by | Nov 22, 2023 | Uncategorized
Archaeologists are using over a million amateur finds to study pilgrimage sites, the Black Death, and the Protestant Reformation.
Much has been written about religious life in the medieval era, but thanks to the British fancy for metal detectors, archaeologists are hopeful about gauging just how much more has gone unwritten.
Earlier this month, the University of Reading announced that it has been awarded a million pounds ($1,245,330) by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council to study the role of religion in medieval life, for which the university will employ a unique source of data: the findings of hobby metal detector users that have been logged in the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme.
The museum’s scheme was founded more than 20 years ago, in part to quell archaeologists’ fears that hobby metal detector users were disturbing the historical record.
“At the time, there was this boom in metal detecting, with lots of archaeological findings being discovered, and not really any mechanism to record them at all,” Michael Lewis, the scheme’s director, told Religion News Service. “So the Portable Antiquities Scheme was set up to provide a mechanism, on a voluntary basis, to record all the other sorts of discoveries that have been found.”
Since then, metal-detecting hobbyists in Britain have had more than a few minutes of fame thanks to a BBC show, Detectorists, that debuted in 2014. Detectorists wasn’t their only time in the limelight; three shows about the hobby specifically in Britain made it onto Detect History’s list of its 10 “Best Metal Detecting TV Shows.”
Though archaeologists once worried that the fad would hamper their work, they are now seeing it as another way to further understand our past.
“The reason that we’re interested in this is that sources …
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by | Nov 21, 2023 | Uncategorized
Though Trump remains the frontrunner, poll-watchers say the South Carolina Methodist is having her moment.
Veteran Iowa GOP activist Marlys Popma has gotten a call from Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign every other week for months.
Popma’s is one of those coveted endorsements among the state’s conservative evangelicals. The 67-year-old served twice as the executive director of the Republican Party of Iowa and twice as president of Iowa Right to Life, and worked for the presidential campaigns of John McCain in 2008 and Ted Cruz in 2016.
But until a few days ago, she wasn’t ready to back a candidate. Then, at a town hall on Friday in Newton, Iowa, Popma stood up and made a surprise endorsement. “I was an undecided voter when I walked in here,” she told the room full of Iowans, who had just heard Haley’s stump speech. “I no longer am an undecided voter.”
Later, she told Christianity Today that “as a Christian, I just really felt the Spirit saying, ‘This is what you need to do, where you need to go.’ So I stood up and said, ‘You’ve got my endorsement.’”
The welcome endorsement came as Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Trump-era US ambassador to the United Nations, is having a moment in the polls and following up strong debate performances with more detail on her pro-life stances.
During the fall, she’s risen nearly ten points in Iowa—bringing her to trail Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In New Hampshire, she’s risen 15 points in the polling, from 4 percent in August to 18 percent in November. She’s maintaining second place in her native state of South Carolina. Donors have started to flock to her campaign. Surveys show voters prefer her in a matchup with President Joe Biden.
The momentum comes with a big …
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by | Nov 21, 2023 | Uncategorized
Despite our best intentions, the default practices of digital life can deform our souls.
No one with a good car needs to be justified,” declares Hazel Motes, the protagonist of Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood. If O’Connor were writing today, perhaps she’d have one of her characters proclaim, “No one with a good smartphone needs to be virtuous.”
Such blanket statements about a particular technology may seem unfounded. After all, you can use your car to drive to church or you can use it, as Motes does, to run over a rival preacher. You can use a smartphone to read the Bible, or you can use it to watch porn. The tool itself is neutral, right?
Wrong, argues Samuel James in his perceptive and pastoral book, Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age. The internet and the default practices it encourages can damage our souls despite our best intentions. Online, we reside at the center of a world designed to cater to our every wish.
Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate the dangers of this position is by reference to C. S. Lewis’s observation in The Abolition of Man that “there is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique.”
The online ecosystem provides an incredible suite of tools to subdue reality—in apparently magical fashion—to our appetites and preferences. To the extent that, as James argues, the digital “cut[s] us off” from reality, it makes wisdom and virtue appear obsolete. …
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by | Nov 21, 2023 | Uncategorized
Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” is well-cast, well-made, and without a thought-provoking theory of its subject’s world-changing appeal.
After the violent throes of revolution, in a bankrupt French Republic on the brink of collapse, a man captured the hearts of his people and rose to rule. This is the story of Napoleon Bonaparte, the subject of director Ridley Scott’s new movie, Napoleon, in theaters for Thanksgiving.
Napoleon was one of the most fascinating people in history. Unfortunately, for all its big-budget set pieces and stars, Scott’s film is underdeveloped and confused—in its basic historical storytelling, but, more importantly, in what it has to say about its subject and the meaning of his life.
Napoleon begins with the bloody fall of the French monarchy and, with it, the head of its famous queen Marie Antoinette. From there, we meet Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix), a lowborn but ambitious officer who seizes his chance to rise to power in the chaotic aftermath of the revolution. The movie follows the major beats of his life point by point, from his first military success at Toulon to his final exile on the island of Saint Helena.
Scott pushes through these phases in confusing succession. From Toulon, which is in France, Napoleon is suddenly in Egypt. If you’re a student of 18th- and 19th-century Europe and its constant power struggles, you know Napoleon campaigned through Egypt to weaken France’s rival Great Britain by nipping at their Middle Eastern holdings. But if you don’t already know this context, you simply see Napoleon with the Great Sphinx at Giza—and likely wonder what he’s doing there and why.
Also strangely handled is Napoleon’s conflicted love affair with Josephine, the woman he made Empress of the French, then later abandoned. Their story is the stuff of legend, one of history’s great …
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by | Nov 21, 2023 | Uncategorized
Elevation’s recent hit has stirred a broader discussion on how to incorporate imprecatory language in worship without being triumphalist.
“Spiritual Enemies to be Encountered,” one of the lesser-known texts written by Charles Wesley, urges the believer to persevere in the battle against “legions of dire malicious fiends” and “secret, sworn, eternal foes.”
There’s talk of spiritual enemies coupled with militarism that places Christ as captain and angels as the infantry in a cosmic war against “all hell’s host.” The figure of Christ is center, as conqueror and commander, but also as lamb and lion:
Jesus’ tremendous name, puts all our foes to flight:
Jesus, the meek, the angry Lamb, a Lion is in fight.
By all hell’s host withstood, we all hell’s host o’erthrow;
And conquering them, through Jesus’ blood, we still to conquer go.
There is a long history of militarism in Christian sacred song. From Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress” to Elevation’s recent hit, “Praise,” it’s easy to find examples of lyricists using violent language and imagery to convey the weight of Christ’s victory over sin and death.
But when it comes to songs that describe death and destruction, what framework should worshipers and worship leaders use to determine the difference between rejoicing in Jesus’ triumph and careless triumphalism?
Elevation’s “Praise” is an energetic anthem with an infectious chorus hook that has made it popular as a congregational song and as a sound clip on apps like TikTok and Instagram.
The song begins with the well-known line from Psalm 150, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” The song’s first verse confidently expresses a commitment to praise God in all things, in all circumstances: …
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