When saints utter prophetic words, they must in some way come true, at least in the hagiographic tradition. But what if one holy person curses another (and vice versa)? Such was the case between Epiphanius and John Chrysostom during the so-called Origenist Controversy, which ensued at the end of the fourth century and into the fifth. Epiphanius, working at the behest of Theophilus of Alexandria, was suspicious of John's orthodoxy and accused him of harboring Origenist fugitives. Epiphanius played the provocateur, traveling to Constantinople and conspiring to discredit John and cast doubts on his leadership, while John did his best to accommodate his elderly colleague from Cyprus. Their differences, however, were irreconcilable. In the end, each bishop wished a dubious fate for the other, both of which came true: Epiphanius died on his journey home, and John was deposed twice and died in exile. Yet both are revered as preeminent fathers of the church, and so in order to reach a point in which they could be counted together as saints, a process of hagiographical rehabilitation and selective forgetfulness began soon after their respective deaths.

This piece explores the origins of the anomalous 1655 New Haven statute against sodomy that broke with legal traditions and codes both in England and New England. A lengthy and extraordinarily specific piece of legislation, the New Haven law stands in stark contrast to the minimalist language favored by the English in the early seventeenth century. When viewed within the larger context of clerical animosities, particularly between Thomas Hooker and John Cotton, there is a strong circumstantial case to make for its implementation as an extension of John Cotton's rejected Massachusetts Bay legal code, Moses His Judicials, applied by his friend and admirer John Davenport in New Haven. A devout disciple of John Cotton, John Davenport's New Haven colony relied on Cotton's influence and stood as a rebuke to Thomas Hooker's Connecticut settlements, often criticized as too spiritually lax by those in Massachusetts Bay and New Haven. While seeking to demonstrate greater piety and rigidity, John Cotton and Thomas Hooker sought to exert dominance over the other, with Cotton employing Davenport's colony as an effective castigation of Hooker's perceived liberality. This piece is reflective of trends in studies of sexuality which suggest that ideas and identities related to sexuality do not operate in isolation, but often mirror anxieties not necessarily connected to the regulation of sexual activities. This article situates the 1655 Sodomy Statue within a broader context in order to understand its origins and animosities that potentially motivated its inclusion into the New Haven legal statutes.

This article contextualizes the origins and development of Joseph Smith's secretive Council of Fifty, a clandestine assembly whose minutes were sequestered from public access since their creation in 1844 and were only made available in September 2016. Organized by Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, only months before his death at the hands of a mob in June 1844, the council was destined to introduce a new form of world governance. Colloquially named the “Council of Fifty,” it blended democratic principles with theocratic rule. More than a significant moment in the development of America's largest home-grown religion, however, Joseph Smith's controversial organization and the ideals it represented hint at broader anxieties over the nation's cultural disunity and democratic excesses in the wake of disestablishment. While many embraced the democratization of religious authority, the Mormons and some of their contemporaries countered that it only introduced cultural and political chaos. Examining how groups such as the Mormons grappled with these implications—through orchestrated electoral participation, appeals to higher laws, and revisions to democratized authoritative structures—sheds light on this dynamic challenge of political self-rule during America's antebellum period.

Merging religious history with childhood studies, this article analyzes the rise of the Sunday school movement to show how concepts of childhood, and young people themselves, helped shape early American religious culture. Religious disestablishment, republican concerns about virtue, and romanticized reconstructions of childhood led to a heightened focus on young people within late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Protestant reform movements. The resulting dissemination of Sunday schools across the country established physical and imagined communities of faith dedicated exclusively to young people. They also fostered unprecedented levels of youth religious leadership by allowing adolescents to serve as teachers, challenging inherited patterns of social and cultural authority. Sunday schools thereby became transformative and transactional spaces where young people could both shape and be shaped by the growing Protestant community. This article describes this synergistic relationship between childhood, youth, and Protestant benevolence by examining the two related educational models that emerged within the Sunday school movement in the early national period. The first, exemplified by republican-humanitarian Sunday schools founded in the late eighteenth century, emphasized literacy instruction for the purpose of creating a virtuous citizenry. The second model also aspired to create virtuous citizens, but it envisioned using Sunday schools primarily to evangelize and sanctify the nation. The increasing emphasis on evangelism produced an even more significant structural shift: the transformation of Sunday schools into child-centric institutions that facilitated youth religious leadership. This in turn helped inaugurate a period within American Christianity when institutions and ministries were designed specifically for children on mass scale, permanently altering the religious landscape and redistributing spiritual authority to more marginalized groups, including young people themselves. By revealing how age became an increasingly crucial factor in determining the shape and substance of religious experiences, this article demonstrates that ideals and anxieties about childhood helped create volunteerism, which in turn reshaped the structure of American Protestantism while simultaneously contributing to the formation of a broader child-centric culture that persists in the modern day.

In the German church elections of July 1933, prominent liberal Protestants in the state of Thuringia gave their support to the Deutsche Christen (German Christians), a pro-Nazi faction that sought to establish a uniquely “German” form of Christianity based on “blood” and “race.” At first glance, this development might suggest an affinity between liberal Protestant theology and völkisch (racist-populist) conceptions of Christianity. However, a closer examination of events leading up to this decision reveals that pragmatic and strategic considerations were at least as important as ideology. Although liberal Protestant leaders ultimately determined that cooperation with the Deutsche Christen was necessary, they did so reluctantly, and only after they were convinced that other options had been exhausted. This article examines church-political alignments in Thuringia during the Weimar and early Nazi eras, with an emphasis on the aims and priorities of the Volkskirchenbund (People's Church League), a liberal Protestant faction in the Thuringian regional synod. It traces the decision-making processes behind the events of 1933, the motives and perceptions of key players, and diverse responses of leaders as well as rank and file members. Their story illustrates one of the more complicated paths toward Christian complicity in the Third Reich.

The 1970 release of His Land, a religious documentary about Israel produced by Billy Graham's film studio, World Wide Pictures, took the evangelical world by storm. It was shown to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of churchgoers and encapsulated the mix of prophecy beliefs and cultural arguments that cohered a decade later into the Christian Zionist movement—a major component of the religious right. Surprisingly, American evangelicals were not the only fans of His Land. American Jews, led by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), helped make the film an international success. AJC officials organized ecumenical screenings and kept detailed records of the film's reception, praising it as “an authentic interpretation” that “strengthen[s] the current interreligious discussion on the Middle East question.” By 1971, the AJC was showing this unabashedly evangelical film to Jewish audiences in synagogues and community centers. Through reconstructing His Land's production and reception, this article provides a new interpretation of the origins of bipartisan, Jewish and evangelical support for Israel in the late-twentieth century. It recasts the rise of a Jewish-evangelical pro-Israel lobby as an important religious episode to understanding the rise of the religious right and the continuing importance of confessional and theological identity even in the era of the “culture wars.”

A dozen years ago, I was sitting in a suburban Vancouver church on a Saturday afternoon, waiting for my young sons’ piano recital to start. I looked around the rented facility, new to me, and noticed an impressionistic painting of the crucifixion toward the front of the sanctuary.