The Strange Speech of Sultan Valad
September 27, 2021
Michael Pifer— Sometime in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, a Sufi poet named Sultan Valad was trying his hardest to get out of delivering a public sermon. He… READ MORE
Category: Religion
People of the Blog
September 10, 2021
Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper— When the Yiddish-language Hasidic online chat forum Kave Shtibel (Coffee House) began a thread about our book, A Fortress in Brooklyn, less than two weeks… READ MORE
A Baby’s First Visit to Church in 1500
August 31, 2021
Nicholas Orme— This is a scene from a fifteenth-century stained-glass window at Doddiscombsleigh: a country church in Devon, in the south-west of England. It shows what would have been a… READ MORE
The Gospel according to Thomas
August 23, 2021
Bentley Layton— The Gospel according to Thomas (“The Gospel of Thomas”) is an anthology of 114 “obscure sayings” of Jesus, which, according to its prologue, were collected and transmitted by… READ MORE
Catholic Hostility toward Evangelicals in Fascist Italy
August 20, 2021
Kevin Madigan— Around 1870, evangelical Christians, as their Catholic adversaries would put it, “invaded” Italy in large numbers. Before unification and the inception of a new liberal order, the extension… READ MORE
Doing Business with the Gods in the Ancient World
August 11, 2021
Jennifer A. Quigley— People today don’t usually think of going to the bank, buying groceries, and signing a lease as religious acts, but in the ancient world, they very often… READ MORE
Work, Time, and Finance-Dominated Capitalism
August 10, 2021
Kathryn Tanner— The Protestant ethic was the spirit of industrial capitalism in its Fordist varieties, where investments sunk in expensive equipment dedicated to the production of one thing meant mass… READ MORE
When the Pope Was in Prison
June 14, 2021
Ambrogio A. Caiani— On the night of 5 July 1809 French forces kidnapped Barnabà Chiaramonti, Pope Pius VII, from his private apartments in the Quirinal Palace in Rome. He would… READ MORE
What are Biblical Values?
May 10, 2021
John J. Collins— For many Christians the importance of biblical law and ethical demands has been relativized by the Christian emphasis on faith. “We know,” writes Saint Paul to the… READ MORE
Liberty in the Things of God
May 6, 2021
Robert Louis Wilken— To understand how religious freedom came to be cherished as a fundamental human right, the story must begin long before the Enlightenment and the development of modern… READ MORE
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