Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation. Edited by John Fea, Jay Green, and Eric Miller. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. xi + 354 pp. $35.00 Paper.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Douglas Sweeney speaks for authors of Confessing History when he writes, During mid-twentieth century, Christian scholars had to work hard to earn respect of secular colleagues. We devoted a great deal of energy to impressing them with our work. We sought to acquire places of honor at academic banquet. But now that we have done this, a different agenda may be in order (308). Contributors to this volume articulate such an agenda for field of history.Their predecessors answered question What does it mean to be a Christian historian? by focusing on historical research. Scholars in this cohort--notably George Marsden, Ronald Wells, and Mark Noll--often hailed from Reformed backgrounds and brought a Reformed intellectual agenda to bear on their work: they wrestled with role of a Christian in informing scholarship. The Marsden settlement, referred to throughout volume, concluded that Christian historians' background faith commitments should shape their understanding of past, but that humility demands they eschew claims to pinpoint God's specific interventions or purposes in history. Rather, historians should limit their explanations to observable cultural forces (3-4). This consensus had effect of making Christian historical scholarship acceptable within academy; it thus advanced church's mission to world by bringing Christian perspectives and concerns into dialogue with those of secular historians.The new, emerging consensus represented by contributors to Confessing History sees mission of Christian historian as more expansive. Many authors build on Marsden settlement and a few critique it, but all articulate fresh ways that a historian's faith can inform her work. In large part they do this by replacing organizing principle of worldview with that of an emphasis of Lilly Foundation, whose funds partially underwrote this volume. Conceiving of historian's work as a vocation, or calling, leads authors to ask not only how a historian's faith should interact with his scholarship, but also how it ought to inform a much wider range of concerns (xi-xiii). Among these are teaching, relationships with colleagues, and work outside academy such as service to local church and involvement in public history.Approximately half essays in volume explore these expanded locations for intersection of faith and practice of history. Essays by Lendol Calder, Robert Tracy McKenzie, Jay Green, and Douglas Sweeney spin out implications that Christian imperative to love holds for historian. They conclude that it takes intentional, thoughtful effort to translate historical knowledge into effective service to students, colleagues, local church, and general public, and that each of these groups ought to have a claim on historian's heart. Calder, John Fea, Tal Howard, and Christopher Shannon consider in particular detail teaching aspect of historian's vocation. Shannon, most radical voice, declares that the proper site for return of God to history is classroom, not publishing house (180). He, Fea, and Howard argue that Christian history professors must not stop at recounting events of past for students, or even at helping students understand sympathetically a culture foreign to theirs. …