Church History articles from March 2006

Church History archives from March 2006

"Heretical plagues" and censorship cordons: colonial Mexico and the transatlantic book trade (1).
March 1, 2006... In the 1570s the Mexican Inquisition prosecuted high-profile heresy and piracy cases against John Hawkins and other English and French corsairs. These trials prompted a high alert for Lutheran and Calvinist books as well as vernacular Scripture...

Ruling eldership in Civil War England, the Scottish kirk, and early new England: a comparative study of secular and spiritual aspects.
March 1, 2006... Within early modern Christianity the idea of church government always entailed a basic contradiction. How could a spiritual body, devoted to Christ's teachings of love and forgiveness, exercise coercive authority? Given the widely accepted need...

John Clarke and the complications of liberty.
March 1, 2006... In the historiography of English and American Baptist movements there is no more familiar convention than this: Baptists early and late championed freedom of the religious conscience, rejected the use of force in spiritual affairs, and, either...

"The Devil Begins to Roar": opposition to early Methodists in New England.
March 1, 2006... In the several decades after their arrival in the New England states in the late 1780s, Methodists were the objects of a wide variety of attacks, some of them mutually contradictory. (1) Their preachers were accused of being pickpockets, horse...

Provincializing Christendom: the case of Great Britain.(Modern European Historiography Forum)
March 1, 2006... The insular traditions of British ecclesiastical history have been transformed since the 1960s, when scholars began to pay attention to the theory of secularization, an inherently comparative and global theory of social change. More recently a...

Challenging dechristianization: the historiography of religion in modern France.(Modern European Historiography Forum)
March 1, 2006... Over the past few months, the two leading journals in contemporary French intellectual life have opened their pages to a polemical battle between two historians of French religion, a French scholar Catherine Maire, and the American Dale Van...

A Religious Sonderweg? Reflections on the Sacred and the Secular in the Historiography of Modern Germany.(Modern European Historiography Forum)
March 1, 2006... A RELIGIOUS SONDERWEG? REFLECTIONS ON THE SACRED AND THE SECULAR IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF MODERN GERMANY If one had to identify the moment at which religion officially "arrived" in the Anglo-American historiography of modern Germany, one...

Commentary--a "religious turn" in modern European historiography?(Modern European Historiography Forum)
March 1, 2006... It is a tremendous honor to participate in this forum with historians of such distinction and fine insight, which should be clear enough from the preceding papers. I have several questions and comments on each paper, but let me first offer...

Homicide in the Biblical World.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Homicide in the Biblical World. By Pamela Barmash. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xvi + 253 pp. $70.00 cloth; $25.99 paper. This monograph, a revised version of the author's 1999 Harvard University dissertation, explores the...

Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Making Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians. By Dale B. Martin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. xii + 307 pp. $29.95 cloth. Dale Martin's latest book delivers an admirably lucid and accessible account of...

Sex and Salvation: Virginity as a Soteriological Paradigm in Ancient Christianity.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Sex and Salvation: Virginity as a Soteriological Paradigm in Ancient Christianity. By Roger Steven Evans. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2003. xvii + 188 pp. $30.00 paper. This book tackles a rich and complex question in early...

The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire. By Michele Renee Salzman. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. xiv + 364 pp. $55.00 cloth; $19.95 paper. The Christianization of...

Reading in Christian Communities: Essays on Interpretation in the Early Church.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Reading in Christian Communities: Essays on Interpretation in the Early Church. Edited by Charles A. Bobertz and David Brakke. Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 14. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. xii + 233 pp....

Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions. Edited by Ra'anan S. Boustan and Annette Yoshiko Reed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xiii + 335 pp. $80.00 cloth. "Anyone, who looks into four things," warned...

Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church: The Monk-Bishop in Late Antiquity.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church: The Monk-Bishop in Late Antiquity. By Andrea Sterk. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. viii + 360 pp. $45.00 cloth. Dr. Sterk's purpose in presenting this study and well-crafted...

Constructing Antichrist: Paul, Biblical Commentary, and the Development of Doctrine in the Early Middle Ages.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Constructing Antichrist: Paul, Biblical Commentary, and the Development of Doctrine in the Early Middle Ages. By Kevin L. Hughes. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005. xxi + 278 pp. $59.95 cloth. "Imminence" and...

Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade. By Jeremy Cohen. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. xvi + 209 pp. $37.50 cloth. Jeremy Cohen's new book raises profound questions about...

Angels and Earthly Creatures: Preaching, Performance, and Gender in the Later Middle Ages.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Angels and Earthly Creatures: Preaching, Performance, and Gender in the Later Middle Ages. By Claire M. Waters. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. xi + 282 pp. $55.00 cloth. This provocative study explores the...

Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... 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...

The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West: From the Beginning to 1600.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West: From the Beginning to 1600. By Colin Morris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. xxii + 427 pp. $99.00 cloth. Without question, this book is now the definitive work in its field; the main...

Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy. By Alison Knowles Frazier. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. xx + 527 pp. $45.00 cloth. Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy is a fascinating analysis of...

Communal Christianity: The Life and Loss of a Peasant Vision in Early Modern Germany.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Communal Christianity: The Life and Loss of a Peasant Vision in Early Modern Germany. By David Mayes. Studies in Central European Histories 35. Edited by Thomas A. Brady, Jr., and Roger Chickering. Boston, Mass.: Brill Academic, 2004. ix + 369...

Women, Sex and Marriage in Early Modern Venice.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Women, Sex and Marriage in Early Modern Venice. By Daniela Hacke. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2004. xvi + 270 pp. $99.00 cloth. This book in the excellent series, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation...

Morandi's Last Prophecy and the End of Renaissance Politics.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Morandi's Last Prophecy and the End of Renaissance Politics. By Brendan Dooley. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. xiv + 238 pp. $36.50 cloth. On November 7, 1630, Orazio Morandi, Abbot of Santa Prassede and one-time...

Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age. Edited by R. Po-Chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. viii + 187 pp. $55.00 cloth. In the last few decades, scholars have firmly established...

The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts, and Confessors.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts, and Confessors. By Robert Bireley, S.J. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xii + 300 pp. $65.00 cloth. Robert Bireley, a Jesuit and historian at Loyola University in Chicago,...

Baptism and Spiritual Kinship in Early Modern England.( )(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Baptism and Spiritual Kinship in Early Modern England. By Will Coster. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002. xviii + 323 pp. $94.95 cloth. Originating as the author's doctoral dissertation under the...

"Full of All Knowledge": George Herbert's Country Parson and Early Modern Social Discourse.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... 'Full of All knowledg': George Herbert's Country Parson and Early Modern Social Discourse. By Ronald W. Cooley. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. 238 pp. $50.00 cloth. George Herbert (1593-1633) is best known for his devotional...

Holy Tears, Holy Blood: Women, Catholicism, and the Culture of Suffering in France, 1840-1970.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Holy Tears, Holy Blood: Women, Catholicism, and the Culture of Suffering in France, 1840-1970. Holy Tears, Holy Blood: Women, Catholicism, and the Culture of Suffering in France, 1840-1970. By Richard D. E. Burton. Ithaca, N.Y." Cornell...

The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965. By Michael Phayer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. xx + 301 pp. $14.95 cloth. The last decade has seen a surge of interest in the history of the Catholic Church in modern...

Jehovah's Witnesses and the Third Reich: Sectarian Politics under Persecution.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Jehovah's Witnesses and the Third Reich: Sectarian Politics under Persecution. By M. James Penton. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. xxii + 412 pp. $75.00 cloth; $35.00 paper. In his work, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Third Reich,...

The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon: Portraits of a Protestant Saint.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon: Portraits of a Protestant Saint. By Stephen R. Haynes. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2005. xv + 176 pp. $22.00 paper. In this fascinating study, Stephen Haynes explores the many divergent interpretations of...

Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641. By Michael P. Winship. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. xv + 322 pp. $29.95 cloth. In August or September 1643 Anne Hutchinson, nee...

English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century. By John D. Krugler. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. xii + 319 pp. $46.00, cloth. In English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth...

Orestes A. Brownson: American Religious Weathervane.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Orestes A. Brownson: American Religious Weathervane. By Patrick W. Carey. Library of Religious Biography. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004. xx + 428 pp. $28.00 paper. Better than any other to date, Patrick Carey's biography succeeds in...

Charles Hodge Revisited: A Critical Appraisal of His Life and Work.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Charles Hodge Revisited: A Critical Appraisal of His Life and Work. Edited by John W. Stewart and James H. Moorehead. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002. x + 375 pp. $25.00 paper. Charles Hodge believed theological truths to be timeless,...

Calling Down Fire: Charles Grandison Finney and Revivalism in Jefferson County, New York, 1800-1840.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Calling Down Fire: Charles Grandison Finney and Revivalism in Jefferson County, New York, 1800-1840. By Marianne Perciaccante. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. x + 193 pp. $49.50 cloth; $16.95 paper. "There are two kinds...

By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion.(Believing History: Latter-day Saint Essays)(Excavating Mormon Pasts: The New Historiography of the Last Half Century)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion. By Terry L. Givens. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 320 pp. $30.00 cloth; $16.95 paper. Believing History: Latter-day Saint Essays. Edited by Richard...

Freedom's Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Freedom's Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era. By Paul Harvey. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. xvi + 338 pp. $34.95 cloth. This thoughtful and...

Saving the Heartland: Catholic Missionaries in Rural America, 1920-1960.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Saving the Heartland: Catholic Missionaries in Rural America, 1920-1960. By Jeffrey D. Marlett. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002. xii + 233 pp. $40.00 cloth. The subject of Jeffrey Marlett's book is at once much narrower...

The Yoder Case: Religious Freedom, Education, and Parental Rights.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Yoder Case: Religious Freedom, Education, and Parental Rights. By Shawn Francis Peters. Landmark Law Cases and American Society. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003. viii + 199 pp. $29.95 cloth; $14.95 paper. As fans of the...

The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism. By Kristy Nabhan-Warren. Qualitative Studies in Religion. New York: New York University Press, 2005. 304 pp. $65.00 cloth. There is much of...

The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era. By Anthony B. Pinn. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2002. xvi + 176 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...

Catholics and Contraception: An American History.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Catholics and Contraception: An American History. By Leslie Woodcock Tentler. Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in Twentieth-Century America. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004. xiii + 337 pp. $29.95 cloth. In Catholics and...

Religion and Healing in America.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Religion and Healing in America. Edited by Linda L. Barnes and Susan S. Sered. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xvi + 535 pp. $29.95 paper. In its constitution, the World Health Organization defines health as "a state of complete...

The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America since 1945.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America Since 1945. Edited by Paul Harvey and Philip Goff. Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. xxi + 557 pp. $75.00 cloth. Increasingly,...

American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. By Stephen Prothero. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2003. 364 pp. $25.00 cloth. These are banner years for Jesus in America. The Second Coming did not happen. But for not...

The Romanesque Revival: Religion, Politics, and Transnational Exchange.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Romanesque Revival: Religion, Politics, and Transnational Exchange. By Kathleen Curran. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. xxvii + 364 pp. $80.00 cloth. One of the best-known and most fully explored phases in...

Holiness Abroad: Nazarene Missions in Asia.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Holiness Abroad: Nazarene Missions in Asia. By Floyd T. Cunningham. Pietist and Wesleyan Studies 16. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2003. xii + 317 pp. $59.00 cloth; $39.95 paper. This study of Church of the Nazarene missions in Asia offers a...

An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... An Introduction to Pentecostalism. By Allan Anderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xiii + 302 pp. $65 cloth; $23.99 paper. Pentecostal forms of Christianity are thriving in many places around the globe. They manifest a wide...

Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World. Edited by Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002. x + 307 pp. $44.95 cloth; $22.95 paper. This fine collection of essays is a valuable...

The Bible in History: How the Texts Have Shaped the Times.(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Bible in History: How the Texts Have Shaped the Times. By David W. Kling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ix + 389 pp. $35.00 cloth. David Kling's new book contains eight separate studies in Christian biblical interpretation that...