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September 2026

September 22, 2026

Origen, Eustathius, and the Witch of Endor

Origen the Literalist? On Patristic Exegesis One of the chief modern complaints about early Christian...

June 2026

June 16, 2026

What Comes First: Doctrine or Ritual Practice?

As a child, I was taught to kneel next to my bed as I prayed...

January 2026

January 31, 2026

Feeling Guilty About History

“I wish I wasn’t White; I feel guilty for all the bad things that White...

January 20, 2026

Yancey, Gregory, and Theology amidst Sin

It was recently revealed in a Christianity Today article that Philip Yancey is “retiring from...

June 2025

June 03, 2025

Listening to Archival Silence: History and Hidden Voices

Today’s post is a mix of methodological and personal musings, thinking about how our work...

May 2025

May 13, 2025

Waterlilly: Kinship, History, and the Novel

"[T]here is no image of an American Indian intellectual" wrote the Lakota literary theorist Elizabeth...

April 2025

April 15, 2025

On the Forgotten Nicene: Eustathius of Antioch

What is Nicaea about? Most modern accounts will focus on the theological debate between Arius...

March 2025

March 26, 2025

Retethering Ourselves: A Review of Priests of History

You know you are reading a good book when you wish you had read it...

January 2025

January 14, 2025

History and Ourselves: Story, The Past, and Responsibility

David Blight, the eminent Civil War historian, begins every class he teaches in the same...

October 2024

October 15, 2024

Indigenous Intellectuals and their Writings, Reconsidered

Preface I am currently in the third year of my PhD program in history, which...

August 2024

August 23, 2024

Who Are Evangelicals, Again? Two Historians Weigh In

In a recent, already field-defining, essay in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion,...

August 13, 2024

An Unexpected Friendship’s Influence

In the spring semester, I did a bit of research towards a project that while...

August 05, 2024

America’s Dates with Destiny

A couple of weeks ago, browsing books in a thrift store (one of my favorite...

May 2024

May 21, 2024

They Said What Now? On Vaguely Defined Theological Language

Throughout my systematic theology class this semester, I ushered students into the painful process of...

March 2024

March 17, 2024

Undiscerned Retrieval: Ockenga and Protestant History

Evangelicals in the States like to have the Reformers and Puritans on their side. However,...

February 2024

February 21, 2024

To Be Looked For: Towards a Philosophy of History

“You need a language with which to express things, which at a certain age you...

November 2023

November 28, 2023

The Philosophical Assumptions behind Historical Criticism of the Gospels

Twenty-one percent of white mainline Protestants do not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus,...

October 2023

October 17, 2023

Is Arianism Real? On Name-Calling and Othering in the Church

This post is part of a series at the Anxious Bench on ‘Contested Ideas in...

August 2023

August 22, 2023

Historicism Was a Greater Challenge Than Darwinism to Some Late 19th-Century Evangelicals’ Christian Faith

If you ask the average educated American Christian what new academic idea presented the greatest...

July 2023

July 18, 2023

Where are the Mothers of the Church? On Patristic Theology and the Visibility Problem

When someone makes the mistake of asking what I do for a living, I typically...

February 2023

February 20, 2023

Hemispheric Histories for Racial and Ethnic Solidarity, Part I

As an immigrant and Afro-Brazilian historian with a profound interest in the history of Christianity...

September 2022

September 30, 2022

History, Royalty Chic, and the Upside Down Kingdom

On a recent trip to New York City to binge on musical theater, my companion...

August 2022

August 26, 2022

The Annales Movement (Part One): Working Across Social Science Disciplines

“Tell me, daddy. What is the use of history?” (Bloch, 3). This is the opening...