Church History articles from December 2006

Church History archives from December 2006

Philosophy as training for death: reading the ancient Christian martyr acts as spiritual exercises.
December 1, 2006... In recent years several notable studies--including those by Judith Perkins, Daniel Boyarin, and Elizabeth Castelli--have assessed the importance of martyrdom and suffering in constructions of ancient Christian identity. (1) This essay takes as...

The real presence of Mary: eucharistic disbelief and the limits of orthodoxy in fourteenth-century France (1).
December 1, 2006... On July 15, 1318, a twenty-six-year-old laywoman named Aude Faure was called before the Inquisition tribunal at the diocesan seat of Pamiers in southern France and immediately confessed to having temporarily doubted both the real presence of...

The origins of southern evangelicalism: revivalism in South Carolina, 1700-1740.
December 1, 2006... Despite the continuing "discovery of southern religious history" and the growing scholarly fascination with southern intellectual and cultural history, historians of the South have devoted all too little attention to the origins of southern...

Textual healing: mainstream protestants and the therapeutic text, 1900-1925 (1).
December 1, 2006... Healing--whether via medical or miraculous means--has increasingly caught the attention of scholars of North American Protestantism within the past decade. Recent studies have convincingly argued that healing was at the heart of Protestant...

Pilgrimage, place, and people: a history of the locations of mennonite world conference assemblies, 1925-2003 (1).
December 1, 2006... In June 1924, Christian Neff, president of the Conference of South German Mennonites, sent an invitation to "all of the major Mennonite bodies around the world," to participate in a world conference that would commemorate the 400th anniversary...

The Ascension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon Formation in Jewish, Hellenistic and Christian Traditions.(An Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity)(Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East)(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Ascension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon Formation in Jewish, Hellenistic and Christian Traditions. By Jed Wyrick. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature 49. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. xviii + 509 pp. $45.00...

The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam. By David Goldenberg. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003. xv + 448 pp. $24.95 paper. Much ink has been spilled in the last few decades over claims...

Gruesome Deaths and Celibate Lives: Christian Martyrs and Ascetics.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Gruesome Deaths and Celibate Lives: Christian Martyrs and Ascetics. By Aideen M. Hartney. Greece and Rome Live. Exeter, U.K.: University of Exeter Press, 2005. xvii + 141 pp. $58.00 cloth; $22.50 paper. By spotlighting martyrs and ascetics,...

Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity. By David Brakke. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. xiv + 309 pp. $49.95 cloth. In David Brakke's study, the relationship between monk and demon in...

Reforming the Church before Modernity: Patterns, Problems, and Approaches.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Reforming the Church before Modernity: Patterns, Problems, and Approaches. Edited by Christopher M. Bellitto and Louis I. Hamilton. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2005. xxiv + 225 pp. $94.95 cloth. The eleven papers gathered together in this...

Early Christian Chapels in the West: Decoration, Function, and Patronage.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Early Christian Chapels in the West: Decoration, Function, and Patronage. By Gillian Mackie. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. xx + 378 pp. $100.00 cloth. In the brief introduction to this useful if diffuse study of a...

The Life and After-Life of St John of Beverley: The Evolution of the Cult of an Anglo-Saxon Saint.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Life and After-Life of St John of Beverley: The Evolution of the Cult of an Anglo-Saxon Saint. By Susan E. Wilson. Church, Faith, and Culture in the Medieval West. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2006. xvii + 252 pp. $99.95 cloth. This book...

The First Crusade: A New History.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The First Crusade: A New History. By Thomas Asbridge. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. xvi + 408 pp. $35.00 cloth. A subtitle of this re-telling of the story of the First Crusade (also known as the Three-Years' Crusade and the...

Heresy in Medieval France: Dualism in Aquitaine and the Agenais, 1000-1249.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Heresy in Medieval France: Dualism in Aquitaine and the Agenais, 10001249. By Claire Taylor. Royal Historical Society Studies in History New Series. Woodbridge, U.K.: Royal Historical Society/Boydell, 2005. xi + 314 pp. 3 maps, 3 genealogies....

The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950-1350.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950-1350. Edited by Robert F. Berkhofer III, Alan Cooper, and Adam J. Kosto. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2005. x + 294 pp. $94.95 cloth. In this collection of seventeen articles ranging from the...

Heresy in Transition: Transforming Ideas of Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Heresy in Transition: Transforming Ideas of Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Edited by Ian Hunter, John Christian Laursen, and Cary J. Nederman. Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2005. xii + 210 pp. $ 99.95...

Marguerite de Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Marguerite de Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance. By Patricia F. Cholakian and Rouben C. Cholakian. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. xxxiv + 413 pp. $40.00 cloth. As Rouben Cholakian points out in the preface, no up-to-date...

From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris. By Barbara B. Diefendorf. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. x + 341 pp. $65.00 cloth; $21.95 paper. After her husband's death in 1572, Marie Du Drac cut...

Piety and Family in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Steven Ozment.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Piety and Family in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Steven Ozment. Edited by Marc R. Forster and Benjamin J. Kaplan. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2005. x + 249 pp. $94.95 cloth. This collection of essays celebrating the career of...

A Paradise Inhabited by Devils: The Jesuits' Civilizing Mission in Early Modern Naples.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... A Paradise Inhabited by Devils: The Jesuits' Civilizing Mission in Early Modern Naples. By Jennifer D. Selwyn. Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate 2004. xiii + 281 pp. $89.95 cloth. "Just as some of ours [Jesuits] go...

Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era. By Magda Teter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xxxvi + 275 pp. $65.00 cloth. There are few books in English on the history of Polish...

Religious Identities in Henry VIII's England.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Religious Identities in Henry VIII's England. By Peter Marshall. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Aldershot, U.K: Ashgate, 2006. x + 300 pp. $114.95 cloth. Discussion about the nature of popular response to the English...

Lest We Be Damned: Practical Innovation and Lived Experience among Catholics in Protestant England, 1559-1642.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Lest We Be Damned: Practical Innovation and Lived Experience among Catholics in Protestant England, 1559-1642. By Lisa McClain. Religion in History, Society, and Culture 6. New York: Routledge, 2004. xvi + 395 pp. $100.00 cloth. During the...

odly Reformers and their Opponents in Early Modern England: Religion in Norwich, c. 1560-1643.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Godly Reformers and their Opponents in Early Modern England: Religion in Norwich, c. 1560-1643. By Matthew Reynolds. Studies in Modern British Religious History 10. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2005. xvi + 312 pp. $90.00 cloth. Historians of...

The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England. By D. Bruce Hindmarsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. xv + 386 pp. $110.00 cloth. No other book published in the last 150 years contains the...

The Origins of Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Origins of Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland. Edited by Alan Ford and John McCafferty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. x + 253 pp. $90.00 cloth. This collection of essays, a product of a symposium held at University...

Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany. By H. C. Erik Midelfort. The Terry Lecture Series. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. xiii + 222 pp. $35.00 cloth. This fascinating...

Britain and the Papacy in the Age of Revolution, 1846-1851.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Britain and the Papacy in the Age of Revolution, 1846-1851. By Saho Matsumoto-Best. Royal Historical Society Studies in History New Series 34. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 2003. xii + 196 pp. $75.00 cloth. This book delivers what the title...

Sowing the Word: The Cultural Impact of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1804-2004.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Sowing the Word: The Cultural Impact of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1804-2004. Edited by Stephen Batalden, Kathleen Cann, and John Dean. Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Phoenix, 2004. xii + 381 pp. $95.00 cloth. If one may talk about...

Russia's Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830-1917.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Russia's Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830-1917. By Sergei I. Zhuk. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2004. xxi + 458 pp. $60.00 cloth. Until recently, generations of...

Agents of Wrath, Sowers of Discord: Authority and Dissent in Puritan Massachusetts, 1630-1655.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Agents of Wrath, Sowers of Discord: Authority and Dissent in Puritan Massachusetts, 1630-1655. By Timothy L. Wood. Studies in American Popular History and Culture. New York: Routledge, 2006. x + 198 pp. $70.00 cloth. Agents of Wrath...

Saints and Strangers: New England in British North America.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Saints and Strangers: New England in British North America. By Joseph A. Conforti. Regional Perspectives on Early America. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. xii + 236 pp. $55.00 cloth; $19.95 paper. As part of Johns...

Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn: Visions of Youth in Middle-Class America, 1780-1850.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn: Visions of Youth in Middle-Class America, 1780-1850. By Rodney Hessinger. Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. viii + 255 pp. $45.00 cloth. Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn...

Prophet, Pastor, and Patriarch: The Rhetorical Leadership of Alexander Campbell.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Prophet, Pastor, and Patriarch: The Rhetorical Leadership of Alexander Campbell. By Peter A. Verkruyse. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005. xviii + 248 pp. $37.50 cloth. Mr. Verkruyse argues that Alexander Campbell's success as...

Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. By Richard Lyman Bushman. New York: Knopf, 2005. xxiv + 742 pp. $35.00 cloth. There have been many attempts over the years to unseat the popularity of Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History (1945; New...

The Rise of Mormonism.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Rise of Mormonism. By Rodney Stark. Edited by Reid L. Neilson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. xiv + 176 pp. $39.50 cloth. In a 1984 essay published in the Review of Religious Research, Rodney Stark projected a growth rate...

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. By Mark A. Noll. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xii + 203 pp. $29.95 cloth. This is a well-crafted, well-argued, and intriguing book, interesting not only because of the...

American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native American Literatures.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native American Literatures. By Joanna Brooks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. vii + 260 pp. $55.00 cloth. What Jesus did with the entombed Lazarus, this book does for...

The Church in the Barrio: Mexican American Ethno-Catholicism in Houston.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Church in the Barrio: Mexican American Ethno-Catholicism in Houston. By Roberto R. Trevino. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xiv + 311 pp. $59.95 cloth; $22.50 paper. Roberto Trevino has written a meticulously...

The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era. By Anthony B. Pinn. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2002. 175 pp. $20.00 paper. It is refreshing to read a study of recent developments about a topic that is usually examined only up to the 1960s...

Note of correction: Church History misattributed the review of The Black Church in the Post Civil Rights Era.(Correction notice)
December 1, 2006... Note of Correction: Church History misattributed the review of The Black Church in the Post Civil Rights Era in vol. 75, no. 1 (March 2006). The review is reprinted here with the correct author, Sylvester Johnson.

The Lion and the Lamb: Evangelicals and Catholics in America.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Lion and the Lamb: Evangelicals and Catholics in America. By William M. Shea. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 416 pp. $37.50 cloth. In 1993, American Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants crafted a document titled...

Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture. By Heather Hendershot. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ix + 256 pp. $27.50 cloth. Distinguishing their approach from fundamentalists who isolate...

Jesus in America, A History: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Jesus in America, A History: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession. By Richard Wightman Fox. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004. viii + 489 pp. $27.95 cloth. Fox, a cultural and intellectual historian, turns his...

America's Religions: From Their Origins to the Twenty-First Century.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... America's Religions: From Their Origins to the Twenty-First Century. By Peter S. Williams. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. xiv + 600 pp. $59.95 cloth; 29.95 paper. What should a state-of-the-art textbook in American religious...

Shamanism, Catholicism, and Gender Relations in Colonial Philippines, 1521-1685.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Shamanism, Catholicism and Gender Relations in Colonial Philippines, 1521-1685. By Carolyn Brewer. Women and Gender in the Early Modern Word. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2004. xxviv + 242 pp. $89.95 cloth. With this book, Carolyn Brewer...

The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody. By David W. Bebbington. History of Evangelicalism Series. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2005. 289 pp. $23.00 cloth. This thorough and insightful volume continues...

Robert H. Gardiner and the Reunification of Worldwide Christianity in the Progressive Era.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Robert H. Gardiner and the Reunification of Worldwide Christianity in the Progressive Era. By John F. Woolverton. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005. xviii + 272 pp. $42.50 cloth. Lay figures rarely take center stage in the...

The Evolution-Creation Struggle.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Evolution-Creation Struggle. By Michael Ruse. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. vii + 329 pp. $25.95 cloth. The revival of the idea of evolution in the natural and social sciences during the past half century has...

Encyclopedia of Christianity.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Encyclopedia of Christianity. Edited by John Bowden. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xli + 1364 pp. $125.00 cloth. This thick but handy reference work will find a wider readership than most encyclopedias. Written in simple, limpid...

A profile of the membership of the American Society of Church History.
December 1, 2006... In its 118-year history, the American Society of Church History has surveyed its membership three times. The first survey was conducted in 1967 and the second in 1987. (2) The third survey was issued in 2005, under the auspices of ASCH's...