Contemporary Church History Quarterly
Volume 31, Number 2 (Summer 2025)
Letter from the Editors (Summer 2025)
By Lauren Faulkner Rossi, Simon Fraser University
Dear Friends,
We find ourselves at the midway point of the year, which seems to be speeding by. I am pleased to bring you this second issue of 2025, which features a slate of fresh material, including reviews from recent additions to our editorial team.
Blake McKinney addresses the “muddled middle” of Mary Fulbrook’s recent monograph, Bystander Society. He makes a lengthy and complex book accessible, with helpful commentary on how the text will be of interest to readers attentive to questions about and problems with the German churches. Michael O’Sullivan’s review of Anna von der Goltz’s attention to the generation of 1968 – The Other 68ers – highlights the diversity of her material and the valuable complications she brings to a much-studied subject. He tells us that her emphasis on the role of right-wing student protestors is an important correction to understanding the student movement as a whole as well as the history of Christian Democracy in Germany.
Björn Krondorfer offers a review of Mirjam Loos’s German-language book, Dangerous Metaphors (the English translation of the title), based on her 2017 dissertation, about German Protestant communication patterns and spaces concerned with communism, particularly the Soviet variant, in the first half of the twentieth century. Kevin P. Spicer takes on Mikael Nilsson’s Christianity in Hitler’s Ideology, with a fresh perspective on some of Nazism’s foundational texts and Aryan conceptions of Jesus within Nazism.
Finally, Martin Menke has written a compelling triple review of books addressing the history of German Catholic women in twentieth-century Germany: his analysis includes two volumes from the series Literatur – Gender – Konfession. Katholische Schriftstellerinnen, and a chapter review of Dominik Schindler’s study of the Catholic women’s movement and its connections to Michael von Faulhaber, before he was appointed archbishop of Munich and Freising.
The second half of 2025 promises strong issues: our September issue will step away from our regular routine of reviews to offer commentary on how our field of historical inquiry frames various contemporary issues in insightful and disconcerting ways. This special issue will be spearheaded by associate editor Mark Ruff. Our December issue will contain a full slate of reviews and conference reports, including a meeting of part of our editorial team at the European Academy of Religion’s eighth annual conference, held in July in Vienna, Austria.
As ever, I invite you, the reader, to let us know about any major conferences, exhibitions, websites, or films that we should know about to review, by contacting me directly.
On behalf of my associate editors and the editorial board,
Lauren Faulkner Rossi,
Simon Fraser University
