Centennial Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
Joel Harrington is a historian of Europe, specializing in the Reformation and early modern Germany, with research interests in various aspects of social history. His most recent book is Dangerous Mystic: Meister Eckhart’s Path to the God Within (Penguin Press, 2018). His previous monograph, The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013), has been translated into thirteen languages and was named one of the Best Books of 2013 by The Telegraph and History Today. Other publications include The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany (University of Chicago Press, 2009), winner of the 2010 Roland H. Bainton Prize for History; Reordering Marriage and Society in Reformation Germany (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2005), one of Choice’s Outstanding Academic Titles of 1996; The Executioner’s Journal (University of Virginia Press, 2016); and A Cloud of Witnesses: Readings in the History of Western Christianity(Houghton Mifflin, 2001). Projects currently underway include a study of the sixteenth-century mercenary Hans Staden, who published an influential account of his captivity among the Tupinambás of Brazil, including graphic accounts of ritual cannibalism.
Why a 14th-century mystic appeals to today's 'spiritual but not religious' Americans
Dec 08, 2018 18:01 pm UTC| Insights & Views
The percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religious tradition continues to rise annually. Not all of them, however, are atheists or agnostics. Many of these people believe in a higher power, if not organized...
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