Church History articles from September 2002

Church History archives from September 2002

Introduction.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... If one thing is clear about our guild, it is surely that the history of Christianity is understood quite differently today than it was a generation or so ago. Then, it was heavily theological and entailed a predilection for the Protestant...

The early church in North America: late antiquity, theory, and the history of Christianity.
September 1, 2002... By almost any measure, the study of ancient Christian history is alive and well, even if one limits one's view to the North American scene. Over the last three decades the number of publications in the field, both books and articles, has grown...

The future of medieval church history.
September 1, 2002... For centuries, from its Roman endorsement as imperial cult around the year 400 to its revolutionary disestablishment in the 1790s, the Christian religion laid claim to the allegiance of Europe's peoples, even a right to set policies about Jews....

Recent currents in the historiography of the radical reformation.
September 1, 2002... There can be no question but that the great principles of freedom of conscience, separation of church and state and voluntarism in religion, so basic in American Protestantism and so essential to democracy, ultimately are...

Problems and promises of Pietism research.
September 1, 2002... Since 1970, when Church History last published a review of Pietist scholarship, there have been significant contributions to almost all areas of the field. (1) Research on Pietism--once the distinct province of German church historians--has...

Church history, history of Christianity, religious history: some reflections on British missionary enterprise since the late eighteenth century.
September 1, 2002... In the Introduction to his lectures on the modern British missionary movement published in 1965, Max Warren suggested that "any serious student of modern history must find some explanation of the missionary expansion of the Christian Church."...

The history of twentieth-century Christianity as a challenge for historians. *.
September 1, 2002... One hundred years ago, the discipline of church history was well established within institutions of higher learning in Western societies. The heirs of Leopold von Ranke and Philip Schaff were well versed in the range of topics that church...

Women, gender, and church history.
September 1, 2002... As befits an article encouraging reflection, I would like to start with a personal anecdote. I recently heard a paper by a prominent literary scholar, which I thought would be an analysis of his encounter with a text. (I am familiar enough with...

Tradition and history (1). (Perspectives *).
September 1, 2002... The relationship between history and tradition has long been convoluted, just as any consensus on the definition of either term is difficult to achieve. The tongue-in-cheek comment by Jean Cocteau that "history is facts which become lies in the...

The Way to Nicaea.
September 1, 2002... By John Behr. The Formation of Christian Theology 1. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2001. xii + 261 pp. $16.95 paper. The meaning of the title is explained in the last lines of the book: "The way to Nicaea is, thus, not a...

Understanding Early Christian Art.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Robin Margaret Jensen. London: Routledge, 2000. xii + 221 pp. $25.99 paper. Discussions of religious imagery in early church history have usually been reserved for the iconography controversies of the seventh century. This new work by...

Pagan City and Christian Capital: Rome in the Fourth Century.
September 1, 2002... By John Curran. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), xx + 389 pp. $85.00 cloth. The religious and cultural history of Rome in the fourth century A.D. is the subject of several modern myths, which even after a generation...

Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola.
September 1, 2002... By Catherine Conybeare. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. xii + 187. $60.00 cloth. After decades of neglect, Paulinus of Nola (d. 431) is enjoying a renaissance of scholarly attention. Dennis Trout's...

The Early Byzantine Monastery at Khirbet Ed-Deir in the Judean Desert: The Excavations in 1981-1987.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Yizhar Hirschfeld. Qedem: Monographs of the Institute of Archaeology 38. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1999. xii + 180 pp. n.p. The monastery at Khirbet ed-Deir provides an important glimpse of a...

Strangers to Themselves: The Byzantine Outsider.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Papers from the Thirty-Second Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. University of Sussex, Brighton, March, 1998. Edited By Dion C. Smythe. Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies 8. Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2000. x + 269. $79.95...

Women and Religious Life in Byzantium.
September 1, 2002... By Alice-Mary Talbot. Variorum Collected Studies Series. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. xii + 310 pp. $105.95 cloth. This volume is a collection of eighteen articles by Talbot, previously published between 1983 and 2000. The focus of the...

The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France.
September 1, 2002... By Constant J. Mews. With translations By Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews. New York: St. Martin's, 1999. xvii + 378 pp. $49.95. The letters of Abelard and Heloise have attracted an audience ever since the thirteenth century, when...

The Leper King and His Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.
September 1, 2002... By Bernard Hamilton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xxvi + 288 pp. $59.95 cloth. Bernard Hamilton's recent work, The Leper King and His Heirs, explores the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1174 to 1187 in order to challenge...

The Twelfth-Century Renaissance.
September 1, 2002... By R. N. Swanson. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. ix + 240 pp. $79.95 cloth; $29.95 paper. This is a work developed out of teaching and intended for the classroom and student. It is a discussion piece of both the notion and...

Book and Verse: A Guide to Middle English Biblical Literature.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By James H. Morey. Illinois Medieval Studies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. xviii + 428 pp. $34.95 cloth. In this valuable text, Morey first argues in his eighty-six-page introduction that there was an extensive Middle English...

Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c. 1100-c. 1550.
September 1, 2002... By Cary J. Nederman. University Park, Penn.: Penn State University Press, 2000. x + 157 pp. $40.00 cloth; $18.95 paper. To ask a medievalist to review a book that makes the Middle Ages look good is like asking a baseball fan to cheer for...

God's House at Ewelme: Life, Devotion and Architecture in a Fifteenth-century Almshouse.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By John A. A. Goodall. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. xx + 361 pp. $112.44 cloth. If there is going to be a large book on a small subject, this is how it should be done. From the double frontispiece to the highly detailed index, everything a...

Spiritual Seeing: Picturing God's Invisibility in Medieval Art.
September 1, 2002... By Herbert L. Kessler. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. xv + 267 pp. 8 color plates; 133 halftones. $49.95 cloth. In recent years many art historians have departed from the traditional, formal,...

Charters and the Use of the Written Word in Medieval Society.
September 1, 2002... Edited By Karl Heidecker. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 5. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. xi + 253 pp. 55.00 [euro]. This is a difficult but rewarding collection. The contributors examine very different periods and places, from the...

Reformers on Stage: Popular Drama and Religious Propaganda in the Low Countries of Charles V, 1515-1556.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Gary K. Waite. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. xxiv + 364 pp. $75.00 cloth. Vernacular drama in the sixteenth-century Low Countries was produced in local "chambers of rhetoric," amateur literary and acting societies....

Straightening the Altars: The Ecclesiastical Vision and Pastoral Achievements of the Progressive Bishops under Elizabeth I, 1559-1579.
September 1, 2002... By Scott A. Wenig. Studies in Church History, vol. 10. New York: Peter Lang, 2000. xi + 290 pp. $61.95 cloth. This helpful study deepens our understandings of the origins and tempo of the Protestant Reformation in England under Elizabeth I...

Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Edited By Gigliola Fragnito. Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, x + 264 pp. $60.00 cloth. "I swear I shall never read again," remarked a despondent Italian cobbler after the only...

Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe.
September 1, 2002... By Brad S. Gregory Harvard Historical Studies 134. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. xvi + 528 pp. $49.95 cloth. From the distance of several centuries, modern people find it difficult to understand why as many as five...

Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe.
September 1, 2002... Edited By James E. Bradley and Dale K. Van Kley. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. xiv + 409 pp. $54.95 cloth; $24.95 paper. Taken together, the seven original essays that make up this fascinating volume in...

Toleration in Enlightenment Europe.
September 1, 2002... Edited By Ole Peter Grell and Ray Porter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. x + 270 pp. $59.95 cloth. This volume of essays addresses the interplay of the theory and practice of tolerance in eighteenth-century Europe. It succeeds...

Henry Fielding and the Narration of Providence: Divine Design and the Incursions of Evil.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Richard A. Rosengarten. New York: Palgrave, 2000. xx + 170 pp. $49.95 cloth. Richard Rosengarten's Henry Fielding and the Narration of Providence is a thoughtful contribution to Fielding studies. Beyond its specific concerns with...

Rituals and Riots: Sectarian Violence and Political Culture in Ulster, 1784-1886.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Sean Farrell. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000. xi + 264 pp. $34.95 cloth. In this overview of sectarian violence in Ulster, Sean Farrell argues that traditional economic and social considerations do not provide a...

Evangelicalism, Penal Theory and the Politics of Criminal Law Reform in England: 1808-30.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Richard R. Follett. New York: Palgrave, 2001. xii + 231 pp. $65.00 cloth. Follett proposes a "mild revision" of the historiography of English penal reform. Challenging the centrality of Bentham, he argues that the decisive political...

Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness: The Eberbach Asylum and German Society, 1815-1849.
September 1, 2002... By Ann Goldberg. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. x + 236 pp. $45.00 cloth; $18.95 paper. In this fascinating book, Ann Goldberg introduces the reader to one of Germany's first modern insane asylums, the institution at Eberbach in...

Rival Jerusalems: The Geography of Victorian Religion.
September 1, 2002... By K. D. M. Snell and Paul S. Ell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xvi + 499 pp. $74.95 cloth. The first instincts of many scholars who pick up this book--to read "rival," "Jerusalems," and "geography" in a metaphorical or...

Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Susan Zuccotti. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2000. xii + 408. $29.95 cloth. Susan Zuccotti's Under His Very Windows is a prodigious accomplishment. The research is astounding in its depth and breadth. The task of finding sources...

Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Geoffrey Wainwright. New York: Oxford University Press: 2000. xiv + 459 pp. $65.00 cloth. Bishop Lesslie Newbigin (1909-98) was a major Christian leader and twentieth-century "Father of the Church." Geoffrey Wainwright's study...

American Methodist Worship.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Karen B. Westerfield Tucker. Religion in America Series. Edited By Harry S. Stout. New York: Oxford University Press, xiv + 345 pp. $49.95 cloth. Karen Westerfield Tucker's study of the history and development of worship in the American...

Edward Sorin.
September 1, 2002... By Marvin R. O'Connell. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. x + 737 pp. $49.95 cloth. Marvin O'Connell, a professor of history emeritus at Notre Dame University, has made another substantial contribution to American church...

Down, Up, and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Dwight N. Hopkins. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000. xii + 300 pp. $20.00 paper. Americans have yet to come to terms with the religious legacy of slavery. Dwight Hopkins responds to the challenge by building a contemporary black theology on...

If You Don't Go, Don't Hinder Me: The African American Sacred Song Tradition.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Bernice Johnson Reagon. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. x + 155 pp. $30.00 cloth; $15.00 paper. In 1996, Bernice Johnson Reagon delivered a series of four lectures on African-American sacred music at the University of...

Western Challenge: The Presbyterian Church in Canada's Mission on the Prairies and North, 1885-1925.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Peter Bush. Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford, 2000. 272 pp. 14 b/w photos. $24.95 paper. Peter Bush argues that during the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Presbyterian Church in Canada was committed to proselytization...

The Young John Muir: An Environmental Biography.
September 1, 2002... By Steven J. Holmes. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. xvii + 309 pp. $55.00 cloth; $22.95 paper. Given the already prodigious body of literature on the naturalist John Muir, Steven Holmes's new biography might seem...

Getting Right with God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, 1945-1995.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Mark Newman. Religion and American Culture. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2001. xii + 292 pp. $39.95 cloth. Mark Newman's Getting Right with God is a thorough, well-written account of how Southern Baptist attitudes toward...

Prayers in the Precincts: The Christian Right in the 1998 Elections.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Edited By John C. Green, Mark J. Rozell, and Clyde Wilcox. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000. xi + 312 pp. $65.00 cloth; $23.95 paper. These political scientists have analyzed the 1998 campaigns, devoting a chapter to...

Plain Women: Gender and Ritual in the Old Order River Brethren.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Margaret C. Reynolds. Edited with a forward by Simon J. Bronner. University Park, Penn.: Penn State University Press, 2001. xii + 192 pp. 9 illus. $29.95 cloth. The author investigates the unique traditions and ritual practices of Old...

Patterns and Portraits: Women in the History of the Reformed Church in America.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Edited by Renee S. House and John W. Coakley. The Historical Series of the Reformed Church in America 31. Grand Rapids: Eardmans, 1999. xiv + 182 pp. $14.00 paper. The essays in this collection originated in the Standing Seminar in...

Mysticism and Social Transformation.
September 1, 2002... Edited By Janet K. Ruffing, R.S.M. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2001. xvi + 220 pp. $49.95 cloth; $24.95 paper. A wealth of historical, philosophical, and theological scholarship concerning religious mysticism over the past...

Christmas: A Social History.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... By Mark Connelly. London: I. B. Tauris, 2001. vii + 264 pp. $39.50 cloth. Mark Connelly introduces this book by taking issue with several recent revisionist historians of Christmas, who have suggested that the modern form of the festival...