Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli, "Citifying Jesus: The Making of a Roman Religion in the Roman Empire" (Mohr Siebeck, 2024)

Religion and urban life are the most successful strategies of handling, enhancing, and capitalizing on human sociability. By integrating religious studies, archaeology, and spatial theory, Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli aims to re-describe the formation of Christ religion as urban religion in Citifying Jesus: The Making of a Roman Religion in the Roman Empire (Mohr Siebeck, 2024). Spanning almost four centuries of Christian literature from Paul to Augustine, the author shows that several characteristics commonly attributed to Christ religion are, in fact, outcomes of the distinct ways in which religious agents enact urbanity and interact with the urban space. The study brings the urbanity of religious agents into focus, shedding light on significant elements of religious transformation, innovation, institutionalization, empowerment, and resistance to power. Simultaneously, it explores the key urban features that shaped the emergence and development of Christ religion.

Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Cultures at the University of Bologna. Previously he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max-Weber-Kolleg of the University of Erfurt and has spent research stays in Paris, Berlin, and Geneva. His research interests focus on the history of the ancient Christ religion, methodological advances in the study of ancient Mediterranean religious groups and traditions, issues of theory and method in the accademic study of religions, and the phenomenon of ancient and contemporary urban religion. He is conversant with issues of political theology, sociology of religion, critical theory of space, and critique of ideology (including religious ideologies).

Jonathon Lookadoo is Associate Professor at the Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary in Seoul, South Korea. While his interests range widely over the world of early Christianity, he is the author of books on the Epistle of Barnabas, Ignatius of Antioch, and the Shepherd of Hermas, including The Christology of Ignatius of Antioch (Cascade, 2023).

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