Chromatius served as bishop of Aquileia, a large trade-centered city at the north end of the Adriatic Sea, from 388–407. He interacted with notables like Rufinus, Jerome, Ambrose, and John Chrysostom, but our knowledge of Chromatius was limited to second-hand statements until the rediscovery of his sermons in the last century. When one examines the sermons in their original context, a disconnect on the issue of heresy emerges. Based on a survey of Christianities in northern Italy, it seems that the variety we might expect is lacking in the sources. An examination of the region reveals that the area during this time was remarkably homogenous in terms of the diversity among its Christian adherents. In Aquileia, Chromatius would have been unchallenged by other churches. In light of that, what did his continued tirades against non-existent “heretical” groups achieve? By examining the whole of each sermon mentioning heretics a pattern emerges surrounding the history of heresy and orthodoxy. The maintenance of institutional memory was not done sentimentally, but to advance the domination Christians had achieved into new arenas, namely, for Chromatius, control over an urban religious space which included Judaism.

In the early thirteenth century, informal communities of pious lay women in urban areas of Northern Europe came to the attention of the Church. These women lived in their own homes or small communities, and played a prominent role in secular society. However, these women soon found themselves both the subject of controversy, and increasingly steered toward a monastic model. Attempts were made to create and institutionalize a “middling” status. These primarily took the form of the creation of “third orders” or “tertiary groups” attached to official religious orders. Using the example of the so-called Franciscan third order, this article explores the evolution and institutionalization of penitential life from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. It both traces the evolution of the fictive Franciscan penitential order, and places it in its wider context. In so doing, it explores the norms and controversies associated with this way of life in later medieval and early modern religious culture.

This essay compares two neglected German translations of Jonathan Edwards's famous Faithful Narrative (1737). Both were published in 1738 but by different circles of German Pietists—one Lutheran and centered around Halle, one Reformed and located in the Nether Rhine area. Both were more intimately woven into transatlantic evangelical communication networks than has been understood. Each version show that the news about the American awakening was received enthusiastically as an encouraging sign of God's advancing kingdom, a model for inner-churchly revivals, and an argument for the legitimacy of Pietist conventicles at home. Comparing the two translations also reveals how Edwards was appropriated in quite divergent ways and with varying attitudes by the two groups, reflecting their distinct regional, denominational and social contexts, as well as specific religious needs and dogmatic emphases. While both texts evince that German Pietism very much partook in the emergence of a transatlantic evangelical consciousness, they simultaneously show how the formation of such an ecumenical identity was complicated by persisting confessional and regional differences. Finally, the two German translations of Edwards's narrative illustrate that the meaning of these revivals as part of a larger Protestant evangelical awakening was negotiated not only among Anglo-American evangelicals but also among Continental Pietists.

A number of years ago I spent time at the John Rylands University Library in Manchester reading the manuscript letters of lay Methodists. One of these was written on May 19, 1740 by a young single mother with two children, offering a moving account of her conversion to Charles Wesley. The writer's name was Margaret Austin. At the end of her letter, just below her signature she added an emphatic postscript that summarized her religious experience: “Awakened by the Reverend Mr. Whitefield: convicted by the Reverend Mr. Jn Wesley: Converted by the Reverend Mr. Charles; for the truth of whose doctrine in the strength of the Lord I am ready to lay down my life.”

This article considers the relationship between stringent and arbitrary censorship policies and “religious freedom,” something “guaranteed” with significant qualifications by the Meiji Constitution, in pre-World War II Japan. In particular, this article explores the role of censorship in shaping the contours of acceptable religious practice by focusing on a regional Christian news monthly, the “Gunma Christian World Monthly.” Edited by Kashiwagi Gien, a rural Congregational minister, this monthly introduced a diverse range of ideas from socialism to critiques of militarism and imperialism. Kashiwagi's espousal of these ideas also made him the focus of local censors. By focusing on two occasions when Kashiwagi's spirited critiques of the state attracted the attention of local authorities, this article examines the complex and contingent process by which the state and its regional agents used legal means to manage the contours of acceptable belief in pre-World War II Japan. The relationship between Kashiwagi and the local police and prosecutors who attempted to manage and regulate “acceptable” content and, by extension, acceptable religious opinion, offers an important and hitherto unexamined site to consider the question of how religious freedom was interpreted by the state, local officials, and religionists.

This article, drawing upon primary field research, analyzes the origins and history of the East African Revival of the 1930s and its ongoing relevance and role in post-genocide Rwanda. Starting as a Holiness-inspired, Anglican movement, the Revival persisted among the Tutsi Diaspora during their exile to refugee camps in Uganda following the 1959 Hutu-led Revolution and has returned with them following the coming to power of the Rwandan Patriotic Front in 1994. The Revival, as it presently experiences a reawakening in the post-genocide church, provides the Tutsi returnees with a spiritual mechanism to explain their plight as refugees and a means by which to heal from decades of suffering. Additionally, a narrative has emerged in which they believe themselves to be a “Chosen People” who found redemption and healing in the refugee camps by embracing the revival spirit. Many Anglican returnees further believe they have been “chosen” to bring healing and reconciliation, through the revivalist tradition, to post-genocide Rwanda. While the return of the Revival tradition in the post-genocide Anglican Church offers potential benefits for Rwanda's reconciliation and recovery, the church must also abandon its apolitical inclinations and challenge the ruling regime in the name of truth, democratization, and justice.