There are some thing that intellectuals enjoy simply because we are intellectuals. One of those institutions that intellectuals appreciate, regardless of their political views, is peer-reviewed academic journals. To be an intellectual is to belong, or desire to belong, to a community of like-minded peers who can critique and appreciate one’s work. Especially appreciate. There is little pleasure in being given great gifts of intellect without being able to share the fruits of research and reasoning with others who have the understanding and interests in dealing with the deep and esoteric matters that interest intellectuals so.

Even a community as small and as anti-intellectual as the Church of God has enough intellectuals to deserve an academic journal of its own. It had been among my own crazier goals to help establish such an effort, though I recognized that it would need to result from a community of intellectuals rather than be the brainchild of myself (or anyone else) alone. It bothered me that in a community where the study of the Bible and of history was so common that there was so sparse of an intellectual community to show for it. And being a community-minded and sociable intellectual whose happiest moments are dinner parties full of good food and fascinating and deep conversations about a wide range of subjects, I keenly felt this void of intellectual institutions within my own religious community.

As it happens, though, there was already an academic community that had already been started by a diverse group of Church of God intellectuals (some of whom I know personally and who were part of a fascinating group of intelligent and witty dinner partners of mine when I lived in Los Angeles. Their group, Genesis Research Projects, is focused on ancient and church history and how to tie the biblical record to historical data to create a fuller picture of the past, so that we can understand it more completely. Their website is at the following location, and unfortunately I am not (yet) a member of the site able to log in: http://www.genesisresearchprojects.org/. I do encourage others to look around, though, and see what they find.

It is my understanding (given the one volume of their quarterly academic journal I have received so far), that this community of Church of God intellectuals came about because of the influence of one Herman Hoeh, a longtime Church of God intellectual whose works, including the Compendium of World History, have framed a great deal of the thinking of Church of God thinkers and historians about the relationship between history and biblical genealogies. Even though there are some flaws and mistakes (especially in chronology), the works are compelling and extremely deep. I myself also remember Dr. Hoeh fondly as a fellow fan of classical music–the only time in my life that I met him we sat in the same group watching a performance of Mendehlsson’s Elijah, one of my favorite oratorios. Nonetheless, I was a little bit too young and the situation in the Church of God too fragmented for him to encourage my own intellectual endeavors as he did those of so many others in the Church of God community during his lifetime.

It is altogether fitting that he should receive the credit for inspiring the Church of God’s only (to my knowledge) academic journal. As the Church of God community has not been very kind to most of its intellectuals, preferring the vain flattery, ambitious plotting, and base hypocrisy of hirelings to genuine and deep intellectual study and application of the Bible, at least those that have survived the various purges ought to be able to work together to help build a worthy intellectual edifice to teach and instruct others in the truth of God’s word. Someone has to do if, if the Church of God is to endure and flourish, and it may as well be those who by inclination and the development of their God-given intellects enjoy those aspects of study. In time, I hope to study more deeply about these matters and help the efforts of the community of Church of God intellectuals however I am able.