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anxiousbench

John Turner

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May 2017

May 11, 2017

The End of American Evangelicalism

Amid the semester's end, the following is adapted and slightly updated from the Anxious Bench archives... One...

April 2017

April 27, 2017

Keller and Coulter, Orthodoxy and Heresy

Most of you have no doubt heard about this spring's Kellerite controversy at Princeton Theological...

April 13, 2017

The End of Silence

Shusaku Endo's Silence is a very grim novel, as is the much-discussed recent film adaptation by...

March 2017

March 29, 2017

Being Protestant

    Early modern English Protestants, at least the more earnest among them, were known...

March 16, 2017

Defining Evangelicalism: Part 1,242…

Douglas Winiarski's Darkness Falls on the Land of Light begins with the story of two...

March 02, 2017

Where is John the Baptist’s Head?

When I ask students to read and generate questions about the Gospel of Mark, someone...

February 2017

February 16, 2017

Are the gods present?

"After he has lunched on his God on Sunday, / You should worship his turd...

February 02, 2017

Biographies Full of Females

Who's significant? As Chris Gehrz discussed in a recent post, his students -- and most...

January 2017

January 19, 2017

The Desecration of Indian Corpses

In February 1850, Mormon settlers began a brief but bloody campaign against several bands of...

January 05, 2017

John Knox and His Women

Jane Dawson begins and ends her biography of John Knox with touching, familial scenes. The...

December 2016

December 22, 2016

Christ Our Morning Star

Adapted from the Anxious Bench archives: My local Presbyterian church has a "Longest Night" service shortly...

November 2016

November 24, 2016

Augustine and Thanksgiving

In Augustine's Confessions, at the end of a discussion of infancy and childhood, there is...

November 23, 2016

Trumpocalypse

Around eighteen years ago, my wife and I drove out into the countryside beyond Louisville...

November 08, 2016

Election Day Reading Material from The Anxious Bench

Whether you want to read more about the 2016 election - or find something to...

October 2016

October 27, 2016

Alienated and Ambivalent Evangelical Scholars

Along with several of my co-bloggers, last week I was at the Conference on Faith...

October 20, 2016

Latter-day Saints and the Anointing of Jesus

My co-blogger Philip Jenkins is in the midst of a fascinating series of posts (most...

October 13, 2016

Perishing While Flourishing

A few years ago, I went through the painful process of winnowing down the stacks...

September 2016

September 29, 2016

God and the 2016 Presidential Debates

Four years ago, I wrote a post on "God and the Presidential Debates" after the...

September 15, 2016

Black Church, White Jesus

Jesus and I were the only white people in the room. When I was twenty...

September 01, 2016

Mormons Will Vote Trump

The 2016 will go down in the annals of American political history as highly unusual....

August 2016

August 18, 2016

How a Dissertation Becomes a Book

The first book of most academic historians is a strange creature: a dissertation that has...

August 04, 2016

Pelican of Mercy

Whenever I'm in Salt Lake City, I like to stop at the Cathedral of the...

July 2016

July 21, 2016

America’s Public Bible

Many historians have observed that early Americans lived in a culture drenched in scripture. Through...

July 17, 2016

Sacred Violence in Early America

In 1637, English forces and their native allies encircled a Pequot village and burned alive...

July 07, 2016

Forgeries and Schadenfreude

Nearly four years ago, Karen King publicized a Coptic manuscript she had dated to the...

June 2016

June 23, 2016

ratemydeity.com

Review sites protect us from the hotel that serves rubbery scrambled eggs as its "free...

June 09, 2016

The Future of American Evangelicalism

Nearly twenty years ago, Christian Smith assessed American evangelicalism as "embattled but thriving." Nowadays, just...

June 07, 2016

Changes at the Bench

The Anxious Bench began its life as a blog some four years ago. Since then, we've published...

June 02, 2016

A Punch in the Gut

Rupert Neudeck died earlier this week at the age of seventy-seven. Mostly unknown in the...

May 2016

May 26, 2016

Earthly Passions and Celestial Parts

"How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?" In his...

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