Church History articles from March 2007

Church History archives from March 2007

"My Lord's native land" (1): mapping the Christian holy land.
March 1, 2007... In the fourth and early fifth centuries Christians laid claim to the land of Palestine. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the investment of the land of Palestine and its places with Christian historical and cultural meanings, and to trace...

From black magic to heresy: a doctrinal leap in the pontificate of John XXII.
March 1, 2007... In 1320, Pope John XXII launched a doctrinal enterprise of some import: the assimilation of practices of black magic into the crime of heresy. As was his custom, John sought the opinion of experts before taking a final decision that would...

The power of books and the practice of mysticism in the fourteenth century: Heinrich of Nordlingen and Margaret Ebner on Mechthild's Flowing Light of the Godhead (1).
March 1, 2007... In 1345 a manuscript accompanied by a letter arrived at the Dominican convent of Maria Medingen in southern Germany. The sender, a secular priest named Heinrich of Nordlingen, and the primary recipient, the Dominican visionary nun Margaret...

Inventing the Catholic worker family.(catholic Worker movement)
March 1, 2007... "The Catholic Worker movement is evolving in ways its founders didn't anticipate," declared a recent article in the National Catholic Reporter, explaining that the movement has evolved from a community of single people to a network that...

Preparing the soil for global revival: station HCJB's radio circle, 1949-59 (1).
March 1, 2007... The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a fundamental shift in the character of the Christian religion--namely, a massive expansion and shift of its center of gravity southward. During this period, Christianity experienced a...

Augustine: A New Biography.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Augustine: A New Biography. By James J. O'Donnell. New York: Ecco, 2005. xvi + 399 pp. $26.95 cloth; $14.95 paper. James J. O'Donnell's Augustine: A New Biography is a book to be taken seriously, not least because it is generically a...

Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity. By Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony. The Transformation of Classical Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. xv + 254 pp. $45.00 cloth. Jesus'...

The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq. By Joel Thomas Walker. The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 40. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. xviii + 348 pp. $49.95 cloth. Walker's...

Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity. By John David Dawson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. x + 302 pp. $50.00 cloth. John David Dawson is both precise and persuasive in his argument that the early...

The Cambridge History of Christianity: Origins to Constantine.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Cambridge History of Christianity: Origins to Constantine. Edited by Margaret M. Mitchell and Frances M. Young. The Cambridge History of Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xlviii + 743 pp. $180.00 cloth. This...

Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000-1125.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000-1125. By Susan Boynton. Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006. xiv + 291 pp. $45.00 cloth. ...

The Stones of Naples: Church Building in Angevin Italy, 1266-1343.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Stones of Naples: Church Building in Angevin Italy, 1266-1343. By Caroline Bruzelius. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. xvi + 272 pp. 160 black-and-white and 40 color illustrations. $75.00 cloth. Caroline Bruzelius...

The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena. By F. Thomas Luongo. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006. xviii + 235 pp. $39.95 cloth. This is an important book. Thomas Luongo examines the career of Catherine of Siena, hardly an...

Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378-1417.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Poets, Saints and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378-1417. By Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. xiv + 243 pp. $45.00 cloth. The Great Schism has been the topic of countless studies,...

John Mirk's Festial: Orthodoxy, Lollardy and the Common People in Fourteenth-Century England.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... John Mirk's Festial: Orthodoxy, Lollardy and the Common People in Fourteenth-Century England. By Judy Ann Ford. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006. x + 169 pp. $80.00 cloth. In this book Judy Ann Ford studies what "seems to have been" "the most...

The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535-1603.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535-1603. By Anne Dillon. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Burlington, Vt." Ashgate, 2002. xxviii + 474 pp. $104.95 cloth. This monograph, developed from the...

Martin Luther.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Martin Luther. By Martin Marty. Penguin Lives Series. New York: Viking, 2004. xxii + 199 pages. $19.95 cloth. As Martin Marty points out in the preface to Martin Luther, only a few biographies of Luther in English are still in print...

The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy. By Lee Palmer Wandel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xii + 310 pp. $70.00 cloth; $23.99 paper. Comparing and contrasting eucharistic theologies is a common task in...

Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion. By Andrew Pettegree. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xi + 240 pp. $70.00 cloth; $25.99 paper. One of the world's top Reformation historians and early modern European specialists, at...

Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early-Modern France.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early-Modern France. By Keith P. Luria. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005. x1 + 361 pp. $69.95 cloth. Historians of early modern France have devoted a...

The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England. By Nathan Johnstone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. x + 342 pp. $85.00 cloth. The principal conceptual thread that holds this interesting book together--in its journey through...

Jane Leade: Biography of a Seventeenth-Century Mystic.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Jane Leade: Biography of a Seventeenth-Century Mystic. By Julie Hirst. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2005. xii + 160 pp. $89.95 cloth. The author begins her work with this statement: "Jane Leade was probably the most important female religious...

Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Will Coster and Andrew Spicer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xiii + 353 pp. $90.00 cloth. Postrevisionist history has found a home in early modern studies, as editors Will...

Creating the Cult of St. Joseph: Art and Gender in the Spanish Empire.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Creating the Cult of ST. Joseph: Art and Gender in the Spanish Empire. By Charlene Villasenor Black. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006. 262 pp. $60.00 cloth. In recent years many scholars of religion have been drawn to...

The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804. By Robert E. Schofield. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. xvi + 463 pp. $58.00 cloth. This second volume completes Professor...

The Old Enemies: Catholic and Protestant in Nineteenth-Century English Culture.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Old Enemies: Catholic and Protestant in Nineteenth-Century English Culture. By Michael Wheeler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xvi + 352 pp. $80.00 cloth. The controversy between Catholics and Protestants, according to a...

Evangelicals and Catholics in Nineteenth-Century Ireland.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Evangelicals and Catholics in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Edited by James H. Murphy. Dublin: Four Courts, 2005. 255 pp. $55.00 cloth. The nineteen essays in this volume were initially presented at a 2004 conference of two nineteenth-century...

Nordic Folk Churches: A Contemporary Church History.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Nordic Folk Churches: A Contemporary Church History. By Bjorn Ryman, with Aila Lauha, Gunnar Heiene, and Peter Lodberg. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005. xiv + 173 pp. $20.00 paper. This thin volume is a welcome addition to the...

Religion and the Rise of Nationalism: A Profile of an East-Central European City.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Religion and the Rise of Nationalism: A Profile of an East-Central European City. By Robert E. Alvis. Religion and Politics. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2005. xxvii + 228 pp. $34.95 cloth. For too long, the study of religion...

Heretics and Colonizers: Forging Russia's Empire in the South Caucasus.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Heretics and Colonizers: Forging Russia's Empire in the South Caucasus. By Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005. xxiii + 350 pp. $49.95 cloth. While the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have...

Beyond Enlightenment: Occultism and Politics in Modern France.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Beyond Enlightenment: Occultism and Politics in Modern France. By David Allen Harvey. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005. viii + 274 pp. $38.00 cloth. Beyond Enlightenment is an impressive and erudite study of Martinism, a...

Religious Differences in France: Past and Present.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Religious Differences in France: Past and Present. Edited by Kathleen Perry Long. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 74. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2006. xxxiv + 270 pp. $38.95 paper. Despite the series in which it...

The German Education of Christian Scholar Philip Schaff: The Formative Years, 1819-1844.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The German Education of Christian Scholar Philip Schaff: The Formative Years, 1819-1844. By Klaus Penzel. Toronto Studies in Theology 95. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 2004. iv + 196 pp. $109.95 cloth. Interestingly, this book is a study of...

The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience: Cardinal Aloisius Muench and the Guilt Question in Germany.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience: Cardinal Aloisius Muench and the Guilt Question in Germany. By Suzanne Brown-Fleming. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2006....

Jonathan Edwards: A Life.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Jonathan Edwards: A Life. By George M. Marsden. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003. xxi + 616 pp. $19.95 paper. Though Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) is generally regarded as a foremost figure in North American religious history, and...

Vale of Tears: New Essays on Religion and Reconstruction.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Vale of Tears: New Essays on Religion and Reconstruction. Edited by Edward J. Blum and W. Scott Poole. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2005. xii + 266 pp. $49.95 cloth; $25.00 paper. Reviewers of anthologies regularly note the...

Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy's Challenge to Materialism.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy's Challenge to Materialism. By Stephen Gottschalk. Religion in North America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. xvi + 487 pp. $35.00 cloth. Christian Science is new enough as a religious...

Gothic Arches, Latin Crosses: Anti-Catholicism and American Church Designs in the Nineteenth Century.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Gothic Arches, Latin Crosses: Anti-Catholicism and American Church Designs in the Nineteenth Century. By Ryan K. Smith. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xiv + 225 pp. $55.00 cloth; $19.95 paper. The book asks a...

Fighting the Good Fight: The Story of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, 1865-1977.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Fighting the Good Fight: The Story of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, 1865-1977. By Houston Bryan Roberson. New York: Routledge, 2005. xxi + 249 pp. $85.00 cloth; $22.95 paper. Writing the history of Christian congregations...

Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America. By David Paul Nord. Religion in America Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. vix + 214 pp. $39.95 cloth. Historian of journalism David Paul Nord...

Passionately Human, No Less Divine: Religion and Culture in Black Chicago, 1915-1952.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Passionately Human, No Less Divine: Religion and Culture in Black Chicago, 1915--1952. By Wallace D. Best. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005. xxii + 251 pp. $39.95 cloth. Passionately Human, No Less Divine: Religion and...

The Impossibility of Religious Freedom.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. By Winnifred Fallers Sullivan. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005. xxii + 292 pp. $29.95 cloth. This is the author's second book-length analysis of how American jurisprudence defines...

Canadian Missionaries, Indigenous Peoples: Representing Religion at Home and Abroad.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Canadian Missionaries, Indigenous Peoples: Representing Religion at Home and Abroad. Edited by Alvyn Austin and Jamie S. Scott. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. viii + 327 pp. $65.00 cloth; $29.95 paper. Lately, Canadians have...

Island Ministers: Indigenous Leadership in Nineteenth-Century Pacific Islands Christianity.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Island Ministers: Indigenous Leadership in Nineteenth-Century Pacific Islands Christianity. By Raeburn Lange. Canberra, Australia: Pandanus Books in association with Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, 2005. 440 pp. AUD $31.78 cloth;...

War and Faith in Sudan.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... War and Faith in Sudan. By Gabriel Meyer. Photographs by James Nicholas. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005. xxviii + 216 pp. $20.00 cloth. War and Faith in Sudan is a very useful, general summary of the contemporary situation in an area...

Quoting God: How Media Shape Ideas about Religion and Culture.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Quoting God: How Media Shape Ideas about Religion and Culture. Edited by Claire H. Badaracco. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2005. xv + 318 pp. $29.95 paper. This is a useful reader for someone teaching a course on religion and the...

Call Me The Seeker: Listening to Religion in Popular Music.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Call Me The Seeker: Listening to Religion in Popular Music. Edited by Michael J. Gilmour. New York: Continuum International, 2005. x + 310 pp. $24.95 paper. The cartographies and resulting synergies between religion and popular culture are...

Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture. By Bill Ellis. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004. 288 pp. $35.00 cloth. Satan is hot--even literally, one supposes. Books about the occult have abounded in...

Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them. By Robert Orsi. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005. xii + 247 pp. $26.95 cloth. In the current cultural climate, to publish a book...

Books received.
March 1, 2007... Albanese, Catherine L., America: Religions and Religion, 4th ed. Belmont, Calif.: Thomson Wadsworth, 2007. Albanese, Catherine L., A Republic of Mind and Spirit. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007. Artigas, Mariano, Thomas...