Irving Hexham

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Irving Hexham (April 14, 1943) is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is married to Karla Poewe who is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Calgary, and is the father of two children, Jeremy and Janet. He holds dual citizenship in England and Canada.

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[edit] Education

Hexham was born in Whitehaven, Cumberland, England. After leaving school at the age of fifteen he spent six years (1958-1964) as an apprentice gas fitter with the North Western Gas Board, and obtained his City and Guilds and advanced diplomas in Gas Technology. After the completion of his apprenticeship he was offered a management position with the Gas Board. During his industrial career he also served as a union representative.

Hexham qualified for university matriculation by correspondence study and entered the University of Lancaster in 1967 where he majored in Religious Studies with minors in History and Philosophy. He graduated with a B.A.(Hons) in 1970.

He then proceeded to post-graduate studies with obtaining his M.A. "with commendation" in religious studies and theology from the Bristol University in 1972. His M.A. was based on anthropological methods and theories and involved a short dissertation on Glastonbury. He obtained a Ph.D. in History from the University of Bristol in 1975. His Ph.D. thesis was on Afrikaner Calvinism and the origins of apartheid as an ideology. In the course of his studies he lived in the Republic of South Africa and studied the languages of German and Afrikaans. His M.A. supervisor was F.B. Welbourn while his Ph.D. supervisor was Kenneth Ingham. When he was in South Africa Elaine Botha at Potchefstroom University was appointed his local supervisor by the University of Bristol.

[edit] Career

Hexham has held a number of posts in various tertiary institutions of higher learning. He was an assistant professor at Bishop Lonsdale College, University of Derby, England from 1974-1977. He also served as a course tutor in the Open University at Derby (1975-77). Hexham then relocated to Canada and assumed the post of assistant professor at Regent College, Vancouver (1977-80). He then became an assistant professor in religious studies at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg (1980-84), and then an assistant professor in religious studies at the University of Calgary (1984-88). He was promoted to being an associate professor at Calgary (1988-92), and then in 1992 assumed the post of Full Professor in religious studies.

He holds a Fellowship in the Royal Anthropological Institute, and is a member of various professional organizations including the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, American Academy of Religion, Association for the Sociology of Religion, South African Institute of Race Relations, South African Society for Mission Studies, and the Berliner Gesellschaft fuer Missionsgeschichte.

Hexham has lectured in undergraduate and post-graduate programs covering topics such as cults, sects and new religious movements, history of religion, sociology of religion, African religions, religion and society in South Africa, millenarian movements, theology and politics, Christianity and culture, missions and society, religion and ethics, fundamentalism and charismatic religion, methods in the study of religion, and the philosophy of religion.

He served as a contributing editor to the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa (1981-93), and is on the Editorial Board for the journals Studies in Religion and Religion.

Hexham has written or co-edited a number of works treating various facets of religion in South Africa including African independent churches, Afrikaner Calvinism, and Zulu religion. He has also compiled reference works such as the Concise Dictionary of Religion and Pocket Dictionary of New Religious Movements. He has also co-written two analytic works on the phenomenon of new religions and cults, and co-edited a pioneering work on the development of Christian contextual missions and new religious movements.

[edit] Personal Faith

Hexham initially rejected Christianity as a teenager before converting through an evangelistic outreach organized by Cheadle Parish Church where he was influenced by Val Grieve and Peter Hayman who later became Professor of the Hebrew Bible at the University of Edinburgh. He became familiar with the Plymouth Brethren though and aunt in Whitehave, Cumbria, and through friendship with Ward Gasque one of the founders of Regent College. He identifies as an evangelical Anglican who frequently attends a German speaking Roman Catholic Church. In the mid 1960s he met Clark Pinnock who was then pursuing graduate studies with Professor F.F. Bruce at the University of Manchester in England. In 1964 Pinnock suggested that Hexham should visit Francis Schaeffer and the L'Abri Fellowship Study Center in Switzerland. Encouraged by Pinnock, Schaeffer, and Gillian White, the wife of the Opera Singer Willard White, he decided to abandon his management career and entered the newly created Religious Studies program at the University of Lancaster in 1967. At Lancaster he studied with Ninian Smart and Edward Conze. Before entering university he spent three months during the summer of 1967 at L'Abri.

Hexham regularly speaks in churches, and has contributed journalist articles to publications such as Christianity Today, and Christian Research Journal, and regularly appears on various radio stations in Canada.

Hexham has been a keen advocate of Christians discovering their intellectual and cultural heritage. To that end he has been a series editor of books designed to introduce Christian tourists to important sites in church history throughout England and western Europe. He has also maintained a strong interest in Christian missions both in history and in contemporary practice. He has highlighted the role of Nineteenth Century African Christian influences in the early development of Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions in Protestantism.

He has written and spoken extensively about the challenges that new religions pose to the church. In this capacity he has been a critic of many popular books by writers in the Christian countercult movement, and has faulted these works for weak arguments and dubious interpretations of data, poor scholarship, and factual inaccuracies (see his essay "The Evangelical Response to the New Age"). He has questioned the manner in which some apologists rely heavily on a confrontational approach to devotees in new religions (see his essay "Witnessing to the Cults"). Hexham's criticisms have not always been well-received by those Christian apologists who have been the object of his criticism. Hexham prefers the pursuit of a rigorous form of primary research into new religions as a preparation for undertaking a Christian missions approach grounded in the disciplines of theology, missions, communications theory, anthropology and so on (see Encountering New Religious Movements: A Holistic Evangelical Approach).

As he rejects the brainwashing theory of religious conversion and indoctrination, and also repudiates deprogramming as a method for responding to cult adherents, Hexham has sometimes been accused by detractors of being a cult apologist.

[edit] Selected Essays

  • "Calvinism and Culture", Crux, Vol. 15, No. 4, (December, 1979), pp.14-19. [1]
  • "The Evangelical Response to the New Age," in Perspectives on the New Age, James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton, eds. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), pp. 152-163. ISBN 0-7914-1213-X
  • "Henry Callaway, Religion and Rationalism in Nineteenth century Mission History" [2]
  • "New Religions and the Anticult Movement in Canada," Nova Religio, 4, 2 (April 2001), pp.281-288.
  • "New Religions and the Social Bond" (with Karla Poewe) [3]
  • "Science Fiction, Christianity, and Technic Civilization," Word and World, 4/1 1984 35-42. [4]
  • "The Soul of the New Age," (with Karla Poewe), Christianity Today (September 2, 1988), pp. 17-21.
  • "Tom Paine's Age of Reason and Modern Unbelief," (with Karla Poewe)Global Journal of Classical Theology, 4/2 (2004) [5]
  • "Verfassungsfeindlich: Church, State, and New Religions in Germany" (with Karla Poewe), Nova Religio, 2, 2 (April 1999), pp.208-227. [6]
  • "Witnessing to the Cults," Crux 16, 1 (March 1980),pp. 12-14.
  • "Yoga, U.F.O.’s, and Cult Membership," Update: A Quarterly Journal on New Religious Movements 10, 3 (September 1986),pp. 3-17.[7]

[edit] Bibliography

  • Afro-Christian Religion at the Grassroots in Southern Africa (co-edited with G. C. Oosthuizen) (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1991). ISBN 0-88946-226-7
  • The Catechism of the Nazarites and Related Writings (co-edited with Robert Papini) (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2002). ISBN 0-7734-7291-6
  • Empirical Studies of African Independent/Indigenous Churches (co-edited with G. C. Oosthuizen) (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1992). ISBN 0-7734-9588-6
  • Encountering New Religious Movements: A Holistic Evangelical Approach (co-edited with Stephen Rost and John W. Morehead) (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004). ISBN 0-8254-2893-9
  • The Story of Isaiah Shembe, 3 Vols., (co-edited with G. C. Oosthuizen) (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1996-2001) ISBN 0-7734-8773-5 (v.1); ISBN 0-7734-7335-1 (v.3)
  • Texts on Zulu Religion: Traditional Zulu Ideas About God (sole ed.) (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1987). ISBN 0-88946-181-3
  • The Christian Traveler's Guide to Germany (with Lothar Henry Kope) (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001). ISBN 0-310-22539-6
  • The Christian Traveler's Guide to Great Britain (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001). ISBN 0-310-22552-3
  • Concise Dictionary of Religion (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993). ISBN 0-8308-1404-3
  • The Hymns and Sabbath Liturgy for Morning and Evening Prayer of Isaiah Shembe's amaNazarites (co-edited with Andreas Hauser)(Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2005). ISBN 0-7734-6058-6
  • The Irony of Apartheid: The Struggle for National Independence of Afrikaner Calvinism against Imperialism (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1981). ISBN 0-88946-904-0
  • New Religions as Global Cultures: Making The Human Sacred (with Karla Poewe) (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997). ISBN 0-8133-2508-0
  • Pocket Dictionary of New Religious Movements (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002). ISBN 0-8308-1466-3
  • Religion, Economics and Social Thought (co-edited with Walter Block) (Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 1986). ISBN 0-88975-076-9
  • Understanding Cults and New Religions (with Karla Poewe)(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1986). ISBN 0-8028-0170-6

[edit] External links

  • Irving Hexham's Home Page at the University of Calgary [8]
  • Biographical profile at InterVarsity Press [9]
  • Concise Dictionary of Religion as an e-text [10]

[edit] See also

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