By Eric G. Wilson (NHC Fellow, 2003–04) In the last twenty years or so, numerous mainstream movies have drawn from the ideas and images of ancient thought to address the collapse of appearance and reality. These films have consistently featured the Gnostic currents that emerged from Plato: not only Gnosticism itself but also Cabbala and … Continued
By Richard E. Spear (NHC Fellow, 1992–93) In this highly original study of Italian baroque master Guido Reni (1575-1642), Richard Spear paints a compelling portrait of the artist — his complexities, his formative experiences, his cultural surroundings, and his unique sensibilities. Spear views Reni's career from a wide variety of perspectives and sets his life … Continued
By Andrew Delbanco (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1990–91; 2002–03) In a spiritual biography of America, Delbanco shows how writers of the past 3 centuries have depicted evil and how they have tried to defy and subdue it. He shows the strategies by which writers such as Cotton Mather, Jefferson and Lincoln, Emerson and Melville, Thoreau and … Continued
By Alex Owen (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) By the end of the nineteenth century, Victorians were seeking rational explanations for the world in which they lived. The radical ideas of Charles Darwin had shaken traditional religious beliefs. Sigmund Freud was developing his innovative models of the conscious and unconscious mind. And anthropologist James George Frazer was … Continued
By John L. Jackson, Jr. (NHC Fellow, 2005–06) The African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem are often dismissed as a fringe cult for their beliefs that African Americans are descendants of the ancient Israelites and that veganism leads to immortality. But John L. Jackson questions what “fringe” means in a world where cultural practices of every stripe circulate … Continued
By Barbara R. Ambros (NHC Fellow, 2013–14) Scholars have widely acknowledged the persistent ambivalence with which the Japanese religious traditions treat women. Much existing scholarship depicts Japan’s religious traditions as mere means of oppression. But this view raises a question: How have ambivalent and even misogynistic religious discourses on gender still come to inspire devotion … Continued
By Eugene D. Genovese (NHC Fellow, 1984–85; 1987–88)
By Jason David BeDuhn (NHC Fellow, 2009–10) By 388 C.E., Augustine had broken with the Manichaeism of his early adulthood and wholeheartedly embraced Nicene Christianity as the tradition with which he would identify and within which he would find meaning. Yet conversion rarely, if ever, represents a clean and total break from the past. As … Continued
Edited by Jodi Bilinkoff (NHC Fellow, 1999–00) and Allan Greer From the cult of Saint Anne to the devotees of the Virgin of Guadalupe, from Saint Anthony who competed with Christ for popularity in Brazil, to Jesuits who mixed freely with shamans that talked with the gods, this exciting new anthology examines the conversion of … Continued
By Michael Philip Penn (NHC Fellow, 2007–08; 2012–13) The first Christians to encounter Islam were not Latin-speakers from the western Mediterranean or Greek-speakers from Constantinople but Mesopotamian Christians who spoke the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Under Muslim rule from the seventh century onward, Syriac Christians wrote the most extensive descriptions extant of early Islam. Seldom … Continued