Articles & Essays

I’ve got to be honest. There was a time, not long ago, when I had become weary of conversations about “Christian scholarship.” These conversations, it seemed to me, had become stale, and sometimes took the place of actually doing scholarship,…

Sola gratia. By grace alone. With the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Protestants around the world have been revisiting this revolutionary concept. And rightly so. But with the festivities behind us, let’s set grace aside for a moment, and focus on…

“Me too.” I first saw these words on a friend’s Facebook post, a friend who only recently went through a grueling process to hold her workplace sexual harasser accountable. Prompted by the campaign inspired by activist Tarana Burke, she posted it along…

This blog post is a condensed excerpt from A New Gospel for Women: Katharine Bushnell and the Challenge of Christian Feminism (OUP 2015), pp. 75-78. It was the morning of October 16, 1893. The day dawned bright and frosty, and excitement was…

As a historian of American Christianity, I have followed with great interest the conversation Tish Harrison Warren began earlier this spring at Christianity Today’s #AmplifyWomen series. In an essay titled “Who’s In Charge of the Christian Blogosphere?,” Warren identified “a new crisis…

Imagine for a moment a team of anthropologists walking through your door, taking a look around, and settling in for a close observation of your possessions, how you interact with them, and what this means about American life. That’s pretty…

The fact remains that most American Christians remain startlingly ignorant of critical aspects of their church’s history. Learning this history can help us more faithfully know ourselves, love others, and follow Christ.

In the end, history doesn’t offer clear answers when it comes to addressing issues of gender, family, and labor. But a knowledge of history and its complexities can help us ask better questions.

So, you’ve probably heard by now: The Democrats have a religion problem. Historian Daniel K. Williams certainly isn’t the first to make this case, but in light of Jon Ossoff’s defeat in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District last week, Williams thought…

1. “Christian feminism” is an oxymoron…and “secular feminism” is a tautology. Yes, there are certainly “secular feminists,” and there are some who are downright hostile to Christianity. But to consider Christianity and feminism as mutually exclusive obscures a long and…