Our sister organisation in North America, the Conference on Faith and History holds its 28th biennial conference in October 2012 at Gordon College, Massachusetts. The theme is 'Cultural Change and Adaptation'. Further details and the Call for Papers can be found here:
http://www.huntington.edu/cfh/conference.htm
CHF and the Conference on Faith and History are keen to build closer connections, so participants from the UK would be very welcome at this conference.
The CFH publishes a refereed journal, Fides et Historia, with two issues per year. The most recent has a section on 'Reconciling the Historian's Craft and Religious Belief', with contributions from Brad Gregory, Mark Noll, David Hollinger, Anthea Butler and Bruce Kuklick. Jonathan Yeager has blogged about it here:
http://esrh.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-issues-of-fides-et-historia.html
For more information about the Conference on Faith and History see its website:
www.huntington.edu/cfh/default.htm
Monday, 30 January 2012
Friday, 20 January 2012
Podcasts - Interviews with Bebbington, Larsen, Kidd
Al Mohler, the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has a regular series of podcast conversations with leading public intellectuals, including Stanley Fish, Peter Berger, Steven Pinker and Roger Scruton. He has also interviewed historians like Andrew Roberts and Eric Foner, as well as scholars associated with CHF and the Conference on Faith and History: David Bebbington, Timothy Larsen and Thomas Kidd. It makes for intriguing listening, especially as the interviewees come from all over the ideological map.
To listen, go to 'Thinking in Public':
http://www.albertmohler.com/category/podcast/
To listen, go to 'Thinking in Public':
http://www.albertmohler.com/category/podcast/
Monday, 19 December 2011
Timothy Larsen on the Victorian Bible
An interesting extended review of A People of One Book has just appeared in Reviews in History, along with a response from Larsen himself.
Thursday, 15 December 2011
The TLS & the scandal of the Evangelical mind
This week's TLS makes great reading for anyone interested in Christianity and History. Tom Wright has a two page spread on new studies of Jesus by Joseph Ratzinger (aka the Pope), Maurice Casey and Bruce Fisk. Anthony Kenny has a characteristically fair-minded review of a history of philosophical thought on the soul written by two Christian philosophers. The classicist Kate Cooper considers Peter Leithart's provocative study, Defending Constantine. David Martin reviews a book on secularisation.
Back in 1995, the historian Mark Noll lamented the scandal of the Evangelical mind. This week's TLS suggests that the health of the Evangelical mind might be improving (as Noll himself admits in Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind). Exhibit A is Tom Wright, the world's most renowned New Testament scholar; he reviews Bruce Fisk, who teaches at Westmont College, and presents a clever popularisation of recent work on the historical Jesus; the philosophers Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (whom Kenny reviews) have both been involved with the Evangelical Philosophical Society; Peter Leithart is a Reformed theologian with a voracious intellectual appetite; the opening review engages with The Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science, co-edited by David Livingstone FBA, who has worked closely with Noll on the Evangelical response to Darwinism; and the book on secularisation is co-edited by Timothy Shah, a scholar of foreign relations who has been leading a two-year project on 'the opening of the Evangelical mind':
http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/38/
This is not bad for a single issue of the TLS, and it shows how British and American Evangelicals (of various stripes) are producing first-rate scholarship in biblical studies, philosophy of religion, the history of science, sociology and foreign affairs.
Wright's review of the Pope's Life of Jesus can be read online:
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article842102.ece
Back in 1995, the historian Mark Noll lamented the scandal of the Evangelical mind. This week's TLS suggests that the health of the Evangelical mind might be improving (as Noll himself admits in Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind). Exhibit A is Tom Wright, the world's most renowned New Testament scholar; he reviews Bruce Fisk, who teaches at Westmont College, and presents a clever popularisation of recent work on the historical Jesus; the philosophers Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (whom Kenny reviews) have both been involved with the Evangelical Philosophical Society; Peter Leithart is a Reformed theologian with a voracious intellectual appetite; the opening review engages with The Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science, co-edited by David Livingstone FBA, who has worked closely with Noll on the Evangelical response to Darwinism; and the book on secularisation is co-edited by Timothy Shah, a scholar of foreign relations who has been leading a two-year project on 'the opening of the Evangelical mind':
http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/38/
This is not bad for a single issue of the TLS, and it shows how British and American Evangelicals (of various stripes) are producing first-rate scholarship in biblical studies, philosophy of religion, the history of science, sociology and foreign affairs.
Wright's review of the Pope's Life of Jesus can be read online:
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article842102.ece
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Open Peer Review: a glimpse of the future ?
Dipping one's toe tentatively into the new world of Open Peer Review, a
draft paper of mine on archbishop Michael Ramsey is now available for
comment and criticism at the History Working Papers Project.
The idea is that HWPP can re-create the interchange of a seminar
online, with readers commenting on the paper as a whole and on
individual paragraphs, with an opportunity for the author to respond,
and post revised versions for subsequent rounds of review. More on the
HWPP project is available here, and there is some interesting thinking about the direction in which peer review might go by Jane Winters of the IHR.
I am sure that the creators of the HWPP would be delighted to have as many scholars as possible, from every specialism, try to use the site and let them have any feedback.
This particular paper examines the petitions that were made to Michael Ramsey, archbishop of Canterbury, to call a national day of prayer. It considers the grounds upon which the petitions was made, and the Church’s official reactions to them. In doing so, it sheds light from an unaccustomed angle onto attitudes towards petitionary prayer among some of the British public, on understandings of the role of the archbishop as leader of the nation’s religious life, and of the recent providential history of the nation, particularly during the 1939-45 war.
I am sure that the creators of the HWPP would be delighted to have as many scholars as possible, from every specialism, try to use the site and let them have any feedback.
This particular paper examines the petitions that were made to Michael Ramsey, archbishop of Canterbury, to call a national day of prayer. It considers the grounds upon which the petitions was made, and the Church’s official reactions to them. In doing so, it sheds light from an unaccustomed angle onto attitudes towards petitionary prayer among some of the British public, on understandings of the role of the archbishop as leader of the nation’s religious life, and of the recent providential history of the nation, particularly during the 1939-45 war.
Monday, 26 September 2011
CHF November Conference: Beyond 1611
The next CHF day conference will be held at St Peter's Vere Street on Saturday 12th November. Our subject is 'Beyond 1611: How the Bible Shaped British Culture'.
The quatercentenary of the King James Bible has focussed largely on the creation of this famous translation. But in recent years, historians and literary scholars have been making exciting new discoveries about the impact of the English Bible on British political and literary culture. This conference showcases some of this new research. The four lectures by experts in the field tell the story of how the Bible captured the British imagination from the seventeenth-century revolutions to the Victorians and beyond. A closing roundtable discussion will consider what contemporary Christians can learn from the Bible’s reception history.
10:30: Tea and Coffee
10:50 Welcome from John Coffey
11.00: Nick Spencer (Research Director, Theos): The Political Bible
12.00: Prof John Coffey (University of Leicester): The Abolitionist Bible
1.00-2.00 Lunch
2.00: Dr Jon Roberts (University of Liverpool): The Romantic Bible
3.00: Dr Mark Knight (University of Roehampton): The Victorian Bible
4.00-4.45: Roundtable: The Use and Abuse of the English Bible
The conference fee is £7.50 (or £5 for students, retired, non-salaried)
To book a place, please email John Coffey at jrdc1@le.ac.uk or write to him at School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH. Cheques should be made payable to 'Christianity and History Forum', though it is possible to pay on the day.
The quatercentenary of the King James Bible has focussed largely on the creation of this famous translation. But in recent years, historians and literary scholars have been making exciting new discoveries about the impact of the English Bible on British political and literary culture. This conference showcases some of this new research. The four lectures by experts in the field tell the story of how the Bible captured the British imagination from the seventeenth-century revolutions to the Victorians and beyond. A closing roundtable discussion will consider what contemporary Christians can learn from the Bible’s reception history.
10:30: Tea and Coffee
10:50 Welcome from John Coffey
11.00: Nick Spencer (Research Director, Theos): The Political Bible
12.00: Prof John Coffey (University of Leicester): The Abolitionist Bible
1.00-2.00 Lunch
2.00: Dr Jon Roberts (University of Liverpool): The Romantic Bible
3.00: Dr Mark Knight (University of Roehampton): The Victorian Bible
4.00-4.45: Roundtable: The Use and Abuse of the English Bible
The conference fee is £7.50 (or £5 for students, retired, non-salaried)
To book a place, please email John Coffey at jrdc1@le.ac.uk or write to him at School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH. Cheques should be made payable to 'Christianity and History Forum', though it is possible to pay on the day.
Sir Herbert Butterfield
Readers of this blog will no doubt know of Herbert Butterfield's lectures on Christianity and History, originally published in 1949. The Cambridge professor (and Methodist lay preacher) has been the subject of a number of studies, including C.T. McIntire's Herbert Butterfield: Historian as Dissenter (2004), but his public image will never look quite the same after Michael Bentley's new work, The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield (CUP, 2011). Bentley has unearthed a set of private letters written by the historian to a woman with whom he had a passionate affair in the mid-1930s. The biographer resists the temptation to sensationalise his subject, and offers a sympathetic account of his religious and historical thought. By contrast, Stefan Collini's review in the TLS (19 and 26 August 2011) is kinder to Butterfield's adultery than to his providentialism.
As Collini points out, Butterfield's reputation as an historian has been in sharp decline. His Christian readership has also shrunk, certainly when set aside the immense popularity of his contemporary, C.S. Lewis. Lewis's childlike sense of wonder enjoys a greater appeal than Butterfield's world-weary cynicism. Yet Bentley makes the case for revisiting Butterfield's thought, for taking it seriously, and he deserves a fair hearing.
As Collini points out, Butterfield's reputation as an historian has been in sharp decline. His Christian readership has also shrunk, certainly when set aside the immense popularity of his contemporary, C.S. Lewis. Lewis's childlike sense of wonder enjoys a greater appeal than Butterfield's world-weary cynicism. Yet Bentley makes the case for revisiting Butterfield's thought, for taking it seriously, and he deserves a fair hearing.
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