With so many other hot-button issues on Civil Religion right now, this one won’t generate much light or heat, but I thought it was worth noting.

The originator of Dana King’s noted Stendahl’s Rules, the Rev. Krister Stendahl has died.

In addition to serving as bishop in the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden and being an ecumenical religious leader, Stendahl was a long-time professor and dean of Harvard Divinity School, and one of the most notable New Testament scholars of his generation.

He helped to pioneer what has become known as the “new perspective on Paul.” Although this “new perspective” is now not-so-new, and has come under much critique, his 1963 essay, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” is still required reading in many divinity school and seminary classrooms.

Yet, perhaps the greatest legacy of the “new perspective” isn’t so much about biblical studies, as it is about how it changed the…