Theologian and church historian Donald W. Dayton has died. While I was a student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School pursuing an M.A. in American church history, I read a lot of Dayton. As a young evangelical, I was passionate about exploring the roots of the movement that I embraced as a sixteen-year-old kid. I read Dayton's Discovering an Evangelical Heritage as well as his unpublished essays that circulated among evangelical scholars and graduate students. One of … [Read more...] about Remembering Donald Dayton
historiography and religion
The Author's Corner with Robert Orsi
Robert Orsi is the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Northwestern University. This interview is based on his recent book History and Presence. JF: What led you to write History and Presence? RO: Whenever I’ve said in a lecture that I believe religious history and contemporary cultures are constituted as webs of relationships between human beings and the various special figures of their respective religious … [Read more...] about The Author's Corner with Robert Orsi
Evangelicalism and the "Third Great Awakening"
Over at The American Interest Crawford Gribbon of Queens University, Belfast has written a nice little historiographical essay on American evangelicalism set in the context of what he calls the "Third Great Awakening" of American Christianity that occurred in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. He argues that during this period evangelicals brought "born-again" religion to the United States even as evangelicalism weakened as a religious and theological movement. He writes:To outsiders, … [Read more...] about Evangelicalism and the "Third Great Awakening"
The Author’s Corner with Jay Green
Jay Green is Professor of History at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. This interview is based on his new book Christian Historiography: Five Rival Versions (Baylor University Press, 2015)JF: What led you to write Christian Historiography: Five Rival Versions? JG: The book is in many ways a culmination of more than twenty years of thinking about and wrestling through the relationship between faith and history in my own life and work. I’ve been teaching our … [Read more...] about The Author’s Corner with Jay Green
Keeping Up With Work on Capitalism and Religion
Over at the blog of the American Society of Church History, Northwestern graduate student Jeffrey Wheatley has a useful historiographical post on some recent scholarship at the intersection of American religious history and the history of capitalism. Here is a taste:Not to be left behind, scholars of Christianity and religion generally have also been especially interested in business, wealth, and trade. This interest, of course, is not unprecedented, but I want to list some … [Read more...] about Keeping Up With Work on Capitalism and Religion
Christopher Graham on “Religion and the American Civil War”
The Way of Improvement Leads Home correspondent Christopher Graham offers some notes on this star-studded panel on religion and the Civil War. --JF The turnout for the Religion and the American Civil War: History and Historiography panel exceeded the organizers’ expectations. So many showed up that we all migrated to a larger room, and participants still overflowed into the hallway, where additional chairs were set up. Mark Noll presided and Allen Guelzo, Harry Stout, George … [Read more...] about Christopher Graham on “Religion and the American Civil War”
Academics and God
Over at U.S. Intellectual History blog, Ray Haberski tries to explain what he calls the "tsunami" of scholarship on religion. He connects it, among other things, to the work of the Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture at IUPUI and its Young Scholars in American Religion Program. Here is a taste:If I want to understand why so many of us in academia have found religion so fascinating, I wonder if a big part of the story is not that we are enamored with … [Read more...] about Academics and God