Madness is a sin. The disturbed are shunned. Mental illness is not the church’s problem.
All three claims are wrong.
In Madness , Heather H. Vacek traces the history of Protestant reactions to ...mental illness in America. She reveals how two distinct forces combined to thwart Christian care for the whole person. The professionalization of medicine worked to restrict the sphere of Christian authority to the private and spiritual realms, consigning healing and care—both physical and mental—to secular, medical specialists. Equally influential, a theological legacy that linked illness with sin deepened the social stigma surrounding the mentally ill. The Protestant church, reluctant to engage sufferers lest it, too, be tainted by association, willingly abdicated care for the mentally ill to secular professionals.
While inattention formed the general rule, five historical exceptions to the pattern of benign neglect exemplify Protestant efforts to claim a distinctly Christian response. A close examination of the lives and work of colonial clergyman Cotton Mather, Revolutionary era physician Benjamin Rush, nineteenth-century activist Dorothea Dix, pastor and patient Anton Boisen, and psychiatrist Karl Menninger maps both the range and the progression of attentive Protestant care. Vacek chronicles Protestant attempts to make theological sense of sickness (Mather), to craft care as Christian vocation (Rush), to advocate for the helpless (Dix), to reclaim religious authority (Boisen), and to plead for the mentally ill (Menninger).
Vacek’s historical narrative forms the basis for her theological reflection about contemporary Christian care of the mentally ill and Christian understanding of mental illness. By demonstrating the gravity of what appeared—and failed to appear—on clerical and congregational agendas, Vacek explores how Christians should navigate the ever-shifting lines of cultural authority as they care for those who suffer.
Fruits of Retirement, a volume of poetry by the Lancashire Quaker Mary Mollineux, was published posthumously in 1702 by her husband and other Friends; it was well received and republished five times ...in the eighteenth century. Yet the early Quakers, like most Protestants of the time, rejected creative endeavour as impinging on the prerogative of the Almighty to create. This article considers why Mollineux’s poetry might have been so well received, notwithstanding Quaker strictures against the creative arts. It begins by reviewing the case against the arts, and argues for the importance of understanding the style, form and acceptance of Mollineux’s poetry in the light of the second period of Quakerism in which it was written and received.
Vibrant worship music is part of the Charismatic liturgy all around the world, and has become in many ways the hallmark of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity. Despite its centrality, scholarly ...interest in the theological and ritual significance of worship for pentecostal spirituality has been sparse, not least in Africa. Combining rich theoretical and theological insight with an in-depth case study of worship practices in Nairobi, Kenya, this interdisciplinary study offers a significant contribution to knowledge and is bound to influence scholarly discussions for years to come. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in Pentecostal worship, ritual, and spirituality.
Are conservative Protestant men especially insecure about their sexual prowess and masculinity? A recent state‐level analysis by Perry and Whitehead suggests that they are. In this study, we use ...national data from the 2021 Crime, Health, and Politics Survey to formally test whether conservative Protestant men are more concerned with their sexual abilities and masculinity than other men. Bivariate and multivariate binary logistic and ordinary least squares regression models consistently show that conservative Protestant men tend to exhibit similar levels of sexual insecurity (self‐reported performance anxiety, erectile dysfunction, and ED medication use) and masculine discrepancy stress (perceived failure to conform to normative expectations associated with hegemonic masculinity) as men of other religious faiths (moderate Protestants, Catholics, and other Christians/religions) and men who report no religious affiliation. Our analyses are noteworthy because they call into question the theory of evangelicalism and phallocentric masculine insecurity at the individual level.
I am interested in what Zahl’s insights suggest for formation in the seminary context. To be very clear, I am not in any way taking Zahl to task for not writing a book he never had any intention of ...writing. On the contrary, being largely quite sympathetic to Zahl’s view, I engage his work on its own terms in order to draw out the significance of its findings for an adjacent domain, one in which the problem Zahl identifies is present, though in a different form.In this essay, then, I describe Zahl’s ambitious project more fully, present the account of experience he works with in developing his argument, and summarize the moves he makes in his genealogy of Protestant theological allergy to experience. I then offer some questions pertaining to what Zahl’s work might imply for theological education in the seminary context, rather than in the theological academy. Because this is a contribution to an exchange with the author about his work, I hope the dialogue will provide him with an opportunity to extend his thinking in additional directions, and provide us with the chance to learn from him how some of the conclusions he reaches might inform engagements on these topics that take a shape that is different from the one he himself names in his innovative and highly provocative book.
Inspired by Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN), we develop an argument—the “Scriptural Argument Against Dogmatic Protestantism” (SAADP)—that Protestants who accept the ...doctrine of sola scriptura cannot reasonably hold that Catholic and Eastern churches are in doctrinal error. If sola scriptura is true and Catholic and Eastern Churches have fallen into error, it is improbable that any Protestant can reliably form true beliefs about controversial points of Christian doctrine, including sola scriptura or suggestions that Catholic and Eastern Christians are in error. We evaluate potential responses to SADDP, considering how SAADP should affect ecumenical doctrinal debates.
America's Road to Jerusalem examines the role of the Six-Day War in American Protestant politics and culture. The author argues that the conflict shifted the balance of power between Evangelicals and ...Modernists, eventually culminating in the Trump Administration's 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
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