Category Archives: books

Time and the Church

The Church, that is, organized Christian religion, has always struggled to make sense of time. The date of Christian holy days, such as Easter and Christmas, has been under dispute for centuries. Some Christians in the past, and even today, … Continue reading

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The Sea Mark and Missionaries

] Available for purchase at https://ash-hill-publishing.square.site/product/the-seamark-captain-john-smith-s-voyage-to-new-england/3JRKUU7G76G7HYTWCBP7U7TF?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false I was a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at Brock University in Ontario in 2010, during which time I taught a class on the History of the First Nations of Canada and researched Anglican missionaries … Continue reading

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History and Miracle

What is a historian to do about miracles, events in time that break the rules of natural law and sensory evidence, products of a supernatural force, that is, God? The easiest approach is, of course, to reject all theism, to … Continue reading

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Captain John Smith: Conqueror, Colonizer, Commissioner

The Sea Mark: Captain John Smith’s Voyage to New England, published by University Press of New England (http://www.upne.com/1611685169.html), juxtaposes three different mentalities and activities: the conqueror, colonizer, and commissioner. Smith the conqueror was a soldier who believed that whoever was … Continue reading

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Love and the Constitution

Is our society founded on Christian virtues and teachings? What is the greatest Christian teaching? What is the essence of Christianity? What is the one truth above all others that sums Christianity, Christian teachings, Jesus’s life? Love. If our society … Continue reading

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The Constitution and Religion

The framers of the Constitution developed their conceptions of religion and government based on a variety of sources: classical political theory, such as Aristotle; European political theory, such as Machiavelli; English political theory, such as Locke and Hobbes; but also … Continue reading

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Jean Louis Berlandier

I am teaching this semester a course on the History of Science, and am using two of my books: Science in the Ancient World, and Frontier Naturalist: Jean Louis Berlandier and the Exploration of Northern Mexico and Texas. The latter … Continue reading

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The Pious Scientist Jeremy Belknap

Jeremy Belknap, who is featured in three of my books: Ebenezer Hazard, Jeremy Belknap, and the American Revolution, Passaconaway’s Realm, and the American Plutarch, was a pious scientist. He believed that piety is the most important response of the scientist to … Continue reading

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Pious Scientists

Oftentimes, missionaries in America were people of exceptional learning. Almon Bacone, for example, the founder of Bacone College, as a faculty member in the 1880s and 1890s taught an incredible number of subjects: Greek, Latin, rhetoric, English literature, logic, natural … Continue reading

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Thinking

“I think, therefore I am.” This famous sentence comes from Rene Descartes the seventeenth-French philosopher. Descartes, a skeptic doubting all, looking for the basic rudiments of reality, discovered a core of reality in the awareness of his own being. By … Continue reading

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