by Dr. Amy Artman

Over the weekend of October 4-7, I attended the 2018 gathering of the Conference on Faith and History.  I was asked to be a part of roundtable on Non-Traditional Spiritual Biographies, where I shared about my forthcoming book, itself a non-traditional biography, about Kathryn Kuhlman, the healing evangelist from the mid-twentieth century.  Other authors in the roundtable discussion were working on biographical projects concerning Charles Lindbergh, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and even Bob Dylan, each focusing at least somewhat on the spiritual aspects of their subjects.  The conversation was lively, and I was delighted to participate for the first time in this interesting Conference.  Plenary gatherings featuring prominent thinkers and practitioners such as historian Robert Orsi were interspersed with panels on a wide variety of topics.

The Conference on Faith and History (CFH) was chartered fifty years ago to uphold, study, and improve the complex relationship between Christian faith and the discipline of history. The organization explores how Christian faith in all its manifestations (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox) plays a role in the lives of individuals as professionals, writers, teachers, and colleagues. Members work at large public universities, Christian liberal arts colleges, museums, historical sites, libraries, publishing houses, churches, and K-12 schools. Attendance at the Conference is open to anyone interested in the intersection of religion and history.