Baptist Standard by Ken Camp, Managing Editor Four emerging economic powerhouses popularly known as BRIC—Brazil, Russia, India and China—may provide building blocks for understanding developments in 21st century global Christianity, missions expert Philip Jenkins spoke at the Symposium on World Christianity hosted by Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion. FOR FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution Thomas S.  Kidd, associate history professor at Baylor University, recounts the role religion played in the American Revolution.  Mr. Kidd contends that it was the belief in the right to worship freely that brought the colonists together, from conservative Evangelists to liberal Deists, and remained a [...]

USA TODAY, Americans’ views of God shape attitudes on key issues by Cathy Lynn Grossman Surveys say about nine out of 10 Americans believe in God, but the way we picture that God reveals our attitudes on economics, justice, social morality, war, natural disasters, science, politics, love and more, say Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, [...]

History News Network op-ed by  Thomas S. Kidd The founding fathers saw the American people’s faith and knowledge as integral to the well-being of the republic.  Religion, they believed, teaches people about their moral obligations before God and the fundamental equality of all people, while good education trains us in the enlightening wisdom of the ages.  If [...]

For the second consecutive year, Carlos Colón, ISR Resident Fellow,  is the recent recipient of an ASCAPLUS AWARD.  The ASCAPLUS Awards Program is for writer members of any genre whose performances are primarily in venues not surveyed; and/or writer members whose catalogs have prestige value for which they would not otherwise be compensated. ASCAPLUS Awards are determined [...]

Books & Culture: In American Insurgents, American Patriots, eminent historian T. H. Breen reveals how the will to revolt spread through America between the Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence. The stars of American Insurgents are not the usual suspects—Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and such—but forgotten farming men and women, many of them devout [...]

By Thomas S. Kidd As we approach the ninth anniversary of 9/11, the debate over Islam’s place in American society is reaching a boiling point. This summer, with the proposed building of the Park 51 Islamic center within two blocks of New York’s Ground Zero, the question of Islamophobia has once again gripped the American [...]

Still Reckoning: A master historian’s summing up of World War II. In Books & Culture, September/October 2010, Philip Jenkins reviews John Lukacs’ The Legacy of the Second World War John Lukacs has long argued for the central role of those years in shaping our contemporary reality, and The Legacy of the Second World War represents [...]

Christianity in China: An irreducible complexity. In Books & Culture, September/October 2010,  David Lyle Jeffrey reviews Lian Xi’s book Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China. “This book will be an important source for Sinologists, church historians, and China-watchers among the Christian laity, even though it is limited in its scope [...]

Honorary Doctorate Received Jay Hein spoke at two Indiana Wesleyan University graduation ceremonies on August 14 and received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. [more..]