Edwards, Mark. “Karl Barth’s emergency homiletic 1932-1933: a summons to prophetic witness at the dawn of the third Reich.” Fides Et Historia 46, no. 1 (December 1, 2014): 104-105.
Abstract: The article reviews the book, “Karl Barth’s emergency homiletic 1932-1933” by Angela Dienhart Hancock.
Robinson, Gregory. “The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights: A Call for Reappraisal.” Steinbeck Review 11, no. 1 (March 2014): 46.
Abstract: John Steinbeck had an ambitious lifelong desire to recast the Arthurian chronicles into a modern version of the epic legends. In fact, “John Steinbeck spent months of his life in England exploring Arthurian locations and living in a medieval cottage in Sommerset rewriting Malory with a biro refill stuck into a goose quill” (Hardyment 10). A significant portion of what he accomplished survives as The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976). The book remains almost universally disparaged by the establishment in academe, both medievalist and Steinbeckian. In my opinion, these judgments are wrong. Steinbeck’s 293-page adaptation stands as a noble literary attempt worthy of accolades, since his narrative perfectly satisfies the medieval Arthurian romance traditions and Steinbeck’s own perceptions of contemporary literature with evocative character relationships and courtly interactions—universally adapted for the interests of a new generation. The Acts conveys the distinctive impression of a medieval saga written with a long-established literary voice, but now in Steinbeck’s modern prose.
Edwards, Mark. “Evangelical Catholicism: The Past, Present, and Future of Christian Reunion.” Historically Speaking 14, no. 4 (2013): 26–27.
Abstract: In 1933 Francis Pickens Miller announced that a “third great period” of Christian history was at hand. In this new epoch, he predicted, Protestants and Catholics would “pool spiritual resources” and become “united in one community.” That might seem a surprising claim coming from a lifelong southern Presbyterian. But Miller made that statement while serving as chairman of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), an interdenominational ecumenical movement whose implicit mission was to replicate and ultimately replace Catholicism’s planetary presence. For Miller, the geopolitical times now demanded that Rome and Geneva repent of their historic habits. Vatican centralism and Protestant individualism had both become hindrances to the advance of a world Christian civilization. Each had to give way to the formation of a new borderless Christendom. It would still take thirty more years and the reforms of Vatican II for Miller to see his way fully toward the reunion of Christianity’s classical combatants. “If John XXIII’s goals can continue to be realized,” Miller concluded in his 1971 autobiography, “the Roman church will resume its traditional leadership of Christendom and the Church Universal which will then emerge—including the Roman, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions—will constitute the best hope of mankind.”
Miller’s remarkable confessions were manifestations of “Evangelical Catholicism.” Because of historians’ relative inattention to Protestants of Miller’s liberal, ecumenical persuasion, Evangelical Catholicism is being touted today as the wave of the future. In the past few years, there has been an explosion of websites dedicated to discussing and tracking the Evangelical Catholic crusade from within Catholicism. Perhaps nothing is bringing more attention to the trend than George Weigel’s Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church (Basic Books, 2013). Conservative evangelicals, one of Weigel’s non-Catholic constituencies, have a strong recent history of interest in Catholic theology and practice. Although Evangelicals and Catholics Together lost momentum after its 1994 declaration, signatories have continued to champion evangelical-Catholic cooperation into the new century—including Weigel, the late Richard John Neuhaus and Charles Colson, and those affiliated with the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology. Leading evangelical and Catholic conservatives remain partners in defense of nuclear family values, while younger Catholics and evangelicals appear more and more comfortable trading spaces out of a common quest for authentic, non-politicized faith.
Edwards, Mark. “Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism.” Journal Of American History 100, no. 1 (June 2013): 267.
Abstract: The article reviews the book “Mortal Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism,” by David R. Swartz.
Correll, Mark R. “The Faustian Century: German Literature and Culture in the Age of Luther and Faustus.” Fides Et Historia45, no. 2 (Summer, 2013): 125-127.
Abstract: The Faustian Century uses the Faust legends to cast a vision of the sixteenth century from the perspective of a mature Lutheran hegemony at the century’s end rather than the more familiar viewpoint from the origins of the Protestant movement. These authors conceive that Lutheranism in power gave a stronger definition to the era than Luther in ascendency. The Faustian Century uses the Faust legend as a lens through which to see this troubled time of religious violence and legally enforced orthodoxy. While a historical Faust may have lived and worked in the first half of the sixteenth century, the popular vision of Faust that inspired Marlowe, Goethe, Mann, and others was initiated a half century later by various anonymous authors in the central Holy Roman Empire: “Historia vnd geschieht Doctor Johannis Faustj des Zauberers” (ca. 1572-1585), the expanded narrative Historia von D. Johann Fausten / dem weitbeschreyten Zauberer und Schwarzkünstler (1587), and the third but less important Faust narrative of 1599 by Georg Rudolf Widmann, D. Iohannes Faustus ein weitberuffener Schwarzkünstler vnd Ertzzäuberer (hereafter referred to collectively as the Eaustbuch).
Edwards, Mark Thomas. The Right of the Protestant Left: God’s Totalitarianism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
The Right of the Protestant Left explores the centrality of religious realignment for the development of American and global politics through the story of the ‘Christian Realists’ who led the American Protestant left after World War I. As a public theological community with transnational ties, the Realists attacked modern civilization, preached participatory democratic relations, and called for an ecumenical world Protestantism. Ultimately, in religion as well as in politics, the Realists and their associates at home and abroad proved to be the authentic religious right of their era. This valuable study thus highlights the conservative strain latent within twentieth-century American liberalism.
Correll, Mark R. “The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany.” Fides et Historia 43, no. 1 (December 1, 2011): 73–75.
Abstract: In a well-written study, The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany, Susan C. Karant-Nunn has introduced a new lens by which to study the Reformations. Karant-Nunn takes a broad range of published sermons from pre-and post-Tridentine Catholics, as well as both Lutheran and Reformed Protestants, and reads them for their affective language. In doing this, she confirms and deepens many other historical interpretations of the Reformation era.
Correll, Mark R. “A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy.” Fides et Historia 43, no. 1 (December 1, 2011): 81–84.
Abstract: The Enlightenment has fallen on hard times as an ideological force for change in history. When it is not simply ignored in the developments of early modern Europe, it is described as a product of social forces. In this sharply written essay, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy, Jonathan Israel sets out an ambitious project to restore the Enlightenment as the central focus for the entire historiography of the eighteenth century and the French Revolution. This work functions as an introduction to his much larger three volume set published by the Oxford University Press. This book is meant for a broader audience than his other works, it has a sharply polemical tone, and his argument does not digress into fine detail typical of a scholarly volume. Nevertheless, it is a powerfully effective challenge to early modern historiography.
Eells, Robert J. “Vietnam’s Second Front: Domestic Politics, the Republican Party, and the War.” Fides Et Historia 43, no. 1 (Winter, 2011): 119-120.
Abstract: Johns’ primary focus is on the Republican Party. Although a minority congressional presence throughout this entire period (roughly 1960-1975), they were a political force nonetheless. They were significant players, Johns states, because bipartisanship in foreign policy was more rhetoric than reality – especially as conditions in Vietnam deteriorated. By the mid-sixties, a different form of patriotism was driving Republican doves to the conclusion that the war was a losing proposition, that it couldn’t be won and was causing more harm than good.
Washington, Ellis. “The Delinquencies of Juvenile Law: A Natural Law Analysis.” Acta Universitatis Danubius.Juridica 6, no. 2 (2010): 25-52.
Abstract: This article is a substantive analysis tracing the legal, philosophical, social, historical, jurisprudence and political backgrounds of juvenile law, which is an outgrowth of the so-called Progressive movement-a popular social and political movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I also trace how this socio-political cause célèbre became a fixture in American culture and society due to existential child labor abuses which progressive intellectuals used as a pretext to codify juvenile law in federal law and in statutory law in all 50 states by 1925. Moreover the dubious social science and Machiavellian political efforts that created the juvenile justice system out of whole cloth has done much more harm to the Constitution and to the children it was mandated to protect than any of the Progressive ideas initially envisioned rooted in Positive Law (separation of law and morals). Finally, I present am impassioned argument for congressional repeal of all juvenile case law and statutes because they are rooted in Positive Law, contrary to Natural Law (integration of law and morals), the original intent of the constitutional Framers and are therefore patently unconstitutional.
