Church History articles from June 2002

Church History archives from June 2002

Healing in the history of Christianity presidential address, January 2002 American Society of Church History.
June 1, 2002... In 1866, after a fall on the ice left her in despair of ever being able to walk again, Mary Baker Patterson (later Mary Baker Eddy) picked up her Bible and began reading stories of the healings performed by Jesus. As she lay in bed, picturing...

The word "homoousios" from Hellenism to Christianity.
June 1, 2002... Homoousios is one of the most important words in the Christian theological vocabulary, since it was used at the Council of Nicaea to express the divine consubstantiality of the Son with the Father. However, long and complicated debates have not...

Hymnody as history: early evangelical hymns and the recovery of American popular religion.
June 1, 2002... The hymns of evangelical Protestantism are the most widely used spiritual texts in American history. Sacred lyrics like "All hail the power of Jesus' name," "Jesus, lover of my soul," "How firm a foundation," and "When I survey the wondrous...

"The abominable crime of Onan": Catholic pastoral practice and family limitation in the United States, 1875-1919.
June 1, 2002... By the 1930s few Catholics in the United States could have been unaware of their church's absolute prohibition on contraception. A widely-publicized papal encyclical had spoken to the issue in 1930, even as various Protestant churches were for...

Who needs enemies? Jews and Judaism in anti-Nazi religious discourse.
June 1, 2002... The so-called German Church Struggle has been a subject of scholarly study and popular interest for several decades. For obvious reasons, the minority of Germans who opposed the Nazis in word or in deed have become compelling symbols of courage...

Forum: is there a center to American religious history?(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... The following are three presentations and a response on the theme of "Is there a center to American religious history?" which constituted a panel sponsored by the American Society of Church History and held in conjunction with the annual...

Does American religion have a center?
June 1, 2002... Undoubtedly, there are many centers to American religion--many topoi around which the wide-ranging multitude of historical developments associated with American religion might be seen to coalesce. Among the several that spring to...

American religious history--decentered with many centers.
June 1, 2002... This panel poses the question, "Is there a center to American religious history?" We historians live in a world and work in a period when the politically correct answer to the question is, "Of course not!" In this day of decentered religious...

Is there a center to American religious history?
June 1, 2002... Over the past few years I have been dealing with a narrow version of this question, as it has applied to the history of Protestantism in the twentieth century. In our book, Re-Forming the Center: American Protestantism, 1900 to the Present,...

"Does American religious history have a center?" reflections.
June 1, 2002... The three essays presented in this session raise issues that remind me of two classic representations of the problem of interpretation. In the Japanese film Rashomon, four differing and incompatible accounts of the same event are presented by...

The Forgotten Desert Mothers: Sayings, Lives, and Stories of Early Christian Women.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Laura Swan. New York: Paulist, 2001. 218 pp. $13.95 paper. Although informed by recent scholarly studies of female asceticism in late antiquity, this book does not have primarily historiographic aims. Rather, Laura Swan seeks here to...

The Hungry Are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia.
June 1, 2002... By Susan R. Holman. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. xviii + 231 pp. 549.95 cloth. The great Cappadocian Fathers--Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa--were pioneers....

The Cult of St Thecla: A Tradition of Women's Piety in Late Antiquity.
June 1, 2002... By Stephen J. Davis. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. xiv + 288 pp. $70.00 cloth. In the late 1970s, as feminism's influence began to make itself felt in biblical studies, Thecla became a figure of some...

Urban and Religious Spaces in Late Antiquity and Early Byzantium.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Jean-Michel Spieser. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2001. xii + 344 pp. $117.95 cloth. In the introduction to his volume of collected essays, Jean-Michel Spieser declares his interest in the use and perception of space, including its...

The Early History of Greed: The Sin of Avarice in Early Medieval Thought and Literature.
June 1, 2002... By Richard Newhauser. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xiv + 246 pp. $64.95 cloth. It is safe to say that Richard Newhauser has written the definitive book on avarice in the early...

State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400-1000.
June 1, 2002... By Matthew Innes. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought 47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xvi + 316 pp. $64.95 cloth. Matthew Innes, Lecturer in History at Birkbeck College, University of London, is the author of...

Spiritual Kinship as Social Practice: Godparenthood and Adoption in the Early Middle Ages.
June 1, 2002... By Bernhard Jussen. Translated by Pamela Selwyn. The Family in Interdisciplinary Perspective 3. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000. 362 pp. $55.00 cloth. The old saying that the fates choose our relatives for us, while we pick our...

The Soul in Ascent: Bonaventure on Poverty, Prayer, and Union with God.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Timothy J. Johnson. Studies in Franciscanism. Quincy, Ill.: Franciscan, 2000. xvi + 226 pp. $16.95 paper. This book is a revised version of the author's doctoral dissertation at the Pontifical Gregorian University (Iste Pauper Clamavit:...

From Whom God Hid Nothing.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Bernard McGinn. The Edward Cadbury Lectures, 2000-1. New York: Crossroad, 2001. ix + 305 pp. $45.00 cloth. "Ce qui ce concoit clairement s'exprime facilement et les mots pour le dire viennent aisement" (What is clearly conceived is...

The Byzantine Lists, Errors of the Latins.
June 1, 2002... By Tia M. Kolbaba. Illinois Medieval Studies. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. xi + 230. $34.95 cloth. This study concentrates on the lists or enumerations of Latin "errors," a body of polemical literature that was produced by...

Universities and Schooling in Medieval Society.
June 1, 2002... Edited by William J. Courtenay and Jurgen Miethke with the assistance of David B. Priest. Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 10. Leiden: Brill, 2000. vi + 244 pp. N.p. This collection, drawn from a conference on...

Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England.
June 1, 2002... Edited by Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. xii + 270 pp. $65.00 cloth; $24.95 paper. This is a collection of ten essays, several of which began life as papers given to the Leeds...

Spiritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England.
June 1, 2002... By Nancy Bradley Warren. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. xi + 276 pp. $55.00 cloth. An economy, by one dictionary definition, is a plan for the management of resources. Nancy Bradley Warren's...

Preaching Peace in Renaissance Italy: Bernardino of Siena and His Audience.
June 1, 2002... By Cynthia L. Polecretti. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000. x + 271 pp. $61.95 cloth. In her beautifully written and subtly argued study, Cynthia Polecretti joins Carlo Delcorno, Zelina Zafarana, Roberto...

Satan's Rhetoric: a Study of Renaissance Demonology.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Armando Maggi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. x + 256 pp. $37.50 cloth. In this intriguing book, Armando Maggi presents a rhetorical analysis of different semiotic systems in which demons/daimones play central...

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine, and Death in Reformation Europe.
June 1, 2002... By Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xiv + 360 pp. $64.95 cloth; $22.95 paper. This richly illustrated book reimpresses on experts, and introduces to the non-specialist, the extent to...

What Pure Eyes Could See: Calvin's Doctrine of Faith in Its Exegetical Context.
June 1, 2002... By Barbara Pitkin. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. x + 260 pp. $60.00 cloth. Given the centrality of the doctrine of faith to the Protestant Reformation, it is not unreasonable to ask whether...

Five Women of the English Reformation.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Paul F. M. Zahl. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001. viii + 120 pp. $18.00 cloth. This brief study summarizes and takes seriously the theological ideas of five Protestant women in sixteenth-century England: Anne Boleyn, Katharine Parr,...

The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West: 1450-1800.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... Edited by Paola Bernardini and Norman Fiering. European Expansion and Global Interaction 2. New York: Berghahn, 2001. xxii + 567 pp. $49.95 cloth. This volume of twenty-five essays grew out of an international conference held at the John...

Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England.
June 1, 2002... By Kristen Poole. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xiii + 272 pp. $59.95 cloth. In the words of the author, this book seeks to achieve two ends. The first is to correct lingering misconceptions about literary references to...

Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... Edited with an introduction by Daniel Vitkus. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. 358 pp. $49.50 cloth; $18.50 paper. Vitkus provides the first edition of three English plays--Selimus, Emperor of the Turks (ca. 1588), probably by...

Quaker Women Prophets in England and Wales: 1650-1700.
June 1, 2002... By Christine Trevett. Studies in Women and Religion 41. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 2000. xv + 246 pp. $89.95 cloth To contemporaries, one of the most shocking developments of the 1640s and 1650s was the public religious activity of...

Susanna Annesley Wesley, 1669-1742: A Biography of Strength and Love, the Mother of John and Charles Wesley.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Samuel J. Rogal. Bristol, Ind.: Wyndham Hall, 2001. viii + 204 pp. $36.00 paper. Students of Methodism and the Wesleys will immediately recognize the name of Samuel Rogal. A frequent contributor to the Studies in the History of Missions...

Les porteurs d'esperance: La mission du Tibet-Sud, 1848-1854.
June 1, 2002... By Francoise Fauconnet-Buzelin. Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1999. 257 pp. Map. Illus. In 1854 two French Roman Catholic priests, Nicolas Krick and Augustin Bourry, were murdered near the border between Tibet and northeast India. The two...

Secularisation in Western Europe: 1848-1914.
June 1, 2002... By Hugh McLeod. New York: St. Martin's, 2000. 387 pp. $65.00 cloth; $19.95 paper. For various reasons, this is a most remarkable book. First, Hugh McLeod, a professor of church history at Birmingham University, compares the progress of...

Sanctity and Secularity During the Modernist Period: Six Perspectives on Hagiography Around 1900.
June 1, 2002... Edited by L. Barmann and C. J. T. Talar. Bruxelles: Societe des Bollandistes, 1999. xi + 187 pp. 35.00 [euro] paper. In this volume Lawrence Barmann and C. J. T. Talar gather six essays (two in French, four in English) written by prominent...

The Catholic Church in Spain: 1875-1998.
June 1, 2002... By William J. Callahan. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000. xx + 695 pp. $49.95 cloth. William J. Callahan's The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875-1998 has already become the standard work on the relations of...

The Catholic Church and Catholic Schools In Northern Ireland: The Price of Faith.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Michael McGrath. Dublin: Irish Academic, 2000. xx + 330 pp. $57.50 cloth. Within Northern Ireland's troubled history, no institution has been the source of more sectarian rancor than the school. Here, Michael McGrath charts the course...

True Catholic Womanhood: Gender Ideology in Franco's Spain.
June 1, 2002... By Aurora G. Morcillo. DeKalb, Ill., Northern Illinois University Press, 2000. ix + 224 pp. $36.00 cloth. True Catholic Womanhood is the first book by Aurora G. Morcillo, a visiting professor of education history and women's studies at the...

Confessions of an Interest Group: The Catholic Church and Political Parties in Europe.
June 1, 2002... By Carolyn M. Warner. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. xvi + 249 pp. $57.50 cloth; $17.95 paper. Using both archival sources and secondary works, Carolyn Warner, a professor of political science at Arizona State University, has...

The Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By W. F. Ryan. Magic in History. University Park, Penn.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. viii + 504 pp. $65.00 cloth; $22.50 paper. W. F. Ryan's examination of various magical beliefs and practices in Russia from Muscovite...

Walking in the Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century.
June 1, 2002... By Meredith Baldwin Weddle. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. xvi + 348 pp. $49.95 cloth. In this carefully researched, beautifully written, and cogently argued book, Meredith Baldwin Weddle broadens our understanding of early...

Damned Souls in a Tobacco Colony: Religion in Seventeenth-Century Virginia.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Edward L. Bond. Macon, Ga: Mercer University Press, 2000. xi + 303 pp. Bibliography. Index. $35.00 cloth. Bond argues that late-seventeenth-century Virginia's Anglicans had "created their own religious identity separate from that of the...

The Roots of Appalachian Christianity: The Life and Legacy of Elder Shubal Stearns.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Elder John Sparks. Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001. xx + 327 pp. $32.50 cloth. John Sparks reconstructs the history of Shubal Stearns from his perspective as a United Baptist minister and in the process argues that...

The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800: The Shaping of an Evangelical Culture.
June 1, 2002... By Dee E. Andrews. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. xv + 367 pp. $59.50 U.S./38.00 [pounds sterling] cloth. Say what you will about the early Methodists, they knew how to draw a crowd. They were darned good at it in 1800, and...

Barton Stone: A Spiritual Biography.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By D. Newell Williams. St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice, 2000. x + 249 pp. $29.99 paper. Williams has produced the most comprehensive, scholarly analysis available of primary and secondary resources for understanding the life, theology, and...

The Village Enlightenment in America: Popular Religion and Science in the Nineteenth Century.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Craig James Hazen. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. ix + 194 pp. $34.95 cloth; $19.95 paper. Readers beware: Despite the title, The Village Enlightenment in America says virtually nothing about either the Enlightenment (as...

The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, 1805-1900.
June 1, 2002... By Gary Dorrien. Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox, 2001. xxv + 552 pp. $39.95. There is something to be said for reexamining materials that are already well known. There is a lot more to be said for putting dozens of those familiar...

Episcopalians and Race: Civil War to Civil Rights.
June 1, 2002... By Gardiner H. Shattuck Jr. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 2000. xiii + 298 pp. Illustrated. $32.50 cloth. In a perceptive and well-researched study, Gardiner H. Shattuck Jr. traces black-white relations within the Episcopal...

Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History.
June 1, 2002... By Philip Jenkins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. vii + 294 pp. $27.50 cloth. The arguments in this book will be familiar to any specialist in new religious movements (NRMs, a.k.a, cults and sects). Jenkins, like Robert Ellwood,...

Sources of Christian Theology in America.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... Edited by Mark G. Toulouse and James O. Duke. Nashville: Abingdon, 1999. 605 pp. $40.00 paper. Mark Toulouse and James Duke have assembled and introduced primary source material from the thinkers whose formative contributions to Christian...

The Councils of the Church: A Short History.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Norman P. Tanner. New York: Crossroad, 2001. xi + 132 pp. $22.95 paper. The author provides a concise summary of the circumstances and yields of the twenty-one ecumenical and general councils from Nicaea I to Vatican II. Readers wishing...

Reclaiming our Roots: An Inclusive Introduction to Church History, vol. 1, The Late First Century to the Eve of the Reformation; vol. 2, From Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, Jr.
June 1, 2002... By Mark Ellingsen. Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1999. x + 308 pp.; x + 433 pp. $27.00; $29.00 paper. Mark Ellingsen intends these two volumes to be aids in ministry and to function as textbooks for those interested in the...

The Story of Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform.
June 1, 2002... By Roger E. Olson. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1999. 652 pp. $56.98 cloth; $34.99 paper. The first glance at Olson's book will lead many readers to think of the huge, excellent but indigestible church history by Kenneth Scott...

Family: A Christian Social Perspective.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... By Lisa Sowell Cahill. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000. xiv + 170 pp. This book is best described as an extended meditation on the attributes that characterize a truly Christian family. Such families, in the author's view, must be egalitarian...

World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, vol. 1, The World by Countries: Religionists, Churches, Ministries; vol. 2: The World by Segments: Religions, Peoples, Languages, Cities, Topics.
June 1, 2002... 2d ed. Edited by David B. Barrett, George T. Kurian, and Todd M. Johnson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Vol. 1: xii + 876 pp. Vol. 2: vi + 923 pp. $295.00 cloth. When the first edition of this work was published in 1982, it...

Minutes of the annual meeting of the American society of Church History. (Society Notices).
June 1, 2002... 3 January 2002 A meeting of the Council of the American Society of Church History was called to order at 4:15 p.m. on 3 Jan. 2002 by President Amanda Porterfield in the Da Vinci Room of the Renaissance Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco CA....