Issue 1 - Sacred Archaeology

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The Theology of Chocolate
As the foamy beverage's popularity rose in Europe, clerics began to view chocolate with suspicion. Did the beverage break the ecclesiastical fast—that period of time running from midnight until Holy Communion? Was chocolate a food or drink?...

Separated But Equal: Can Christians Stay Together While Worshipping Apart?
Intergenerational worship is a hot topic for pastors and lay leaders these days, with books on the "worship wars," "blended worship," and how to reach the elusive 18 to 35-year-old demographic. Numbers are down, and pastors feel they must reach out to the younger members to reverse this trend…

The Last Crusade: Reflections on Billy Graham's Life and Legacy
Ten days prior to President Kennedy's inauguration, JFK invited Graham to the Kennedy family's Palm Beach estate to foster their relationship. Kennedy was sensitive to a national religious schism due to his Roman Catholicism, which he felt Graham could help heal…

Sacred Scriptures on the Silver Screen
Within the Gospels we find love, greed, temptation, betrayal, death, rebirth and redemption on both a personal and universal scale; Jesus' life has rightly been called the greatest story ever told and its influence reaches deep into dramatic and comedic narratives from the first millennium onwards…

Apostles and Goddesses: The Magical Mystery Tour of Ephesus
Most observers today would identify the protuberances on the torso of the Artemis statue as breasts. Not all scholars agree with this "polymastic," i.e., many breasted, identification, however. Instead, some have theorized that the protuberances on the official cult statue are palm-dates, acorns, eggplant, ostrich-eggs, bags to hold amulets, bee eggs, zodiacal signs, bunches of grapes, clusters of dates, bull testicles, or additional clothing…

Saints in Sacred Spaces
Christians must have understood then that to proclaim Jesus as Son of God was deliberately denying Caesar his highest title and that to announce Jesus as Lord and Savior was calculated treason…

In What Sense Was Early America A "Christian Nation?"
Although great good has been done in America from Christian motives, the nation has also been the perpetrator of great evil, and sometimes in the name of Christ. It is beyond belief, for example, that a special divine plan ordained that European colonists should treat Native Americans—human beings in the image of God—like beasts of the field…

Electing a Pope: Some Historical Reflections
The councilman hired bricklayers to seal the windows and doors of the hall where the cardinals were meeting. Bread and water was to replace the meals of men accustomed to eating well. According to one account, even the roof of the hall was removed, allowing, it was hoped, for the Holy Spirit to have direct access to the papal electors…

The Montanist New Jerusalem
That Montanus should look for apocalyptic sacred space in Phrygia (Asia Minor) rather than in Syria-Palestine is not difficult to imagine when one remembers that at the time Montanus was prophesying about these things, around 165 CE, the Jerusalem of old no longer exited…