History of Christianity

Inside the North Carolina Creation Museum Taxidermy Hall of Fame and Antique Tool Collection

June 14th, 2013

In the basement of a Christian book store in Southern Pines, North Carolina, three popular images of Jesus are mounted on a wall in a single frame. A description hanging to the left of the display explains that these are not in fact pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ, but of Lucifer. Christ, it explains, could not have had long hair, an effeminate appearance, or Caucasian features. Citing 2 Corinthians 5:16, it says

The Bible states clearly that His physical appearance (“Christ after the flesh”) would cease to be known. It is not an accident that the most famous person in human history has no reliable image recorded in history. Such an image would become the object of worship.

Immediately above of this warning against idolatry, four photos of John Wayne are displayed without comment.

Sermon Studies: More Possibilities than We Can Imagine

May 31st, 2013

by David M. Powers

I am grateful to Robert H. Ellison for the useful suggestions raised in his post “On the Discipline of ‘Sermon Studies,’” and I endorse his hopes for more systematic attention to the vast and often undervalued resource which sermons provide. Basing his comments in part on Keith A. Francis’ proposals in The Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon, 1689-1901 (2012), Ellison has specified several areas for potential gleanings. It occurs to me there may be additional benefits we can scarcely envision.

June 2013 Issue Online

May 22nd, 2013

Our latest issue of Church History is out now. In this issue:

Gregory Dodds examines the ways English speaking Protestants’ drew uncritically from Desiderius Erasmus to construct their views of pre-Reformation Catholicism in “An Accidental Historian: Erasmus and the English History of the Reformation.”

Tim Verhoeven examines the backlash against the American Sabbatarian movement in his article, “In Defense of Civil and Religious Liberty: Anti-Sabbatarianism in the United States before the Civil War.”

Marianne Robins challenges traditional narratives of French Protestant aid to Jewish refugees in “A Grey Site of Memory: Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and Protestant Exceptionalism on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon.”

Laurie Maffly-Kipp’s plenary address, “The Burdens of Church History,” reconsiders the role that institutions play in a historiography that seems increasingly to find Christianity beyond institutions.

And Felicity Jensz and Hanna Acke introduce a forum on the form and function of nineteenth century missionary periodicals.

ASCH members can view the entire issue here.

Tags: Church History Journal
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The ASCH’s First Joint Conference With the Ecclesiastical History Society

April 29th, 2013

The Society has approved a joint international conference with the UK-based Ecclesiastical History Society. The conference will be held April 3-5, 2014. The ASCH has budgeted four $1000 travel grants for graduate students. We will also have up to eight $500 grants for young scholars, independent scholars, and other members. Further details, including the conference theme, location, and calls for papers, will be available in the coming weeks.

Tags: EHS, Joint Conference
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Earth Day

April 22nd, 2013

By Patricia Appelbaum

The Rough Draft Historian

Happy Earth Day, everyone. Last year in my community, several local churches sponsored a speech and rally with environmentalist Bill McKibben. There was much talk about the important part that religious communities could play in resisting global warming, as if this were somehow a novel idea.

ASCH Spring Meeting 2013: An Extremely Brief Recap

April 15th, 2013

By Shaun Horton

The American Society of Church History’s Spring Meeting in Portland felt less like an academic conference and more like 30 academics hanging out. We held some panel sessions. We drank coffee. We visited some of Portland’s historical church buildings. People smiled a lot. But despite the laid back atmosphere, this was a productive weekend.

Spring Meeting 2013 Live Blog

April 4th, 2013

Click here to follow our live blog, post comments and get updates as they happen.

Subscribe to our live blog

Our official live blog for the 2012 Annual Winter Meeting begins at 4:30pm Thursday, April 4, and will cover the meeting until Sunday at 8:30am.

You can add to the live blog by commenting from the blog page, or by tweeting at #ASCH13.

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Food and Wifi in Portland, OR

March 19th, 2013

Our biannual Spring Meeting is almost upon us. Beginning on April 4, the ASCH will be convening at the Crown Plaza Convention Center, where there will be panels and events throughout the weekend. Early bird rates still apply for those who register by March 22 (this coming Friday). As with our previous meeting, there will be free food and free internet.

Tags: Spring 2013 Meeting
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March 2013 Issue of Church History

February 23rd, 2013

Our March 2013 issue of Church History is now online. Its feature articles include:

Kristi Upson-Saia revisits the anger and violence attributed to Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in “Holy Child or Holy Terror? Understanding Jesus’ Anger in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.”

Carolyn Muessig traces the changing meanings of Galatians 6:17 (“I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body”), and the development of stigmata in “Signs of Salvation: The Evolution of Stigmatic Spirituality Before Francis of Assisi.”

Andreas Loewe examines the emergence of the Lutheran musical tradition in “Why do Lutherans Sing? Lutherans, Music, and the Gospel in the First Century of the Reformation.”

Lisa McClain discusses the sixteenth century practice of penance without priests in “Troubled Consciences: New Understandings and Performances of Penance Among Catholics in Protestant England.”

..and Timothy E.W. Gloege analyses the impact of the newspaper Christian History on nineteenth century American revivalism in “The Trouble with Christian History: Thomas Prince’s ‘Great Awakening.’”

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David Tracy’s Principle of Provocation and the Reading of Church History

January 28th, 2013

By Tom Schwanda

I teach both a grad and undergrad course in the history of Christian spirituality. While the primary areas of my specialization are seventeenth–century Puritanism and eighteenth–century Evangelicalism I enjoy teaching the entire landscape of church history. In my classes we read and examine the writings of some of the “Communion of Saints” including Perpetua, the desert fathers and mothers, Benedict of Nursia, Bernard of Clairvaux, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Thomas á Kempis, Jan Hus, Martin Luther. John Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, Jonathan Edwards, John and Charles Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, John Woolman, Phoebe Palmer, Theophan the Recluse, representatives from Pentecostalism, Howard Thurman, Desmond Tutu, Watchman Nee, and Thomas Merton.

Over the centuries we have tended to privilege oral and written texts by and about those whom we study. However, increasingly we recognize the importance of art and architecture and place and space as equally revealing texts. Regardless of the type of text we face a common challenge in reading wisely and well these records. This reminds us of the common task of interpretation. Recently, I was revisiting David Tracy’s summary of hermeneutical principles in his Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (Crossroad, 1981, see especially chapter 3).

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