End times for end times
Franklin Graham, son of the famous evangelist, recently warned that the rise of Ebola signaled that we are living in the last days. Few people noticed. Christian filmmaker Paul Lalonde released an awful movie in October about the end of the world. Despite snagging Nicolas Cage for the lead role, Lalonde’s retooling of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’s bestselling Left Behind books fell flat with audiences.
Evangelical apocalypticism looks almost dead.
The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History, edited by Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum
There are probably few reference books that vacationers will drag down to the beach this summer....
Armed and dangerous
Jay Rubenstein offers a lively and well-researched history of the First Crusade. He has a gift for making thousand-year-old history both exciting and relevant.
The Anointed, by Randall J. Stephens and Karl W. Giberson
In high school I was taught that the Earth is about 10,000 years old. But I also learned the basics of evolution from my evangelical teachers....
Mapmakers for God
Three new books give fresh insights into the complicated history of
evangelical Zionism. Together they present a compelling argument that
the founding fathers of the modern state of Israel were not just
Theodor Herzl and his Zionist Congress, but American and British
evangelicals who exercised tremendous political and economic power in
the 19th century—power that modern-day evangelicals like Hagee and his
allies can only dream of.
The Great (and holy) War
In the popular World War I protest jingle “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier,” a hear...
Them That Believe: The Power and Meaning of the Christian Serpent-Handling Tradition
What does it mean to have faith?...
Mormon ghosts
On September 11, 1857, over 120 migrants on their way from Arkansas to California hid in a haphazardly constructed wagon fort in southern Utah....
