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American Christians and the Emptiness of Death

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2016

Extract

My office is the antithesis of emptiness. I am not sure how many books I have managed to cram into a 9 by 12 room, but suffice it to say I have used every available space, even to the point of violating the university's fire code. A year ago, when the fire marshal came around for a routine inspection, he informed me that I could not stack books all the way to the ceiling on top of 6-foot bookshelves but had to leave at least 12 inches' clearance. He told me he would be back for a repeat inspection in a couple of months. This forced me to do some culling—an excruciating task. So over spring break, I reluctantly downsized. Though every book now stood properly upright on a shelf, there was not an inch left anywhere in which to fit even one more volume.

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Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2016 

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References

19 Corrigan, Emptiness, 8, 152, 154, 172.

20 Ibid., 10.

21 Ibid., 100–101.

22 Ibid., 38.

23 Ibid., 58–59.

24 Ibid., 18.

25 Ibid., 6, 21, 29, 30, 40.

26 Ibid., 29.

27 Ibid., 58.

28 Quoted in Harold K. Bush, Jr., Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 2007), 247.

29 Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (1909), in The Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings on Heaven, Eden, and the Flood, ed. Howard G. Baetzhold and Joseph B. McCullough (Athens: University of Georgia, 1995), 181.

30 Larzer Ziff, Mark Twain (New York: Oxford University, 2004), 94; Corrigan, Emptiness, 160.

31 Corrigan, Emptiness, 161–163; Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 2001), 180.

32 Joseph Smith–History 1:19 (quoting 2 Timothy 3:5); Corrigan cites this passage in connection with his ch. 4, “Time,” in Emptiness, 143–144.

33 Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 164–169. See the immediate evangelical rejoinder: Craig A. Evans, “Getting the Burial Traditions and Evidences Right,” in How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus' Divine Nature—A Response to Bart Ehrman, Michael F. Bird et al. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2014), 71–93. For the argument that the post-resurrection appearances cited by Paul (in 1 Corinthians 15:5–8) were a tradition that developed independently from the empty tomb story, see Daniel A. Smith, Revisiting the Empty Tomb: The Early History of Easter (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2010), 2–4.

34 Bush, Mark Twain, 246.

35 Peter J. Thuesen, Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine (New York: Oxford University, 2009), 133–135.