But yeah, I think we are trying to be relevant while undermining ourselves by trying to relate to society based on their terms. Thanks for writing this. There’s so much here worth considering.

How do you suggest Christians go about curing their ignorance of history? Any particular books or authors you recommend?

Oh. I think you’re right. How embarrassing. Either way, the article is excellent.

1. Find a good, but general, work on the history of the church. When I started this process I used The Story of Christianity By Justo L. Gonzalez (Volume 1, and Volume 2 since it’s a very broad introduction.
2. See what parts of it you find interesting
3. Find out what are the best resources on those parts
4. Get your hands on those resources and read/watch them

Now by best resources I mean both primary and secondary sources. For example, I’m just beginning to look at medieval Christianity. I’ll be doing this likely for a few years off and on just like I did with the First Great Awakening. So knowing a bit about medieval theology and philosophy I knew right away that if I want to understand this time of the Church’s history I needed to understand Boethius and Aquinas so I went out and got stuff BY (not about, but by) them. Once I’m done reading some of their own work, I’ll be looking at getting a biography on Aquinas (Boethius would be harder find one on) I’ll also be looking at getting a history book specifically dealing with the middle ages so I can decide where to branch my research off to. If there is writings from that time about the current situation, all the better. I always want to read primary sources first.

That might give some idea of how I’m trying to go and do this.

As for SIHAG, I should write up a whole entry on that and JE one day. Most people don’t know that JE preached it many times before the revival began without must impact. Also, many people don’t now that Billy Graham himself preached a version of it. I would not go as far as calling it the greatest sermon ever (although I do like it), but it is a decent example of the preaching of the time. My point with brining it up was the fact that because it’s the main sermon associated with the First Great Awaking people who don’t like it usually don’t look beyond it to see what was actually going on during the awakening. If you want to read a sermon by JE I would first recommend: “A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted To The Soul By The Spirit Of God, Shown To be Both Scriptural And Rational Doctrine” which can be found in his complete works Volume Two on CCLE.

You might find these links interesting:
http://www.chronologicalbiblestorying.com/
http://www.onestory.org/Default.aspx

Stories are primarily told orally, a fact you allude to when you point out that preaching often does not tell our story (of course, stories are written too, but it is the written stories, in the Bible, that are not told orally or are often not even read).

The parachurch organization of which I am a part has in recent years developed oral strategies to use in cultures that are preliterate, or places where the economics will never be such to support a literature. Technology is at a point to make this doable with things like the Megavoice player http://www.megavoice.com/.