Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Fundamentalism Turns 100, A Landmark For The Christian Right, William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

These days, the term “fundamentalism” is often associated with a militant form of Islam.

But the original fundamentalist movement was actually Christian. And it was born in the United States a century ago this year.

Protestant fundamentalism is still very much alive. And, as Susan Trollinger and I discuss in our 2016 book, it has fueled today’s culture war over gender, sexual orientation, science and American religious identity.

Review: 'Notre Dame Vs. The Klan: How The Fighting Irish Defied The Kkk,' By Todd Tucker, William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

Todd Tucker’s book is an easy and enjoyable read. And the author has a great story to tell, about the three days in May 1924 when Notre Dame students clashed with members of the Ku Klux Klan on the streets of South Bend. Notre Dame alumni will particularly enjoy it, as Tucker (a 1990 graduate) has written what is in effect a love letter to his alma mater, replete with details about the author’s experience as a student (as well as additional autobiographical information).

How Little House On The Prairie Led Me To A Christian Vision Of Justice, Cynthia Prescott

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

'Not Cruelty But Piety': Circumscribing European Crusading Violence, Susanna A. Throop

History Faculty Publications

Was there such a thing as “crusading violence”? Traditionally the crusading movement has been sharply distinguished from other forms of Christian violence motivated, or at least justified, by religion. However, we have increasingly come to recognize the difficulties of drawing clear-cut boundaries between crusading and other aspects of western European culture in the Middle Ages. This chapter assesses the ways in which crusader violence was like and unlike other forms of medieval Christian violence.

Response: Are American Christians Persecuted?, William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

With an eye toward reuniting the church and the academy, this book focuses on the role that scholarship can play in making good preachers into really great preachers. This is the bridge between scholarly and popular writing that informs the sermon and makes it more powerful and meaningful for the people who regularly listen to sermons. Preachers are challenged to raise the level of their commitment to scholarship as well as overcome any pre-existing prejudices with scholarship. The preacher as scholar is the perfect way for the pulpit to respond to the challenges of a secular, post-modern world that often …

[Review Of] Kamen, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. 4th Ed. New Haven, Ct: Yale University Press, 2014. Xii+490 Pp. $25.00 (Paper)., Gretchen Starr-Lebeau

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Maybe Irish Voters Actually Were Swayed By Their Church, Una M. Cadegan

History Faculty Publications

It’s almost always more incorrect than correct to say “Church” when you mean “hierarchy.” It’s especially misleading in the case of same-sex marriage, and Catholic support thereof.

The vocal public insistence of much of the hierarchy (Vatican, Irish, US) on the impossibility and the danger of same-sex marriage represents a dead end in Catholic moral theology. This is not to undercut the entirety of the moral theology — far from it. The notion that humans are created for relationships, that the power of procreation is deeply and sacredly connected to the love between men and women, that stable, loving families …

Mirrored Images: The Passion And The First Crusade In A Fourteenth-Century Parisian Illuminated Manuscript (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale De France, Ms Fr. 352), Susanna A. Throop

History Faculty Publications

This lavish mid-fourteenth-century Parisian illuminated manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 352) combines a description of the Holy Land with an abridged version of the history and continuations of William of Tyre in Old French known as the Eracles. It is both visually familiar to scholars and under-studied. Several of its Gothic panel miniatures, especially folio 62r, the conquest of Jerusalem, have been published more than once, yet the manuscript's illumination programme as a whole has not been assessed since Jaroslav Folda's 1968 doctoral dissertation. Analysis of folio 62r in the context of both the full illumination …

Review: 'Common Threads: A Cultural History Of Clothing In American Catholicism', Una M. Cadegan

History Faculty Publications

Sally Dwyer-McNulty's Common Threads is a readable, useful study. The work's scope is narrower than the title suggests, but it is evocative nonetheless. The book focuses primarily on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (more on the latter), the clothing of priests and female religious (sisters or nuns), and the uniforms of Catholic schoolgirls.

In The 'Lógos' Of Love: Promise And Predicament In Catholic Intellectual Life, Una M. Cadegan, James Heft

History Faculty Publications

In the 'Lógos' of Love: Promise and Predicament in Catholic Intellectual Life, the title of the September 2013 conference cosponsored by the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California and by the University of Dayton, was inspired by a somewhat unlikely pair: Walker Percy and Pope Benedict XVI. The lógos of love, according to Benedict in his 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, is where “[t]ruth opens and unites our minds ... the Christian proclamation and testimony of caritas”—that Latin word inadequately translated into English as “charity” but which refers to the fullness of love made possible …

Review: 'Harold Frederic’S Social Drama And The Crisis Of 1890s Evangelical Protestant Culture', William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896) is a terrific novel. The title character is a young, naïve, poorly educated Methodist minister who — when the narrative begins — has been appointed to take the pastorate of a small-town church in upstate New York. It is within only a matter of weeks after moving to Octavius with his wife, Alice, that Theron makes the acquaintance of exotic and compelling individuals who challenge his heretofore unexamined evangelical faith. Abandoning his Methodism with impunity, Ware is soon hurtling toward his “damnation.”

Damned but not dead: At the end of the novel, …

Paper Memory: A Sixteenth-Century Townsman Writes His World (Book Review), John B. Roney

History Faculty Publications

Book review by John B. Roney.

Lundin, Matthew. Paper Memory: A Sixteenth-Century Townsman Writes His World. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Galatians, Ephesians (Book Review), John B. Roney

History Faculty Publications

Book review by John B. Roney.

Bray, Gerald L., ed. Galatians, Ephesians. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011. (Reformation commentary on Scripture. New Testament; 10). ISBN 978083082973

Evangelicalism And Religious Pluralism In Contemporary America: Diversity Without, Diversity Within, And Maintaining The Borders, William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

Not that many people need convincing, but the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) provides confirming evidence that evangelicalism in America is alive and well. In this survey, which involved 54,461 telephone interviews, the 76% of respondents who identified themselves as Christians were asked a follow-up question: "Do you identify as a Born Again or Evangelical Christian?" Forty-five percent answered yes. This number obviously includes a fair number of folks within "mainline" denominations and within predominately African-American churches; more surprising, perhaps, 18.9% of American Catholics identified themselves as "born again" or "evangelical."

If one were to depend solely on the …

Dire L’Interdit: The Vocabulary Of Censure And Exclusion In The Early Modern Reformed Tradition, John B. Roney

History Faculty Publications

Book review by John Roney:

Mentzer, Raymond A., Françoise Moreil and Philippe Chareyre, eds. Dire l’interdit: The Vocabulary of Censure and Exclusion in the Early Modern Reformed Tradition. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010.

Review: 'God's Own Party: The Making Of The Christian Right', William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

There has been no end of predictions that the demise of the Religious Right is imminent. Over the past three decades, proof of its impending collapse has included the televangelist scandals, Pat Robertson’s failure to secure the Republican presidential nomination, the election and re-election of Bill Clinton, and the emergence of “young” evangelicals who refuse to toe the Religious Right line (this one keeps popping up).

The latest version involves the notion that economically focused libertarians of the Tea Party will inevitably find themselves in heated conflict with evangelical and fundamentalist social conservatives, thus challenging the power of the Religious …

Catholic Studies In The Spirit Of 'Do Whatever He Tells You', Una M. Cadegan

History Faculty Publications

During the University of Dayton's sesquicentennial in the year 2000, the singer-songwriter alumnus who headed the university's Center for Social Concern performed a song he written for the occasion, "Do Whatever He Tells You." At the reception after the celebration, a colleague still fairly new to the university, nonreligious but with an evident affinity for the university's mission and commitments, commented that he thought the song was little odd; hadn't something like "do whatever he tells you" been written over the gates of Soviet labor camps? My first response to the remark, phrased more wittily than I can recall here, …

The Jesuits In Latin America, 1549 - 2000: 450 Years Of Inculturation, Defense Of Human Rights, And Prophetic Witness, Charlotte M. Gradie

History Faculty Publications

A review of the book "The Jesuits in Latin America, 1549-2000: 450 Years of Inculturation, Defense of Human Rights, and Prophetic Witness," by Jeffrey L. Klaiber is presented.

Not All Autobiography Is Scholarship: Thinking, As A Catholic, About History, Una M. Cadegan

History Faculty Publications

My premise in this essay is that the historian of religion who is a believer has a distinctive need for conscious reflection on this autobiographical connection. Without conscious reflection, it is too easy fall into cheerleading on the one hand or score-settling on the other. is even easier, perhaps, to lapse into self-indulgence-hence the caveat of my title, which is aimed primarily at myself. Thinking about the roots of my work as an historian has made me more consciously attentive to doing the work of the historian, as historian, well. Thinking about where that work has taken me not only …

Richard Newhauser (Ed.), The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities To Individuals (Book Review), Denise A. Kaiser

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Denise Kaiser:

ISBN 9789004157859

Brokers Of Culture: Italian Jesuits In The American West, 1848-1919 (Book Review), R. Bryan Bademan

History Faculty Publications

Book review by R. Bryan Bademan.

McKevitt, Gerald. Brokers of Culture: Italian Jesuits in the American West, 1848-1919. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007. ISBN 9780804753579

Why Have You Come Here? The Jesuits And The First Evangelization Of Native America. By Nicholas P. Cushner, Charlotte M. Gradie

History Faculty Publications

The article reviews the book "Why have you come here? The Jesuits and the first evangelization of Native America", by Nicholas P. Cushner.

Nicholaas H. Gootjes, The Belgic Confession: Its History And Sources, John B. Roney

History Faculty Publications

Book review by John Roney.

Gootjes, Nicholaas H. The Belgic Confession: Its History and Sources. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007.

ISBN 9780801032356

Hispanic Methodists, Presbyterians, And Baptists In Texas (Book Review), R. Bryan Bademan

History Faculty Publications

Book review by R. Bryan Bademan.

Barton, Paul. Hispanic Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists in Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. ISBN 029271291X1

What I Overheard In The Sesquicentennial Conversation, Una M. Cadegan

History Faculty Publications

Catholic higher education is in many ways still responding to the challenge first articulated by John Tracy Ellis in his 1955 essay. In efforts to promote both a unique Catholic identity and a culture of excellence on par with secular institutions, Catholic universities can learn much from their historical context, founding religious communities, and contemporary experience.

This essay suggests some practical applications for campus life and governance that might be culled from a university’s religious history.

Vengeance And The Crusades, Susanna A. Throop

History Faculty Publications

This article demonstrates that the popularity of the idea of crusading as vengeance was not limited to the laity, and, instead of fading away after 1099, the ideology grew more widespread as the twelfth century progressed. The primary aim here is to present the evidence alongside preliminary analysis, reserving further, more detailed interpretation for future publications.

The Essential Carlstadt: Fifteen Tracts By Andreas Bodenstein (Carlstadt) From Karlstadt (Book Review), John B. Roney

History Faculty Publications

Book review by John Roney.

Karlstadt, Andreas Rudolff-Bodenstein von. The Essential Carlstadt: Fifteen Tracts. Waterloo, Ont.; Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1995. ISBN 9780836131161

The Cambridge Companion To John Calvin (Book Review), John B. Roney

History Faculty Publications

Book review by John Roney.

McKim, D. K. (Ed.). (2004).The Cambridge companion to John Calvin. Cambridge University Press.

ISBN 9780521816472; 9780521016728 (pbk.)

Race, Nation, And Religion In The Americas, Edited By Henry Goldschmidt And Elizabeth Mcalister, R. Bryan Bademan

History Faculty Publications

Book review by R. Bryan Bademan.

Goldschmidt, Henry and Elizabeth McAlister, eds. Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

ISBN 978-0195149197

"Monkeying With The Bible”: Edgar J. Goodspeed's American Translation, R. Bryan Bademan

History Faculty Publications

Devotion to the Bible remains an underappreciated aspect of American religious life partly because it fails to generate controversy. This essay opens a window onto America's relationship with the Bible by exploring a controversial moment in the history of the Bible in America: the public reception of University of Chicago professor Edgar J. Goodspeed's American Translation (1923). Initially, at least, most Americans flatly rejected Goodspeed's impeccably credentialed attempt to cast the language of the Bible in contemporary "American" English. Accusations of the professor's irreligion, bad taste, vulgarity, and crass modernity emerged from nearly every quarter of the Protestant establishment (with …