At Christian History,we enjoy putting together fresh material for you every week: articles, interviews, book reviews, excerpts from classic texts, quizzes–we’re constantly thinking of fresh ways to dig into the church’s history to increase our understanding and deepen our devotion.
However, a lot of things catch our attention that we’d like to tell you about, but that we can’t devote a full feature to. That’s one of the great things about blogging–it can be a way to call your attention to something interesting in a timely fashion but without having to commission and edit an article.
Here are some of the stories I would have shared with you if the Christian History Blog had existed last week:
I would have told you how workers who were converting a disused South Philadelphia church into a home discovered the long-lost burial place of a former slave, abolitionist, and architect of the Underground Railroad. They found the body of Stephen Gloucester, one of the first African Americans ordained as a Presbyterian minister. He has since been reburied at Philadelphia’s Old Pine Street Church cemetery.
I would also have told you about historian Peter Brown’s good fortune. He was selected to share the $1 million Kluge Prize for Lifetime Study of Humanity. And for those of you who don’t know Peter Brown, I would have shared a bit about his wonderful work on Augustine of Hippo, on the early church’s theological understanding of the body, and on the origins of the cult of the saints.
But that was last week’s news. This week, we welcome our first blog contribution from Bethel University historian and former Christian History and Biography managing editor Chris Armstrong. In coming weeks, you will hear from other Christian History bloggers, all of them CH&B editorial alums: Elesha Coffman, Collin Hansen, and Ted Olsen. Check out their pictures and biographical sketches on the left side of the blog’s main page.
So welcome to our blog. We’ll do our best to keep you up to date on interesting facets and new facts of Christian history.
