Christianity Commons^™

Stepping Out Of Constantine’S Shadow, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Beginning in 1970 and continuing for forty years thereafter, Robert Markus informed and enlivened discussions of Constantinian Christianity. His impressive erudition still illumines our understanding of the period “during which Christian Romans came slowly to identify themselves with traditional Roman values, culture, practices, and established institutions.” Markus identifies the world in which that assimilation slowly occurred as “the secular.” Accustomed to hearing about assimilation of that sort when conversations turn to Christianity’s affirmations of—or accommodations to— democratic structures or, more pointedly, to civil religion, we may consider Markus politically correct. Yet because he conscripted Latin Christianity’s prolific paladin, Augustine of …

How Mormons Became American, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

A century ago, it was once a simple matter to assume a norm for American culture and situate the Mormon well outside it. Polygamy was likened to slavery in the nineteenth century (as the first Republican Party platform did in 1856). Brigham Young was compared to an Asian despot. Mormon women were victims in need of mythic frontier heroes like Captain Plum and Buffalo Bill to save them. Even Joseph Smith’s martyrdom could be seen as the penalty for his violation of the right to a free press. Mormonism made available to the playwrights of the Great American Saga the …

Christian Realism And Augustinian (?) Liberalism, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Surely there is enough kindling lying about in the Bible and in subsequent moral theology to fire up love for neighbors and compassion for countless “friends” in foreign parts--and in crisis. And, surely, the momentum of love’s labor for the just redistribution of resources, fueled by activists’ appeals for solidarity, should be sustained by stressing that we are creatures made for affection, not for aggression. Yet experience, plus the history of the Christian traditions, taught Reinhold Niebuhr, who memorably reminded Christian realists, how often love was “defeated,” how a “strategy of brotherhood . . . degenerates from mutuality to a …

Latter-Day Saints, Church Of Jesus Christ Of, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emerged in the 19th c. out of a Restoration* rather than a Reformation* ideology. Joseph Smith* organized the Latter-day Saints in Fayette, New York, in 1830, shortly after he produced the Book of Mormon* which, he claimed, he received from the angel Moroni and translated from an ancient record.

Mormon, Book Of, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

In 1830 Joseph Smith* published a book he claimed to have translated "by the gift and power of God" from ancient gold plates buried in a hillside in upstate New York. The book records the details of three ancient peoples who had inhabited the North American continent.

Mormon Worship, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints*, (LDS), worship God, the eternal Father, and Jesus Christ.

LDS doctrine designates temples as the most sacred sites of worship, the believers' homes as the second most privileged spaces for devotional acts, and the chapels, or meetinghouses, as the third most important. A temple (more than 100 worldwide in 2000) is a holy place, a "house of the Lord."

Smith, Joseph, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

An influential 19th-c. US religious figure, Joseph Smith was a 14-year-old boy living in New York, when, by his own account, God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him.

Young, Brigham, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

Upon Joseph Smith's murder in 1844, Young, as president of the Quoram of the Twelve Apostles, was recognized as the new leader by most members of the Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Augustine And Corruption, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Augustine's political thought or, as it is often called, political theology is a matter of considerable dispute. 'Augustine and Corruption' approaches that dispute by examining the evidence that Ramsay MacMullen presented to substantiate his observation that Augustine 'approved of' corruption. I read that evidence differently and use Augustine's remarks about bribes paid to court clerks, schemes to defraud philanthropists, and tax evasion to support what has been aptly called 'a minimalist' interpretation of his political expectations.

Patience And/Or Politics: Augustine And The Crisis At Calama, 408-409, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Few scholars would quarrel with Ernst Dassman's observation that early Christian "reserve" toward the political cultures of antiquity--a mixture of difference and indifference, which only occasionally gave way to hostility--turned Christians' outcast status into something of a virtue.Still fewer are likely to dispute the assertion that influential fourth-century Christians unreservedly welcomed the changes that came with Constantine and anticipated the "Christianization" of imperial, if not also local, politics. But evaluations of Augustine's enthusiasm later that century and early the next never fail now to elicit disagreement

Fasting In England In The 1560s: "A Thinge Of Nought"?, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

We continue to learn about the unsettled condition of the Elizabethan religious settlement in the early 1560s. “Perceived deficiencies” associated with a woman's sovereignty and supreme governance of the realm's reformed church dictated that counsel be “insistently proposed to and, at points, imposed upon” Elizabeth I “by her godly male subjects.” We now appreciate, however, that the queen was not drawn or driven to the left by puritans, as John Neale influentially suspected in the 1950s. And we may conclude from David Crankshaw's recent study of the Canterbury provincial convocation of 1563 that the bishops her government appointed were not …

Prophesying Again, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Discusses the lay involvement in the prophecies or exercises devised by Elizabethan reformers in England as in-service training during the 16th century. Attitude toward prophesying during the period; Exercises of the refugee churches; Efforts to suppress the prophesying.

How Socially Conservative Were The Elizabethan Religious Radicals?, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Social historians have long suspected that religious convictions made a difference in the sixteenth century, and historians of the late Tudor religious and political settlements have recently emphasized the differences that advanced forms of Calvinism are alleged to have made. They say that religious radicals--puritans and precisianists, to their contemporary critics--were social conservatives who thought wealth was a blessing and poverty a curse. According to Keith Wrightson and David Levine, the "firmly committed Puritans among the yeomen of the parish" promoted a "sense of social distance" between themselves ("the better sort") and the less respectable. The 1995 republication of Wrightson's …

Much In Prayer: The Inward Researches Of Elizabethan Protestants, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Examines some Elizabethan Protestants' reasons for praying and the controversy over forms of prayer during the period. Calvinists' rejection of prescribing times for prayer; Premium on feeling of misery in prayer; Godly sorrow; Suppression of rational judgment; Debate on fixed and impromptu prayers; Prayer as art.

Social History, Psychohistory, And The Prehistory Of Swiss Anabaptism, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The article discusses a variety of issues concerning social history, psychohistory and the prehistory of Swiss Anabaptism. It explores the contextualist approach to the history and practice of Anabaptism. It traces the prehistory of Swiss Anabaptism and the normative vision of Anabaptist origins. The article also examines the theology of martyrdom according to Conrad Grebel, father of Anabaptist.