The subfield of intellectual history has derived much of its vitality in the last thirty years from theological history, largely because of the latter’s focus upon continuity or discontinuity of thought in the search for orthodoxy. Yet recent methodological innovations upon reception history allow that subfield to give back, mainly in the way of theological … Read more
Despite growing international interest in Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, detailed English-language studies on the movement’s history in Hungary remain scarce. Existing sources are predominantly published by the denominations themselves and tend to focus on internal narratives of faith and growth. To date, no comprehensive academic account in English has traced the development of Hungarian Pentecostalism … Read more
As of 2025, Africa is home to the largest Christian population of any continent. In the early 1900s, only around ten million of its inhabitants identified as Christians; today, that number exceeds 754 million.[1] Yet within this remarkable continental expansion, there remain countries where Christianity has gained only a small foothold. The Federal Republic of … Read more
Thomas Helwys’s (1550-1616) “A Declaration of Faith” is the earliest English Baptist confession. Published in Amsterdam in 1611, that claim is defensible, but reflects a complicated and controversial time in English Baptist origins. The church Helwys led parted ways with their founder, John Smyth, over doctrinal conflict and also faced scrutiny from other congregations as … Read more
Foxes “Book of Martyrs” was once one of the most widely read and broadly influential books within the English Reformation tradition. Starting as one of the great chained books, given a privileged place in every parish church alongside the English Bible and Book of Common Prayer during the English Reformation, it exerted an incredible influence … Read more
This paper explores William Perkins’s use of covenantal thought as a key tool for interpreting eschatology, focusing on how his understanding of divine covenants shapes his view of the end times. Perkins, a prominent figure in Reformed theology, employs a covenantal framework to unify Scripture, presenting the unfolding of God’s redemptive plan from creation to … Read more
Religious liberty and its cognates, religious toleration and separation of church and state, are fundamental in the development of Western nations. However, in Eastern Europe, the principles and practices of religious liberty evolved much later. It was first in the missionary context that advocates of religious liberty met the obstacles of civil authorities and the … Read more
This paper will examine women’s rights in Islam. The primary texts that will be analyzed include the Qur’an and its tafsir as well as the Hadith and Sira, as Muhammad’s treatment of women and his teachings on marriage and divorce are crucial to understanding the foundational Islamic view of women. Additionally, this paper will compare … Read more
Months before his unexpected death, Jonathan Edwards’s correspondence and his theological notebooks reveal that he was getting ready to write a significant work on redemptive history which sought to cast theology “into the form of a history;” a narrative which would span three worlds: heaven, earth, and hell. This paper examines one part of this … Read more
Over the past seventy-five years, the standard assumption in cultural and anthropological studies has been that the Anglo-American approach to cross-cultural mission work in the 18th and 19th centuries was motivated by a mix of cultural imperialism, spiritual superiority, and ethnic or racial hubris. On this reading, talk of being compelled by an ardent love … Read more