Church History articles from June 2003

Church History archives from June 2003

On teaching the history of Christianity: traditions and presuppositions.
June 1, 2003... In his presidential address to the American Society of Church History in 1920, Robert Hastings Nichols observed that he had discovered, in his reading of previous addresses, "no mention of the reading of a paper dealing with what is the...

Episcopal election in Novgorod, Russia 1156-1478.
June 1, 2003... Episcopal election in Western Christianity evolved considerably over the course of the fifth to the twelfth centuries. In the early part of this period, an open electorate consisting of the clergy and the people (clerus et populus), as well as...

Defacement: practical theology, politics, or prejudice: the case of the north portal of Bourges.
June 1, 2003... The Cathedral of St. Etienne at Bourges, which Ribault justly styles "un chef d'oeuvre gothique" (a Gothic masterpiece), (1) did not escape the Huguenot depredations of 1562. Especially vulnerable to the pikes and pry-bars of the Reformers were...

The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the restoration of Israel in the "Judeo-centric" strand of Puritan millenarianism (1).
June 1, 2003... For the American Puritan minister Increase Mather, the battle of Armageddon would be "the most terrible day of battel that ever was." "Asia is like to be in a flame of war between Israelites and Turks," he wrote in The Mystery of Israel's...

"A great religious octopus": church and state at Virginia's Constitutional Convention, 1901-1902 (1).
June 1, 2003... A hundred years ago Virginia drafted a new state constitution designed to disfranchise African American voters. That objective was transparent from the outset of the convention. As John Goode, the presiding officer, assumed his seat, he called...

"In my extremity I turned to Gandhi": American pacifists, Christianity, and Gandhian nonviolence, 1915-1941 (1).
June 1, 2003... American pacifists first heard of Mohandas Gandhi and his struggles in South Africa and India after World War I. Although they admired his opposition to violence, they were ambivalent about nonviolent resistance as a method of social change. As...

The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... By Mathew Kuefler. The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. x + 437 pp. $45.00 cloth. Kuefler argues that Christianity succeeded in the later Roman Empire (ca. 200-450) in part by...

Rescue for the Dead. The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Jeffrey A. Trumbower. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. xv + 207 pp. $45.00 cloth. The relationships between the living and the dead have always been in the center of religious experience and...

Religious Violence between Christians and Jews: Medieval Roots, Modern Perspectives.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... Edited by Anna Sapir Abulafia. New York: Palgrave, 2002. xviii + 205 pp. $60.00 cloth. Coerced conversion and baptism, accusation of ritual murder and host desecration, persecution and massacre in the shadow of "holy war": what is the...

Reason, Community and Religious Tradition: Anselm's Argument and the Friars.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Scott Matthews. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2001. ix + 238 pp. $69.95 cloth. Scott Matthews' Reason, Community and Religious Tradition effectively utilizes philosophical, historical, and religious methodologies to examine Anselm's...

The Bishop's Palace: Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Maureen C. Miller. Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000, xviii + 307 pp. 44 black and white photographs, 53 line drawings. $49.95. cloth. This remarkable book is an essay...

From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Donna Spivey Ellington. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001. xii + 284 pp. $59.95 cloth. To identify changes in Marian devotion, Ellington compares the published sermons of seven late medieval preachers with...

Piety and Pythagoras in Renaissance Florence, The Symbolum Nesianum.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Christopher Celenza. Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 101. "Leiden: Brill, 2001. xiv + 238 pp. $85.00 cloth. This work is a full scholarly edition and translation of a single manuscript with complete editorial apparatus,...

The Bible in the Renaissance: Essays on Biblical Commentary and Translation in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Edited by Richard Griffiths. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2001. xvii + 204 pp. $84.95 cloth. From a conference held in London in 1998, Richard Griffiths brings together nine cleanly edited papers into a volume that will be of interest to...

Renaissance Humanism in Support of the Gospel in Luther's Early Correspondence: Taking all things captive.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... By Timothy P. Dost. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2001. x + 244 pp. $79.95 cloth. This monograph has every characteristic of a doctoral dissertation. It is very well researched, heavily footnoted, with a carefully restricted subject matter, an...

Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559 to 1685.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... Edited by Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xviii + 241 pp. $60.00 cloth. The dozen essays collected in this book address two key questions: To what extent did the experience of religious...

The Eagle and the Cross: Jesuits in Late Baroque Prague.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... By Paul Shore. No. 16 in Series 3: Original Studies Composed in English. Saint Louis, Mo.: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2002. xiv + 267 pp. $22.95 paper. Paul Shore presents the Prague Society of Jesus in unbreakable connectedness with the...

Religion and Society in Modern Europe.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... By Rene Remond. Translated by Antonia Nevill. The Making of Europe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. viii + 237 pp. $62.95 cloth. The scope of this book is more specific than the title might suggest. Rene Remond's subject is secularization, defined...

The Instruction of a Christen Woman.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... By Juan Luis Vives. Translated by Richard Hyrde. Edited by Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, Elizabeth H. "Hageman, and Margaret Mikesell. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. cxviii + 274 pp. $39.95 cloth. This carefully researched...

Reformation and Scholasticism. An Ecumenical Enterprise.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Edited by Willem J. Van Asselt and Eef Dekker. Texts and studies in Reformation and post-Reformation thought. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2001. 311 pp. $24.99 paper. Readers might wonder why the "and" in the title and not an "or,"...

Celtic Theology: Humanity, World and God in Early Irish Writings.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... By Thomas O'Loughlin. New York: Continuum, 2001. xviii + 235 pp. $74.95 cloth; $28.95 paper. The phrase "Early Irish" means the period from the fifth to the tenth century. Much theological material survives from then, but scholars have...

Milton and the Rabbis: Hebraism, Hellenism, and Christianity.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Jeffrey S. Shoulson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. xvi + 340 pp. $52.50 cloth; $19.50 paper. In this refinement of his dissertation, Jeffrey Shoulson explores the relation between John Milton's writings (particularly...

Mr Simson's Knotty Case: Divinity, Politics, and Due Process in Early Eighteenth-Century Scotland.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... By Anne Skoczylas. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001. xii + 403 pp. $75.00 cloth. John Simson (1667-1740), outspoken contender for theological modernization, was elected Professor of Divinity at Glasgow University in 1708. He...

The National Churches of England, Ireland, and Scotland 1801-46.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Stewart J. Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. xii + 459 pp. $95.00 cloth. This book is an ambitious comparative study of the national churches of the three largest nations of the United Kingdom. It surveys the period between...

The Second Disruption: the Free Church in Victorian Scotland and the Origins of the Free Presbyterian Church.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By James Lachlan MacLeod. Scottish Historical Review Monograph 8. East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell, 2000. x + 277 pp. 16.99 [pounds sterling] paper. In 1843, the Church of Scotland suffered the well-known Great Disruption that was set off...

John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Frank M. Turner. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002. xii + 740 pp. $35.00 cloth. Frank M. Turner's book is a detailed, meticulously researched study of events and ideas leading to Newman's 1845 entrance into the Roman...

The Coming Crisis: the Impact of Eschatology on Theology in Edwardian England.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Mark D. Chapman. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 208. Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001. 189 pp. 40.00 [pounds sterling] cloth. This monograph posits the thesis that in England the shaking of...

Jonathan Edwards and the Bible.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Robert E. Brown. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. xxiv + 292 pp. $35.00 cloth. Scholars previously have regarded Jonathan Edwards as a traditional interpreter of the Bible with a penchant for typology. Brown's original and...

Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Daniel L. Dreisbach. New York: New York University Press, 2002. x + 283 pp. $42.00 cloth. Thomas Jefferson's celebrated "wall of separation" metaphor has exerted a profound influence on American thought and practice regarding relations...

Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... By Bruce Dorsey. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002. xiv + 299 pp. $39.95 cloth. This carefully researched book provides a richly textured interpretation of the gendered dynamics of antebellum reforms in the United States. Bruce...

American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Dean Grodzins. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xvi + 631 pp. $39.95 cloth. First things first: Dean Grodzins' biography of Theodore Parker is scholarship at its most meticulous and exacting. He has combed through...

The Religious World of Antislavery Women: Spirituality in the Lives of Five Abolitionist Lecturers.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... By Anna M. Speicher. Women and Gender in North American Religions. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000. xiv + 242 pp. $39.95 cloth; $19.95 paper. Anna M. Speicher has written a fine study of five female abolitionists--Angelina...

O Sisters Ain't You Happy? Gender, Family, and Community among the Harvard and Shirley Shakers, 1781-1918.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Suzanne R. Thurman. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2002. xvi + 262 pp. $39.95 cloth; $19.95 paper. The author has revised her dissertation at Indiana University under Shaker scholar Stephen Stein into an important...

Emma Curtis Hopkins: Forgotten Founder of New Thought.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... By Gail M. Harley. Women and Gender in North American Religions Series. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2002. xxvi + 190 pp. $34.95 cloth. Gail Harley's book is a welcome addition to the history of women and of American...

American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Deirdre M. Moloney. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xviii + 267 pp. $49.95 cloth; $19.95 paper. This work provides fascinating insights into American Catholicism from approximately the mid nineteenth century...

Hero of the Heartland: Billy Sunday and the Transformation of American Society, 1862-1935.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Robert F. Martin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. xviii + 163 pp. $27.95 cloth. It is not difficult today to identify male professional athletes and coaches who are well-known Christian evangelists. David Robinson ranks...

Holy Day, Holiday: the American Sunday.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Alexis McCrossen. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000. xiv + 209 pp. $45.00 cloth; $16.95 paper. "What is a day of rest?" asked labor analyst Carroll D. Wright in his 1885 study, Sunday Labor. To Wright and many of his...

Close Harmony: a History of Southern Gospel.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By James R. Goff, Jr. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xvi + 394 pp. $45 cloth; $24.95 paper. Author James Goff's Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel is an important contribution to the scant scholarly...

Something Within: Religion in African-American Political Activism.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By Fredrick C. Harris. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. xxii + 227 pp. $35.00 cloth. Fredrick C. Harris, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Rochester, has written an award winning book on a very difficult topic....

Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... Edited by Mary Kupiec Cayton and Peter W. Williams. 3 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001. lxxviii + 2436 pp. $325.00/3 vol. set, cloth. This hefty, three-volume encyclopedia is a superb resource for American cultural and...

The Power of Religious Publics: Staking Claims in American Society.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... Edited by William H. Swatos, Jr. and James K. Wellman, Jr. Religion in the Age of Transformation. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999. vii + 237 pp. $59.95 cloth. This anthology probes the complex intertwining of religion and public life in the...

A Dictionary of Asian Christianity.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... Edited by Scott W. Sunquist, David Wu Chu Sing, and John Chew Hiang Chea. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001. xliv + 937 pp. $75.00 cloth. Editor Scott Sunquist and associate editors David Wu Chu Sing and John Chew Hiang Chea are to be...

Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter. A History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... By Sandra E. Greene. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. xxii + 200 pp. $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. Drawing on extensive interview work and archive sources, Greene's study of the Anlo of Ghana takes up the interest in landscape...

The Long Tragedy: Australian Evangelical Christians and the Great War, 1914-1918.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... By Robert D. Linder. Adelaide, South Australia: Openbook, 2000. 196 pp. $19.95 paper. The First World War had a profound affect on Australia. In looking at the war through an evangelical lens, Robert Linder has focused on a particular...

The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation.(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... By R. Scott Appleby. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. xvi + 429 pp. $28.95 cloth. First there were the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; then periodic warnings of possible terrorist activity that the American people have heard...

"Minutes of the annual meeting of the American Society of Church History: 2 January 2003. (Society Notices).
June 1, 2003... A meeting of the Council of the American Society of Church History was called to order at 4:15 p.m. on 2 January 2003 in the Private Dining Room--9 at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel in Chicago, Ill. by President E. Brooks Holifield--the one...