The Carolingian period, roughly the eighth and ninth centuries, was dynamic and decisive in European religious history. The ruling dynasty and the clerical elite promoted wave after wave of reform that I call “unifying,” “specifying,” and “sanctifying.” This presidential address argues that religion was the key unifying and universalizing force in the Carolingian world; that the Carolingians were obsessed with doing things the right way—usually the Roman way; and that the Carolingians sought to inculcate Christian behavior more than religious knowledge. The address concludes by arguing that the Carolingians put a markedly European stamp on Christianity and that they Romanized Christianity well before the papacy attempted to do so.

Over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Christian thinkers turned rhetorically to the biblical servant Hagar (Genesis 16 and 21) to establish, or at least support, specific policies restricting Jewish interaction with Christians. Referencing St. Paul's allegorical interpretation of Abraham, Sarah, and her servant Hagar in his Epistle to the Galatians, they transformed a longstanding association of Hagar with the old law, synagogue, or a vague Jewish “other” into a figure representative of Jews living in their midst. The centrality of St. Paul's allegory in western Christian liturgical and exegetical traditions made it a useful framework for thinking about contemporary Christian-Jewish relations. This article is a consideration of the intertwining of biblical typology and history; an examination of the way one particularly rich typological reading came to give meaning to relationships between real Christians and Jews in medieval Europe. A proliferation of Hagar imagery in word and image offered a structure for thinking about Jewish policies in a way that moved beyond Augustine's insistence on toleration. The association of living Jews with the haughty, disrespectful, ungrateful servant sent away by Abraham provided an effective support for increasingly harsh treatment of Jews in Christian society.

Religious controversy swept across England during the revolutionary decades of the 1640s and 1650s. Historians have studied the attendant ecclesiological debates meticulously. The piety as practiced by the puritans has also been carefully examined. Yet generally, these two subjects of ecclesiology and piety have been kept as separate compartments of analysis. The plethora of tracts that rolled off the press during the initial years of the 1640s, nevertheless, shows that many contemporary polemicists were keen to tie the two themes together. The Presbyterian and Independent polemicists were no exception. As this article seeks to demonstrate, a common feature of their publications was the belief that their preferred ecclesiastical polity best served the purpose of promoting individual piety and creating a godly society. Thus the Presbyterian and Independent conflict waged not only over issues of ecclesiology proper such as categories of church offices and of governing councils or composition of church membership to which historians have directed their attention hitherto, but also over questions of how ecclesiology affected piety. Such conflict was a reflection of the commitment of Presbyterians and Independents to their respective vision of reformation for the country. More broadly, this article shows a facet of religious controversy that ultimately led to the disintegration of the godly community and weakened the base of support for the Commonwealth and the Protectorate.

Centered on understudied manuscript sources located in the Archive of the Francke Foundations, this essay argues that defenses of slavery among eighteenth-century protestants developed from a longstanding tradition of providential thought and narration. This tradition of providential thought and narration was informed by protestants’ transatlantic missionary efforts. Far from encouraging human passivity, faith in God's providential direction motivated protestants to wide-ranging evangelistic endeavors. By focusing on the correspondence and writings of George Whitefield, August Hermann Francke, Gotthilf August Francke, and several missionary Pietists in the colony of Georgia, the essay shows how eighteenth-century protestants confirmed God's providential oversight through the practice of retrospective reflection in their writings and publications. The providential pulse of these writings was integral to knitting together a transatlantic community of protestants in their evangelical zeal and encouraging them to new efforts. Whitefield and the Pietists continued to rely on this providential faith and narrative style as they interpreted their acceptance of slavery in terms of God's direction over the success of their missions, the decisions of temporal authorities, and the conversion of slaves to Christianity.

Studies concerned with modernity, mission Christianity, and sexuality generally address how western, Christian gender ideologies have affected women or how they have affected modernization. This article approaches the nexus of modernity, Christianity, and sexuality from a different angle. One of the notable consequences of modernization was that young people in industrializing nations began demanding the right to choose their own spouse and marry for love. Several scholars have noted the connection between modernization and spouse self-selection, but none have explored the relationship between Christianity's endorsement of spouse self-selection and its global appeal during the mid-twentieth century. This article examines a collection of letters written by young Africans to missionary Walter Trobisch after reading his popular 1962 book, I Loved a Girl. These letters suggest that Christianity's endorsement of spouse self-selection and marrying for love gave it a kind of modern appeal for young people who were eagerly adopting the modern values of individualism and self-fulfillment. The practice of prayer provided relief to young people who were struggling to navigate the unfamiliar realm of dating in the modern world.