Philip Jenkins

In 1768, John Wesley expressed concern about the decline of popular belief in witchcraft and the supernatural: “The English in general, and indeed most of the men of learning in Europe, have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions as mere old wives’ fables. I am sorry for it. . . . They . . . . Continue Reading »

From Every Tribe and Nation: A Historian’s Discovery of the Global Christian Story by mark a. noll baker, 224 pages, $19.99 In 1900, over 80 percent of Christians lived in Europe and North America. By 2050, the comparable figure should be just over a quarter, with the remainder distributed across . . . . Continue Reading »

The British newspaper  The Independent  has an article by Matthew Bell on the  Alpha Course , which it describes, interestingly, as “British Christianity’s biggest success story.” Being the  Independent , and standing at the far distant extreme of secularism, . . . . Continue Reading »

Felices Pascuas ,  Joyeuses Pâques ,  Buona Pasqua ,  Glad Påsk . . . Around the world, Christians use very similar words to wish each other a  happy Easter , and with a couple of glaring exceptions, they call the feast by a variant of  pascha , Passover. Even . . . . Continue Reading »

I posted recently  about the network of small states that existed between the Roman and Persian empires, the two superpowers of Late Antiquity. Most of these buffer states are of little interest to non-specialists, but two of those middling powers in particular demand our attention for what . . . . Continue Reading »

This year more than most, March 21 is a date of multiple significance in the Church of England. You might justly ask whether the English church still matters much on the world stage, but the wider Anglican Communion assuredly does: by the middle of this century, there could well be 150 million . . . . Continue Reading »

This weekend, many millions of people around the world will commemorate St. Patrick as a symbol of Irish national pride. I intend no slight whatever to that national consciousness, nor do I criticize the general partying that claims it as an excuse. What is sad, though, is that portraying Patrick . . . . Continue Reading »

Some years ago, I published  The Lost History of Christianity , which traced the early expansion of Christianity into Asia and Africa, as well as Europe. For perhaps a thousand years, Christianity flourished at least as well in Asia as in Europe, and that when we focus wholly on the Western . . . . Continue Reading »

March 1 is the feast of  David , the early medieval bishop and missionary who became patron saint of Wales. We actually know strikingly little of David apart from that date, of March 1, but I’m going to suggest that represents a good deal in its own right. Through the Middle Ages, . . . . Continue Reading »

Gregory Clark’s A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World is not quite as bad as either its author or publisher try to make it. As reported in a major New York Times article heralding the publication of “the next blockbuster in economics,” the book represents a . . . . Continue Reading »