John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture, writes up a summary of the proceedings of The Historical Society’s conference, “Globalization, Empire, and Imperialism in Historical Perspective.”

“We urgently need an antidote to the journalistic clichés and the even more deplorable pseudo-scholarly discourse surrounding the interlocked themes of globalization, empire, and imperialism. We need the distance—the perspective—that good historical thinking affords. There was plenty of that on display in Chapel Hill, along with some muddle,” reports Wilson.

For more on how “pseudo-scholarly” and pseudo-theological discourse on these themes has been manifest in the contemporary ecumenical movement, check out this piece, which reflects on the 2004 meeting of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in Accra, Ghana, “Ecumenical Economics: Confessing against the Empire.”