Church above Vathy bay, Kalymnos island, Dodecanese archipelago, Greece

An Explosive Easter Celebration

The Orthodox Easter tradition of throwing dynamite on the island of Kalymnos echoes the Greek resistance to the Italian occupation of the 1940s.
Christ's Descent into Hell by Hieronymus Bosch

Fire and Brimstone

If our conception of hell was absent from Christianity at the time the religion was born, whence exactly does it hail?

Railroad Chapel Cars Brought God to the People

Between 1890 and 1946, thirteen railroad chapel cars made their way across America, spreading a Christian message in rural communities.
An illustration of the case of Maria Elisabetha Beckensteinerin

Suicide by Proxy

In early Modern Europe, suicide was a sin to be punished with eternal damnation. Some women found an awful workaround: committing murder.
L'Envoûteuse (The Sorceress) by Georges Merle, 1883

Radical Theology: A Syllabus

Radical theology aims to construct revolutionary understandings of myth, ritual, and scripture that speak to the dearth of meaning in our contemporary moment.
Title page for Sinners in the hands of an angry God, 1741

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: Annotated

Jonathan Edwards’s sermon reflects the complicated religious culture of eighteenth-century America, influenced not just by Calvinism, but Newtonian physics as well.
Virgin of Guadalupe, 1779

Abstinence By Juramentos

Long before Dry January became a thing, Mexicans were using a similar program of temporary abstinence based on a pledge to the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Anna te Drieën, 1528

Who Was Jesus’s Grandma?

Canonical scripture never mentions the parents of the Virgin Mary, but the body of St. Anne was vital to Christianity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Photograph: Anti-gay marriage protestors pray outside the Massachusetts State House March 11, 2004 in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Source: Michael Springer/Getty

What is Fundamentalism?

Fundamentalism, which shifts the balance between authority structures and the indescribable divine, emerged after medieval society gave way to the modern.
An elections poster of the General Jewish Labour Bund hung in Kiev, 1917. Heading: "Where we live, there is our country!"

How the Jewish Labor Bund Changed After World War II

For those thousands involved with the Bund, the group played an important role in a era marked by trauma, displacement, and resettlement.