Ephraim Radner

The Anglican Communion has nearly eighty-five million members spread around the globe. Until the mid-twentieth century, these were concentrated among the Anglo-American immigrant churches associated with the British Empire. But by the 1960s, this concentration began a dramatic shift towards Africa . . . . Continue Reading »

The greatest cultural”and ecclesial”challenge we have to confront is the loss of a palpable sense that God’s life makes all the difference in the world to our social and political decisions. Many things have made this witness more and more difficult in our era, and they touch the wider world . . . . Continue Reading »

The tedium of repeated déj vu in this sad little volume did at least send me back to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. It is as if a publisher came to Candida Moss, a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Notre Dame, with a proposal for a quick buck, relying on the political twitter of the times: “You’re an expert: Reframe Gibbon’s notorious chapter on the Romans and the Christians with some contemporary scholarship and cultural fillips, and we can put out a nifty pamphlet that’ll sell.” … Continue Reading »

The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom by candida moss HarperOne, 320 pages, $25.99 The tedium of repeated déjà vu in this sad little volume did at least send me back to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. It is as if a publisher came to Candida Moss, a professor of . . . . Continue Reading »

Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Jon D. Levenson Princeton, 288 pages, $29.95 In the wake of the religiously colored violence of 9/11 and the anxieties it spawned, numerous efforts in the West were made to engage Muslims in common discussions . . . . Continue Reading »

As is usual in religious struggles, François Fénelon lost the battle in the early-modern debate over mystical prayer but is winning (for now) the war. Censured by the pope for some of his views regarding “pure love,” he has sometimes been cast as the naïve dupe of the illuminist widow Madame . . . . Continue Reading »

Professor Margaret O’Gara, a prominent Catholic ecumenical theologian, died on August 16 in Toronto at the age of 65. Prof. O’Gara spent her entire career as part of the Theology Faculty of  the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, at the University of . . . . Continue Reading »

The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Societyby brad s. gregorybelknap press, 592 pages, $35.75 In 1844, the Spanish priest, philosopher, and polemicist Jaime Balmes published the third and final volume of his massive Protestantism and Catholicism Compared, With Respect . . . . Continue Reading »