History Commons^™

The Significance Of John S. Mbiti's Works In The Study Of Pan-African Literature, Babacar Mbaye

Babacar Mbaye

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Special Collections And Museum Exhibits: A Civil War Or The War Of Northern Aggression?, Christopher J. Anderson

Christopher Anderson

This essay examines the political nature of curating special collections and museum exhibits. Exhibits are designed to draw attention to historical or contemporary issues in order for viewers to reflect on the past and to ask questions in the present. The contents of an exhibit also echo the educational backgrounds, interests, and biases of both curator and curatorial team. As a result exhibits are framed ideologically, sociologically, and even theologically in order to give voice to the voiceless and to champion certain positions from history. This essay investigates the contested nature of exhibits by highlighting their basic and complicated spectrums …

“Did Jesus Die In Outer Space? Evaluating A Key Claim In Richard Carrier’S On The Historicity Of Jesus, James F. Mcgrath

James F. McGrath

The attempt to use later sources, interpreted in ways that are at best open to dispute, in an attempt to argue against what generations of skeptical scholars have concluded to be likely with respect to the early Christian sources, is never going to make mythicism seem more probable than the hard-earned and intensely-researched consensus of historians and scholars, namely that there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth.

The Catholic Enlightenment. The Forgotten History Of A Global Movement, Ulrich Lehner

Ulrich L. Lehner

No abstract provided.

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

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

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 …

Managing A Merger, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

It was not the sort of place where one would expect to find the folks who produced the More-with-Less Cookbook, but the massive and hermetically sealed Opryland complex in Nashville was where 9,330 Mennonites gathered in early July for a momentous meeting. The two largest Mennonite bodies in the U.S. — the General Conference Mennonite Church (established in 1860) and the Mennonite Church (formally established in 1898, but with roots that go back much further) — voted to merge into one denomination, the Mennonite Church USA, after first finding a way to address the issue of homosexuality.

In Lockdown America: The Corruption Of Capital Punishment, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

Reviews of three books:

• Randolph Loney, A Dream of the Tattered Man: Stories from Georgia’s Death Row.
• Austin Sarat, When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition.
• Mark Lewis Taylor, The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America.

Author's introduction: I finish this review in the shadow of Timothy McVeigh's execution. But while America's most notorious mass murderer is dead, and while the pundits continue to argue the merits and meaning of his execution, news about capital punishment just keeps coming. Next after McVeigh on the federal death list is Juan Raul Garza, but because …

Review: Stuart Banner's 'The Death Penalty: An American History', William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

In this dispassionate but chillingly detailed survey of capital punishment, Banner, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, documents and explains the dramatic "changes in the arguments pro and con, in the crimes punished with death, in execution methods and rituals ... [and] in the way Americans have understood and experienced the death penalty."

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

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

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 …

Fundamentalism, William Vance Trollinger

William Vance Trollinger Jr.

In America fundamentalism is a movement within Protestantism that was organized immediately after World War I in opposition to "modernism," which included liberal theology primarily, and also Darwinism and secularism. A subgroup of evangelicalism, fundamentalism staunchly affirmed with evangelicals "fundamentals of the faith," including the deity of Christ, his virgin birth, his bodily resurrection, and his substitutionary atonement. What distinguishes fundamentalists from other evangelicals is their strident opposition to modernism. They are, to quote George Marsden, "militant anti-modernist evangelicals."

The Decline Of Christianity In Modern Europe, David C. Taylor Jr

David C Taylor Jr

Europe was once considered the epicenter of the Christian religion. For centuries Christianity was not only the main religion of Europe it was also a main political power. The Roman Catholic church, and in turn the Christian faith, enjoyed great power at various times throughout history in the European countries and influenced the culture in many ways. However, today there has been a moral and spiritual decline in Europe of staggering numbers. This short essay will explore possible reasons for Christianity’s decline in Europe in the last century and whether or not there is a possibility that the church could …

Enlightenment And Catholicism In Europe. A Transnational History, Ulrich Lehner, Jeffrey Burson

Ulrich L. Lehner

No abstract provided.

"The Apollos Of The West": The Life Of John Allen Gano, Jerry Rushford

Jerry Rushford

The purpose of this thesis is the presentation of the life of John Allen Gano, a man important in the history of both early Kentucky and the Restoration Movement. Research toward that end resulted in the recovery of many important documents concerning the period. Basic materials are his own writings, whether in his “Biographical Notebook,” his frequent letters to the Millennial Harbinger, or that found reported to or copied in other brotherhood papers. In addition, a wealth of secondary sources are utilized to complete the overall picture of his life and times. Information gathered from primary and secondary sources is …

Patrick Henry’S “Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death,” A National Call To Arms, David C. Taylor Jr

David C Taylor Jr

On March 23 1775, Patrick Henry gave a speech that resounded through the American Colonies as a call to arms against the oppressive British. His cry to Virginians was to no longer let the tyranny of the British Monarchy reign over them. He did not wish to have war, but war seemed to be the only viable option to get the results he so desperately desired.

Stosunki Chrześcijańsko-Żydowskie W History, Pamięci I Sztuce: Europejski Kontekst Dzieł W Katedrze Sandomierskiej [Jewish-Christian Relations In History, Memory, And Art: European Context For The Paintings In The Sandomierz Cathedral], Magda Teter, Urszula Stępień

Magda Teter

[Polish] Obraz Infanticidium wiszący na zachodniej ścianie katedry sandomierskiej i ukazujący sceny rzekomego morderstwa dzieci chrześcijańskich przez Żydów był często przedstawiany w izolacji jako przykład antysemityzmu polskiego oraz stosunków pomiędzy Żydami a Kościołem katolickim. Stał się więc ten obraz swego rodzaju „miejscem pamięci” (lieu de mémoire), w którym „skrystalizowana” została także pamięć stosunków chrześcijańsko-żydowskich w Polsce, oraz tym samy źródłem napięć i protestów. Bogato ilustrowana książka pod redakcją Magdy Teter i Urszuli Stępień ma na celu przedstawienie wstępnego zarysu, ułatwiającego zrozumienie sandomierskich obrazów w ich szerszym kontekście artystycznym, historycznym, i historiograficznym, na tle wydarzeń zarówno europejskich, jak i lokalnych.

[English] …

From Slave Revolt To A Blood Pact With Satan: The Evangelical Rewriting Of Haitian History, Elizabeth Mcalister

Elizabeth McAlister

Enslaved Africans and Creoles in the French colony of Saint-Domingue are said to have gathered at a nighttime meeting at a place called Bois Caïman in what was both political rally and religious ceremony, weeks before the Haitian Revolution in 1791. The slave ceremony is known in Haitian history as a religio-political event and used frequently as a source of inspiration by nationalists, but in the 1990s, neo-evangelicals rewrote the story of the famous ceremony as a ‘‘blood pact with Satan.’’ This essay traces the social links and biblical logics that gave rise first to the historical record, and then …