In the past decade, Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) historiography has enjoyed an efflorescence that warrants the attention of church historians. Two notable books mark the surge of interest in Adventism and its prophet: one of them an extraordinary denominational history, Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American Dream, by Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart (1989; 2007); the other an excellent collection of essays, Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet, edited by Terrie Dopp Aamodt, Gary Land, and Ronald L. Numbers (2014). Both books remind church historians that Seventh-day Adventism deserves its due as one of America's original religions. Since 2005, however, a number of books have appeared that understandably have received less scrutiny. The Adventist Pioneer Series, in particular, produced by SDA scholars and published by SDA presses, has largely escaped the notice of the wider, non-SDA historical community. This is unfortunate. There is the inevitable unevenness among these volumes, and given their intent to serve a popular Adventist audience, there is also the predictable parochialism in them, in some more than others. Nevertheless, to date there are several books in the series, and no doubt more to follow, which should command serious scholarly interest. To make our way through this largely unfamiliar historiographical landscape calls for a little mapping. Most of these authors come from SDA backgrounds, whatever distance they have gone from them. It will be necessary, then, to reflect on the differences between a historian of Adventism and an Adventist historian, secular versus supernatural history, and apologists who rate scholarly notice and those who do not. It will be important as well to realize that there is no hard, unyielding line between these differences.

The 1970 release of His Land, a religious documentary about Israel produced by Billy Graham's film studio, World Wide Pictures, took the evangelical world by storm. It was shown to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of churchgoers and encapsulated the mix of prophecy beliefs and cultural arguments that cohered a decade later into the Christian Zionist movement—a major component of the religious right. Surprisingly, American evangelicals were not the only fans of His Land. American Jews, led by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), helped make the film an international success. AJC officials organized ecumenical screenings and kept detailed records of the film's reception, praising it as “an authentic interpretation” that “strengthen[s] the current interreligious discussion on the Middle East question.” By 1971, the AJC was showing this unabashedly evangelical film to Jewish audiences in synagogues and community centers. Through reconstructing His Land's production and reception, this article provides a new interpretation of the origins of bipartisan, Jewish and evangelical support for Israel in the late-twentieth century. It recasts the rise of a Jewish-evangelical pro-Israel lobby as an important religious episode to understanding the rise of the religious right and the continuing importance of confessional and theological identity even in the era of the “culture wars.”

Devotion to the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Los Angeles has a complex and multifaceted history. This article will discuss the initial celebrations of Our Lady of Guadalupe, beginning with a procession in 1928 and developing with increasing popularity in the 1930s. By 1941, the Virgin of Guadalupe had become an important political and religious symbol for the archbishop of Los Angeles, John J. Cantwell, who conducted a pilgrimage to Mexico City, during which he reconfirmed the significance of the Guadalupe image for the Los Angeles Catholic community. In commemoration of Archbishop Cantwell's historic visit, a fragment of the tilma, the cloak on which the Virgin of Guadalupe representation had appeared, was offered to Los Angeles. As the only known piece of the tilma currently found outside of Mexico City, this relic has great devotional significance. As this article will show, the tilma relic disappeared into relative obscurity following its arrival in Los Angeles, only to become a renewed focus of devotion over sixty years later, in 2003. This article will conclude with the reasons behind the relic's revival through a discussion of Juan Diego and his canonization.

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.

A dozen years ago, I was sitting in a suburban Vancouver church on a Saturday afternoon, waiting for my young sons’ piano recital to start. I looked around the rented facility, new to me, and noticed an impressionistic painting of the crucifixion toward the front of the sanctuary.