Exploring the Study of Religious History

Lights, Camera, Action!

2012-02-17T02:06:00.009-08:00

Last evening closed out our "Religion in Early America: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution," series in the LeRoy Martin Distinguished Lecturer Series at UTC. All the lectures were videoed and will be available for sale on DVD. It was an amazing three nights!

As the organizer for this lecture series, I ate like a king all week at some of the best restaurants in Chattanooga. The only downside was the lack of sleep. I probably averaged about 4-5 hours of sleep this week because I handled nearly all the arrangements for this event, including shuttle runs to and from the airport, breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with the speakers and members of the Chattanooga community, as well as faculty at UTC and surrounding schools, technology setup at the lectures, advertising on the radio and in the newspaper, and catering services. I make no complaints though. It was a thrill to meet with some of the best scholars of religious history and thought in America, and offer their knowledge to the local public.

On Tuesday, February 14, Gerald McDermott spoke on "Jonathan Edwards, the Great Awakening, and the Future of Global Christianity." This is an abstract of his talk:

"Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) was a leader and analyst of the revival that helped shape early America. His experience with the Great Awakening led to an analysis of religious experience that has provided spiritual direction ever since. This lecture explains his relationship to the Awakening, outline his theology of discernment that emerged from the Awakening, and discuss his relationship to millennialism and American exceptionalism. Then it will propose that his larger theological vision is well-suited to the new shape of global Christianity, for it provides bridges between Catholics and Protestants, East and West, charismatics and non-charasmatics, and liberals and conservatives."

McDermott did not deliver his usual seamless, polished speech. Instead, he chose to take a more conversational tone when explaining the person and theology of Edwards. My sense is that the audience, made up of a collection of faculty, students, and people in the Chattanooga community, appreciated the fact that McDermott made Edwards approachable as an important figure in American religious history.

Scholars like McDermott, Marsden, and others have taken great pains to show Edwards as embodying more than simply a fire and brimstone preacher, and this message is making headway. Several people in the audience commented on how their perception of Edwards has now changed. They no longer viewed "America's Theologian" as simply the author of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." As McDermott successfully demonstrated, Edwards was a complex thinker whose contribution to American history, and religion in general, is much broader in scope than most people realize. While I am not necessarily convinced that Edwards bridges the gaps between the East and West, Catholics and Protestants, and charasmatics and non-charasmatics in the way that McDermott proposed, I appreciated the passion that Roanoke's Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion has for one of the most important thinkers America has produced.

Tommy Kidd's lecture on Wednesday, February 15, "Patrick Henry, the Great Awakening, and the Rise of Religious Liberty in Revolutionary Virginia," was (understandably) much more historical than the one by McDermott.

This is his abstract:

"In this lecture, Dr. Thomas Kidd of Baylor University will consider the great Patriot leader Patrick Henry as a bridge between the Great Awakening and the American Revolution. Henry attended revival meetings of the Great Awakening as a boy, which helped form his personal faith and his dramatic speaking style. Along with fellow Founders such as John Adams and George Washington, Henry believed both in protecting religious liberty, and in continuing direct government support for churches. Henry's debates with James Madison and Thomas Jefferson over disestablishing Virginia's state church illuminate the vital importance of faith in the American founding, the Founders' disagreements over the 'separation of church and state.'"

Kidd focused on the issue of religious liberty and Henry's concern for the welfare of America in the aftermath of the Revolution. Kidd argued that Henry has been lost among the crowd of Founders because he objected to the structure of government and view of church-state relations that other patriots like Jefferson and Madison promoted. Henry feared that America was being fashioned by some of the Founders into another Britain, which would be ruled by a president instead of a king. Henry also swam against the current when he suggested that America's government should not necessarily separate completely from religion. He wanted people to continue to pay taxes to churches, but only to those of their choice. Rather, than benefit the Congregationalists or Anglicans, Henry thought it best for people to be able to give to any Christian denomination, including Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Anglicans. Jews and other non-Christians should be exempt from paying tax completely.

Tommy's lecture also led to some interesting discussions during the time of Q &A with the audience. Several people pressed him for further comments on church-state relations as well as Henry's view of liberty. As always, Tommy handled many potentially explosive issues with poise, care, and graciousness.

Finally, Catherine Brekus spoke on Thursday, February 16 on "Sarah Osborn's World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America."

This is her abstract:

"What are the historical roots of evangelical Christianity? When and why did the evangelical movement begin, and how can we explain its popularity? In 'Sarah Osborn's World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America,' Catherine Brekus answers these questions by recovering the story of an extraordinary woman who belonged to the first generation of evangelical Christians in America. Few people today have ever heard of Sarah Osborn, a schoolteacher who lived in Newport, Rhode Island during the 1700s, but she was one of the most charismatic female religious leaders of her time. During the 1760s she led a remarkable revival that brought hundreds of people, including large numbers of slaves, to her house each week. Her story offers a fascinating window into the early history of the evangelical movement, a movement that continues to influence American life today."

Brekus broke new ground in the series by showing several slides of Osborn's manuscripts and images of eighteenth-century American life. In many ways, Brekus's lecture reiterated the main themes that I tried to engage with in Enlightened Evangelicalism: The Life and Thought of John Erskine. Brekus described Osborn as an evangelical Calvinist who was influenced by the Enlightenment. Osborn's commitment to empirical evidence, that stemmed from John Locke's philosophy, supports my thesis about Erskine and other eighteenth-century evangelicals. Catherine's lecture is based on her forthcoming book about Osborn, which will be published soon by Yale University Press.

What I appreciated most about the three lectures was that they displayed evangelicalism in a favorable light. When I taught at conservative institutions in the past, Christianity was taken for granted. Most schools required their professors to integrate faith and learning. But at a state school Christianity is not necessarily appreciated, even in the Bible-belt South. Less than an hour away from me is the site of the Scopes (Monkey) Trial of 1925, which has tarnished evangelicalism as an anti-intellectual movement. As leading scholars at recognizable institutions of higher learning, McDermott, Kidd, and Brekus are repairing this damaged image. Hopefully, the word will continue to spread that there are significant differences between fundamentalism and mainstream evangelicalism.

A Great Day of Teaching

2012-02-08T11:03:00.000-08:00

I had a lot of fun teaching today. In my 9am class on "Religion in Southern Culture," four students gave presentations on a supplemental book that they read for the course. I was caught off guard when one student presented Darren Dochuk's From Bible Belt to Sunbelt. Out of a list of over one hundred and fifty titles, she chose this book. After the presentation, I had the chance to reiterate the importance of Dochuk's thesis as well as the thoroughness of the book. When the student mentioned Bill Bright and Campus Crusade in her presentation, I noticed several people perk up and ask questions about the book, presumably because they were members of "Cru" and wanted to purchase the text, or perhaps check it out at the library.

In my 11am course, "Religion in the Age of Wesley, Whitefield, and Edwards," the sixteen of us debated which excerpts from Jonathan Edwards's A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737) to include in my forthcoming reader. We are only spending one week on Edwards's Narrative, and so we had to move through it very quickly. I instructed the students to pick out roughly fifteen pages of text that they felt future students should read. Several people commented that pages 3-14 were essential in that they provided an overview of the revivals at Northampton in a narrative format. About four or five people countered by saying that this information could be quickly condensed and explained in the introductory paragraphs to the excerpt, and that the best material came from pages 30-45 in which Edwards analyzes the nature of the conversions at Northampton. Finally, two or three people were adamant that the case study on Phebe Bartlet (pages 109-121) should be included. I appreciated everyone's input, despite the fact that we did not reach a consensus. Edwards's book is so interesting, and has so many different parts, that it is indeed difficult to pick out only a few pages.

Jonathan Yeager

How Do They Do It?

2012-02-08T05:08:00.000-08:00

How do they do it? It seems that individual authors are pumping out more and more books these days. Mark Noll is one of the best examples of this trend. For years he has consistently churned out such academic titles as Christians in the American Revolution (1977), one of my favorites, Princeton and the Republic (1989), Religion and American Politics (1989), A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (1992), his best-seller, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1994), Turning Points (2001), The Princeton Theology, 1812-1921 (2001), The Old Religion in a New World (2001), the "magisterial" America's God (2002), The Rise of Evangelicalism (2004), Is the Reformation Over? (2005), God and Race in American Politics (2008), and The New Shape of World Christianity (2009). His Clouds of Witnesses came out in March 2011, and was quickly followed by Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind in July 2011, which came out only a few months before his Protestantism: A Very Short Introduction. I recall Bruce Hindmarsh quipping that he could not read as many books as Noll produced in a year!

Other examples abound. After publishing his PhD dissertation as The Protestant Interest in 2004, Thomas Kidd went on to write a series of impressive texts including, The Great Awakening (2007), American Christians and Islam (2008), God of Liberty (2010), and Patrick Henry (2011). He is on target to complete a biography of George Whitefield by 2014, the 300th anniversary of the Grand Itinerant's birthday. The list continues. The religious historian Paul Harvey, author of Freedom's Coming, has published Through the Storm, Through the Night as well as Moses, Jesus, and the Trickster in the Evangelical South in 2011. His fellow "blogmeister," Randall Stephens, published The Fire Spreads in 2008, and has co-authored the much-talked about The Anointed at the end of 2011. John Fea turned his dissertation into The Way of Improvement Leads Home in 2008, helped to edit Confessing History at the end of 2010, and only months later released Was America Founded As a Christian Nation? How do they do it?

In fairness, many of these books are offshoots of the research done on previous projects. But still, it is remarkable how efficient these scholarly are. Rick Sher once told me that it took him ten years to revise his Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment (1985), and in the preface of his award-winning, The Enlightenment and the Book (2007), he states that he began research for the book in the early 1990s. I think John Wigger said something similar, that it took him about a decade to write American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists (2009).

What I find interesting is that some authors do not need to write multiple monographs to become leaders in their field. Rick Sher, John Wigger, and George Marsden serve as evidence of this fact. Sometimes, all that is needed is one ground-breaking book to catapult a person to literary stardom. Marsden's Fundamentalism and American Culture was a runaway success that permanently etched his name into the annals of Christian scholarship. A second example is Nathan Hatch's The Democratization of American Christianity, which has been cited as one of the best monographs on religious history in America. The lesson to me is: although it is impressive to produce multiple books in a decade, it only takes one seminal monograph to make a dramatic impact in the academy.

Jonathan Yeager

The Books Keep Piling Up!

2012-02-03T15:48:00.000-08:00

My reading list continues to grow. I just received Timothy Larsen's A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford, 2011)--props to Andy Tooley for being mentioned in the intro for his "expert knowledge in the field of nineteenth-century British studies"--and David Hall's A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Reforming Transformation of Public Life in New England (Knopf, 2011) in the mail. I ordered both books at a discount during the 2012 AHA meeting last month in Chicago. So many books... so little time!

Christmas for an Eighteenth-Century Religious Historian

2012-01-30T11:00:00.001-08:00

I imagine that February 14, 15, and 16 will be like Christmas for me. On those dates, Gerald McDermott, Thomas Kidd, and Catherine Brekus will be giving the February LeRoy Martin Lectures (respectively), with the following theme: "Religion in Early America: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution." From the perspective of an eighteenth-century religious historian, such as myself, these speakers represent the best of breed in that category. All three scholars will be talking about subjects related to new or forthcoming books. McDermott will be lecturing on a topic pertaining to his new book on Jonathan Edwards, Kidd on Patrick Henry's religion, and Brekus on Sarah Osborn.

What is especially exciting for me is that the material from these lectures relates to a current course that I am teaching this semester entitled, "Religion in the Age of Wesley, Whitefield, and Edwards." For fifty minutes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I have the privilege of talking to fifteen students at UTC about the revivals in America and Great Britain. As we discuss the various facets of the culture and context of the eighteenth century, I almost always mention information that comes from these authors, especially Kidd's work on the Great Awakening. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that I am paid to teach such a class!

We are planning on videoing the lectures, and so if you would like to purchase a DVD of any of the individual lectures for $10, my contact information is here.

Jonathan Yeager

Expressing the Ineffable

2012-01-29T07:41:00.000-08:00

Anne Steele (1717-1778) was a leading eighteenth-century evangelical poet. Although largely forgotten today, Steele's hymns were among very popular in her day, and included in best-selling anthologies such as John Ash's and Caleb Evans's A Collection of Hymns Adapted to Public Worship (1769) as well as John Rippon's Selection of Hymns from the Best Authors, Intended as an Appendix to Dr. Watts's Psalms and Hymns (1787). Much more gloomy than Charles Wesley's hymns, and less didactic than the compositions of Isaac Watts, Steele's writings provide a sobering look at the Christian life from the perspective of an often-troubled mind.

In her book, To Express the Ineffable: The Hymns and Spirituality of Anne Steele, Cynthia Aalders argues that Steele's hymns offer "a surprising and appealing spiritual honesty, together with an acknowledgement of human loss and limitation" (2). Born into a wealthy timber merchant's family in Hampshire, England, Steele witnessed the death of several key family members, including her mother Anne Froude in 1720, her step-mother Anne Cator in 1760, and her beloved father William Steele in 1769. Throughout her life, Steele was plagued by health-related problems such as headaches and bouts with "the ague." These emotional and physical pains are evident in her poetry.

In her 1760 (republished in 1780 with an additional third volume) Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional, Steele shows signs of self-doubt, grief, and melancholy. Aalders writes that "her experiences of earthly suffering and her perception of the absence of God prompted her to use her hymns as a means of probing and questioning the divine-human encounter... Steele's hymns are more often introspective, characterized by doubt and uncertainty, sometimes bordering on despair" (3-4). While acknowledging that God has given her certain "powers," or literary talents, Steele doubts her abilities to reach her full potential. Her Calvinistic upbringing taught her that all mankind is tainted by sin, which affects the whole of one's efforts at being godly. Indeed, language itself is corrupted and incapable of expressing in any conceivable terms the true glory and character of God. Aaders sums it up this way: "Steele accepts her God-given vocation--the task of writing hymns and poetry about God and the religious life--but she also acknowledges her requisite failure, hindered as she is by the limitations of human language" (78). Several of Steele's hymns demonstrate the ineffability of God: "Desiring to Praise God" (I.1-2), "Imploring Divine Influence" (I.2-3), "Humble Worship" (I.37), and "The Condescension of God" (I.65).

Yes, despite the doom and gloom in Steele's poems, Aalders denies the conclusions of most scholars, who have typically judged Steele as a recluse consumed with personal loss. Aalders claims that Steele's poems exhibit signs of optimism amidst perceived despair, and that many of the supposed devastating episodes in her life are based on unsubstantiated myths. Tradition has it that Steele fell off a horse as a teen and became a lifelong invalid, and that her fiance drowned hours before the wedding. From Aalders's research, she finds no evidence that Steele was permanently incapacitated and that she was ever engaged to a man named James Elcomb. Aalders admits that many of the trials that Steele experienced influenced her writings. Evidence of her pain can be found in poems like "Wrote in an Ill State of Health in the Spring" (II.60). Nevertheless, Aalders is adamant that amidst the dark clouds, Steele looked to God as the source of her hope, and the only one who could bring sunnier days ahead. Aalders states, "Steele begins many of her hymns tentatively, conscious of the limitations of human language and the challenges of articulating praise to a God who, in his incomprehensible sovereign will, allows suffering to burden frail humanity. Yet this hesitancy does not fully represent her hymnody nor adequately encapsulate her spirituality, for Steele concludes just as many of her hymns by making faithful affirmations about God and her experience of the spiritual life" (136). Her struggles to find happiness and look to God for salvation can be seen in "God My Only Happiness" (I.142), "Desiring to Trust in God" (I.78), "Mourning the Absence of God, and Longing for His Gracious Presence" (I.143), and "The Faithfulness of God" (II.85). Steele places complete trust in God's will, assuming that the Almighty will do what is good and just.

Aalders's book is a finely written analysis of Anne Steele and her writings. Aalders reinstates Steele as a talented poet who deserves to be placed alongside the more recognized hymnists Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and William Cowper. The books also serves as reminder that much of the Christian life is marked by intense periods of pain and suffering. The good news, according to Aalders's study, is that one can always find hope of better times thanks to the trustworthiness of God.

Jonathan Yeager

Recent Faculty Job Ad

2012-01-27T10:52:00.001-08:00

Carleton College

Christian Studies

Carleton College, Department of Religion, seeks qualified candidates to fill a one-year leave replacement position in Christian Studies, with a particular emphasis on gender, to begin Sept. 1, 2012. While candidates’ fields may include History of Christianity, Theology/Religious Thought, Biblical Studies, or Sociology/Anthropology of Religion, we seek those whose research or teaching competencies substantively engage gender as a category of analysis in Christian Studies.

Candidates should a) have experience in teaching, b) be skilled at relating both classical and contemporary Christian materials to their various historical and cultural settings, and c) situate their work within the broader theoretical and methodological concerns of the field of religious studies. We seek applicants who are committed to teaching a diverse student body in a religiously-unaffiliated, highly selective, liberal arts environment. While we will consider ABD candidates, it is preferred that the Ph.D. be in hand by Sept. 1, 2012. Women and members of minority groups are especially encouraged to apply. Carleton College does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, ethnicity, religion, sex, national origin, marital status, veteran status, actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, status with regard to public assistance, disability, or age in providing employment or access to its educational facilities and activities. The expected teaching load for this position is five courses distributed over a three-term academic year. Benefits apply.

To apply, please complete the online application found at jobs.carleton.edu, including electronic submission of a cover letter, C.V., and 2-3 sample syllabi. Three letters of reference should be submitted electronically to mmcnally@carleton.edu, Michael McNally, Chair, Department of Religion, Carleton College, Northfield, MN. Review of applications will begin February 20, 2012.

What is Important on a Curriculum Vitae?

2012-01-27T09:03:00.000-08:00

What is the most important parts of a cv for an academic? And what is the ranking of these parts? There are various opinions on these questions. Answers seem to depend on the type of academic job that a person is pursuing. The standard answer is that small liberal arts colleges tend to focus on teaching, as opposed to larger research-based institutions, which favor publications. Supposedly, a hiring committee at a liberal arts college fear applicants with multiple peer-reviewed journal articles and/or books since that might suggest future negligence in teaching. Another fear is that well-published scholars may leave for greener pastures after a year or so. Liberal arts college seem to want a person who is willing to stay for the long haul. It would be interesting to find statistical evidence for these generalizations.

Liberal arts colleges fascinate me. From my experience, this type of institution drools at the sight of a cv from a person with an Ivy-League PhD while at the same time hopes that their dream candidate will not publish too much for the reasons previously mentioned. In other words, it seems that many liberal arts colleges want an extremely intelligent person, who has been through the rigors of a top-notch program, but who is committed to teaching, and not necessarily publishing. I realize that this is perhaps a gross generalization, and that there are certainly going to be notable exceptions, but these comments reflect my (albeit) limited experience and observations over the past several years.

What is the significance of publishing then? I recall one notable scholar telling me that if up to him, he would hire strictly on the basis of publications alone. In the order of importance, this person ranks the monograph first, followed by the edited volume, and finally peer-reviewed journal articles. I have read pundits' postings in the Chronicle of Higher Education and elsewhere that equate four peer-reviewed journal articles with a monograph. But this judgment does not seem to be a firm rule that is followed by all scholars. Recently, a colleague told me that paper presentations at conferences rank at the same level as a book review. That is to say, neither are viewed as important entries on a cv. I found this comment intriguing. I had heard that book reviews were not weighed highly by academics, but always assumed that presentation papers would be viewed by most as respectable contributions to a cv. I wonder what the consensus is on ranking the entries on a cv.

It, of course, gets much more complicated when considering faith-based institutions. A Christian liberal arts college usually makes it clear that it does not want to hire anyone unwilling to subscribe to the school's statement of faith, regardless of a person's impressive credentials. In many cases, the successful candidate is the individual who has a connection with the college (alma mater, relative, etc.). All of these interesting dynamics make it difficult to come up with a clear picture of what the perfect cv looks like.

Jonathan Yeager

Samuel Kneeland of Boston

2012-01-23T14:15:00.000-08:00

For last few years I have been fascinated with the history of the book. I first became aware of the significance of this subject when I read Richard Sher's masterful The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and America (University of Chicago, 2007). Sher awakened me to the importance of eighteenth-century publishers and how lucrative this profession could be. I soon realized the value of Sher's book for my own research as I was finishing up my dissertation on John Erskine. After reading Enlightenment and the Book, I re-wrote my thesis, and dedicated a final chapter to establishing Erskine as the premier evangelical disseminator in the Atlantic world. While Sher's work on the history of the book as it pertains to the Enlightenment is ground-breaking, there are only sparse references to evangelicalism and publishing. I wanted to know more about this elusive topic. To my surprise, hardly anyone has written about the publishers of evangelical works in the eighteenth century. In the case of Erskine, I found that he worked with the Gray publishing firm in Edinburgh to produce most of his works as well as many of the posthumous writings of Jonathan Edwards.

After finishing the dissertation on Erskine, which has since been published as a monograph, I did research on religious printers and publishers in eighteenth-century America. Thanks to tools like the indispensable English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), I came across Samuel Kneeland (1697-1769). Although he was a leading printer and publisher in colonial Boston, to my amazement, no one has ever written a scholarly article or book on him. Last year I conducted research on Kneeland and submitted an article to the journal Printing History. Today, I received my gratis copies of "Samuel Kneeland of Boston: Colonial Bookseller, Printer, and Publisher of Religion," which is in Series Eleven of the January 2012 issue of Printing History. The article should be available very soon on Academic One File.

This is the opening paragraph of the article:

Samuel Kneeland is one of those characters in the history of the book in America who we know played a vital role; yet, very little has been written about him. Related to the prolific Green family of printers, he forged relationships with leading colonial booksellers like Daniel Henchman, printed for the colony of Massachusetts Bay, and published several key religious texts. In the following article, the objective is to shed light on Kneeland's overall contribution to the colonial book trade, identifying those for whom he printed, at what price, and the kinds of literature that he put forward. From an anlysis of Kneeland's life and business, we can gain a further understanding of the history of the book in eighteenth-century America from the perspective of Kneeland, one of the premier bookseller-printers in Boston.

I go on to describe Kneeland's significance as a printer, bookseller, and publisher of religious works. Kneeland formed partnerships with his uncle Bartholomew Green (1667-1732) and later his cousin, Timothy Green (1703-63). The latter firm of S. Kneeland and T. Green established the New-England Weekly Journal in 1727 and claimed the rights to print (1736) and later own (1741) the Boston Gazette. After Kneeland and Green bought the rights to publish the Boston Gazette, they combined it with the New-England Weekly Journal to become the Boston Gazette, or New England Weekly Journal, perhaps the first newspaper merger in colonial America. American religious historians will recall that the Boston Gazette provided news of the revivals associated with the Great Awakening. Articles in the newspaper, for instance, alerted readers to the travelings of George Whitefield, including upcoming his speaking engagements in America. After Green left the firm to go to his hometown of New London, Kneeland sold the Boston Gazette to Benjamin Edes and John Gill, who altered the title of the paper slightly and began a new issue in April 1755.

Besides printing newspapers, Kneeland also printed and published several key religious works. He printed best-sellers like Philip Doddridge's The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, Solomon Stoddard's The Safety of Appearing at the Day of Judgment, Thomas Prince's A Chronological History of New-England, George Whitefield's Sermons on Various Important Subjects, and John Flavel's Token for Mourners. Perhaps most importantly, he printed many of the writings of Jonathan Edwards, including The Life of David Brainerd and Freedom of the Will.

Kneeland also was a publisher, which meant that he underwrote the costs of publications himself. Publishing was a risky venture, but it had a greater potential for profits than a set fee charged by printers. In the article, I provide an appendix that lists the known works published by Kneeland. In his early years, Kneeland published familiar authors like Cotton Mather, Thomas Foxcroft, Samuel Checkley, Richard Baxter, and Matthew Henry. As the revival fires of the Great Awakening heated up, he published George Whitefield, Jonathan Dickinson, and Thomas Prince. Most notably, Kneeland underwrote Jonathan Edwards's seminal Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746). By the time that Kneeland retired, he could claim over nine hundred imprints bearing his name as printer or publisher.

If you are interested in reading more about Kneeland, please contact William T. La Moy, the editor of Printing History, for a hardcopy of the article. Alternatively, when the article appears on Academic One File, you could download a copy of it.

Jonathan Yeager

Open Faculty Positions in Christian Studies and Church History

2012-01-23T13:09:00.001-08:00

Shorter University in Rome, Georgia has an open faculty position in Christian Studies. The job ad can be seen here. The posted requirements are:

Qualifications: Candidates must have a Master’s degree with at least 18 graduate hours in Christian Studies, with a Ph.D. preferred. Candidate must have a strong desire to teach, mentor and advise undergraduates.

In addition to the required online application, applicants need to send one packet containing the following: •Cover letter •Unofficial transcripts of all academic work •A doctrinal summation of your beliefs concerning: Scripture, God; Man; Jesus; the Holy Spirit; Atonement; the Church; and End Times •A statement about your comfort level with the 2000 edition of the Baptist Faith and Message •A statement of your views on Calvinism •Three current letters of reference

Send all materials in one packet, making sure to label it with your name and the position for which you are applying to:

Human Resources Shorter University 315 Shorter Avenue Rome, Georgia 30165

Apply today at the following link: https://home.eease.adp.com/recruit/?id=1172271

Shorter University is a Christ centered University affiliated with the Georgia Baptist Convention and requires employees to be committed Christians.

Transforming Lives Through Christ

Anderson University in Indiana has a posting for a tenure-track position in Church history. Information can be seen here. The job ad requirements are:

Anderson University School of Theology announces a tenure-track position in Church History, to begin in 2012-13. Candidate is expected to teach seven courses per academic year, have excellent classroom skills and a demonstrated interest in both electronic and face-to-face educational delivery. Completed Th.D/Ph.D. and teaching experience expected. Rank and salary set according to qualifications and experience. In addition to academic qualifications, the candidate should be committed to the Christian faith, be involved in a local congregation, and possess an ability to develop courses and programs that are inclusive of the diversity of the students and constituency served. High priority given to those who are ordained and/ or experienced in congregational leadership and have a strong commitment to the Church of God, Anderson, Indiana. Women and minority candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. The mission of the Anderson University School of Theology is to form women and men for the ministry of biblical reconciliation. Review of applications will begin immediately and applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Send curriculum vitae, and three letters of reference to Dean David Sebastian, Anderson University School of Theology, 1100 East Fifth Street, Anderson, Indiana 46012-3495.

Anderson University is a private Christian university of 2,600 undergraduate and graduate students in central Indiana. Anderson continues to be recognized as a top Christian college: in 2010, U.S. News and World Report ranked Anderson University among the best colleges and universities in the Midwest for the seventh consecutive year. Established in 1917 by the Church of God, Anderson University offers more than 65 undergraduate majors and graduate programs in business, education, music, nursing, and theology. The University’s location in the central part of the state allows easy access to state parks, several boating lakes, and beautiful farmland. The close proximity to Indianapolis, the state’s capital, offers a full range of cultural and entertainment amenities. Anderson University is an equal opportunity employer.

Are Lectures Boring?

2012-01-23T07:04:00.000-08:00

A question I continue to ask myself is whether or not to lecture in a given course. I have taught a variety of courses at a number of schools since 2008 (ah, the life of an adjunct), but I have not yet come to a firm conclusion on lecturing. I had been told by several people who are abreast of the latest techniques and opinion polls, with regard to higher education, that students don't want professors to lecture. Rather, it is best to break them up into small groups for the purposes of having discussion. A number of people told me that today's students are technologically savvy and fidgety, and so can't sit still during a long lecture. They supposedly find the stand-and-deliver method boring.

Not knowing any better, I decided to organize my earliest courses so that students constantly had to form small groups for the purpose of discussion. Unfortunately, I found this method to produce dismal results. Most students--especially freshman--didn't want to talk, even within a group of their peers. On a typical day, several students would not do the reading, and so usually did not have anything to contribute. Asking individuals within the groups questions was often like pulling teeth.

In a few courses, I tried forcing students to do individual research on a topic and then lead the class in discussion for part of their grade. Talk about boring, try listening to a person give a thirty-minute talk on a subject that he or she had looked up on Wikipedia ten minutes before class. Not only did these students not know their subject, but it was typically delivered in a dispassionate way.

In later semesters, I tried lecturing. Despite the warnings that I had received, I figured that it couldn't be worse than previous experiences. It took me several months over the summer to write notes for upcoming courses. In most cases, I put together over 200 pages on Microsoft Word for a particular course like American history or historical theology. I reasoned that if I lectured, at least someone would be talking in class!

I remember being surprised by the result. For the most part, students seemed to enjoy the lectures, especially when I talked about a topic that I was passionate about such as the Great Awakening or the Enlightenment. In a few instances, students thanked me after a lecture. In fairness, I rarely lectured for fifty minutes without stopping for questions. More times than not, I introduced talking points, using the Socratic method. Perhaps young people, who are so immersed in today's soundbite culture, find a lecture that is interesting and presented by a passionate speaker, novel.

I continue to wonder what is the best method of teaching. I suppose the correct answer is that each course demands its own unique structure. There are also some factors that dictate how a course should be run. In larger sections of one hundred or more students, for instance, it would be nearly impossible to break students up into small groups or have them do presentations. But in the smaller classes of thirty or fewer people professors usually have the choice on how to format a class.

Is it true that lecturing is sometimes preferable by students?

Jonathan Yeager

Job Posting--Head of the History Department at UTC

2012-01-20T10:51:00.001-08:00

There is an open position for the chair of the history department at UTC.

Here is the ad:

Department Head/History

Chattanooga, TN

The Department of History at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga invites applications for the position of head of the Department of History. This is a tenurable position with appointment to begin August 1, 2012. Applicants must be at associate or full professor level; the field of specialization is open but candidates must have a PhD in history. The successful candidate must have administrative experience or show evidence of administrative skills, and have the ability to foster and maintain collaborative relationships within the department, with other programs and departments throughout the university, with the administration, and with external agencies. Applicants should have a strong record of excellence in teaching and evidence of scholarly productivity. Review of applications will begin January 15, 2012; while preference will be given to applications received by that date, the review will continue until the position is filled. Candidates should send all materials electronically to Dr. John Phillips, Department of History Head Search Committee Chair, at facultyvitae11@utc.edu. Dossiers should include a letter of interest, current c.v., evidence of administrative experience, statement of teaching and administrative philosophy, a representative article or book chapter, and three letters of recommendation from individuals who can attest to teaching, research, and administrative expertise. When sending materials please reference the title of the position. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is an equal AA/Title VI & IX Section 504/ADA/ADEA/EOE. Further information about the department is available at http://www.utc.edu/Academic/History.

Web page: http://www.utc.edu
Web page: http://www.utc.edu/Academic/History/
Web page: http://www.utc.edu/Administration/AcademicAffairs/FacultyOpenings/

E-mail: facultyvitae11@utc.edu

Scripture and Church: Calvin, Servetus and Castellio

2012-01-20T03:38:00.000-08:00

Last night Bruce Gordon gave a stimulating lecture at UTC entitled, "Scripture and Church: Calvin, Servetus and Castellio." The lecture hall was packed, with at least one hundred people--a mixture of students, faculty, and members of the Chattanooga community. Bruce's talk examined Calvin's, Servetus's, and Castellio's view of scripture, describing each theologian's way of interpreting the Bible.

I particularly enjoyed the time allotted for questions at the end of the lecture. As a good historian, Bruce did a wonderful job at bringing to light Calvin's strengths and weaknesses from a balanced perspective. While certainly not deifying Calvin, Bruce was quick to defend the Reformer against embellished accounts of him as a blood-thirsty monster who demanded the death of Michael Servetus.

As host of this event, I enjoyed taking Bruce to see Chattanooga's world-class aquarium and learning about what life is like as a faculty member at Yale. He mentioned his hope to produce a biography of Zwingli at some point in the future.

I look forward to the upcoming LeRoy Martin lectures from Gerald McDermott, Thomas Kidd, and Catherine Brekus in mid-February.

Jonathan Yeager

Christianity Today Blurb

2012-01-18T14:03:00.000-08:00

John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture, wrote some brief comments about Enlightened Evangelicalism in the latest issue of Christianity Today.

Here is the blurb: As with modernity, so with "the Enlightenment project": much handwringing. Meanwhile, as if in a parallel universe, scholars are exploring the relationships (multiple, contested) between evangelicalism and the Enlightenment (or Enlightenments). A case in point is Jonathan Yeager's Enlightened Evangelicalism, which begins with a quotation from Sir Walter Scott. Focusing on John Erskine (1721-1803), a prominent Scottish evangelical preacher and theologian, Yeager tells a story with wide resonance. The full page on the CT website can be seen here, which appears the same in the printed form of the latest issue of the magazine on page 64.

As far as I know, there are only two blogs that have posted comments about the book. One is "Sweeney's Booknotes," a blog started by Doug Sweeney at Trinity Evangelical Divinity Seminary. The second is by David Ceri Jones on his blog. The only "published" review that I know of is by Jeff Suderman on H-Net Reviews. Jeff wrote an excellent book on the Scottish Moderate minister, George Campbell. I hear rumors of forthcoming reviews in the Westminster Theological Journal and the Religion in American History blog. Perhaps other published reviews will appear later this year.

On a side note, I was pleased to see that Enlightened Evangelicalism was (albeit briefly) the top 20,000 seller on Amazon.com yesterday and #7 on the "Scotland" list.

ASCH Proposals for the 2013 Meeting

2012-01-16T14:12:00.000-08:00

It is already time to think about paper proposals for the 2013 American Society of Church History Conference in January 2013. Proposals are due on March 15. I am open to forming a panel on a topic pertaining to eighteenth-century religious history, evangelicalism, or the Enlightenment.

Below is the Announcement that is posted on the ASCH website:

ASCH 2013 Winter Conference
The annual Winter 2013 meeting of the American Society of Church History (ASCH) will be held Thursday to Sunday, January 3-6, 2013, in New Orleans, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA). We invite ASCH members and other interested scholars to submit paper and session proposals on any aspect of the history of Christianity and its interaction with culture, including proposals for formal papers, panel and round table discussions, consideration of a major recent book, critical assessments of a distinguished career, and other relevant themes and issues.

In addition to traditional categories relating to periods, geographical areas, and special topics, we will give special consideration to proposals that consider broader themes across periods or regions; engage in interdisciplinary discussion; place theological ideas in historical context; examine particular genres, source materials or methods; or treat the current state of the study of church history. We also invite sessions that deal with pedagogical issues of concern in the teaching of the history of Christianity, or with issues in the publication and dissemination of research to specialist and general audiences. Panels should exhibit diversity of gender, rank, and scholarly location in their composition.

Proposals for entire panels/sessions are strongly preferred, though proposals for individual papers will also be considered. The committee welcomes international participation and particularly encourages proposals (whether for full panels or individual papers) from those who live and work outside the United States. Sessions are typically two hours in length and allow for three or four papers, a formal response, and Q&A with the audience. In order better to group individual papers into sessions, such proposals for individual papers should address one of the following themes:

Christianity and public life, or the relationship of church and state
Christian responses to disaster and suffering
Christianity and race, or creole cultures

The deadline for proposals is March 15, 2012.
(For those interested in submitting joint proposals to the AHA and the ASCH, the deadline for AHA proposals is February 15, 2012. See www.historians.org.)

Paper proposals should consist of (1) a short description of less than 300 words, (2) a biographical paragraph or CV summary of the applicant, and (3) a current mailing location, email address, and phone number for the proposed presenter. Session proposals should contain all of the above for each of the presenters as well as (1) the session title, (2) a brief description of less than 300 words outlining the theme or topic of the session, and (3) biographical data and contact details for the chair and the respondent (which can be the same person). Use of audio-visual equipment is limited to the hotel provider’s equipment, has become very expensive, and must be restricted to presentations for which it is strictly necessary. The proposed use of computers, internet, or projectors in the session must therefore be stated and rationalized in the proposal.

Please send proposals, preferably by email, before March 15, 2012, to the program committee at asch2013@regent-college.edu. Acknowledgements and further information will be sent out as proposals are received. The program committee reserves the right to reconfigure sessions as needed.

NOTE: All program participants must register for the annual meeting and be members of the ASCH at the time of the Meeting.
Bruce Hindmarsh, Program Chair
Regent College, 5800 University Blvd., Vancouver, BC, CANADA, V6T 2E4

University Press or Trade Book?

2012-01-16T05:45:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I received my first royalty check and sales report for Enlightened Evangelicalism. From looking at the report, which shows the number of books sold from last April to September, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend who is finishing up his PhD at the University of Chicago. We discussed the current job market for professors as well as ideas for future publications. I posed the question of whether it is better to publish with a firm like Eerdmans, Baker, and InterVarsity or an academic university press.

My friend proceeded to tell me about a session he attended about a year ago at ETS or SBL in which a representative on the panel from a Christian trade publisher commented on how the firm only wanted to produce books that can sell thousands of copies, as opposed to a non-profit university press that will most likely sell only a few hundred copies of a particular title. While discussing the matter, my friend reminded me that university press books, although fewer in number, make a significant contribution to scholarship. That is not to say that a trade book cannot also be a work of scholarship, but the primary objective of a trade publisher seems to be, first and foremost, to produce a book that has wide appeal.

The other issue, especially for professors to consider, is that academic press books are often necessary for tenure and promotions. While publishing a book in general will be helpful for an academic's career, university press titles are usually given more weight in the tenure process and by a promotion committee since there is a rigorous peer-review process with university presses that is not necessarily present with trade publishers.

The ideal, of course, would be to publish a best-seller with a university press--a book that not only helps with your promotion but also sits on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. But that is an unlikely scenario. Most university press books are priced too high to be bought by the general public (especially in a hardback edition) and are marketed to college libraries.

This is a topic I will need to continue to think about as I work on future projects.

Jonathan Yeager

Olaudah Equiano: African or South Carolinian?

2012-01-15T03:19:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Vincent Carretta's Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man, a wonderful account of an evangelical who was instrumental in the abolition of the slave trade in Britain. Many students of English literature are familiar with Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789), which chronicles the life of a slave in Africa who is eventually freed, becoming a celebrity in the English-speaking world in the last decade of his life. But unknown to most is that Equiano might have embellished key sections in his autobiography.

According to Equiano, he was born in 1745 in present-day Nigeria, where he claimed to have been abducted at age eleven and sold to English slavers. Forced aboard a ship to the West Indies, he makes his way to the West Indies where he is sold to a Virginia planter who quickly resells Equiano to a British Royal Navy officer named Michael Henry Pascal. His new owner renames Equiano "Gustavus Vassa" before taking his new prize back with him to London, probably in 1754. Between August 1755 and December 1762, most of Equiano's time was spent aboard Royal Navy vessels during the Seven Years' War. Equiano enjoys his time at sea, experiencing a certain equality among his shipmates that would have been unknown had he been a plantation slave. After serving Pascal faithfully for a number of years, Equiano expects to be set free in 1762, but instead is sold to James Doran, captain of a merchant ship headed to Montserrat. In the West Indies, Equiano is sold once more to a Quaker merchant named Robert King.

Through shrewd business ventures of his own, Equiano saves enough money to buy his freedom from King in 1766. The newly freed man makes his living over the next decade as a hairdresser and sailor for hire. Over the course of that time he travels to Italy, modern-day Turkey, and the West Indies. In May 1772 he joins an expedition to the Arctic led by Constantine John Phipps who hopes to find a shorter route to India. Reeling from a near-death experience on the Arctic voyage, Equiano returns to London in late 1773 seeking spiritual guidance. He attends St. James's Anglican parish church several times and explores Quakerism, Roman Catholicism, and Judaism. At one point he considers moving to Turkey, believing that Muslims are more sincere in their beliefs and practices than the Christians he has met.

During his spiritual distress, he meets a couple of silk weavers in Holborn who introduce him to Methodism. He is told that he needs to experience a "new birth" whereby God pardons a person on the basis of the merits of Christ's death on the cross. While aboard a ship headed to Cadiz, Spain, Equiano picks up his Bible and begins reading Acts 4:12, later writing that "the Lord was pleased to break in upon my soul with his bright beams of heavenly light; and in an instant, as it were, removing the veil, and letting light into a dark place... I saw the Lord Jesus Christ in his humiliation, loaded and bearing my reproach, sin, and shame. I then clearly perceived, that by the deed of the law no flesh living could be justified. I was then convinced, that by the first Adam sin came, and by the second Adam (the Lord Jesus Christ) all that are saved must be made alive" (174). He had experienced conversion, the kind of spiritual rebirth that he had been told was necessary for salvation.

In the spring of 1775, Equiano agrees to help a former employer establish a plantation off the Mosquito Coast in Central America. At the time, he suffers no scruples when purchasing slaves to work the fields. Becoming disillusioned with the project, Equiano makes his way back to England at the beginning of 1777. He considers becoming a missionary to Africa, but when his request is denied by the bishop of London, he returns to the sea as a hired sailor once again.

It is not known exactly when Equiano changed his mind about the slave trade--it appears to be a gradual development--but in the mid-1780s he becomes involved in the plans to found Sierra Leone, a colony where free blacks could settle and form their own community. Hired as a commissioner for the project, and later dismissed due to his criticism of the project, Equiano spends the remainder of his life supporting the abolitionist movement. He joins Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, and others in trying to convince Britons of the evils of the Atlantic slave trade. Equiano's most significant contribution in this regard is his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, published in 1789. The book went through eleven editions in the eighteenth century, making Equiano wealthy in the process and catapulting him to literary stardom. When he died on March 31, 1797, he was arguably the best known and affluent person of African descent in the Atlantic world.

One of the most interesting aspects of Carretta's biography is his procative thesis that Equiano fabricated part of his narrative in order to bolster the abolitionist movement. Through his research Carretta finds birth and baptismal records describing Equiano as a native of South Carolina, not Africa. Carretta writes, "Equiano certainly knew that to do well financially by doing good for the abolitionist cause he needed to establish and maintain his credibility as an eyewitness to the evils of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in its various eighteenth-century forms. He also knew what parts of his story could be corroborated by others" (xvi-xvii). In order to oppose slavery, abolitionists needed a credible witness who had experienced the horrors of slavery and the Middle Passage. Carretta believes that Equiano's Interesting Narrative filled this void by providing the kind of proof that abolitionists were keen to exploit.

Carretta's monograph is an excellent biography of the truly interesting life of Olaudah Equiano. But if given the choice, I would first recommend reading his recent book on Phillis Wheatley, which I blogged about earlier. The Phillis Wheatley biography is more concise and cuts down on the number of block quotations that is prevalent throught his book on Equiano. Without diminishing the importance of Carretta's work on Equiano, the new book on Wheatley is the work of a craftsman who has perfected his trade.

Jonathan Yeager

Lamin Sanneh Coming to UTC

2012-01-14T04:57:00.001-08:00

Lamin Sanneh, the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale University, will be speaking at UTC in January 2013 as part of the LeRoy Martin Distinguished Lecturer series. Along with Philip Jenkins, Dr. Sanneh will be talking on a topic pertaining to the theme of global Christianity.

Dr. Sanneh, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is descended from the nyanchos, an ancient African royal house, and was educated on four continents. He went to school with chiefs' sons in the Gambia, West Africa. He subsequently came to the United States on a U.S. government scholarship to read history. After graduating he spent several years studying classical Arabic and Islam, including a stint in the Middle East, and working with the churches in Africa and with international organizations concerned with inter-religious issues. He received his Ph.D. in Islamic history at the University of London.

He was a professor at Harvard University for eight years before moving to Yale University in 1989 as the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity, with a concurrent courtesy appointment as Professor of History at Yale College. He has been actively involved in Yale's Council on African Studies. He is an editor-at-large of the ecumenical weekly, The Christian Century, and serves on the editorial board of several academic journals. He is an Honorary Research Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies In the University of London, and is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He serves on the board of Ethics and Public Policy at Harvard University, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of over a hundred articles on religious and historical subjects, and of several books. For his academic work he was made Commandeur de l'Ordre National du Lion, Senegal's highest national honor.

His Books include:

Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1989
The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics: A Religious & Historical Study of Islam in Senegambia (c.1250-1905), Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, January 1990.
West African Christianity: The Religious Impact,1983: co-published by Christopher Hurst, George Allen and Unwin (London) & Orbis Books (North America) 304pp.
Encountering the West: Christianity & the Global Cultural Process: The African Dimension, London: HarperCollins Publishers; Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1993.
The Crown and the Turban: Muslims and West African Pluralism (295pp). Westview Press. Imprint of HarperCollins. October, 1997.
Religion and the Variety of Culture: A Study in Origin and Practice, Valley Forge, PA.: Trinity Press International, 1996.
Het Evangelie is Niet Los Verkrijgbaar, Uitgeverij Kok - Kampen, Netherlands, 1996.
Piety and Power: Muslims and Christians in West Africa, Orbis Books. October, 1996.
Faith and Power: Christianity and Islam in 'Secular' Britain (with Lesslie Newbigin & Jenny Taylor), London: SPCK, 1998.
Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Whose Religion is Christianity?: The Gospel Beyond the West, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. (Winner: Theologos Award for "Best General Interest Book 2004")
The Changing Face of Christianity: Africa, the West, and the World (co-edited with Joel A. Carpenter) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Religion in the Age of Wesley, Whitefield, and Edwards

2012-01-12T08:01:00.001-08:00

The second course that I am teaching this semester is a new offering at UTC. This is a course that I developed based on my interest and expertise in eighteenth-century evangelicalism. I've entitled it: "Religion in the Age of Wesley, Whitefield, and Edwards." The course is designed to teach students about not only important figures like John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards, but also lesser-known leaders of eighteenth-century evangelicalism.

The main text for the course is Mark Noll's The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys. This is the obvious choice for a class on this subject. My hope is that the time in class will allow me to test some of the material that I am putting together for an anthology that is forthcoming with Oxford University Press, as well as giving students the opportunity to do original research on some of the more obscure evangelicals in the eighteenth century.

As part of the course, students will write a research paper on a lesser-known American evangelical. These are the choices:

Francis Asbury, Isaac Backus, Aaron Burr Sr., Joseph Bellamy, Benjamin Colman, Samuel Davies, Jonathan Dickinson, Timothy Dwight, Nathaniel Emmons, Olaudah Equiano, Samuel Finley, Thomas Foxcroft, Samuel Hopkins, Samuel Miller, Jedidiah Morse, Charles Nisbet, Samson Occom, Sarah Osborn, Thomas Prince, Solomon Stoddard, Eleazar Wheelock, Phyillis Wheatley, or John Witherspoon

I am limiting the list to names that can be researched through the on-line Evans collection of early American imprints that is made available through the Lupton Library at UTC. Although I would have liked for students to have access to Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO), this database would cost the university (at last quote) somewhere in the neighborhood of $150,000 in start-up costs.

Besides the final research paper, I am requiring students to write two book reviews. For the first, they will select one of three options. Option one is George Marsden's Jonathan Edwards: A Life. Option two is to read and write a review of Harry Stout's The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism AND Frank Lambert's "Pedlar in Divinity": George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals, 1737-1770. And option three is Henry Rack's Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism.

For their second book review, students will select a text from the following list:

• Dee E. Andrews, The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800: The Shaping of an Evangelical Culture (Princeton, 2001)

• Catherine Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845 (UNC, 1998)

• Joanna Brooks, American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native American Literatures (Oxford, 2003)

• Vicki Tolar Burton, Spiritual Literacy in John Wesley’s Methodism: Reading, Writing, and Speaking to Believe (Baylor, 2008)

• Vincent Carretta, Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (Georgia, 2005)

• J.C.D. Clark, English Society, 1660-1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics during the Ancien Régime (Cambridge, 2000)

• Vincent Carretta, Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage (Georgia, 2011)

• Milton J. Coalter, Gilbert Tennent, Son of Thunder: A Case Study of Continental Pietism’s Impact on the First Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies (Praeger, 1986)

• Joseph A. Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement: Calvinism, the Congregational Ministry, and Reform in New England Between the Great Awakenings (Eerdmans, 1981)

• John Corrigan, The Prism of Piety: Catholick Congregational Clergy at the Beginning of the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1991)

• Michael J. Crawford, Seasons of Grace: Colonial New England’s Revival Tradition in Its British Context (Oxford, 1991)

• Derek H. Davis, Religion and the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 (Oxford, 2000)

• Katherine Carte Engel, Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America (Pennsylvania, 2011)

• John Fea, The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (Pennsylvania, 2009)

• John Fea, Was America Founded As a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction (Westminster John Knox, 2011)

• John R. Fitzmier, New England’s Moral Legislator: Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817 (Indiana, 1998)

• Richard L. Gawthrop, Pietism and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Prussia (Cambridge, 1993)

• John A. Grigg, The Lives of David Brainerd: The Making of an American Evangelical Icon (Oxford, 2009)

• Allen C. Guelzo, Edwards on the Will: A Century of American Theological Debate (Wipf and Stock, 2008)

• David D. Hall, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England (Knopf, 2011)

• Timothy D. Hall, Contested Boundaries: Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial American Religious World (Duke, 1994)

• David Hempton, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (Yale, 2005)

• D. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiographies in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2008)

• D. Bruce Hindmarsh, John Newton and the English Evangelical Tradition (Eerdmans, 1996)

• David L. Holmes, The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (Oxford, 2006)

• David Ceri Jones, ‘A Glorious Work in the World’: Welsh Methodism and the International Evangelical Revival, 1735-1750 (Cardiff, 2004)

• Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Religion (Basic Books, 2010)

• Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (Yale, 2009)

• David W. Kling, A Field of Divine Wonder: the New Divinity and Village Revivals in Northeastern Connecticut, 1792-1822 (Pennsylvania, 1993)

• Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America (Princeton, 2006)

• Frank Lambert, Inventing the “Great Awakening” (Princeton, 2001)

• Ned C. Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680-1760 (Cornell, 2000)

• Rebecca Larson, Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700-1775 (UNC, 2000)

• Bryan F. Le Beau, Jonathan Dickinson and the Formative Years of American Presbyterianism (Kentucky, 1997)

• Cynthia Lynn Lyerly, Methodism and the Southern Mind, 1770-1810 (Oxford, 2006)

• Jerome Dean Mahaffey, The Accidental Revolutionary: George Whitefield and the Creation of America (Baylor, 2011)

• Jerome Dean Mahaffey, Preaching Politics: The Religious Rhetoric of George Whitefield and the Founding of a New Nation (Baylor, 2007)

• Gerald R. McDermott, Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods: Christian Theology, Enlightenment Religion, and Non-Christian Faiths (Oxford, 2000)

• Richard Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (NYU, 2009)

• Amanda Porterfield, Female Piety in Puritan New England: The Emergence of Religious Humanism (Oxford, 1991)

• Clotilde Prunier, Anti-Catholic Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Peter Lang, 2004)

• Sarah Rivett, The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (UNC, 2011)

• J. Rixey Ruffin, A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic (Oxford, 2007)

• John Saillant, Black Puritan, Black Republican: The Life and Thought of Lemuel Haynes, 1753-1833 (Oxford, 2002)

• Sharon V. Salinger, Taverns and Drinking in Early America (Johns Hopkins, 2004)

• Jonathan D. Sassi, Republic of Righteousness: The Public Christianity of the Post-Revolutionary New England Clergy (Oxford, 2008)

• Leigh Eric Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scotland and the Making of American Revivalism (Eerdmans, 2001)

• Robert E. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804 (Penn State, 2009)

• Erik R. Seeman, Pious Persuasions: Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New England (Johns Hopkins, 1999)

• Richard B. Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: the Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Princeton and Edinburgh, 1985)

• John Howard Smith, The Perfect Rule of the Christian Religion: A History of Sandemanianism in the Eighteenth Century (SUNY, 2010)

• David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton, 2010)

• Harry Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (Oxford, 1988)

• John R. Tyson, Assist Me to Proclaim: The Life and Hymns of Charles Wesley (Eerdmans, 2008)

• Mark Valeri, Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America (Princeton, 2010)

• Mark Valeri, Law and Providence in Joseph Bellamy’s New England: The Origins of the New Divinity in Revolutionary America (Oxford, 1994)

• W. R. Ward, Early Evangelicalism: A Global Intellectual History, 1670-1789 (Cambridge, 2010)

• W. R. Ward The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge, 2002)

• Marilyn J. Westerkamp, Triumph of the Laity: Scots-Irish Piety and the Great Awakening, 1625-1760 (Oxford, 1987)

• Marilyn J. Westerkamp, Women and Religion in Early America: 1600-1850 (Routledge, 1999)

• Rachel Wheeler, To Live Upon Hope: Mohicans and Missionaries in the Eighteenth-Century Northeast (Cornell, 2008)

• John Wigger, Taking Heaven by Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America (Oxford, 1998 and Illinois, 2001)

• John Wigger, American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists (Oxford, 2009)

• Robert J. Wilson, The Benevolent Deity: Ebenezer Gay and the Rise of Rational Religion in New England, 1696-1787 (Pennsylvania, 1984)

• B.W. Young, Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1998)

I've tried to be thorough with this list, giving students the chance to pick a book on a topic that interests them, and covering various disciplines--theology, history, gender, politics, etc. If you have any further suggestions of books to add, I would welcome your input.

Jonathan Yeager

Religion in Southern Culture

2012-01-12T07:39:00.000-08:00

I am teaching a course this semester on "Religion in Southern Culture." This is basically a religious history of the South, beginning with a discussion of how the South became the so-called Bible belt of America, and ending with issues related to civil rights. I'm requiring three texts for the class: Christine Leigh Heyrman's Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt, Patrick Q. Mason's The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South, and Paul Harvey's Freedom's Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War Through the Civil Rights Era. While the first and third are standard textbooks for a course like this, I chose Mason's book because it highlights scenes of anti-Mormon violence in Tennessee, which is the state in which I teach. Mormonism clearly is not the dominant religion in the South, either before or after the Civil War, but Mason's book is important in forcing scholars and students to include other religions into discussions on southern religion, rather than a narrow focus on Protestantism.

For the course, I require students to read the three main texts, writing one discussion question and 1/2 page answer for each of the chapters in the three books. I've required this assignment in previous courses and it seems to be effective in forcing students to do the readings and turn their work in on time, promoting good writing, and creating topics for class discussion.

I also require students to select two books to write reviews from a list of approved titles. Here are the approved titles, broken down into various categories:

General Studies of Religion in the South

· Boles, John B. The Irony of Southern Religion (Peter Lang, 1994)

· Cobb, James C. Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (Oxford, 2007)

Religion and Women in the South

· Ashton, Dianne. Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America (Wayne St., 1997)

· Brekus, Catherine A. Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845 (UNC , 1998)

· Friedman, Jean E. The Enclosed Garden: Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830-1900 (UNC, 1985)

· Kierner, Cynthia A. Beyond the Household: Women’s Place in the Early South, 1700-1835 (Cornell, 1998)

· Lebsock, Suzanne. The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 (Norton, 1984)

· McDowell, John Patrick. The Social Gospel in the South: The Woman’s Home Mission Movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church South, 1886-1939 (LSU , 1982)

· Perdue, Theda. Cherokee Women: Gender and Cultural Change, 1700-1835 (Nebraska , 1998)

· Rodriguez, Jeanette. Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among Mexican-American Women (Texas , 1994)

· Turner, Elizabeth Hayes. Women, Culture, and Community: Religion and Reform in Galveston, 1880-1920 (Oxford, 1997)

Religion and Slavery in the South

· Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North Carolina (Harvard, 1998)

· Boles, John B., ed. Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the American South, 1740-1870 (Kentucky , 1988)

· Daly, John. When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War (Kentucky , 2002)

· Diouf, Sylviane A. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas(NYU , 1998)

· Irons, Charles F. The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia (UNC, 2008)

· Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (UNC , 1998)

· Wood, Betty. Women’s Work, Men’s Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia (Georgia , 1995)

Regional Studies of Religion in the South

· Clark, Erskine. Our Southern Zion: A History of Calvinism in the South Carolina Low County, 1690-1990 (Alabama, 1996)

· Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (LSU , 1992)

· Hanger, Kimberly S. Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769-1803 (Duke, 1997)

· Heaney, Jane Frances. A Century of Pioneering: A History of the Ursuline Nuns in New Orleans, 1727-1827 (Ursuline Sisters of New Orleans, 1993)

· Hoffman, Ronald. Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782 (UNC , 2000)

· Irons, Charles F. The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia (UNC, 2008)

· Isaac, Rhys. The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (UNC , 1982)

· Lebsock, Suzanne. The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 (Norton, 1984)

· McCauley, Deborah Vansau. Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History (Illinois , 1995)

· Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (UNC , 1998)

· Nelson, John K. A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776 (UNC, 2001)

· Owen, Christopher H. The Sacred Flame of Love: Methodism and Society in Nineteenth-Century Georgia (Georgia , 1998)

· Rogoff, Leonard. Homelands: Southern Jewish Identity in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Alabama , 2001)

· Schweiger, Beth Barton. The Gospel Working Up: Progress and the Pulpit in Nineteenth-Century Virginia (Oxford, 2000)

· Sobel, Mechal. The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (Princeton, 1988)

· Sommer, Elisabeth. Serving Two Masters: Faith, Authority, and Community among the Moravian Brethren in Germany and North Carolina, 1727-1801 (Kentucky , 2000)

· Sparks, Randy J. On Jordan’s Stormy Banks: Evangelicalism in Mississippi, 1773-1876 (Georgia , 1994)

· Sutton, William R. Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore (Penn State, 1998)

· Thorp, Daniel B. The Moravian Community in Colonial North Carolina: Pluralism on the Southern Frontier (Tennessee , 1989)

· Turner, Elizabeth Hayes. Women, Culture, and Community: Religion and Reform in Galveston, 1880-1920 (Oxford, 1997)

· Van Voorst, Carol. The Anglican Clergy in Maryland, 1692-1776 (New York, 1989)

· Wood, Betty. Women’s Work, Men’s Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia (Georgia , 1995)

African American Religion in the South

· Frey, Sylvia R. and Betty Wood. Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 (UNC , 1998)

· Gomez, Michael A. Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (UNC , 1998)

· Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (LSU , 1992)

· Hanger, Kimberly S. Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769-1803 (Duke, 1997)

· Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement I the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Harvard, 1993)

· Hinson, Glenn. Fire in My Bones: Transcendence and the Holy Spirit in African American Gospel (Pennsylvania , 2000)

· McMillen, Sally G. To Raise Up the South: Sunday Schools in Black and White Churches, 1865-1915 (LSU , 2001)

· Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (UNC , 1998)

· Morrow, Diane Batts. Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1821-1860 (UNC , 2002)

· Sobel, Mechal. Trabelin’ On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith (Princeton, 1988)

Baptists in the South

· Harvey, Paul. Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925 (UNC , 1997)

· Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement I the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Harvard, 1993)

· Morrow, Diane Batts. Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1821-1860 (UNC , 2002)

· Sobel, Mechal. Trabelin’ On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith (PUP, 1988)

· Wills, Gregory A. Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785-1900 (Oxford, 1996)

Methodism in the South

· Lyerly, Cynthia Lynn. Methodism and the Southern Mind, 1770-1810 (Oxford, 1998)

· McDowell, John Patrick. The Social Gospel in the South: The Woman’s Home Mission Movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church South, 1886-1939 (LSU , 1982)

· Owen, Christopher H. The Sacred Flame of Love: Methodism and Society in Nineteenth-Century Georgia (Georgia , 1998)

· Schneider, Gregory A. The Way of the Cross Leads Home: The Domestication of American Methodism (Indiana , 1993)

Evangelicalism in the South

· Boles, John B. The Great Revival, 1787-1805: The Origins of the Southern Evangelical Mind (Kentucky, 1972)

· Dochuk, Darren. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatisim (Norton, 2011)

· Calhoon, Robert M. Evangelicals and Conservatives in the Early South, 1740-1861 (South Carolina, 1989)

· Eslinger, Ellen. Citizens of Zion: The Social Origins of Camp Meeting Revivalism (Texas, 1999)

· Fea, John. The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (Pennsylvania, 2009)

· Barry Hankins, God’s Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism (Kentucky, 2010)

· Mulder, Philip N. A Controversial Spirit: Evangelical Awakenings in the South (Oxford, 2002)

· Sparks, Randy J. On Jordan’s Stormy Banks: Evangelicalism in Mississippi, 1773-1876 (Georgia, 1994)

Catholicism in the South

· Gannon, Michael V. The Cross in the Sand: The Early Catholic Church in Florida, 1513-1870 (Florida, 1967)

· Heaney, Jane Frances. A Century of Pioneering: A History of the Ursuline Nuns in New Orleans, 1727-1827 (Ursuline Sisters of New Orleans, 1993)

· Morrow, Diane Batts. Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1821-1860 (UNC , 2002)

Religion and Judaism in the South

· Evans, Eli N. The Lonely Days Were Sundays: Reflections of a Jewish Southerner (Mississippi, 1994)

· Rogoff, Leonard. Homelands: Southern Jewish Identity in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Alabama , 2001)

· Rubin, Louis D. My Father’s People: A Family of Southern Jews (LSU , 2002)

Theology in the South

· Holifield, E. Brooks. Gentleman Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1790-1860 (Duke, 1978)

Religion and Civil War in the South

· Daly, John. When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War (Kentucky , 2002)

· Goen, C. C. Broken churches, Broken Nation: Denominational Schisms and the Coming of the Civil War (Mercer, 1985)

· Hill, Samuel S. The South and the North in American Religion (Georgia , 1980)

· Hill, Samuel S. Southern Churches in Crisis Revisited (Alabama, 1999)

· McPherson, James. For Cause and Comrade: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (Oxford, 1997)

· Shattuck, Gardiner. A Shield and Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies (Mercer, 1987)

· Snay, Mitchell. Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (Cambridge, 1993)

· Woodworth, Steven E. While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of the Civil War Soldiers (Kansas , 2001)

Special Topics on Religion in the South

· Ownby, Ted. Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920 (UNC , 1990)

· Tolnay, Stewart E. and E. M. Beck, Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930 (Illinois, 1995)

· Wilson, Charles Reagan. Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Georgia, 1980)

If you have additional titles that I should consider adding, please feel free to contact me.

Jonathan Yeager

Philip Jenkins at UTC

2012-01-12T04:26:00.000-08:00

Renowned author and speaker Philip Jenkins will be coming to UTC in the spring of 2013. Jenkins, who has published over two dozen books, will be talking on a topic pertaining to global Christianity, which is the theme for the spring 2013 LeRoy Martin Distinguished Lecturer Series.

Scripture and Church: Calvin, Servetus and Castellio

2012-01-10T04:43:00.000-08:00

Bruce Gordon is coming to UTC to give a lecture at 7pm on Thursday, January 19 in the Raccoon Mountain Room. This is the second lecture in the LeRoy Martin Distinguished Lecturer Series. The title of his talk is "Scripture and Church: Calvin, Servetus and Castellio." This is the abstract of the upcoming lecture:

"The 1550s was a decade of turbulence and conflict for the European Reformation. In German lands war loomed, while in France the reformed faithful suffered severe persecution. In England the young King Edward VI in whom such hopes had been placed was succeeded by his Catholic older sister, Mary. Within the Reformed church there many unresolved questions and tensions. This was evident in the trial and execution of the Spaniard Michael Servetus in Geneva in the autumn of 1553. This notorious case brought together three very different figures: John Calvin, Servetus and Sebastian Castellio. This talk will explore the differences between these men by considering the ways in which they interpreted the Bible and how those readings influenced their understanding of church and reform. The result is a consideration of the different paths the Reformation might have taken during those volatile years."

Bruce has written a wonderful new biography on John Calvin published by Yale University Press in 2009. The book puts flesh on a figure noted for his influential Institutes of the Christian Religion but whose life has been somewhat obscure. Although there is not all that much information on Calvin's person life, Bruce constructs an interesting and seamless narrative that places the great theologian within the context of Renaissance Europe. He also does a masterful job at describing Calvin as a regular person with character flaws, including arrogance and a desire for revenge against his enemies, while at the same time revealing Calvin's strengths, such as human compassion for the poor and desire for ecumenism among the other reformers. Calvin is sure to be the definitive biography of Geneva theologian for many more years to come and I look forward to his lecture at UTC.

The Problem of Christian Scholarship

2012-01-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

At the AHA/ASCH conference in Chicago, I had the opportunity of listening to an interesting session by Mark Noll and other panelists on the Christian vocation. This seems to be a hot topic based on recent scholarship. I had been hearing a lot of buzz about a book by Randal Stephens and Karl W. Giberson entitled, The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age (Harvard, 2011), and so while at the book exhibit, I purchased it and began leafing through the initial chapters while traveling back to Chattanooga.

I have read about 100 pages of the book so far and can now appreciate the attention that it has received. The introductory chapter points out the irony that many evangelicals would rather learn about science and history from psedo-scholars than established experts with PhDs from prestigious universities. I found the chapter on "The Amateur Christian Historian" particularly interesting, as it implicitly derides evangelicals for accepting the dubious claims of such influential figures as David Barton. While the authors are quick to praise historian Mark Noll, who publicly castigates current trends in providential history, it felt as if Stephens and Giberson were giving too much credit to secular scholarship. That is to say, the underlying message seemed to be: attempts to integrate faith and history should be avoided at all costs. To be fair, I need to finish reading the whole of the book to see if my impression remains the same.

The arguments in the first chapters reminded me of some of the issues raised in the recent book, Confessing History, edited by John Fea, Jay Green, and Eric Miller. While appreciating the work of Marsden, Noll, Hatch and other great historians, some of the essayists complain that evangelical historians are being trained to eschew faith-based assumptions. In order to be accepted in the academy, and perhaps to secure a tenure-track post, must a budding scholar tuck away his or her faith and simply focus on writing good history?

My hope is that there is a via media that avoids the pitfalls of providential history while at the same time does not make historical writing irrelevant to practicing Christians. I abhor reading uncritical, so-called scholarship, but at the same time, I do not want to read or write books that would offer no spiritual nourishment for hungry readers, whether professional scholars or laypeople. It will be interesting to see which Christian historians emerge as the leaders after the Noll-Marsden-Hatch generation.

Jonathan

After Edwards

2012-01-09T03:50:00.000-08:00

Capping off the ASCH conference in Chicago was a session, "After Edwards: Appropriations of the New England Theology." A panel consisting of Ken Minkema, David Kling, Anri Morimoto, Ava Chamberlain, and chaired by Oliver Crisp, offered a preview of what to expect in an edited book forthcoming with Oxford University Press. Additional contributors for the book who were not on the panel include Michael McClymond, Gerald McDermott, and Doug Sweeney. The panelists rightly allude to the fact that although Jonathan Edwards has received much scholarly attention, Edwards's so-called New Divinity followers have been largely ignored by the academy. Monographs on Joseph Bellamy, Samuel Hopkins, and Nathaniel W. Taylor have helped religious and intellectual historians understand the scope and breadth of Edwards's legacy, but there is much more to learn about important figures like Levi Hart, Nathaniel Emmons, and Edwards A. Park.

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the monographs of Kling, Sweeney, and others on the New Divinity and can't wait for this new book to come out later this year!

Jonathan

Your Time is Up!

2012-01-07T14:08:00.000-08:00

A recent session I attended at the ASCH meeting in Chicago reminded me of a problem that plagues conferences: some speakers don't know when to stop talking. Painfully, the audience sits through minute after minute beyond the time allotted without hearing the desired words, "In conclusion..." The audience cannot help but feel bad for the chair of the session as he or she passes note cards to the lecturer, clearly indicating that time is up. Yet, audaciously, the presenter continues onward, perhaps with no indication that the end of the paper is anywhere near.

I wonder what justification such a speaker has for infringing on the time of other lecturers on the panel, embarrassing the chair, and frustrating the audience. Perhaps older professors feel as though the knowledge that they are providing is worth their weight in gold, and consciously or unconsciously believe that no one would mind if they extend their argument into a thirty- or forty-minute discourse. But this problem is not limited to seasoned professionals; younger professors transgress the boundaries of time as well. I wish that presenters would realize that their message would have a greater chance of being received if they adhered to basic elements of courtesy and time management.

Jonathan Yeager

Rewriting American Religious History--The New England Soul

2012-01-07T11:36:00.000-08:00

I am currently in Chicago, attending the AHA/ASCH conferences and enjoying every minute of it. The book exhibit provides the ultimate academic bookstore experience and many of the paper presentations have provoked thoughtful discussion on the craft of historical research and writing.

My favorite session so far was "Harry Stout's New England Soul after 25 Years," which took place in the morning on Friday, January 6. The only disappointment of note was the small venue. The program committee clearly did not realize the popularity of this session since chairs had to be quickly assembled outside the conference room, extending several feet beyond the entryway. Mark Noll, Catherine Brekus, James Byrd, Thomas Kidd, and Ken Minkema paid tribute to one of America's leading religious historians.

I have been dwelling on an insight that Stout gave in his parting comments. He explained that after spending over a year of research and writing several hundred pages of the original manuscript, he scrapped his work and started over again. He came to the conclusion that his initial probing into Puritan religious history was simply derivative of Perry Miller's magisterial The New England Mind. In order for Stout to break away from Miller's immensely important work, he would have to approach his research from a new perspective and, more importantly, utilizing a different methodology. Stout ultimately determined to write The New England Soul using the laborious method of reading thousands of manuscript sermons, as opposed to limiting his sources, as Miller had done, to published sermons. Thanks to Stout's painstakingly tedious endeavor, he has re-written religious history, dismantling Miller's declension theory of Puritan theology, instead proposing that there was continuity in the sermons of colonial divines from the seventeenth century into the eighteenth.

The lesson I drew from Stout's talk was to examine religious history from new perspectives, using fresh techniques and methodologies. If religious historians limit their research to the same primary sources as previous scholars, there is little chance of developing an authentically viable new thesis. A historian who is unwilling to look at unappreciated sources will almost assuredly never write pioneering works of broad interest.

Jonathan Yeager

Will the Real Patrick Henry Please Stand Up

2011-12-26T09:17:00.000-08:00

I just finished Thomas Kidd's new book, Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots (Basic Books, 2011). This is the sixth book in Kidd's astoundingly prolific career. Beginning with The Protestant Interest: New England After Puritanism (2004), Kidd has also published The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (2007), The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents (2007), American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism (2008), God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (2010), and has a contract with Yale University Press to write a biography of George Whitefield. With roughly only a decade of experience as a full-time faculty member at Baylor University, Kidd and his impressive list of works places him on par with some of America's most seasoned scholars.

Patrick Henry consists of ten chapters and an epilogue and reads more like a popular biography of the patriot than a typical Kidd monograph full of annotations. Besides as a casual bedtime read, I see this book as a useful supplementary text for American history survey courses. Henry's story is placed within the context of life in colonial Virginia, the revivalist preaching during the Great Awakening, the Stamp Act crisis, the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord, declared independence from Britain, the fighting of the Continental Army, organization of the new republic, and the French Revolution. Kidd successfully argues that Henry is an important American patriot throughout this time, and not simply an orator who shouted "Give me liberty or give me death" and then faded into oblivion.

While I prefer Kidd's more scholarly monographs, in terms of the amount of information offered, Patrick Henry demonstrates that Kidd can write a captivating biography for a popular audience that is interested in American history from a Christian historian's perspective.

Jonathan M. Yeager

The Bible, the Problem of Pleasure, and Victorian Religion

2011-12-22T09:06:00.000-08:00

A recent review by David Bebbington of Dominic Erdozain's excellent book The Problem of Pleasure: Sport, Recreation, and the Crisis of Victorian Religion (2010) is available on IHR's 'Reviews in History' web page.

Also of note on the RiH web page is a review of Tim Larsen's A People of One Book: the Bible and the Victorians (2011)

Humanities Jobs: Are they Worth It?

2011-12-20T05:07:00.000-08:00

Lately, I have been confronted with the question of whether landing a humanities job is worth all the fuss. It seems that everyone around me earns a higher salary. I recall, for instance, walking to the local Sheetz gas station and noticing an advertisement for a needed assistant manager who would earn close to $50,000 with additional medical and retirement benefits. Christmas cards from distant relatives have been arriving, alerting me to recent job promotions and extravagant vacations. What is striking is that many of the cards are coming from people who are ten years younger. I remember these former tykes playing with Hot Wheels and Barbies as though it was yesterday.

I contrast the successes of friends and family with that of the humanities professor. The latter often goes into debt in order to attend graduate school. Perhaps he or she is lucky to receive free tuition and maybe a stipend to undergo postgraduate work, but even with a small income stream coming in, the PhD student lives below the poverty line during the multiple years of solitary confinement that it takes to complete a degree. This situation becomes even more complicated if the PhD candidate has a spouse and children. Little boys and girls do not understand why their daddy or mommy has to be locked up in a room or library all day instead of playing with them.

The payoff, of course, is that one day the PhD degree will be earned and lead to a tenure-track position at a reputable college, university, or seminary. Yet, as we all know, these jobs are illusive and securing one of these rare gems has been compared to winning the lottery. But suppose that one does land a tenure-track faculty position, what then? The reality is that you now have a job earning the equivalent salary of an assistant manager at a fast food restaurant. Even worse, the teaching post you accepted may require you to move to an undesired location far away from relatives (or civilization for that matter). The teaching load might be a 4-4, or worse, with responsibilities to teach entry-level general education courses full of unmotivated freshman. Sure, you are now "Dr. so and so," but is an additional prefix to your name worth all this?

In thinking about the potential disadvantages of the life of a humanities professor, it is only fair to point out the benefits as well. First, there is the joy of teaching. You get to engage (albeit sometimes sleepy) young minds on subject matter in your field. It may not be your specialty, but the information you go over at least in theory revolves around your knowledge base. Prodding students to think about interesting topics and relevant issues can be very rewarding, and even more so if you have the chance to teach an upper-level elective nearer to your specialty. A college professor teaches more mature students than the middle school or high school teacher, which means that classes have the potential of being the site of stimulating conversations and debates. Second, you have much more time off than most working adults. You have an extended summer vacation (and part of the spring off for that matter), a long Christmas break, and your own spring break, not to mention additional holidays. In the summer months while others are slaving away or bored at a Dilbert-type office environment you have the chance to do a number of things, including outdoor activities, research, and/or traveling. Third, you are paid to stay current with your discipline, which means that if you enjoy reading, you have the best of jobs. Academic presses send you free copies of books for you to review for journals or as potential classroom textbooks. Books push you to think about the accuracy of details in your lectures or offer new insights for research projects that you are working on. Fourth, there is a level of respect given to professors. Students in most cases call you "doctor" and the general public perceives that you are an intelligent person simply by the fact that you hold a faculty position. There are many additional perks that one could talk about, but these are some of the basics.

All-in-all the life of a professor is a good one. But not everyone would agree that the benefits outweigh the costs associated with this type of job. Anyone who doesn't enjoy reading, solitary research, teaching (obviously), and grading should not strive to be a professor. Furthermore, if you want to be wealthy and have an extravagant lifestyle, a humanities professorship is not for you. The benefits of a professorship is very much counter-cultural in that instead of leading a fast-paced life that utilizes high tech gadgets, the professor instead plops himself or herself into a chair and slowly and methodically reads (usually printed books), writes, and grades. In an age when most people seem to have a thirty-second attention span, professors are called to read thousands and thousands of pages on subjects that would leave most people yawning. The bottom line is that it is worth it to endure the challenges leading up to a full-time teaching position, provided that a person understands what that type of life entails.

The Southern Menace

2011-12-15T16:50:00.000-08:00

Patrick Mason's new book, The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South (Oxford University Press, 2011) is a lively read about the perception of Mormon missionaries in the South. Mason argues that white Protestants in the South greatly feared Mormon missionaries seducing their wives and daughters. He begins with the story about Parley Pratt who was hunted down and murdered by Hector McLean. A poor husband, McLean nevertheless felt the humiliation of losing his wife to a Mormon and sought revenge for the sake of his honor. Mason claims that anti-Mormon assaults, although not often ending in murder, were present in all southern states in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. But of the fourteen states comprising the Mormon Southern States Mission, Alabama and especially Tennessee were decidedly the most violent, with the 1880s documented as the worst years.

Mason shows that Mormonism only became a national concern in the 1850s after the establishment of what outsiders saw as a Mormon theocracy in Utah Territory and the Mormons' 1852 public announcement that sanctified plural marriage. Polygamy represented a significant danger to most nineteenth-century Americans because it challenged the traditional view of the ideal Christian home. As a result, Christian churches around the country preached out against "the Mormon menace," making polygamy a central concern in moral reform efforts. Missions and schools were established in Utah with the goal of reclaiming and educating people about the evils of Mormonism. Not until Mormons rescinded polygamy at the end of the nineteenth century, did American hostility toward them dissipate.

The unruly atmosphere of the nineteenth-century South proved to be a particularly dangerous area for Mormons to proselytize. Mason provides a key story about the murder of Joseph Standing that illustrates the kind of anti-Mormon violence that the South was capable of producing. What is remarkable in the story is that everyone knew who killed Standing, and yet none of the perpetrators were adequately tried or prosecuted. In looking at the episode of Standing and other accounts, one gets the feeling that parts of the South run parallel to scenes from the movie Tombstone, with roving gangs inflicting terror and brutality on anyone who they wished without any repercussion. Yet these vigilantes were not composed of the dregs of society, but more typically middling farmers or workers who had a stake in the community. Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians in the South often looked the other way as these atrocities were performed, believing that Mormon polygamists to be the bigger threat to the nation's health.

According to Mason, anti-polygamy helped many southerners find common cause with northern reformers, religious leaders, and politicians. Beginning with Rutherford Hayes, U.S. presidents played a prominent role in the fight against polygamy throughout the late 1870s and 1880s. In 1882, the Edmonds Acts declared polygamy a felony and eventually both Republicans and Democrats joined forces to stamp out this ungodly form of marriage. Pressure was so great on Mormons to abandon polygamy that LDS president Wilford Woodruff felt compelled to formerly announce the end of plural marriage in 1890. Apparently, American Christians objected less to Mormon doctrines than the practice of polygamy.

Although based on his doctoral dissertation, The Mormon Menace is surprisingly captivating, and at an affordable price (on Amazon it is around $26). The story of anti-Mormon violence in the South needed to be told and Mason should be commended for telling this tale in such a spirited and engaging manner.

Jonathan Yeager

AHA and ASCH Conferences at Chicago

2011-12-12T12:37:00.000-08:00

I am getting excited for the upcoming AHA and ASCH conferences at Chicago from January 5-8. In looking over the program, I see a number of interesting sessions. The standout is the Friday morning session, "Harry Stout's The New England Soul after 25 Years." Chairing the session is Mark Noll, with panel contributors Catherine Brekus, James Byrd, Thomas Kidd, and Ken Minkema.

Other notable sessions include the Friday afternoon panel on "Edwin S. Gaustad (1923-2011): Reflections on His Influence," chaired by Grant Wacker and the Friday afternoon session "Habernas, the Public Sphere, and American Religious History." Capping off the conference is the Sunday afternoon panel, "After Edwards: Appropriations of the New England Theology," which is devoted to an upcoming book (Oxford University Press) on the legacy of Edwardsean theology, edited by Doug Sweeney. I look forward to seeing this book in print !

Jonathan Yeager

New Issues of Fides et Historia

2011-12-12T12:12:00.000-08:00

The new issue of Fides et Historia (Summer/Fall 2011) is currently out, and it includes some interesting articles and book reviews. The first section is a forum on "Reconciling the Historian's Craft and Religious Belief," and includes essays by Brad Gregory, Mark Noll, Anthea Butler, David Hollinger, and Bruce Kucklick (among others). I found Noll's article to be one of the most interesting. He examines the work of the English philosopher F.H. Bradley and whether scholars should value accounts of the supernatural when writing history.

The second section is an interesting roundtable discussion on the book, Confessing History. I think that Jay Green's essay expresses the sentiment of many Christian historians who look up to the work of historians such as Noll and Marsden.

Finally, there are a number of good reviews. Steven Pointer writes about Alister Chapman, John Coffey, and Brad Gregory (eds), Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion. All religious and intellectual historians should read this book. Yours truly reviewed the superb new biography on Adam Smith by Nicholas Phillipson. Timothy Larsen nobly defends Eric Metaxas's Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy from the criticism of Martin Marty and others. Thomas Kidd brings to light Laren Winner's A Cheerful and Comfortable Faith: Anglican Religious Practice in the Elite Households of Eighteenth-Century Virginia. And Richard Gildrie reviews Mark Valeri's latest book, Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America. I have an admitted bias for the eighteenth century, but many of these books would make welcome additions to the personal libraries of religious scholars.

I am a proud member of the Conference on Faith and History, and the current issue reaffirms to me that other historians have a similar outlook on how to do religious history.

Jonathan Yeager

Highs and Lows in the Life and Times of Phillis Wheatley

2011-12-03T16:53:00.000-08:00

Vincent Carretta's new biography, Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage (University of Georgia Press, 2011) is simply spectacular. Carretta, a professor in the English department at that University of Maryland, has produced an engaging book on America's first black author.

Wheatley was kidnapped from an unknown location in Africa and put aboard a slave ship to America. Arriving at Boston in July 1761, Phillis was sold to the wealthy evangelical merchant John Wheatley and his wife Susanna. Named after the slave ship that brought her to America, Phillis probably could not have ended up in a better home. The Wheatleys and their eighteenth-year-old twins, Nathaniel and Mary, treated Phillis like a family member as opposed to a slave or even a servant. She learned to read and write, and showed an affinity for classical literature and poetry. Furthermore, the Wheatleys gave Phillis unusual freedom to mingle socially with visiting guests. Carretta writes, "The Wheatleys' treatment of Phillis enabled them to publicize their status, piety, and charity. They also used her to display their commitment to evangelical Christianity. They demonstrated that they could afford to spare Phillis the drudgery one would expect to be assigned to someone in her condition. Very few owners granted slaves the 'leisure Moments' that would allow them to write poetry" (23). This freedom proved beneficial to a young precocious girl with a gift for writing.

Carretta does a fairly good job at introducing the ministry of George Whitefield and Methodism in general. He shows Methodism as a despised movement due to its perceived emotionalism and outdoor preaching that infringed on the territory of resident clergyman in America and Britain. Carretta also rightly notes that many people disliked the fact that Methodist itinerants preached to the lower ranks of society, including slaves. Of course the hypocrisy of Whitefield is apparent in the fact that he purchased slaves to support his Georgia orphanage after denouncing the institution. Nevertheless, Wheatley and other slaves of African descent were drawn to the Grand Itinerant, perhaps because of his energetic preaching and message that an oppressed person experiencing the "new birth" would enjoy heavenly bliss in the afterlife. Although there is no record of when Phillis first heard Whitefield, it is possible that she went to his sermon at the Old South Church at Boston on February 27, 1764.

Carretta's expertise in English literature adds to the storyline as he explains the context and significance of Wheatley's poems, both in manuscript and published form. Carretta's research shows that Wheatley's first poem was not the assumed missing piece, "On the Death of the Rev. Dr. Sewell," but rather a four-line poem about the Thachers, a distinguished Boston Congregationalist family. Carretta also analyzes Phillis's published poems, including "On Virtue," which calls on readers to seek God's grace rather than human wisdom alone, "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty," which praises George III for repealing the Stamp Act, and her most notorious work, "On being brought from Africa to America," which seems to condone slavery at first glance. Carretta, however, dispels the notion that Wheatley justifies slavery. Carretta states, "Modern critics have accused Wheatley, or at least the primary voice in her poem, of rejecting her African heritage and engaging in racial self-hatred. But such critics confuse accommodation with appropriation. Like many authors of African descent who follow her, Wheatley repeatedly appropriates the values of Christianity to judge and find wanting hypocritical self-styled Christians of European descent. Theologically, Wheatley perceives her capture in Africa as leading to fortunate fall that allows her formerly 'benighted soul' to rise to embrace Christianity" (61). The poem that set off Wheatley's career is undoubtedly her elegy on Whitfield, written eleven days after his death. "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield" was widely read by Americans and Britons and catapulted Wheatley to stardom.

As Wheatley increased her literary output and mastered her craft, John and Susanna encouraged Phillis to produce a book of her poetry. Wheatley's first attempt at finding subscribers for a book intended to be published in Boston was not successful. However, her fortunes changed for the better in a second attempt, thanks to the support she received from the wealthy evangelical patroness, Selena, Countess of Huntingdon. Archibald Bell of London published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in 1773 with a frontispiece of Wheatley that was unprecedented in its depiction of a female author of African descent.

To promote the book, Phillis left Boston for London with Nathaniel Wheatley as her traveling companion. Carretta raises the provocative argument that Phillis might have wanted to go to England in order to seek freedom. Her arrival at London in the summer of 1773 was on the anniversary of a landmark court case in which Lord Chief Justice William Murray, the first earl of Mansfield, ruled that a runaway Virginia slave named James Somerset captured in England could not be forced to return to the colonies as a slave. His judgment opened the door for self-manumission by colonial slaves residing in England. The timing of Wheatley's trip to London is suspicious to Carretta, who sees Phillis weighing her options. Carretta demonstrates that Phillis would have been familiar with Boston newspapers relaying the case (the same newspapers that printed her poems). Even more important is the fact that Wheatley's London tour guide was Granville Sharp, who backed Somerset, and almost assuredly would have talked about manumission with her. Carretta argues that "It is unimaginable that while Wheatley and Sharp were looking at caged African animals, as well as the emblems of British regal glory, Sharp would not have brought up the subject of his judicial triumph the preceding year in extending British liberty to enslaved people of African descent. Sharp considered himself ethically and morally bound to help people in Wheatley's condition" (128). While we don't know Wheatley's intentions, we do know that Nathaniel, who now ran the family's business, gave Phillis his word that she would be freed once she returned to Boston. The implication is that Phillis knew her options and Nathaniel virtually had no choice but to free her.

With her new found freedom, Wheatley was not necessarily better off. She returned to Boston on September 13, 1773 a free woman, but now had to provide for herself. John and Susanna Wheatley, although under no further financial obligation to help Phillis, apparently allowed her to live with them. But with Susanna's death shortly after Phillis's return from London, and John's five years later on March 12, 1778, Phillis, perhaps wanting a better social footing, married the purportedly notorious free black merchant John Peters in 1778. Carretta, however, questions the reliability of the information on Peters, particularly since one of the accounts unjustifiably portrays him as "the villain in a Dickensian narrative of the decline and death of a sentimental heroine" (176). Very little is known about Peters or about Phillis in the years following her marriage until her death in 1784. Within the limited data, Carretta discovers that Peters lost a lawsuit which effectively ruined the couple financially.

Phillis tried to publish a second book, printing proposals in 1779 for a substantial work of three hundred pages and priced between nine and twelve pounds. The poor timing of this book and its extraordinary price doomed it from the start. Her proposed project never saw the light of day. Wheatley continued to publish occasional individuals poems, but never produced a second book. She died on December 5, 1784 and was placed in an unmarked grave.

Coming from someone who normally does not appreciate poetry, I was captivated by Carretta's biography. He does not over-analyze the rhetorical composition of Wheatley's poems, nor does he ignore the context of Wheatley's surroundings. Carretta writes like a historian, asking critical questions on points that others have assumed to be true. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in eighteenth-century evangelicalism and religious history.

Jonathan Yeager

Fall 2012 LeRoy Martin Distinguished Lecturers at UTC

2011-11-21T09:51:00.000-08:00

We already have the Fall 2012 speakers lined up for the LeRoy Martin Distinguished Lecture Series at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

The Fall 2012 theme will relate to religion and politics in light of it being a presidential election year. Here are the lecturers:

D.G. Hart, Thursday, September 27, 2012 on his new book, From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservativism (Eerdmans, 2011)

John Fea, Tuesday, October 9, 2012 on his new book, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction (Westminster John Knox, 2011)

Amanda Porterfield, Thursday, November 8, 2012 on her upcoming book, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (University of Chicago, 2011)

The lectures are free and open to the public. Further information will be posted on the philosophy and religion website

Enlightened Evangelicalism: Finalist for the 2011 Scottish History Book of the Year

2011-11-21T05:30:00.000-08:00

Enlightened Evangelicalism: The Life and Thought of John Erskine (Oxford, 2011) is a finalist for the 2011 Scottish History Book of the Year Award from the Saltire Society. Here's hoping!

Revolution in Photography

2011-11-14T14:59:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: this post has very little to do with religious history.

Ok, that being said, for those of you who love taking pics of historic sites (or anything in general) there's a new camera out there which is a must have. Check out this article at the Atlantic and then look at these pics on Lytro's website which you can manipulate by clicking (or touching, for you ipad users) on different parts of the photo you want to focus on.

Bebbington at UTC

2011-11-09T05:04:00.001-08:00

Last Monday, November 7 at noon, Bebbington gave the first lecture of the year in the LeRoy Martin Distinguished Lecture Series on Christian history and thought at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga entitled, "The King James Bible in Britain from the Late 18th Century." The lecture was attended by a crowd in excess of an estimated 140 people. Since the Raccoon Mountain Room at UTC only has only about 120 seats, several people had to stand at the back of the room.

David argued that the KJ Bible, although written in 1611, did not find a welcome home in Britain until around the end of the eighteenth century. He stated that it was viewed as a "relic of barbarism" by many early and mid eighteenth-century critics. However, at the end of the eighteenth century, and especially into the nineteenth century, public opinion of the KJ Bible began to rise. Bebbington suggested that this appreciation stemmed from four factors: delight in past works for their own sake, British national sentiment and anti-Catholicism, the patronage of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and a redefinition of the KJ Bible as the accepted "Authorized Version." By the end of the 1890s, Bebbington claimed, the "Authorized Version" became the standard Bible in Britain and was firmly embedded in the culture.

The lecture itself offered a number of captivating quotations from the early modern era to the present, including statements by Christopher Hitchens and supporting evidence from Youtube videos (I didn't know Bebbington knew about Youtube). Overall, Bebbington gave an outstanding lecture on a topic intended to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. One of the highlights for me occurred after the lecture when one of my students told me that as a result of what she heard, she was now considering changing her major from English studies to religion. If the other lectures in the Martin Distinguished Lecture series are half as good as this one, I will be elated.

Jonathan Yeager

New Books

2011-11-08T19:00:00.001-08:00

A warm congrats to David Ceri Jones and Andrew Atherstone for their edited volume Engaging with Martin Lloyd-Jones: The Life and Legacy of 'the Doctor' (2011). See here for the contents page.

Alister Chapman also deserves a warm congratulations for his new book Godly Ambition: John Stott and the Evangelical Movement.

(Shameless plug) Congrats to myself and George Kalantzis as well for our edited book Evangelicals and the Early Church: Recovery, Reform, Renewal (2012).

Recommendations:

"This unusually interesting volume combines bracing historical engagement with rare theological wisdom. Its chapters carefully explore why, how, under what conditions, and how much contemporary evangelicals should try to appropriate guidance from the first Christian centuries. A particularly helpful feature is the paired chapters that promote the best kind of respectful give and take on contested or difficult questions. The book is a gem of edifying insight."
-Mark Noll
Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame

"Here is a collection of essays that invites the reader to wrestle along with the authors over the query why evangelicals have not embraced more fully the early church as part of their theological and ecclesiastical legacy. It is certainly a question of importance. The appropriation of the early church by essentially free-church segments of contemporary Christianity remains at the experimental stage however much momentum it has gained over the last twenty years. Of varying degrees valuable insights are offered in this book with which pastoral and academic leadership needs to grapple for the future of evangelicalism."
-D. H. Williams
Professor of Patristics and Historical Theology, Baylor University

Andy Tooley

The Not So Legendary David Brainerd

2011-11-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

John A. Grigg's book, The Lives of David Brainerd: The Making of an American Icon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), is a remarkable biography of David Brainerd, attempting to separate fact from fiction in the story of this legendary missionary.

The first three chapters of the book is a critical analysis of Brainerd's life in light of some of the claims made by Jonathan Edwards in his initial biography. From Grigg's account, we learn that Brainerd grew up in a relatively wealthy family in Haddam, Connecticut, a town about thirty miles northeast of New Haven. Shortly after having a conversion experience, Brainerd matriculated at Yale College at the start of the Great Awakening. In the aftermath of visits by George Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent, Yale students were whipped into a spiritual frenzy. Tennent's Danger of an Unconverted Ministry (1740) convinced radicals to question the spiritual state of the local clergy, and form separate churches if need be. It is within this context that Grigg seeks to set the record straight concerning Brainerd's expulsion from Yale College. According to Edwards's account, Brainerd was expelled for the singular comment that Yale's tutor Chauncey Whittelsey had "no more grace" than a chair. The school's rector Thomas Clap had warned students that those who persisted in denouncing a member of the faculty and staff at Yale as unconverted or a hypocrite would be expelled. The statement that Brainerd was overheard as saying at the conclusion of a chapel service had cost him a college degree. Different than Edwards's work, Grigg points to Brainerd as a consistent rebel at the school, as opposed to a student who had been punished for an isolated incident.

Grigg also demonstrates that Brainerd most likely did not become a missionary to Native Americans because he had no other options after he was expelled. Brainerd apparently had at least two pastorates offered to him by churches at Easthampton and East Haddam, but ultimately turned down these requests. Edwards wrote that Brainerd chose to be a missionary because he was "determined to forsake all the outward comforts" of life. Grigg, however, convincingly argues that as a missionary to the Indians Brainerd would have had much more flexibility and independence than as a traditional pastor to a white congregation. Sponsored by the Scottish Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, Brainerd served briefly as a missionary to the Native Americans at Kaunameek, between Albany and Stockbridge, and then for three years to the Indians at the Forks of the Delaware River valley. Throughout his narrative, Grigg provides a detailed contextual picture of Native American history in colonial America as well as the European emigration of the Scotch-Irish, German Lutherans, Quakers, and Huguenots.

Brainerd felt compelled to preach to the Indians of the Susquehanna River valley, but did not have much success. His greatest success came when he ministered to the Delaware Indians at Crossweeksung, New Jersey. Without denying Brainerd his opinion that God had aided his efforts, Grigg shows that a number of circumstances assisted him inadvertently in his attempt to evangelize the Crossweeksung Indians. For starters, they were isolated from other Native American communities, making them more susceptible to European culture and Christianity. Furthermore, Brainerd benefited from the fact that the women of the village, who Grigg points out were the spiritual guardians for a tribe, accepted the foreigner's message. These women travelled for miles to gather the men to return to the village to hear Brainerd's sermon the next day. Brainerd also benefited from the fact that the men killed some deer nearby, which allowed the community to remain in the area to hear the white man's message. The revival in New Jersey, recorded in Brainerd's published journal, continued to grow and even drew in local European settlers.

Grigg does not fear killing sacred cows. He questions the tradition of Brainerd's romance with Jerusha Edwards and, in a later chapter, denies that the missionary had a close relationship with Jonathan Edwards until the final five months of his life. Rather, Jonathan Edwards is forced to write to the people closest to Brainerd--his brother John, Jedidiah Mills, Gilbert Tennent, Ebenezer Pemberton, Esther Sherman, Jonathan Dickinson, and Aaron Burr--in order to learn about the subject of his biography.

Chapter four marks the end of the life of David Brainerd, according to John Grigg. Now begins the second half of the book in which Grigg assesses the various interpretations of Brainerd in the years following his death. First in the dock is Edwards's Life of Brainerd (1749). Grigg states that Edwards crafted his biography in such a way that would justify his theology in Religious Affections (1746) that true religion consists of actions more than words. Grigg describes Edwards working on the Life of Brainerd throughout 1748 and 1749 in the midst of his own personal struggles with his congregation at Northampton. Grigg has Edwards hounding his congregants to read the Life of Brainerd with the hope that they would recognize their own spiritual deficiencies and look to Brainerd as a model of godly behavior. Grigg writes, "Rather than responding by repentance, however, the townspeople decided to rid themselves of the messenger" (144). Throughout the editing process, Edwards removes any hint of enthusiasm in his subject as well as personal shortcomings, such as Brainerd's critical comments towards Yale's administration. Nevertheless, Grigg affirms the validity of Edwards's account, saying that "the essential message... was true to its subject (136). In the end, Edwards presents a thoroughgoing Calvinist missionary who renounces worldliness by ministering to Indians.

In chapter five, Grigg seeks to understand the reason for John Wesley's admiration of Brainerd. Wesley edition of Brainerd's life was published in 1768 as An Extract of the Life of the Late Rev. David Brainerd, Missionary to the Indians. Grigg submits that Wesley published his account of Brainerd's life in order to inspire his itinerant Methodist preachers to live a life of self-sacrifice. In the midst of the controversies involving the sexual exploits of Methodist itinerate preachers and rogue enthusiasts, Grigg writes, "Wesley turned to Brainerd as an example of the life he expected from Methodist ministers" (154). Grigg further speculates that Wesley was drawn to Brainerd because of similarities that he had with the missionary. Both men itinerated as preachers, virtually had no permanent home, and were unjustly persecuted. But unlike Edwards's Calvinistic Native American missionary, Wesley's Brainerd is a model to the theologically Arminian Methodists.

The final chapter delineates Brainerd's influence in the nineteenth and twentieth century, particularly among missionaries. Within the chapter are numerous examples and quotations of mostly men who saw Brainerd in almost unrealistic terms as the ideal selfless missionary to emulate.

Grigg's monograph is well researched and thorough throughout. Because it is well written and offers many compelling arguments, I had a difficult time putting the book down. The Lives of David Brainerd will no doubt serve as the definitive source for scholars seeking to understand the life and legacy of an American icon.

Jonathan Yeager

Lectures on Christian History and Thought at UTC

2011-11-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

As part of my duties as Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, I am in charge of inviting speakers to give public lectures. This academic year's Christian History and Thought lectures, sponsored by the Martin Distinguished Professorship in Religious Studies, features a number of well known scholars, including David Bebbington. Here is the schedule:

Monday, November 7, 2011 at noon: David Bebbington on "The King James Bible in Britain from the Late 18th Century"

Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 7pm: Bruce Gordon from Yale Divinity School on his new biography of John Calvin

Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 7pm: Gerald McDermott from Roanoke College on his new theological book on Jonathan Edwards

Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 7pm: Thomas Kidd from Baylor University on his new biography on Patrick Henry

Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 7pm: Catherine Brekus of the University of Chicago Divinity School on her upcoming biography of the 18th-c. diarist Sarah Osborn

Thursday, March 1, 2012 at 7pm: Grant Wacker of Duke Divinity School on his forthcoming biography of Billy Graham

All lectures are free and open to the public. If you are in the area, I invite you to attend.

More information about the lectures, as well as the venues and parking can be found at: http://www.utc.edu/Academic/PhilosophyAndReligion/events.php

Recent Bebbington Lecture at Baylor

2011-11-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

David Bebbington, a Fellow of Baylor's Institute for the Study of Religion and visiting professor at Baylor for the Fall of 2011, recently gave a paper on "The Revival that Founded Baylor: Baptist Faith in the Frontier Texas" on October 20, 2011. Thanks to the ISR for providing a video of this lecture.

Jon Yeager named Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Tennessee, Chattanooga

2011-11-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

A hearty congrats to Jon Yeager on his appointment as a Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Tennessee, Chattanooga!

New Book!!

2010-10-15T05:22:00.000-07:00

A new book is coming out by a Bebbington student entitled: "Enlightened Evangelicalism: The Life and Thought of John Erskine"

Here is the description of the book as listed in the Oxford University Press catalog:

Description
John Erskine was the leading evangelical in the Church of Scotland in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Educated at Edinburgh University, he learned to appreciate the epistemology of John Locke and other empiricists alongside key Scottish Enlightenment figures. As a clergyman, he integrated the style and moral teachings of the Moderate Enlightenment into his discourses and posited new theories on traditional views of Calvinism in his theological treatises.

While widely recognized as an able preacher and theologian, Erskine's primary contribution to evangelicalism was as a disseminator. He sent countless religious and philosophical works to correspondents like Jonathan Edwards so that he and others could learn about current ideas, update their writings, and provide an apologetic against perceived heretical authors. Erskine also was crucial in the publishing of books and pamphlets by some of the best evangelical theologians in America and Britain. Within his lifetime, Erskine's main contribution was as a propagator of an enlightened form of evangelicalism.

While there is a great deal of scholarship on Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley, Yeager argues that it is time to expand the scholarship of eighteenth-century evangelicalism by turning to one of their lesser-studied colleagues. In this new biography of Erskine, Jonathan Yeager lays out the life and thought of a hitherto under-researched - yet, in his day, widely respected - preacher and gives Erskine the scholarly treatment that he so richly deserves.
Features

Reviews

"Jonathan Yeager provides a valuable account of a remarkable eighteenth century Scottish polymath preacher and writer who was a champion both of orthodox evangelicalism and of the rationality of the moderate enlightenment. John Erskine is often remembered as an avid correspondent and supporter of Jonathan Edwards, but in his own time he was one of Scotland's leading theologians and an innovative thinker in his own right."
-- George Marsden, author of Jonathan Edwards: A Life

"In this first modern full-length biography of the important but overlooked 18th-century Scottish religious leader John Erskine, Jonathan Yeager has shown us how Erskine served as a 'Popular preacher'--a disseminator of information to the growing transatlantic evangelical network--to insure that traditional Calvinism had a rigorous intellectual content. This work confirms that the Enlightenment was a movement of great religious intensity, a time of spiritual seekers and the renewal of religious traditions. Indeed, the Enlightenment itself was profoundly religious in many ways--an Enlightenment of the spirit as well as of the mind."
-- Kenneth Minkema, editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards and of the Jonathan Edwards Center & Online Archive, Yale Divinity School

"John Erskine, the best-known clergyman in his church's 'Popular Party,' he repackaged orthodox Calvinism to meet Enlightenment challenges--shedding new light and religious intelligence around the Western world through his extensive correspondence and bibliographical generosity. Yeager is to be thanked for this outstanding 'life and thought' of a leading conduit in what we might call (ironically) the Christian republic of letters."
-- Douglas A. Sweeney, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

"Jonathan Yeager is to be thanked for uncovering neglected manuscript sources and for reminding us of John Erskine's important and multifaceted career as a preacher and theologian, an antagonist of Methodists and Roman Catholics, and a tireless proponent of transatlantic evangelical Protestant culture during the second half of the eighteenth century."
-- Richard B. Sher, author of Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment

Product Details
352 pages; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
ISBN13: 978-0-19-977255-1
ISBN10: 0-19-977255-X

ABD - Forget about It!

2010-02-09T04:03:00.000-08:00

It's enticing. The job ad states: "Will consider ABD." What else could that mean other than you have a real chance at landing this teaching post? Yet, in reality, there is very little (no??) chance of an ABD PhD student being offered the position and even making it to the interview stage. This is the lesson that I learned after applying for faculty positions the last two years. It is only two years later, after having completed my doctorate, added publications, awards, teaching experience, and presentations that schools are finally inviting me to interviews.

The first year that I began applying for faculty positions was 2008. I remember being excited and thinking that my cv looked pretty good. So why not apply? After submitting the necessary materials for the first few jobs, I learned very quickly what the negatives were to applying for faculty posts.

First and foremost, applying is time-consuming. Have you seen what the requirements are for applying for these jobs? In addition to submitting a cover letter and cv, most require official transcripts and three personal reference letters. The graduate school that I attended charges me $5 per official transcript, and the institution where I earned my doctorate (which does not offer an official transcript because I earned a research PhD from a British institution) charges me £15 for every three letters that states in a few brief sentences that I have fulfilled all the school's requirements for earning the PhD. Besides the costs involved in applying, there is also the challenge of finding three willing referees to write multiple letters on your behalf at a moment's notice. After asking for the fiftieth reference letter from these people, you realize how indebted to them you are.

Even more time-consuming than the initial application are the essay questions that most Christian schools require. It is a mixed blessing making it to "round two." At first you are excited. "Finally!," you say, "I found a school that is interested in me!" You read the email or letter that states, "We have narrowed down our applications and would like to pursue yours further. Will you please answer the following questions and return them to us by such and such date." The range of questions can be as little as two or three or as many as thirty (from my experience). In one particular instance, it took me two weeks, spending almost all my time and energy, to answer a school's essay questions only to receive a rejection letter one month later. Some schools do not even bother informing you of their decision. After spending hours answering their questions, and waiting months with no word, you politely send an email to the appropriate person only to receive the reply back: "Oh sorry about that, but we have filled the position."

None of this information is new. I have spoken with dozens of current faculty members at institutions and they all agree that, for better or for worse, this is the process of getting hired for humanities professors. My point is not simply to relay bad news. Rather, what I hope to achieve here is to convince you to consider the appropriate time on when you will begin the process of applying for jobs. What is the likelihood that you will be hired as an ABD candidate? In my opinion, next to nil. Therefore, why not guard your precious time (and your family's) and begin applying for jobs when you have finished your doctorate (or at least passed your defense).

It is a brutal market out there right now. The economy is terrible and there are few jobs. In some instances, I have applied for a job alongside 300 other candidates. With so many applicants, what are the chances that someone will pull your application out of the pile and say to the other committee members: "I know that we have 150 qualified applicants, who have completed their doctorates, have published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, and have excellent teaching records, but this candidate is special." Applying for full-time faculty positions is "morally degrading," one prominent professor recently told me. If this is so, why not save your energy (and mental health) and begin applying for jobs when you are most qualified to do so? With a doctorate degree in-hand, there is a better chance that you will be seriously considered for a full-time position.

JY

Christian Fundamentalism and British Evangelicalism

2009-12-22T06:49:00.000-08:00

David Ceri Jones blogs about the final EFB event at King's College, London, that took place on Tuesday 15 December.

On another note, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life recently posted an interesting interview/discussion with Rick Warren entitled The Future of Evangelicals on their website.

Lecture: A Dirty Word in Pedagogy?

2009-11-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

For the past several months I have been reevaluating my teaching methodology and specifically whether I should embrace or discard lecturing in my classes. Currently, all the courses that I teach are general education requirements with at least forty students in each class. As an undergraduate I remember attending lecture-oriented classes that were painful to sit through. Looking back, I am forced to ask myself whether it was my immaturity, poor study habits or the speaking ability of the professor that made me believe that such courses were boring and ineffective. Now the situation is reversed. I am the professor and a new batch of students are forced to take my classes.

I have heard the arguments for abandoning the lecture. Small groups are what works best, some say. Another argument is that professors must include multimedia in their presentations - movies, cartoon, video clips - anything but straight lecturing. Powerpoint presentations are also suggested to be outdated and cannot help the lecturer.

In a few of my initial classes, I scraped by with canned lectures and came to the conclusion that something must change. But I am not convinced that the lecture must be completely abandoned. One of my friends at Fordham University, who was voted teaching fellow of the year two years in a row, commented on how he incorporated stories into his lectures. He told me that he tries to include at least one personal story in each lecture. Since the beginning of the fall semester this year I have tried to mimic this strategy. The good Lord knows that I have plenty of funny, entertaining, heart-breaking and unbelievable stories to tell that are based on my life's experiences. For the most part, I have been having tremendous results. Of course some of my lectures are not good, especially the ones that fall outside of my discipline and I am forced to rely on other people's scholarship. But several students have commented on how much they enjoy the stories I tell and certainly when I do pause and tell an emotional or hilarious story, the sleepy eyes of many students brighten and, in some cases, you can hear a pin drop in the class as I tell a particular anecdote. My question then is this: are stories the way to revive the notoriously boring lecture? Must teachers abandon lecturing all together and have students constantly breaking up into small groups and doing activities in order to ensure good evaluation reports?

JY

Protestantism from the Renaissance to Modernity: Stagnant, Growing or Declining?

2009-10-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

Recently, I attended a conference at Baylor on Secularization and Revival. One of the best colloquial sessions there featured a discussion of Timothy Larsen's new book Crisis of Doubt. It was interesting to hear that in the nineteenth century many English-speaking Protestants were proclaiming that Christianity was on the decline and that the situation was much better in the previous century. What is interesting to me is that in the eighteenth century, the same argument was made - that evangelical piety was much more robust in the previous century and that it was the rise of Enlightenment thought that caused the decay of a vibrant Protestantism that was championed by the Puritans. I suspect that a sixteenth-century historian could propose that the Puritans believed that Protestantism was on the decline and looked back with admiration to the time of the Magisterial Reformers. My question then is this: Was Protestantism from the Renaissance to Modernity stagnant, growing or in decline?

Larsen is right when he pointed out in the session that many nineteenth-century ministers were preaching the real effects of secularization during their day while in reality there are plenty of examples of renewed piety among lukewarm Christians. The same jeremiad-style preaching existed in the eighteenth century. If a person read only the sermons of evangelical clergymen during the eighteenth century, he or she would walk away thinking that Christianity was marginal and on the brink of being overthrown by the advancing army of atheists and deists. In determining the true spiritual climate from the Renaissance to Modernity, there is the additional problem that secularization did in fact occur, at least in Britain. Today, Protestantism IS marginal in Britain. Anyone visiting Scotland or England will struggle to find multiple Christian congregations within a town that are thriving. Instead, a visitor will see boarded up churches, beautiful former church buildings that have been converted to apartments or condominiums and state church congregations that are dominated by the elderly. So, in the case of Britain, secularization did occur, but when? Are we to believe that Callum Brown is right in his "Death of Christian Britain" - that secularization occurred in the 1960s? Or, are other sociologists and historians correct in tracing the decline of Christianity at least in Britain to be a slow decay since the Enlightenment or during the "Crisis of Faith" in the nineteenth century?

JY

Remarks on David Bebbington and his work by George Marsden

2009-10-14T08:36:00.000-07:00

As many of you may know, David Bebbington’s 60th birthday was celebrated at a special dinner at Baylor University on 9 October 2009. Several scholars who gathered there to honor Professor Bebbington. Here is one of the tributes, by George Marsden, that were given on that occasion.

[Please note: this is a typescript prepared for presentation and not for publication, so it is not carefully proofread]

For some time now I have been greatly indebted to David Bebbington, not only for his excellent publications, but also for his friendliness and generosity whenever we have had occasion to meet. One of my best memories is from probably the early 1990s when we were together at a conference at Oxford and I was working on the project that became The Soul of the American University. David took Lucie and me on a lovely walk along the river in Oxford. England and explained to me how British universities worked, some of the factors in their secularization, and the difference in methods of punting in Oxford and Cambridge. The longer I have known David, the more I have come to realize that he seems to know almost everything about our field. That became especially apparent when twice in recent years he and I were featured at gatherings at St. Andrews University on comparative fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Whereas I did a lot of guessing as to facts and did a good bit of what would be called here “shooting from the hip” in offering interpretations, David made presentations which revealed in engaging ways that he had total mastery of all the relevant facts from which he drew wise and judicious conclusions.

But while we all know that David is a renowned scholar, there is one small piece of his scholarship that has in a way surpassed everything else—and I want to talk about that. In his 1989 book on Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, David provided what has become the definitive—even canonical characterization of evangelicalism—saying that evangelicals can be identified by four characteristic traits. These have become so widely known and used by those defining evangelicalism that they are now known simply as “the Bebbington quadrilateral.” This is, I can testify, a remarkable accomplishment. I myself tried for years to provide concise definitions of evangelicalism. So has Mark Noll. So has Donald Dayton. So have Randy Balmer and Grant Wacker. So have a host of sociologists. So has everyone who has studied the subject. But none of us has succeeded. Only David’s four-part characterization has stuck. I do not begrudge David this success. I just admire it.

Not wanting to make any mistakes when talking in the presence of someone who knows all the facts, I actually did some scientific research to confirm how widely Bebbington was known for the quadrilateral. So I googled David Bebbington and turned to the most authoritative source that I could find: Wikipedia. There, sure, enough it was: “He is widely known for his definition of evangelicalism, referred to as the Bebbington quadrilateral, [which was first provided in his 1989 classic study Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s]. Bebbington identifies four main qualities which are to be used in defining evangelical convictions and attitudes: biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism.”

So impressed am I at the success and usefulness of this characterization, that I am convinced that David has stumbled on the formula for success in characterizing things. So I have decided to try to do as nearly the same things as possible in characterizing any topic that I encounter. So here is my first attempt. It is at classifying a certain type of historian, which I shall call a Bebbingtonian: This will be “The Bebbingtonian Quadrilateral:

First, while one trait of evangelicals is Biblicism, for the Bebbingtonian the corresponding trait is Biblioism.

A Bebbingtonian reads a lot of books—he even writes a lot of books. The Bebbingtonian is, on might even say, immersed in books--- the library is his veritable baptistry—he is an Anabaptist who gets re-immersed every day. A Bebbingtonian swims in books—when books go, so will the species of Bebbingtonian.

Christo/centric/ Baptocentric—A Bebbingtonian may, of course, be Christocentric personally, but qua historian he is clearly Baptocentric. Baptists—and not just of the biblioist sort-- are what he dreams about. When he came to Texas, as I understand it, he set out to count and classify all the Baptist churches in Texas. You will not be surprised to learn that he did the same thing after he got to Scotland. He edited a book, The Baptists in Scotland: A History. Since, however, there are several more Baptists in Texas than there are in Scotland—someone told me that there are towns in Texas where there are more Baptists than there are people-- it may take him longer to write the sequel. But I’m pretty sure he can already name every variety of Texas Baptist and tell you in what region each predominates.

Conversionism / Conserverism—Being a Conserverist must be distinguished from it near kin, being a conservative. Bebbingtonians, it must be admitted, do sometimes appear a wee bit conservative in their demeanor. They always speaks in a very proper English. They do not say you’ll. But, I digress, since my point is that despite some accidental similarities, a Bebbington is not necessarily a conservative and may surprise you sometimes. Rather to be a true Bebbington, one must be conserverist or one dedicated to conserving things. Historians are by nature conservers of the past and and Bebbington is a great historian. The intensity of his dedication to conserving is see when that trait is combined with the fourth and final one.

Activism/ Exactivism—An exactivist is a person who gets everything precisely right. Anyone who has worshipped with David will notice that he is not only participates in the worship, but he also keeps an exact record of it. He has a little notebook with notes in it like: time of silence after the sermon: 11:52:14 to 11:53:29- 75 seconds.. Hymn No 372, Like a River Glorious, 4 verses, 11:53:54 to 11:56:41, two minutes and forty-seven seconds. And so forth. So not only does the Bebbingtonian conserve all facts about the past that he can find, but he also conserves even more exact facts for historians of the future to work with.

So if you ever meet someone who has these four traits of the Bebbingtonian Quadrilateral: Biblioism, Baptocentricism, Conserverism, and Exactivism, then you have identified an impressive an rare bird, the Bebbingtonian—who is indeed rumored to migrate south to Texas every other year.

Reflections on David Bebbington Occasioned by his 60th Birthday

2009-10-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

David Bebbington’s 60th birthday was celebrated at a special dinner at Baylor University on 9 October 2009. Scholars who gathered there to honor Professor Bebbington included George Marsden, Philip Jenkins, Timothy Larsen, Tommy Kidd, Paul Fiddes, and one of Exploring the Study of Religious History’s regular contributors, Jon Yeager. Here is one of the tributes, by Timothy Larsen, that were given on that occasion.

Reflections on David Bebbington Occasioned by his 60th Birthday

It is not for me to assess David Bebbington’s career, but rather for him to assess mine, but I can bear witness to things that I have seen and heard.

I first studied the history of Christianity as a Wheaton College student in the 1980s. We were aware of a dynamic trio that was conquering the wider academy – Marsden, Hatch, and Noll. If you listened more closely, one learned that there were other members of this cohort in America such as Harry Stout and Grant Wacker. But in the evangelical mafia of historians—as they were often referred to back then—there was only one made-man in Canada, George Rawlyk—and only one in Britain, David Bebbington.

In Britain, as far as I can tell, David had to make his way without any directly applicable role models or mentors. There was no contemporary academic evangelical historiography in a British context, and American attempts were in their initial handful of years. David therefore, while still in his twenties, set himself the opening task of working out a distinctly Christian philosophy of history. The result was his first book, Patterns in History. It is still in print and we should celebrate it now as well, as it was published exactly thirty years ago or, to put it in the light of the official prompt for this celebration, half a lifetime ago. Once again, it needs to be emphasized that David did not have evangelical conversation partners to help him formulate Patterns in History. Instead, he needed to grapple with a Marxist historiography that loomed large at that time in Britain.

Having been educated at Cambridge, David had taken a position in the History Department at the University of Stirling. Stirling was a very young and determinedly modern university. Theology was not to be taught there, and its history department certainly did not think it would be incomplete without an ecclesiastical historian. In other words, unlike Noll and others who were able to develop as scholars in a confessional academic environment that encouraged Christian approaches, David had to make his way by demonstrating that he was a good historian despite rather than because of his interest in Christianity. Even when I defended my PhD thesis in 1997, the member of the department who was considered to be closest to what I was doing, and therefore the best choice for the internal examiner on my committee, was a historian whose philosophy of history was most indebted to the Marxist approach. Part of David’s response to this situatedness has been to develop two careers simultaneously, establishing himself as a well-respected political historian as well as an eminent church historian. Most notably, he is one of the foremost historians of the prime minister W. E. Gladstone. While it might be an exaggeration in one sense to say that this is the British equivalent to being a leading expert on Abraham Lincoln—given Lincoln’s unique position in American political and cultural history—nevertheless it is pointing in the right direction and, moreover, it is unquestionably true that mastering the primary sources is a vastly larger challenge when it comes to Gladstone than Lincoln. And David rose to the top of the field of Gladstone studies in parallel with rising to the top in the discipline of religious history.

In 1989 came David’s Evangelicalism in Modern Britain. I have demonstrated the extraordinary achievement and impact of that book in print already, so I will not rehearse that here, other than to underline once again that, as a mere preliminary to a magisterial work which brilliantly and provocatively connected religious history to intellectual and cultural history across three centuries, he generated the definition of evangelicalism which still has a near monopoly position – Google is just one search engine among many compared to the Bebbington Quadrilateral among alternative definitions of evangelicalism.

I should say a few words on David as a PhD supervisor. Put simply, David has a premier ability to turn his research students into professional historians. One very welcome part of his secret in this area is an extraordinary generosity of time and spirit. As I said in explanation of my dedication of Crisis of Doubt to David: “I have never heard anyone speak of their doctoral supervisor in a way that made me jealous, and I would not trade my time with David Bebbington for the mentoring of any other scholar.” David mentors his research students in a thoroughgoing way from the minutest details—it took me several years, but he did not let up for an instance until I was able to spot a split infinitive on my own—to the broadest and most ambitious issues regarding making one’s way in the profession at conferences, in publications, and as a member of a faculty. David, on behalf of all of your research students past and present, I want to say thank you for the way that you so routinely and effectively go the extra mile for us.

Finally, I should like to observe rather impertinently that David is, to appropriate a snide comment of Mark Twain’s, a man with no redeeming vices. He does not drink or smoke. He is not a greedy eater. I don’t think he even drinks coffee but, if he does every now and then, I am quite confident that he does not do it in the heroic, American way of four or more cups at any given sitting. In other words, I fully expect that there will be another such occasion on David’s 90th birthday when the table will be abuzz with talk about a recent monograph of his. I just hope that I somehow manage to live to be there as well.

Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism Conference

2009-10-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

The Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in Britain Project is hosting a one-day conference for scholars, ministers and the interested public at King’s College Chapel, London, on Tuesday,15 December 2009. The conference will consider the ways in which Evangelicalism andFundamentalism have expressed themselves in the social and historical conditions of Britain and engage such questions as:

• Who have traditionally been Evangelicals and Fundamentalists?

• What doctrines have they upheld?

• What attitudes have they maintained?

• Have Evangelicals displayed the anger often considered characteristic of Fundamentalists?

Featured speakers include Prof. Alister McGrath of King’s College, London, Dr Stephen Holmes of the University of St Andrews and Prof. David Bebbington of the University of Stirling

New "From the ISAE Vault" Page

2009-09-28T06:48:00.000-07:00

The Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals has created a new page entitled "From the ISAE Vault" which will revisit older "classic" issues of its bulletin by making them available on their website.

The latest classic issue to be posted features two book reviews of Mark Noll’s seminal 1994 publication The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Carl F.H. Henry and Jon Butler. In this same issue the ISAE also published a provacative, and controversial, dialogue (entitled “Evangelicals and the Writing of History”) between Yale Professor Harry Stout and conservative British churchman Iain Murray concerning Stout’s recently published biography on George Whitefield entitled The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Eerdmans, 1991).

Evangelical Trends, 1959-2009

2009-09-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

The Latest issue of Anvil 26:2 (2009) has an article by Bebbington entitled Evangelical Trends, 1959-2009

See the description of the article below:

Anvil first appeared in 1984. In this article, David Bebbington, a leading historian of evangelicalism, demonstrates how the half-century around that date witnessed a variety of changes within the Evangelical movement in Britain. Although the most typical characteristics of Evangelicals survived, there was a decline in anti-Catholicism, Keswick teaching, premillennial eschatology, traditional missionary-mindedness and internal unity. On the other hand there was a rise in the proportion of Evangelicals in their denominations, a broadening of their views and fresh ecumenical engagement. Reformed and charismatic sectors grew, black-led churches arose, gender issues became controversial, socio-political involvement increased and relative prosperity had major consequences. By the end of the period the movement was much more diverse than at its beginning.

American Fundamentalism

2009-08-18T15:21:00.000-07:00

Has anyone read this new book, below, which is on the New York Times paperback non-fiction bestseller list?

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet.

The CV Doctor

2009-08-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

Any ideas out there on how to contruct a good cv? What do the top job candidates have and in what order? My understanding is that education goes first, followed by teaching experience (if applying to a liberal arts college), then publications, awards and honors, presentations and last church/community service. Any thoughts?

JY

Bebbington Turns 60!

2009-07-29T10:07:00.000-07:00

A Happy Birthday is in order for Bebbington who turned 60. I told him that he did not look a day older than 50.

JY

David Ceri Jones Interview

2009-07-14T12:42:00.000-07:00

Read an interview with historian David Ceri Jones over at Exiled Preacher. Click here

How Old Is Evangelicalism

2009-07-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

FYI: I wrote a short little piece on Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog entitled "How Old Is Evangelicalism."

Andy

Tim Larsen in the Wall Street Journal

2009-06-13T05:30:00.000-07:00

Is faith irrational? A. N. Wilson, author of many books, among them The Victorians (2003), no longer thinks so. Click here for Tim Larsen's thoughts on Wilson's crisis of doubt titled 'Look Who's a Believer Now'.

Great Caesar’s Ghost! Are Traditional History Courses Vanishing?

2009-06-11T10:18:00.000-07:00

An interesting article in the NY Times on the changing shape of the discipline of history. Click here for the entire article.

The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727-1795

2009-06-07T15:26:00.000-07:00

Has anyone ever read Edmund S. Morgan's "The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727-1795"? Originally published in 1962, this book written by Yale's Emeritus Sterling Professor of American History is one of the all time best biographies of an eighteenth-century figure. Morgan's depiction of Yale's former president is so thorough and well written that it can't help but inspire one's own writings (He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006). For anyone studying colonial American history, "The Gentle Puritan" is a must read!

Jon Yeager

Upcoming Conferences in UK and US

2009-05-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

UK

Tim Larsen will be presenting a paper at the Centre For Dissenting Studies on 23 May 2009. Click here for the schedule.

David Bebbington will be a featured speaker at the Calvin Conference in Geneva on 24-27 May 2009. Click here for more details.

David Ceri Jones will also be presenting a paper at the Calvin conference in Geneva. Click here for more details.

Mark Noll will be a keynote speaker at the Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in Britain conference 16-17 June 2009. Click here for further details.

Conference on Methodism entitled Religion, Gender, Industry: Exploring Church and Methodism in a Local Setting on 16-18 June 2009 Click here for further details.

US

Daniel Walker Howe will be one of the featured speakers at the 1st Biennial Religion and American Culture Conference June 4-7, 2009. Click here for more details.

Graduate School, Don’t Go??!!

2009-04-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

On January 30, 2009, the Chronicles of Higher Education posted the following melancholy article by William Pannapacker entitled, “Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go”. Pannapacker, Associate Professor of English at Hope College, argues that there are only five reasons that a person should attend graduate school in the humanities:

1) “You are independently wealthy, and you have no need to earn a living for yourself or provide for anyone else”

2) “You come from that small class of well-connected people in academe who will be able to find a place for you somewhere”

3) “You can rely on a partner to provide all of the income and benefits needed by your household”

4) “You are earning a credential for a position that you already hold — such as a high-school teacher — and your employer is paying for it”

Pannapacker states that his intention is to warn graduate students that their chances of securing a tenure-track position as a professor is comparable to winning the lottery. Too many students, he says, are ignorant of the reality that “there is a shrinking percentage of positions in the humanities that offer job security, benefits, and a livable salary… They don't know that you probably will have to accept living almost anywhere, and that you must also go through a six-year probationary period at the end of which you may be fired for any number of reasons and find yourself exiled from the profession. They seem to think becoming a humanities professor is a reliable prospect — a more responsible and secure choice than, say, attempting to make it as a freelance writer, or an actor, or a professional athlete — and, as a result, they don't make any fallback plans until it is too late.”

I found Pannapacker’s article sarcastic, unsympathetic, and disturbing – but accurate. I think that graduate students should be aware of the difficulties of landing the elusive full-time teaching position.

Jon Yeager

Christianity and History Forum

2009-04-19T16:41:00.000-07:00

Dr. David Ceri Jones (but not this Dr. Jones) is blogging about several presentations at this year's CHF conference over at his blog.

Thanks for this David. We look forward to your post on the Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in Britain project's workshop, to be held at the University of Stirling next week.

The Need for Historians of Theology

2009-04-07T14:08:00.001-07:00

"Where are the Historians of Theology?"

I remember on one occasion David telling me that a friend of his, when asked if he was a historical theologian, replied no. If I recall correctly, this response came as a surprise to the people interviewing him for the position of a historical theologian at a prestigious evangelical institution. The candidate responded instead that he was a theological historian. He subsequently went on to demonstrate that he was a capable person for this post.

The previous story highlights what I see as a negative trend, particularly among evangelicals: there seem to be few theological historians in the academy. In my estimation, there are countless historians and theologians, but relatively few historians of theology. Alister McGrath and Tony Lane have written excellent books on historical theology, but they are writing primarily as theologians and tend to downplay the rich cultural and social contexts in which theological ideas were birthed. What I want to suggest is that theology is influenced by its social and culture context. Thus greater attention needs to be given to these contexts in order for us to gain a better understanding of theology.

The opposite problem is apparent among many historians. At the history conferences that I have attended, the dominant topics there relate to politics, social and cultural issues, even if they are religious in nature. I remember attending the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society conference at Halifax last July. Two eminent Scottish historians commented to me about the lack of theological knowledge among the members of the society. One of the two provided the honest assessment that he and others simply did not understand the relevant theological issues of the day.

My thesis therefore is that we need more historians of theology. I submit that there is a need for systematic theologians and social and political historians. However, surely there is also a need for historians to examine theology. We need able historians to describe lucidly the context of theological ideas. We need more David Bebbingtons, Mark Nolls, Bruce Hindmarshs, John Stackhouses (perhaps he would not want to be known as a historian), Timothy Larsens, Jaroslav Pelikans, and Roger Olsons. In my historical theology class that I teach at Taylor University, I chose to lecture from Roger Olson’s The Story of Christianity. Why? – because in my opinion, the best way to relate doctrine to students is to explain it within the context of narrative. Not only are Augustine’s ideas interesting, so is his personal life. His lustful struggle as a youth and the freedom that he found in God’s grace informed his thought on predestination (being irresistible called by God). Origen is another interesting thinker. He took Matthew 19:12 as encouraging words for becoming a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven. Despite the wide variance in grades on my first exam, not one of my students missed the following question:

Name the controversial early Church Father known for his allegorical interpretations of scripture who castrated himself in order to become a “eunuch for the kingdom of heaven”

Justin Martyr
Origen
Cyprian
Julius Caesar

Perhaps it is time for institutions of higher learning to consider advertizing for theological historian faculty positions.

Jon Yeager

ISAE's New Website

2009-03-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals is in the midst of updating its website. Two special features include an evangelical timeline and an evangelical hall of biography.

Southern Seminary and the History of Christianity

2008-12-21T20:07:00.000-08:00

Southern Seminary is hosting a conference on 18-19 February 2009. There should be several stimulating papers. I am particularly interested in Gary Dorrien's paper on 'Liberal Theology, the Social Gospel, and the Invention of Social Ethics'. His three volume work titled The Making of American Liberal Theology is an excellent contribution to the study of religious history in America.

I am also looking forward to Grant Wacker's paper, and upcoming book, on Billy Graham.

See more details, including a pdf program of the event, here.

EFB Conference, University of Oxford

2008-12-05T09:10:00.000-08:00

Cullen, myself and David are all on our way to Oxford this weekend to attend the EFB conference at Rewley House on 8-9 December 2008.

You can find details on the entire project here as well as details on the upcoming conference here and download a programme here.

You can also find information on our informal gathering last June 2008 at St Andrews by downloading a summary of the event here.

Cheers,

Andy

American Evangelicals and the Evangelical Complexion

2008-11-10T05:00:00.000-08:00

Joel Carpenter, Director of the Nagel Center for the Study of World Christianity at Calvin College and the author of Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of Modern Fundamentalism, 1930-1946 (Oxford, 1998), has written a thoughtful piece on American Evangelicalism, titled the evangelical complexion.

Carpenter maps the growing ethnic diversity of American evangelicals and discusses the ways in which this diversity has had an effect on the movement's current, and possibly future, concerns. His thesis: American evangelicals are increasingly 'more culturally varied than is commonly supposed'.

I suspect Carpenter is largely right here. Evangelicals are much too often associated with one ethnic group(White Anglo-American), socio-economic status (the middle class), and intellectual tradition (Puritan).

Evangelicalism and the Election: A Review of a Discussion Between Duane Litfin and Richard Mouw

2008-11-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, November 5th, at 7:00 PM at Wheaton College, Duane Litfin, President of Wheaton College, and Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary, discussed evangelicalism, the election and the future relationship between evangelicals and politics.

Dr. Brian Howell has kindly agreed to write a short review of the event for us here at ESRH. Many thanks Brian!

The dust of the election has barely settled. Some still have tears of joy in their eyes and others just have tears, but for evangelicals on the right and left it is a good time to take stock of the political landscape. In keeping with the theme of the incoming administration, the tone of the CACE center’s discussion between Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Seminary, and Duane Litfin, President of Wheaton College was generally hopeful.

The evening began with a discussion of the Evangelical Manifesto. Both presidents said their support for the document came from a concern that evangelicals had become too linked to Republican politics. They intimated that the political sea change of November 4 might be an opportunity to build on the growing political diversity of evangelicalism.

As could be expected from the author of Uncommon Decency, President Mouw was consistently irenic in his comments. Even when the last questioner of the evening accused him of “arrogantly accusing [conservative evangelicals] of being arrogant,” Mouw repented of any “tone” he may have inadvertently conveyed, while gently reminding the accuser of some shameful parts of the evangelical past (e.g., pastors denouncing the civil rights movement and calling Martin Luther King a communist.)

Throughout his remarks, Mouw encouraged us to consider the theological implications of our past and future activism. A philosopher, prolific author, and (full disclosure) one of my favorite professors from my days at Fuller, Mouw’s challenge to bring theological intelligence to our political activism - of whatever stripe - was clear.

President Litfin sounded some themes familiar to those of us in the Wheaton community, but like Mouw, he engaged the topics with a spirit of humility and charity. Litfin noted the problem of trying to reshape U.S. society to become “comfortable” for the Christian, at one point asking, “By what right do we think that America should be comfortable to us as Christians?”

Since the evening was not a debate, there was nothing in the way of disagreement. This was to be expected, but I left feeling that some of the more interesting events from the recent campaigns were not picked up as they could have been.

For example:

James Dobson’s Focus on the Family Action political group put out a controversial “letter” - a fictional account of life in the U.S. at the end of Obama’s first term - that offended many evangelicals. How should we handle “in house” controversy? Is it better to start facebook groups and make public protests to communicate the diversity of our community to the outside world? Or should we work it out among ourselves, preserving the unity of Christian fellowship?

In 2004, many evangelicals made a lot of George Bush’s faith. In this election, Obama was, by some measures, more articulate about his faith than McCain. McCain, however, clearly matched up better with traditional evangelical concerns around abortion. Should evangelicals support policy over faith? (Mitt Romney, anyone?)

The most prominent aspect of this election must be race. White evangelicals did not support Obama in numbers larger than their support of Bush in 2004. Black evangelicals overwhelmingly supported Obama, surpassing their support for Kerry in 2004.[2] Illustrating Emerson and Smith’s thesis of Christian racial division, do White evangelicals have an opportunity to respond to Obama’s presidency in a way that could heal racial division? If so, how?

If nothing else, the evening was an encouragement for all Christians to prayerfully consider our theology and our actions as we engage the world. Now seems as good a time as any.

[1] http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctpolitics/2008/10/jim_wallis_dema.html

[2] http://www.jointcenter.org/index.php/content/download/557/3238/file/BlackVote2004.pdf; cf. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/in-georgia-small-improvements-in-black.html

Conference Featuring the McManis Lectures

2008-11-05T14:30:00.000-08:00

Beginning November 6th, 2008, Wheaton College is hosting the McManis Lectures titled: Reading the Decalogue Through the Centuries. Contributors include D. Stephen Long, Tim Larsen and Carl Trueman.

Below is a preview of Friday's session.

Friday, November 7, 2008

9:15-9:55..............................Jeffrey Greenman, Lancelot Andrewes
9:55-10:10............................Greenman Q&A
10:30-11:15..........................Chapel, Neal Plantinga
11:30-12:10..........................Carl Trueman, John Owen
12:10-12:25..........................Trueman Q&A
12:30-1:30............................Lunch Break
1:45-2:25..............................Stephen Long, John Wesley
2:25-3:05..............................Timothy Larsen, Christina Rossetti
3:05-3:25..............................Long/Larsen Q&A
3:25-4:15..............................Coffee Break
4:15-4:55..............................George Hunsinger, Karl Barth
4:55-5:15..............................Hunsinger Q&A

Evangelical Influence and the Presidential Election

2008-11-02T17:00:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, November 5th, at 7:00 PM at Wheaton College, Duane Litfin, President of Wheaton College, and Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary, will discuss evangelicalism, its influence on this historic election, and thoughts concerning the future relationship between evangelicals and politics.

For more details visit the Center for Applied Christian Ethics.

Look for a guest blog concerning this discussion by Dr. Brian Howell on Friday Nov. 7th.

An Interview with David W. Bebbington

2008-10-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

Neil Dickson, the convener of the Brethren Archivists and Historians Network and editor of the Brethren Historical Review, interviewed Bebbington in early 2003 concerning the state of the historiography of evangelicalism. You can read the entire interview here.

Here are a few excerpts from the interview:

Dickson: Given the emergence of this new evangelical historiography, what do you see as its strengths?

Bebbington: ...But another strength of this evangelical historiography is its strong insistence that you must not only look at religion per se, but you must look at religion in its total setting, look at religion in the setting of society. You must be willing to engage in class analysis of people who went to church. You look at religion in terms of its setting in the world of ideas, so you see theology as part an evolving intellectual pattern, which can be analysed in terms of the history of ideas. What that means is that the evangelical movement is set within its real context, how people really lived in the social and intellectual world of their times. There must be no artificial segregation between the sacred and the profane which was not part of the reality of people’s experience at the time.

Dickson: If we can turn to your own writing for a moment, you have claimed that the defining characteristics of evangelicalism are conversionism, crucicentricism, activism and biblicism. How well do you think the recent literature has sustained what has sometimes been called the ‘Bebbington quadrilateral’? Do you see it as in need of revision or do you still stand by what you wrote fourteen years ago or so?

Bebbington: If you’re writing about anything, you have to know the thing you’re writing about, so there was a need for some sort of definition of what evangelicalism is. The most obvious way of defining it is to take definitions current at a particular point in the past time, and use the way in which people defined the movement at the time. If a person is described as an evangelical, then the person is an evangelical. However, that obvious method does not work. That is because at any one point in time, some people claimed to be evangelicals and other people said they weren’t! And that’s true not just on the liberal side but also on the fundamentalist side. In the inter-war period in Britain, there were lots of liberal evangelicals who insisted that they were evangelical, but conservative evangelicals said they weren’t! And there were some fundamentalist evangelicals, who were very insistent they were the only evangelicals, but some liberal evangelicals said they were not evangelicals. So there are exclusions. You therefore have to have some supra-historical criteriology for determining who you are supposed to be studying. The way to do that is through some model of characteristics built up over space and time which provides a common essential core. That’s what the model of four characteristics is designed to do. It does reflect reality, I think, in large measure from the 1730s right up to the present day, in the western world generally, and therefore I am inclined still to defend it. If you don’t have it, you’ve got to have something that is its equivalent, and I’ve seen no better.

Let me suggest one or two ways in which people have proposed its improvement. One way is to add individualism as a fifth characteristic. I don’t agree with that because a very large number of evangelicals have been extraordinarily communitarian—communitarian in the sense that they’ve placed enormous emphasis on the centrality of the family in Christian nurture, transmitting the faith down the generations, in their emphasis on the Christian church itself. A lot of evangelicals have placed as much emphasis on the doctrine of the church at some times and in some places as many so-called High Churchmen. After all, Edward Irving was an evangelical—he came up with the Catholic Apostolic Church and you can’t get a more elaborate ecclesiology than that…

Dickson: The Brethren too.

Bebbington: Absolutely! Brethren ecclesiology is fundamental to their existence and that’s not just a matter of theory. It’s also a matter of practice—mutual support and mutually acknowledged leadership is of the essence of Brethrenism. So I don’t think you can get away with individualism as being a defining characteristic because a lot of evangelicals have not been.

Another objection that people have made is: well surely some Roman Catholics fit the definition. I’m very happy with that. If Roman Catholics fit the definition, then I’m happy to call them evangelical Catholics. What is more, a lot of Catholics are themselves these days happy to call themselves evangelical Catholics, and if they’re happy I certainly don’t want to deny them the privilege of using the term. There’s even an organisation based in Dublin which is called Evangelical Catholics. They accept these four emphases as being distinctive and important, at the core of their faith.

The third objection that’s been raised is: well aren’t you allowing some evangelicals to be heretics if they fit that typology of four characteristics? Couldn’t they actually deny some aspects of Christology, for example, and still under your definition be evangelical? Well my answer to that is, yes again I accept this impeachment. There are such things as heretical evangelicals. The most obvious instance are the Oneness Pentecostals in the Appalachians of the United States. They actually began by engaging in a distinctive baptismal practice—that is to say baptising in the name of Jesus only—and because their theology is largely determined by that practice, they came up with a sort of Jesus Unitarianism, accepting only that the second person of the Trinity is God,. There’s no distinct first person, there’s no distinct third person. Now that is heresy according to Christian tradition, the councils of the Christian faith, and in the last resort I would say, the Gospel of John. Nevertheless, the Oneness Pentecostals, like almost all Pentecostals, fit the fourfold typology. I’m not prepared, therefore, to say that they are anything other than evangelicals, but I do want to say that they are heretical. I’m therefore perfectly prepared to admit the category of heretical evangelical—it’s not surprising, for there are heretical High Churchmen, there are heretical Roman Catholics and so on.

So, so long as you accept that there are those qualifications that can be made because of the nature of reality, I’m very happy with the quadrilateral still.

David's Itinerary for the end of October and early November

2008-10-24T06:18:00.000-07:00

David will be giving a lecture on Evangelical Theology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries to the Methodist Missionary Society History Project in Birmingham on Monday and Tuesday, 27-28 October 2008. The title of the conference is Did They Believe and Teach Our Doctrines?: Theological Thought and Conviction in Methodist Missions.

In addition to this event David will be delivering the Hughey Lectures at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague, 3-5 November 2008. The theme of the lectures is 'Baptists and Revival.'

David Bebbington's Curriculum Vitae

2008-10-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

I had second thoughts about publishing this post. The reason being that David does not like to advertise his achievements. In a world where self-promotion is second nature to most of us, David does not like to attract attention to himself.

This post, however, should be viewed as an aide to our own historical and theological research, not as an advertisement for David's achievements. So, please see Bebbington's curriculum vitae here.

Congrats to Cullen Clark

2008-10-17T09:12:00.000-07:00

Congrats on the completion of your MRes dissertation!

Young, Restless and Reformed: A British Perspective--Guest Blogger

2008-10-13T06:56:00.000-07:00

Dr. David Ceri Jones, lecturer in History at Aberystwyth University in Wales, has kindly agreed to be a guest blogger for us. His post is a reflective piece on Colin Hansen's book Young, Restless and Reformed: A Journalists Journey With the New Calvinists (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008). David is a contributor to the Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in Britain Project, and is currently writing a history of Calvinistic Methodism in England and Wales during the eighteenth century which will be published by the University of Wales Press in early 2010.

In addition, David is working on a critical edition of Whitefield's correspondence with Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh. This work is being undertaken with the help and partnership of IMEMS and The Jonathan Edwards Centre at Yale University.

Collin Hansen’s Young, Restless and Reformed: A Journalists Journey with the New Calvinists (Wheaton, Ill; Crossway Books, 2008) has already generated considerable debate and discussion on the blogosphere. Charting the resurgence of Reformed convictions in the United States associated with names such as John Piper, the Calvinist Charismatic C. J. Mahaney of Sovereign Grace Ministries, Al Mohler the President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Mark Driscoll of the phenomenal Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Hansen has written a wonderfully evocative and sympathetic portrayal that disabuses readers of many of the popular misconceptions of Calvinism. The emphasis throughout the book is on the life-transforming impact that the discovery of Reformed theology has had on a whole range of individuals. While John Piper is very much the father-figure of the movement, he’s the one individual that links all of the others, Jonathan Edwards, is never far away either! The New Calvinists are predominantly young, passionately committed to Scripture and the centrality of preaching; they are thorough-going five-point Calvinists, embrace the best of modern worship music, are culturally engaged, missional and socially aware.

However, the book has received a relatively lukewarm reception in Britain. Apart from Erroll Hulse’s hope that the resurgence might be the precursor to another Great Awakening [Evangelicals Now, (October, 2008)], most British commentators have bemoaned the movement’s almost exclusive focus on the Five Points; the Calvinism of this new generation is not yet your grandfather’s Calvinism as one British reviewer has put it [see here]. Another reviewer [see here], with a complete lack of historical nuance, has gone so far as to claim that this is actually the third wave of Calvinist renewal in the twentieth century; the first being associated with the founding of Westminster Seminary, the Grand Rapids publishers, the Free Church of Scotland and the irascible practically Hyper-Calvinist A. W. Pink of all people! The second wave was that led by Jim Packer and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. In one of the most revealing comments from a British perspective, Jim Packer comments that the Reformed recovery during the 1950s and 1960s was something of a false dawn, swept away by the charismatic renewal with its emphasis on experience rather than theology. Those who carried on the legacy of Packer and Lloyd-Jones tended to lack their breadth of vision and personal magnanimity, and their positive work was hi-jacked by those who made commitment to Calvinism a badge of honour and retreated to the kind of Reformed ghettos that John Piper talks about in this book.

Some of the individuals which figure in this book are becoming better known on this side of the Atlantic. Despite receiving a frosty reception from some at the Banner of Truth conference in the early 1990s, John Piper is now a frequent visitor to Britain. C. J. Mahaney’s Sovereign Grace Ministries have outposts in Britain, and are in some respects closely akin to the New Frontiers Churches. Mark Driscoll has recently visited Britain, although it maybe that many from the Reformed community would find his style of preaching off-putting, which would be a great pity. But over and above this the American New Calvinists have much to teach Reformed Christians in Britain, and a sober consideration of some of the reasons for their success might pay dividends for Reformed Churches in Britain. One of the most remarkable features of the churches which Hansen visits is their sheer size. Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis having over 4,000 members, Mars Hill, 6,000, Mahaney’s Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland, 3,000, to say nothing of the 6,000 15-24 year olds who attend the New Attitude Conferences or the 40,000 students who gathered in Memphis to listen to Piper on ‘Don’t Waste Your Life’. By contrast most Reformed churches in Britain are small and embattled. Many either hark back to a perceived golden age, whether that be the 1950s, 1859, the 1730s or even further back. Others have circled the wagons in the hope of revival and better days ahead.

The genius of the Reformers was that they were always reforming, and it may be that some of these new vibrant and culturally relevant expressions of reformed theology in the twenty-first century are actually much more faithful to the spirit of the Reformers and Puritans than many of their latter day champions in Britain would care to admit! The challenge of the New Calvinist resurgence in the United States is that many are looking for something deeper than the personality-driven, entertainment-obsessed faddishness that blights much contemporary evangelicalism. Reformed Christians in Britain could do worse than follow Mark Driscoll’s example and become missional Christians, taking their Calvinism and dressing it in new twenty-first century clothes, not to make Jesus relevant, but to show he is already relevant’. Who knows, there might then be a Reformed resurgence on this side of the Atlantic as well.

David Ceri Jones

Aberystwyth University

More on the Emergence of Evangelicalism

2008-10-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

John Wolffe, Professor of Religious History in the Open University, weighs in (Tell Me, Where Was Evangelicalism Bred?) on The Emergence of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities edited by Michael Haykin and Kenneth Stewart.

Wolffe's thoughts: the main argument of the book is overstated. He writes,

'As Bebbington points out, despite its length, the book’s coverage is limited in its denominational range, being focused on Presbyterian and Nonconformist dimensions, and giving relatively little attention to Methodism, which was a central expression of Evangelicalism. Indeed, the treatment of Anglican Evangelicals is also skewed, more attention being given to Calvinists such as Newton and Toplady than to Arminians such as Wesley, who was surely far too pivotal to early Evangelicalism to be dismissed as a "deviation"'.

Beyond Bebbington: The Quest for an Evangelical Identity

2008-09-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

The title of this post is also the title of a recent article written in the autumn 2008 edition of the quarterly journal Churchman. The author, Brian Harris, principal of Vose Seminary (formerly the Baptist College of Western Australia), has written a piece concerning the relevance of Bebbington's quadrialteral for the twenty-first century context. He asks several interesting questions, the central one being:

'is contemporary evangelicalism characterised by the priority placed on conversionism, activism, biblicism and crucicentrism, and if so, is this a valid characterisation of both belief and practice?'

B. Harris, who recently completed a PhD interacting with the thought of Stanley Grenz and the nature and future of evangelical identity, believes that other descriptors might prove more accurate and desirable for contemporary evangelicalism. He argues that contemporary evangelical communities 'might be better characterised as being a community of "passionate piety"'. I will leave the reader to assess whether or not his argument is persuasive in applying that particular descriptive term to contemporary evangelicalism.

My reason for writing about this article by B. Harris is because I think his title is misleading. His real difficulties concerning the Bebbington quadrilateral appear to be with the way in which others apply it to contemporary evangelicalism. The quadrilateral is a combination of priorities which _have been_ the special marks of evangelical religion. Claiming, therefore, that we need to get beyond Bebbington needs to be qualified or rewritten. One alternative title for his article might be: 'Getting Beyond the Application of Bebbington's Quadrilateral to Contemporary Evangelicalism'.

Bebbington's quadrilateral has its difficulties (see an earlier post here), but one of the things that The Emergence of Evangelicalism has shown is that the quadrilateral remains relevant to the interpretation of evangelical religion in the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Whether or not this is true for the twenty-first century context remains to be seen.

Thoughts?

Recent Publications by (a few of) Bebbington's Students

2008-09-03T21:17:00.000-07:00

The most recent edition of the Evangelical Quarterly journal (July 2008) has an excellent article by Jon Yeager titled: 'Puritan or Enlightened: John Erskine and the Transition of Scottish Evangelical Theology'.

Perhaps Jon will grace us with his presence on this blog by answering any questions that arise after everyone rushes out to read his article--which everyone should do!

On another note, Lionel Young has a review of Todd Magnum's The Dispensational-Covenantal Rift (Paternoster, 2007) in the winter/spring 2008 edition of Fides et Historia.

Congrats fellas.

Absence of Blog Posts and John D'Elia

2008-08-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

My apologies to those who tune in to this blog. My wife and I have relocated to the US (from Edinburgh) where we have taken up jobs for Wheaton College in Illinois. My wife will have teaching duties in the department of anthropology and I will be working with the fine folks at the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (ISAE). Both of us will continue to work on our phds while returning to the UK every so often for research.

While packing and unpacking I happened to come across a blog which had a nice post on John D'Elia's new book on George Ladd. There are several interesting (and perhaps uninformed) comments at the end of the post as well. You can read about it here.

I hope to be able to blog a bit more in the coming weeks. As always, feel free to make comments or update the readers on how your own research is progressing.

Cheers.

Andy

New Books on Evangelicalism

2008-07-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

Here are a few books that have appeared recently which might be of some interest to all of us:

The Surprising Work of God: Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism by Garth M. Rosell

Evangelical vs. Liberal by James K Wellman

Jesus Made in America: A Cultural History from the Puritans to the Passion of the Christ by Stephen J. Nichols

A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America by John A. D' Elia (one of David's former students)

Fundamentalism and Evangelicals (Oxford Theological Monographs) (New Paperback Edition) by Harriet A. Harris

Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't by Stephen Prothero

Early Evangelicalism: A Global Intellectual History, 1670-1789 by W.R. Ward

Reinventing English Evangelicalism, 1966-2001: A Theological and Sociological Study by Rob Warner

The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony and Postmodernity: 1950-2005 by Gary J Dorrien

The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America by Thomas S. Kidd

Cosmopolitan Evangelicals

2008-06-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

So this post is more in the realm of sociology than history, but there is a significant amount of overlap. I wondered if any of you had seen or read D. Michael Lindsay's book Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. He contends that the major division in the American evangelical movement is not between those who support the political right and the political left, but between "populist" evangelicals and "cosmopolitan" evangelicals. In an interview conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life Lindsay comments:

"I differentiate between two kinds of evangelicals. Populist evangelicalism has been what a lot of attention has been devoted to. This is the domain of, “We’re going to take back Washington.” A lot of Patrick Henry [college] embodies populist evangelicalism. Principally seeing politics as the arena where you have to bring about cultural change using mass rallies.

An exemplar of this was, in 1980, there was a Washington for Jesus rally, which Bill Bright and a number of other evangelical leaders organized. It’s the idea that a radio commentator would get on and say, “You need to call your congressman today. They’re voting on an issue.” And the evangelicals would flood the phone lines on Capitol Hill. This is an important part of evangelical activism. But I think it’s actually [part of] the previous generation.

That generation is dying off, and it’s being replaced with what I call cosmopolitan evangelicalism. This is the evangelicalism of the establishment, where the edges have been softened. The cosmopolitan evangelicals that came up time and again in my research are those folks who interact regularly with people of different faiths and of no faith at all. They rub shoulders in the secular world all the time. And they don’t lose their faith as a result of that, but they interact with their faith in different ways.

So whereas populist evangelicals want to take back America or convert to the Christianization of this country, cosmopolitan evangelicals have a more modest goal. They simply want their faith to be seen as legitimate, authentic, and – they hope in the end – attractive and winsome. In the same way, they do want their faith to draw others, but [they use] different forms of mobilization [that are] far more subtle, more nuanced, and because of that, more significant."

Fuller Seminary's "Theology, News & Notes"

2008-06-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

Liz thought it would be good to draw our attention to Fuller's Theology, News & Notes publication. The winter 2008 edition was dedicated to the topic of evangelical identity. There are several excellent articles, and most of them interact with an aspect of Bebbington's quadrilateral.

James Bradley, the Geoffrey W. Bromiley Professor of Church History at Fuller, carefully constructs a summary of evangelicalism in the issue. He parses evangelicalism's growth into four stages and examines "a single thread of evangelical theology, the substitutionary atonement, to show how different historical eras and contexts shaped evangelical emphases, and at the same time, how certain elements of the gospel became prominent in the evangelical tradition" (p. 4)

'Fundamentalist' and 'evangelical' as Terms of Public Discourse

2008-05-29T13:44:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting (and good) article on Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism in the public sphere by Christopher Watkin in the latest issue of the Cambridge Papers over at the Jubilee Centre. You can read the article here.

Watkin begins the essay with these lines below.

'Question: What do British Parliamentarians most frequently associate with 'evangelicals'?

Answer: Evangelicals are those who oppose the use of condoms.

Shocked? Perhaps not if you're a regular newspaper reader or television viewer.

Bothered? You should be if you would describe yourself using this term.'

Thoughts?

The Emergence of Evangelicalism

2008-05-26T03:38:00.000-07:00

I thought the first post should be dedicated to the appearance of a recent book evaluating David's descriptive definition of Evangelicalism: The Emergence of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (Nottingham: IVP, 2008) edited by Michael Haykin and Kenneth Stewart. (You can find information on it here, here and here). Unfortunately--for all you US based folks--it is only available in the UK at the moment.

The Emergence of Evangelicalism is, as its subtitle suggests, a book which explores the continuity between the religion of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the evangelical religion that emerged in the eighteenth century. A whopping 18 scholars on both sides of the Atlantic contribute essays to the book. At the heart of the book is the question, 'Did Evangelicalism predate the eighteenth century?' This question was the title of an article by one of the editors (Kenneth Stewart) which appeared in the Evangelical Quarterly 77:2 (2005): 135-153 (it is available on ATLA Religion Database in pdf format for all of you who are, like myself, occasionally too lazy to go to the library!) The central question of the book is a good one, but it is not the first and only question concerning the adequacy of David's quadrilateral. Several other books have questioned the sufficiency of the quadrilateral (see Andrew Atherstone's recent work on Charles Golightly). One of David's former students, Timothy Larsen, has flagged up one of the problems with the quadrilateral: it assumes certain contextual information. He comments:
'For example, if no context is made explicit, an argument could be made that St Francis of Assisi was an evangelical. St. Francis, after all, had a clear, dramatic conversion experience; he was so committed to activism that he pioneered friars out itinerating amongst the people, preaching the gospel, and ministering to physical needs rather than being cloistered monks; his biblicism was so thorough that his Rule was made up mostly of straight quotations from Scripture; his crucicentrism was so profound that it reached its culmination in the stigmata.' (T. Larsen in The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 2.)

Yet, no other definition of evangelicalism comes close to rivaling the scholarly acceptance of David's quadrilateral. I think many people get hung up on the descriptive/prescriptive qualifications when examining the definition as it is configured in the quadrilateral. As historians, we are not (or should not be) attempting to place a prescriptive framework on the past. We hypothesize but then look for data which will make or break our hypothesis. My own thought on the quadrilateral is that although it possesses a few minor cracks, it is a solid descriptive definition of Evangelicalism.

Thoughts?
Andy