north shore of the...

The nineteenth-century Bible wars and the separation of church and state (1).(Catholic-Protestant relations and the battle over Bible reading in schools)
December 1, 2005... In December 2004 the George W. Bush administration filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of two Kentucky counties barred by the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals from posting framed copies of the Ten Commandments in their...

Elizabeth Clark's History, Theory, Text: A (Somewhat) confessional reading.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. By Elizabeth A. Clark. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. x + 325 pp. $39.95 cloth; $19.95 paper. Throughout her enormously productive career, Elizabeth Clark has...

Reimagining patristics: theory's vital role in the study of premodern texts.(History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn)(Book review)
December 1, 2005... The study of premodern texts--in particular, the writings of the church fathers--stands poised to benefit from and contribute to a theoretically informed intellectual history. This claim lies at the center of Elizabeth Clark's important...

Conversion or adhesion? Historians between the social sciences and the linguistic turn.(Book review)
December 1, 2005... History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn is an admirably erudite and spirited book that places the historian's trade under the scrutiny of postmodern critical theory. Central to Prof. Clark's argument is that postmodern...

Return of the text, or the end of late ancient Christianity?(Book review)
December 1, 2005... Readers of Elizabeth Clark's books who like to linger over their jacket art can do so again with History, Theory, Text. "Cluny" by Paul Shakespear is a lopsided diptych in hues of leaf and tile, thick with textural and geometric shapes that...

Response to comments on History, Theory, Text.
December 1, 2005... I am honored to have my book discussed in this Church History "Forum." I thank the editors for this opportunity and the commentators for their reflections, critiques, and questions. By "history," I mean a discipline of the modern academy,...

Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making. By Elizabeth A. Castelli. Gender, Theory and Religion. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. xvii + 335 pp. $40.00 cloth. Hardly anyone would dispute the claim that the martyrdom of...

Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority. By Sara S. Poor. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. xvi + 333 pp. $55.00 cloth. Why does the medieval German mystic...

History and Memory in the Carolingian World.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... History and Memory in the Carolingian World. By Rosamond McKitterick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xvi + 337 pp. $70.00 cloth. One of the great efforts of scholars from the Italian Renaissance until today has been to...

Mary's Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Mary's Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe. By Virginia Nixon. University Park: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. xiii + 216 pp. $35.00 cloth. Anne, sainted grandmother of Christ and subject of this book, displays a...

The Church and Learning in Late Medieval Society: Studies in Honour of Professor R. B. Dobson.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... The Church and Learning in Late Medieval Society: Studies in Honour of Professor R. B. Dobson. Edited by Caroline Barron and Jenny Stratford. Harlaxton Medieval Studies 11. Donington, U.K.: Shaun Tyas, 2002. xii + 398 pp. 49.50 [pounds...

Pawns or Players? Studies on Medieval and Early Modern Women.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Pawns or Players? Studies on Medieval and Early Modern Women. Edited by Christine Meek and Catherine Lawless. Studies on Medieval and Early Modern Women 3. Dublin: Four Courts, 2003. 224 pp. $30.00 paper. This rich volume includes eleven...

Cistercian Europe: Architecture of Contemplation.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Cistercian Europe: Architecture of Contemplation. By Terryl N. Kinder. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002. 407 pp. $70.00 cloth. Kinder's monograph on Cistercian architecture is a pleasure to read and to look at. The plates are not only...

Pope John XXII and His Franciscan Cardinal: Bertrand de la Tour and the Apostolic Poverty Controversy.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Pope John XXII and His Franciscan Cardinal: Bertrand de la Tour and the Apostolic Poverty Controversy. By Patrick Nold. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon, 2003. xii + 212 pp. $85.00 cloth. Recent Franciscan historians have...

Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella. By D. P. Walker. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. x + 144 pp. $19.95 paper. Originally published in 1958, D. P. Walker's book has become a classic in...

Richard Hooker and Reformed Theology: A Study of Reason, Will, and Grace.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Richard Hooker and Reformed Theology: A Study of Reason, Will, and Grace. By Nigel Voak. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. xviii + 348 pp. $90.00 cloth. The assumption that Hooker was a leading defender of an established via media...

Popular Politics and the English Reformation.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Popular Politics and the English Reformation. By Ethan H. Shagan. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xiv + 341 pp. $70.00 cloth; $25.00 paper. In an account now so oft-repeated...

Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Edited by Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. viii + 368 pp. $70.00 cloth. If, as Christopher Clark rightly points out in...

Anglo-American Millennialism, from Milton to the Millerites.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Anglo-American Millennialism, from Milton to the Millerites. Edited by Richard Connors and Andrew Colin Gow. Studies in the History of Christian Traditions 113. Leiden: Brill, 2004. xviii + 213 pp. $126.00 cloth. The End is here! Not yet,...

Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine. By Suzanne K. Kaufman. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005. viii + 255 pp. $34.95 cloth. What more could be said about healing shrines after the publication of Ruth Harris's...

The Third Spring: G. K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... The Third Spring: G. K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones. By Adam Schwartz. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005. xv + 416 pp. $64.95 cloth. What shared experiences drove writers as...

Citizenship, Community, and the Church of England: Liberal Anglican Theories of the State between the Wars.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Citizenship, Community, and the Church of England: Liberal Anglican Theories of the State between the Wars. By Matthew Grimley. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004. viv + 260 pp. $95.00 cloth. Grimley raises the profile...

St. Paul's: The Cathedral Church of London, 604-2004.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... St. Paul's: The Cathedral Church of London, 604-2004. Edited by Derek Keene, Arthur Burns, and Andrew Saint. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. xiv + 538 pp. $125.00 cloth. There has in recent decades been a great florescence in...

Saving the Forsaken: Religious Culture and the Rescue of the Jews in Nazi Europe.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Saving the Forsaken: Religious Culture and the Rescue of the Jews in Nazi Europe. By Pearl M. Oliner. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. viii + 265 pp. $32.50 cloth. Pearl Oliner has written a scholarly book that reflects her...

The Voices of Gemma Galgani: The Life and Afterlife of a Modern Saint.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... The Voices of Gemma Galgani: The Life and Afterlife of a Modern Saint. By Rudolph M. Bell and Cristina Mazzoni. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. xvi + 320 pp. $30.00 cloth. Gemma Galgani of Lucca, Italy, was a stigmatic, an...

The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000. Edited by Hugh McLeod and Werner Ustorf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. x + 234 pp. $60.00 cloth. In The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century,...

The Catholic Church and Russia: Popes, Patriarchs, Tsars, and Commissars.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... The Catholic Church and Russia: Popes, Patriarchs, Tsars and Commissars. By Dennis J. Dunn. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2004. xi + 261 pp. $89.95 cloth. This solid monograph provides a reliable, well-informed account of the political history...

The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism. By Thomas S. Kidd. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. xi + 213 pp. $40.00 cloth. With a keen eye for the riveting quotation and an even keener eye for subtle cultural...

Ballots and Bibles: Ethnic Politics and the Catholic Church in Providence.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Ballots and Bibles: Ethnic Politics and the Catholic Church in Providence. By Evelyn Savidge Sterne. Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in Twentieth-Century America. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003. xviii + 299 pp. $34.95 cloth....

Unaffected by the Gospel: Osage Resistance to the Christian Invasion (1673-1906): A Cultural Victory.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Unaffected by the Gospel: Osage Resistance to the Christian Invasion (16731906): A Cultural Victory. By Willard Hughes Rollings. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004. xi + 243 pp. $45.00 cloth; $22.95 paper. The Osage people...

Black Church Beginnings: The Long-Hidden Realities of the First Years.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Black Church Beginnings: The Long-Hidden Realities of the First Years. By Henry H. Mitchell. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004. xviii + 197 pp. $18.00 paper. Henry H. Mitchell, a retired professor of black church studies from the...

Elevating the Race: Theophilus G. Steward, Black Theology, and the Making of an African American Civil Society, 1865-1924.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Elevating the Race: Theophilus G. Steward, Black Theology, and the Making of an African American Civil Society, 1865-1924. By Albert G. Miller. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2003. xxiv + 216 pp. $28.00 cloth; $21.00 paper. ...

James Baldwin's God: Sex, Hope and Crisis in Black Holiness Culture.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... James Baldwin's God: Sex, Hope and Crisis in Black Holiness Culture. By Clarence E. Hardy III. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003. xvi + 150 pp. $30.00 cloth. Clarence Hardy III has written an extremely thoughtful study of...

Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement. By Christine Rosen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. viii + 286 pp. $35.00 cloth. Eugenics has traditionally been the purview of historians of science, but...

The History of the Riverside Church in the City of New York.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... The History of the Riverside Church in the City of New York. By Peter J. Paris, John W. Cook, James Hundut-Beumler, Lawrence H. Mamiya, Leonora Tubbs Tisdale, and Judith Weisenfeld. New York: New York University Press, 2004. xiv + 350 pp....

Evangelical Feminism: A History.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Evangelical Feminism: A History. By Pamela D. H. Cochran. New York: New York University Press, 2005. viii + 246 pp. $19.00 paper. This book is a history of evangelical feminism between 1970 and the present. Based on evangelical periodicals,...

Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and Environment in America from the Puritans to the Present.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and Environment in America from the Puritans to the Present. By John Gatta. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. xii + 291 pp. $19.95 paper. Every generation poses new questions of both the...

Religion in the American South: Protestants and Others in History and Culture.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Religion in the American South: Protestants and Others in History and Culture. Edited by Donald G. Mathews and Beth Barton Schweiger. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004. vii + 342 pp. $59.95 cloth; $19.95 paper. For...

Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity. By R. Marie Griffith. California Studies in Food and Culture 12. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. xiv + 337 pp. 20 black-and-white photographs. $55.00 cloth; $21.95...

Congregations in America.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Congregations in America. By Mark Chaves. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. xi + 291 pp. $29.95 cloth. The strength of this book is in its observations on a vast amount of data derived from statistical surveys. The primary...

Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture. By David Chidester. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. xii + 294 pp. $50.00 cloth; $19.95 paper. There are several schools in the study of popular culture. One, the...

Legacies of Liberation: The Progressive Catholic Church in Brazil.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Legacies of Liberation: The Progressive Catholic Church in Brazil. By John Burdick. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2004. xii + 163 pp. $89.95 cloth. In this highly readable short monograph, John Burdick challenges the reports of the demise of...

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Rebellion and the Blasphemy of Empire.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Rebellion and the Blasphemy of Empire. By Thomas H. Reilly. A China Program Book. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004. xi + 234 pp. $45.00 cloth. As David Mungello reminds readers on the back of this...

The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief. By Richard Barber Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. xiv + 464 pp. $27.95 cloth. In The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief, Richard Barber sets himself the daunting task of "trac(ing)...

Religion and the Creation of Race and Ethnicity: An Introduction.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Religion and the Creation of Race and Ethnicity: An Introduction. Edited by Craig R. Prentiss. New York: New York University Press. 2003. x + 243 pp. $55.00 cloth; $19.00 paper. This carefully crafted collection of original essays takes an...

Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles. By Julie Ingersoll. New York: New York University Press, 2003. x + 177 pp. $60.00 cloth; $19.00 paper. Julie Ingersoll's provocative study is the current last word in an...

Faith Cure: Divine Healing in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements.(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Faith Cure: Divine Healing in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements. By Nancy A. Hardesty. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2003. vii + 168 pp. $19.95 cloth. The current interest in religion and health has led to a new interest in the history...