A nice feature of Google books

MJ. Smith

First I asked it to show me the use of three phrases over the last 200 years.

You can see that Covenant theology had a small surge 1870-1910 then in the late 1930's really took off as a major term. Liturgical theology has a blimp in the 1940's (from Dix I suspect) then starts to take off in the 1960's. Dispensational theology as a term is the newest to be used much.

If you click on one of the time period boxes preceding the phrase you get the Google books behind the data..

pretty cool.

Rosie Perera

Awesome! Fascinating! How did you discover that? I could only find it by Googling "Ngram viewer" but what if I hadn't known it existed?

Here's an interesting one:

Here's another interesting one:

I guess interest in Jesus peaks around certain events: turn of the 20th century (when there was a lot of millennial fervor as there tends to be at the turn of every century), Great Depression, "Jesus People" movement, ...