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Archive for June, 2011|Monthly archive page

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Cornbread and Caviar / Bob Jones Jr.

In Books on 23 June 2011 at 7:52 pm

I first read Cornbread and Caviar when I was in high school. Bob Jones Jr.’s love for fighting fire with fire and his willingness to say embarassing things about the yet living made it entertaining fare. Stories about Ma Sunday filching fried chicken? Check. Broadsides against Billy Graham? Check. As a teenager, a line like this was just fun: “What a tragedy to see him [Billy Graham] building the church of Antichrist, masking the wickedness of popery, and providing a sheep’s cloak of Christian recognition for the wolves of apostasy.” After receiving a new copy of the book from my uncle last week, I decided to reread it and see what caught my attention now that I’m a graduate student with an interest in twentieth century fundamentalism.

The first thing that stood out was Jones’s apologia for the racial order of the Old South. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Rapture Index: How the Hermeneutics of Rapture Predictions Are Modern

In Essays on 15 June 2011 at 10:34 pm


Rapture Index screenshot

There are a whole host of adjectives used to describe fundamentalist religion: backwards, anti-modern, reactionary, unscientific, ante-Diluvian.* The idea behind all of those descriptions is that fundamentalist religions have fallen off the train of progress. It’s a whiggish notion that religion, like society and politics, is advancing to greater freedom, rationality, and liberality thanks to science; consequently, fundamentalist religions that don’t share those goals are backwards, and will fade away in time.

It’s also a notion that is wrong.

Read the rest of this entry »

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The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity / Philip Jenkins

In Books on 7 June 2011 at 12:11 pm

Philip Jenkins is an oddball for the academy at a time when historians are expected to focus their research on a very specific topic, time, and place. As a student at Cambridge, Jenkins earned a PhD in history while doing research for the renowned criminologist Sir Leon Radzinowicz. He even found the time to win the BBC quiz show Mastermind by mastering questions in three unique fields: “Christianity AD 30-150,” “Vikings in Scotland and Ireland, 800-1150,” and the “History of Wales, 400-1100.” Since 1980, he has had appointments in criminal justice, American studies, religious studies, and history at Pennsylvania State University.

Before The Next Christendom was published in 2002, Read the rest of this entry »

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“For God(s) and Country”

In Essays on 1 June 2011 at 6:48 pm

The recent post on homosexuality and gay marriage highlighted the tension that arises when two authority structures, government and the church, claim the exclusive right to define activities and regulate behaviors. One bellwether of such conflicts is the military chaplaincy. The recent revocation of the “Don’t Ask” policy has brought this conflict between church and state into sharper focus.  The new policy seeks to ensure that a servicemember can have an openly gay lifestyle free from discrimination while also protecting a clergy member’s right to preach the moral viewpoints of his denomination. A  recent dust-up on the question of same sex ceremonies in military chapels shows how complex this balancing act has already become.

Read the rest of this entry »

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