This session explores diverse expressions of Christian identity, authority, and transformation across time and cultures. Topics include Protestant visual arts theologies in the U.S., gender and episcopal authority in early medieval Ireland, missionary photography and indigenous conversion in Ecuador, and sixteenth-century Anabaptist martyr narratives. Together, these papers highlight how Christian communities have navigated belief, representation, and freedom in varied historical and cultural contexts.
This paper compares liberal Protestant with evangelical Protestant attitudes toward contemporary art between 1960 and the mid-1980s. Following the fundamentalist-modernist split in the United States in the 1920s, theologically orthodox and liberal Protestants diverged on many cultural issues. A study comparing the diverging theological stances on visual art has yet to be done. I approach this topic through a case study comparing content about contemporary art published in the popular liberal publication The Christian Century (CC) with that in its evangelical counterpart, Christianity Today (CT), during the quarter century in question. I demonstrate that CC theologically embraces contemporary art by suggesting all art can contribute to Christian devotion, while CT critiques such art as pessimistic reflections of secularity. By exploring the rhetoric permeating the larger public through popular periodicals, this paper enhances our understanding of the beliefs and values making up liberal Protestant and evangelical communities in the U.S.
The first portion of the ninth century Bethu Brigte,(The Book of Brigit) climaxes in St. Brigit being ordained as a bishop. There has been little discussion of this topic in the scholarship. The editor and translator of the critical edition of Bethu Brigte, simply states, “This is obviously a scribal error,” pointing out that later portions of the text show St. Brigit refraining from performing the sacrament of baptism. However, the concept had meaning for several communities within early medieval Ireland; Brigit’s episcopal ordination also appears in the 9th century Martyrology of Oengus and is retained, with additional explanations, in the later Middle Irish Life of Brigit. How are we to understand this repeated assertion? This paper investigates contextual factors that might have served to make Brigit the Bishop culturally intelligible to certain populations in early medieval Ireland, particularly the factor of religious status and gender exceptionalism in Early Irish law texts
This paper analyzes the transformation of U.S. Protestant missions in Latin America through the lens of Jim (1927-1956) and Elisabeth Elliott (1926-2015), two Christian Missions in Many Lands missionaries in Ecuador. Through analysis of missionary photography, particularly the image "Jim with a few of his schoolboys in Shandia," and related literary works, the paper demonstrates how the Elliotts represent the shift from fundamentalism to evangelicalism in 20th-century missionary work. Jim exemplifies the fundamentalist approach focused on Biblical exposition, while Elisabeth represents a new evangelicalism that, while still conservative and aligned with White supremacist and capitalist values, adopted a more development-oriented approach. The research examines four key elements in the photograph: the "jungle" setting, professional attires, schoolboy situation, and absence of women. Drawing from diverse sources related to "Operation Auca," including recent indigenous perspectives, the paper illuminates how this transformation reflected broader changes in post-World War II American Christianity and impacted indigenous communities.
Beginning with Het Offer des Heeren (1561), Dutch Anabaptists collected and circulated narratives describing the deaths of their martyrs in ever-expanding volumes, culminating in the Martyrs Mirror (1685). These martyrologies intersperse accounts of the martyrs' deaths with theological treatises and prison letters, as well as purported interrogation records and official court sentences. This paper examines the editorial decisions made by the compilers of martyrologies to advance their apologetic aims of presenting Anabaptist Christianity as both legitimate heir to the Apostolic church and non-threatening to the state. It identifies themes and literary tropes borrowed from early Christian martyr texts and medieval hagiography and demonstrates how Anabaptist martyrologists put these to use to establish their martyrs as true Christians—not heretics deserving execution.