Between the 1960s and 2010s, yoga became a familiar feature of American culture, including its Christian subcultures. This article examines Christian yoga and public-school yoga as windows onto the fraught relationship between Christianity and culture. Yoga is a flashpoint for divisions among Christians and between them and others. Some evangelicals and pentecostals view yoga as idolatry or an opening to demonic spirits; others fill gaps in Christian practice by using linguistic substitution to Christianize yoga. In 2013, evangelical parents in California sued the Encinitas Union School District (EUSD) for promoting Hinduism through Ashtanga yoga. Sedlock v. Baird's failure to dislodge yoga exposes tensions in Christian anti-yoga and pro-yoga positions that stem from a belief-centered understanding of religion, the dissatisfaction of many Americans with Protestant dominance in cultural institutions, and a broad-based pursuit of moral cultivation through yoga spirituality. I argue that, although many evangelicals feel like an embattled minority, they are complicit in cultural movements that marginalize them. Naïveté about how practices can change beliefs may undercut Christian doctrines, facilitate mandatory yoga and mindfulness meditation in which public-school children and teachers are required to participate, and impede evangelistic goals by implicating Christians in cultural appropriation and cultural imperialism.

The fifth-century Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius is an unusual example of a surviving minority source. Although scholars have mined his work for raw data on events between 320 and 425 c.e., in contrast to other contemporary ecclesiastical historians, Philostorgius has received little attention. His work has suffered derision, being seen as nothing more than “Arian” polemic and thus as more partisan than its pro-Nicene counterparts. This essay analyzes Philostorgius's role as one of many competitive voices participating in the composition of historical works for the elite readership of Constantinople in the fifth century. Philostorgius's Ecclesiastical History constituted an integral part of the historiography of late antiquity and early Christianity. His representation of the relationship between bishops and emperors reveals a distinctive theory of history which informs his entire work.

This article presents an unpublished and largely unexplored source written in Basel during the international church council, the Vita fratrum predicatorum conventus Basiliensis (1442–1444). It deals with the reform of the Dominican friary, which was effectuated just before the start of the council to prevent scandals. Johannes of Mainz, its author, was the first lector of the reformed friary and wrote the text to corroborate the reformed religious identity of his community. He presented the reform of the Basel friary—which aroused fervent opposition of the original inhabitants—as a new episode in the history of salvation. A second part of the Vita fratrum eulogized the characteristics that Observant friars have in common. By “othering” Conventual friars and by depicting their horrible deaths, Johannes tried both to convince the Observant Basel friars of their superiority over Conventuals and to exhort them to stick to an Observant lifestyle. Unfaithful friars, the narrative warned, were eradicated from the celestial vineyard. For the last part of the Vita fratrum, which presents “the most fruitful plants” of the vineyard, Johannes of Mainz drew up personal and original biographies of contemporary Dominicans, such as Johannes Nider (d. 1438), who is presented as a “mirror of observance” and a “doctor of souls.”

The Family of Love met with considerable controversy in Elizabethan England. This article examines a series of confessions given by members and ex-members of the group before Protestant authorities. Such testimonies are less straightforward than they seem. Specifically, Familists and their opponents used confessions as an opportunity to refine their religious identities. Both sides fought to establish themselves as simple, transparent Christians even as they indulged in the twists and turns of sixteenth-century polemics. Rather than dismissing such sources as distortions, this article explores the ideological diversity that results from the attempt to derive meaning from hostile attention.

This paper examines Joseph Smith's construction of a racialized theology, which drew upon conceptions of Abrahamic lineage and the possibility of “racial redemption” for peoples of African descent through conversion to Mormonism. This ran against the grain of his Protestant and Catholic contemporaries’ religious understandings of race. He expanded upon earlier iterations of his ideas with the introduction of new rituals and liturgy related to LDS temples. Smith's wife may have invited a person of African descent to participate in this new liturgy before his murder in June 1844. The views he expressed about peoples of African descent before his death are inchoate, although high-ranking Mormons related to Smith seemed to have agreed with the possibility of racial redemption. After Smith's death, Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders framed the LDS temple and priesthood restriction in terms of Smith's liturgy rather than any of Smith's varied teachings on race. This paper also argues that Mormonism's racial restriction arose from its roots in the sealing ritual rather than ecclesiological power structures. Mormonism's racial doctrine has often been described as a “priesthood ban,” referring to ecclesiastical authority. However, this discounts the religious contexts in which it arose and excludes the experiences of women and children, who were not allowed to participate in the endowment or sealing ordinances. This paper places Mormonism's temple liturgy at the front and center of the LDS Church's priesthood and temple restriction.

This essay brings to light how the establishment of the Apostolic Delegation to Palestine, Cyprus, and Transjordan (1929) marked a turning point in the Catholic presence in Palestine during the period of the British Mandate. Based on several unexplored archival sources, this paper analyzes the factors driving the creation of the new Apostolic Delegation and the consequences it produced in the Holy See's Middle and Near Eastern policies. The difficult relationship among various Catholic institutions in Palestine and the necessity to adapt the Catholic presence in that region to the new political situation caused the Vatican to send an apostolic visitor (1925) and then to establish direct representation of the Holy See in Jerusalem (1929). This last decision contributed to sounder relations with the British administration and functioned to limit the involvement of European Catholic powers (primarily France and Italy) in church affairs. At the same time, it highlighted the Vatican's will to reinforce the role of the Christian Arab clergy in Palestine while limiting that of European missionaries. This analysis creates a clearer picture of how the establishment of the Apostolic Delegation to Palestine, Cyprus, and Transjordan was at the same time the cause and effect of an important shift in the Catholic perception of Palestine.