Church History articles from December 2007

Church History archives from December 2007

Defining the boundaries of orthodoxy: Eunomius in the anti-Jewish polemic of his Cappadocian opponents.
December 1, 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...

Guardians of the sacred: the nuns of Soissons and the slipper of the Virgin Mary (1).
December 1, 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...

Let the children come: the religion of the protestant child in early America (1).
December 1, 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,...

Mormons study "abroad" Brigham Young's romance with American higher education, 1867-1877 (1).
December 1, 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...

Urbanization and the end of Black churches in the modern world.
December 1, 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...

Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

The Body in St. Maximus the Confessor: Holy Flesh, Wholly Deified.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Celi De in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

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)
December 1, 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....

Thomas Becket and his Biographers.(Thomas Becket and His Biographers: Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, vol. 28)(Book review)
December 1, 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...

The Privilege of Poverty: Clare of Assisi, Agnes of Prague, and the Struggle for a Franciscan Rule for Women.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240-1570.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture.(Book review)
December 1, 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;...

Captives and Their Saviors in the Medieval Crown of Aragon.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Beyond the Reformation? Authority, Primacy and Unity in the Conciliar Tradition.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II: 1500 to 1900.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations.(Book review)
December 1, 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,...

Angels in the Early Modern World.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Separation and the Sword in Anabaptist Persuasion: Radical Confessional Rhetoric from Schleitheim to Dordrecht.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529-1629.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

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)
December 1, 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...

Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Remember, Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

The Shaping of Ulster Presbyterian Belief & Practice, 1770-1840.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

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)
December 1, 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...

China's Millions: The China Inland Mission and Late Qing Society, 1832-1905.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Protestant Missionaries, Asian Immigrants, and Ideologies of Race in America, 1850-1924.(Book review)
December 1, 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....

The Bishop of the Old South: The Ministry and Civil War Legacy of Leonidas Polk.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Reliving Golgotha: The Passion Play of Iztapalapa.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Sanctuary Cinema: Origins of the Christian Film Industry.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

In the Beginning: Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and the Making of the Antievolution Movement.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

The South's Tolerable Alien: Roman Catholics in Alabama and Georgia, 1945-1970.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

A. Philip Randolph: The Religious Journey of an African American Labor Leader.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Lutherans and the Longest War: Adrift on a Sea of Doubt about the Cold and Vietnam Wars, 1964-1975.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Millenarianism and Popular Culture.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Pulpit and Politics: Clergy in American Politics at the Advent of the Millennium.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Satan: A Biography.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Mariam, the Magdalen, and the Mother.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

The Oxford History of Christian Worship.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

God's Joust, God's Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

The Marketplace of Christianity.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Saints and Their Cults in the Atlantic World.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Sound in the Land: Essays on Mennonites and Music.(Book review)
December 1, 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...

Books received.
December 1, 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:...