Priests of History: How Christians Should View the Past in a Secular Age – providencemag.com

By Nadya Williams on October 1, 2025
In the year 1989, I was an elementary school student in Russia. I may have been atheist or perhaps an agnostic, but in either case I lived in a country where God’s name was not mentioned in polite company. Meanwhile, history ended without my knowledge. Or, at least, so proclaimed Francis Fukuyama in his legendary essay, “The End of History,” which he subsequently expanded into a book-length treatise in 1992. By then, I was a newly arrived immigrant in Israel, and history seemed very much alive.  
Fukuyama’s original proclamation was a response to the Velvet Revolutions that toppled Communist dictators all over Europe and ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, mere months after my own family left Russia for Israel. If liberal democracies rule the day, his logic went, then ideologies like fascism, communism, and authoritarianism will lose their appeal. Mankind will enter a new age of peace and therefore history, in the sense of a dialectical progression towards the ultimate meaning of politics as the “master science,” whose “end is the human good,” will be concluded.¹ 
Alas, this remarkably optimistic prediction did not come true, as we now know with over three decades of hindsight. But an even more ignorant and apathetic view of history has arrived. To be precise, we are living in what historian Sarah Irving-Stonebraker calls an “Ahistoric Age” in her recent book, The Priests of History: Stewarding the Past in an Ahistoric Age. How Christians see their past and present and future has always been connected to how they think of God. For Christians, put simply, God is the author of history, and this changes everything. Except, in our Ahistoric Age, Christians alongside everyone else seem to have forgotten this.  
Irving-Stonebraker contends that while the roots of the Ahistoric Age existed earlier (cue Fukuyama), it demonstrably took off around 2010, right alongside the ubiquitous iPhone. She identifies five key characteristics of this age: 
“1. We believe that the past is merely a source of shame and oppression from which we must free ourselves. 
2. We no longer think of ourselves as part of historical communities. 
3. We are increasingly ignorant of history. 
4. We do not believe history has a narrative or a purpose. 
5. We are unable to reason well and disagree peaceably about the ethical complexities of the past—that is, the coexistence of good and evil in the same historical figure or episode.”  
Irving-Stonebraker brings up G. K. Chesterton’s fence analogy as characteristic of the Ahistoric Age. Someone who comes across a fence in an unexpected place might stop first and think about the possible purpose of the fence: Why was this fence erected? Surely not for nothing. Such would be a responsible historical reaction. But, as products of the Ahistoric Age, we are inclined to just take out the fence without giving it another thought. So too goes our attitude towards our heritage; having developed over numerous generations, we should not presume the wisdom of our inherited customs can be discarded so easily. 
But it’s not just that the hypothetical fence seems to be lacking in purpose in our landscape. Rather, we’ve lived through a number of scandals around memorials and public statues over the past decade, and in each case, the argument for removal, while contending to draw on history (the statue as an object of commemoration of a historic person or event) is stemming, rather, from ahistoric sentiments, Irving-Stonebraker contends. If the person or event being commemorated seems offensive to people today, then it must be removed. But such is not a historical perspective—and it is certainly not a Christian way of viewing the past.  
What is the responsibility towards the past specifically of Christians living in this Ahistoric Age? Irving-Stonebraker feels passionately that all believers must learn their history and understand their connection to previous believers. But we must do more than that:  
“We must understand how we can engage in the practice of history. In this book, I am arguing from a biblical position that all Christians are called upon to tend and keep history—to be priests of history. This does not necessarily mean I expect all of us to roll up our sleeves and dig into the archives or write professional or scholarly history. But it does mean all Christians can engage with history in our daily lives and pass down our heritage, especially through our intellectual and spiritual formation and discipleship.”  
After explaining the genesis of our Ahistoric Age in Part I, Part II explains “Why We Need History,” showing how a more accurate view of the past enables us to recognize the past without being beholden to it. Instead of attacking statues, for instance, having a more nuanced view of the past can help us think about all persons of the past as God’s creations, whose stories matter because they too are part of the larger story God is writing through us all. Finally, Part III, “How History Can Help Us,” offers more practical takeaways in thinking historically about our own lives, our connection to our past (national, churchly, family-related), and how to think prayerfully about our future.  
Throughout, Irving-Stonebraker brings up concrete historical examples from her areas of expertise and best familiarity—British and Australian history. As an ancient historian, I encountered a number of figures for the first time, but Irving-Stonebraker’s orientation of the reader to them required no previous knowledge to understand her use of these examples. In fact, perhaps the obscurity of some of these examples only further proves her point that as Christians, we see the less-known figures of the historical past differently. 
By commissioning all of us as “priests of history,” Irving-Stonebraker emphasizes the significance and weight of our task as Christians, people living in one particular time, but acutely aware of our connection to other Christians and the church across time. History is an integral discipline for the health of the church, because the very claims on which the church rests are intensely historical.  
But there is another essential component to this book: for Irving-Stonebraker, this is no mere theological exercise. This book is a passion project that isn’t just a reflection on what history should mean to every believer—although it certainly is that, and that alone would make it worth reading. Still, the additional dimension driving the book is deeply personal, and it makes it all the more compelling. Like myself, Irving-Stonebraker is an adult convert to Christianity. Originally an atheist academic, she came to realize that the claims of the faith are true. She found true joy and purpose in her academic work as a historian in the process. In other words, while this was obviously not the reason for her conversion, becoming a Christian ultimately made her a better historian. In a world where Christians too often are asked to keep their faith private, this is a key point. 
When historian George Marsden first published The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship in 1997, his premise was as contentious as the title makes it sound (I am still a little bit amazed that Oxford University Press published it!). Can Christians be good historians, scientists, artists and writers? Yes, of course. But can they be good historians, scientists, artists, or writers as Christians? Can they combine their professional persona with their faith and retain their academic credibility? Some in the secular academy were decidedly skeptical, and the burden fell on Christians to show their case. Historians like Marsden, who was lauded for his scholarship by secular and Christian institutions alike, were excellent case studies of this phenomenon in action. But it is time for a new generation of Christian historians and other practitioners to pick up the baton now. 
This Ahistoric Age of ours offers its challenges to Christians, to historians, and to Christian historians. And yet, it also offers opportunities. Our work as researchers matters in a cosmic sense, as strange as it is to wrap our minds around this concept. It is by practicing our love for our historical subjects in our research, in our churches, in our homes, and in our friendships and in various other relationships, that we will not only steward history well, but will follow God’s call to delight in this world he has made—in our research, too.  
This entire world is God’s temple. And we are his priests. 
Nadya Williams is the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church (2023), Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity (2024), and Christians Reading Pagans (2025). She is Books Editor for Mere Orthodoxy and Interim Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at Ashland University. She is also a Contributing Editor to Providence and holds a PhD in Classics from Princeton University. You can find her on Twitter @NadyaWilliams81
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