New Issue of Fides et Historia

I'm enjoying reading the Winter/Spring 2013 issue of Fides et Historia. There are several articles and book reviews that I found interesting. The issue opens with Robert Tracy McKenzie's presidential address at last fall's Conference on Faith and History meeting at Gordon College, "The Vocation of the Christian Historian: Re-envisioning Our Calling, Reconnecting with the Church," followed by articles by Philip Jenkins ("A Critic in the Desert: Robert Browning and the Limits of Plain Historic Fact"), George W. Harper ("'It is a Battle-Royal': A. Z. Conrad's Preaching at Boston's Park Street Church during the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy"), and Daryl R. Ireland ("John Sung's Malleable Conversion Narrative").

The following book reviews caught my eye:

Alister Chapman reviews David Hempton's The Church in the Long Eighteenth Century

Colin B. Chapell reviews Catherine Brekus and W. Clark Gilpin, eds. American Christianities: A History of Dominance and Diversity

Matthew Bowman reviews Edward Blum's and Paul Harvey's The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America

Jared Burkholder reviews Thomas Kidd's American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism

Chad Lower reviews Adrian Weimer's Martyrs' Mirror: Persecution and Holiness in Early New England

Robert Caldwell reviews Michael McClymond's and Gerald McDermott's The Theology of Jonathan Edwards

Miles Mullin reviews Darren Dochuk's From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservativism

Charles McCrary reviews D. G. Hart's From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservativism

Colin Chapell reviews Randall Stephens's and Karl Giberson's The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age

New Issues of Fides et Historia

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