New Books in Christian Studies

Through meticulous archival research, close readings of key works, and informed and imaginative speculation about a largely enigmatic life, Red Ink author Drew Lopenzina provides a vivid portrait of a singular Native American figure in Through an Indian’s Looking-Glass: A Cultural Biography of William Apess, Pequot (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017). This “cultural biography” provides a lens through which to comprehend the complex dynamics of indigenous survival and resistance in the era of America’s early nationhood. William Apess’s life intersects with multiple aspects of indigenous identity and existence in this period, including indentured servitude, slavery, service in the armed forces, syncretic engagements with Methodist spirituality, and Native struggles for political and cultural autonomy. Even more, Apess offers a powerful and provocative voice for the persistence of Native American presence in a time and place that was long supposed to have settled its Indian question in favor of extinction. This new biography will sit alongside Apess’s own writing as vital reading for those interested in early America and indigeneity. Ryan Tripp is an adjunct instructor for several community colleges and online university extensions. In 2014, he graduated from the University of California, Davis, with a Ph.D. in History. His Ph.D. double minor included World History and Native American Studies, with an emphasis in Linguistic Anthropology and Indigenous Archeology.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Andrew R. Lewis is the author of the new book, The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics: How Abortion Transformed the Culture Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Lewis is assistant professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati and is the book review editor at the journal of Politics & Religion. Following up on recent podcasts with Daniel Bennett and Christopher Baylor, The Rights Turn demonstrates a transformation of American politics with the waning of Christian America. As opposed to conservatives focusing on morality and liberals on rights, both sides now emphasize rights-based arguments to win policy battles and build support. Based on historical and quantitative data, Lewis analyzes evangelical advocacy and public opinion related to abortion, free speech, and the death penalty. He shows how rights claims have been used to protect evangelicals, whose cultural positions are increasingly in the minority. Heath Brown, associate professor, City University of New York, John Jay College and CUNY Grad Center, hosted this podcast. Please rate the podcast on iTunes and share it on social media.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

It’s not often that a single person’s life can reveal the dramatic social and political shifts of a community. From his youth, John Papa I’i, an important statesman and author, played a pivotal role in shaping and supporting the 19th century Kingdom of Hawai’i In Facing the Spears of Change: The Life and Legacy of John Papa I’i (University Of Hawai’i Press, 2016), Marie Alohalani Brown, Assistant Professor of Religion at University of Hawai’i at Manoa, carefully traces the contours of his biography with nuance and beauty. The book is rich with detail and one of the few histories to put the vast corpus of Hawaiian language sources to use in understanding the island’s past. John Papa I’i’s life also serves as a rewarding vantage point for thinking about Hawaiian religion during the early years of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, and the expanding influence of Christianity. In our conversation we discussed genres of life writing, challenges of reframing Hawaiian modes of thinking into western academic categories, Christian conversion, John Papa I’i’s s upbringing, the importance of family genealogy, the Laplace affair, King Kamehameha and his descendants, Hawaiian language sources, elder years and productive retirement, and John Papa I’i’s importance for Hawaiians today. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kjpetersen@unomaha.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

In a career spanning several decades, James L. Kugel has illuminated the Hebrew Bible from the perspectives of both a biblical scholar of enormous skill and eloquence and as an engaged and imaginative reader. In The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), Kugel, Starr Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Literature at Harvard University, consults not only biblical scholarship but neuroscience and anthropology to examine the relationship between conceptions of self and conceptions of God. The way these conceptions shift over time, and the way biblical text itself reflects on these changes, shed new light on changing notions of self and God, and the relationship between these changes. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. He can be reached at davidg1@uchicago.edu.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Is there one principal avenue of exploration that could lead to the very heart of the religious experience? For David L. Weddle, professor emeritus of Religion at Colorado College, that way in is the practice of ritual sacrifice. In his new book, Sacrifice in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York University Press, 2017) Weddle conducts a comparative study of the practice and the social significance of sacrifice in the three “religions of Abraham.” Weddle’s book draws extensively on theology, history, and cultural theory to view the ways in which sacrifice has shaped, and continues to shape, the cultures of these religious traditions, and he proposes ways in which the traditions can work to overcome the violent sacrificial impulses still evident in extremist theology and practice. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. He can be reached at davidg1@uchicago.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Messiah ben Joseph, the slain Galilean messiah, is the most enigmatic figure in Rabbinic Judaism. David C. Mitchell‘s Messiah ben Joseph (Campbell Publications, 2016) proposes that this messiah is not a rabbinic invention at all, however, and convincingly details Messiah ben Joseph’s emergence as early as the Pentateuch. Join us as we talk with Mitchell about his fascinating book. David C. Mitchell is a biblical scholar, musicologist, and Hebraist. He is Precentor and Director of Music at Holy Trinity Pro-Cathedral, Brussels. L. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

I own many Bibles, but curiously, I didn’t purchase any of them. They were all given to me, almost all by Protestant Christians. And, considering the history of Protestant Christianity, that impulse to freely offer “God’s word” makes a lot of sense. John Fea takes up the institutionalized giving of Bibles in a primarily American context in his new book, The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society (Oxford University Press, 2016). Through a meticulously researched and carefully constructed chronological narrative of the American Bible Society, Fea expertly touches upon themes of foreign relations, gender, race, technology, and the changing American religious landscape from just after the Revolution to today. This fascinating work would therefore be of interest to general readers and to experts in the field, and is particularly noteworthy as it explores Christianity outside of traditional denominational lines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

A central theological and philosophical problem facing Christians is the question “How could a merciful God damn people to hell?” It is tempting to solve this issue by developing an image of God that leaves out mercy or an understanding of Christian doctrine that rejects the concept of hell. In his new book, Hell and the Mercy of God (Catholic University of America Press, 2017), Adrian Reimers takes up this challenge. In this thought-provoking work, Reimers does not simply seek to resolve this apparent contradiction, but reveals the connections between Gods mercy and hell while embracing the ambiguity of human existence. Philosophers and theologians in particular will find this work useful, but it is so clear that students, and even historians like myself, will be able to understand it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

In the 10th century, a succession of Byzantine rulers reversed centuries of strategic policy by embarking on a series of campaigns that dramatically reshaped their empire. This effort and its consequences for the history of the region is the focus of Anthony Kaldellis‘s Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade (Oxford University Press, 2017), which provides the first survey of this important era of Byzantine history written in over a century. Kaldellis sees the campaigns that began in the 950s as a consequence of the collapse of the Carolingian empire and the decline of the Abbasid caliphate, which provided the Byzantines with an opportunity to stabilize their southeastern frontiers and to extend and consolidate their holdings in the Balkans and in Italy. Effected through a combination of military conquest and traditional Byzantine “soft power,” the result was a greatly expanded domain, one centered now in Europe rather than in Asia. As Kaldellis explains, what brought this period to an end was not any factor internal to the empire but the simultaneous threats posed in the late 11th century by the Normans, the Pechenegs, and the Seljuk Turks, which in the end proved too much for the Byzantine state to manage successfully even with the help of the warriors of the First Crusade. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

This week on the podcast, Daniel Bennet joins us to talk about his new book, Defending Faith: The Politics of the Christian Conservative Legal Movement (University Press of Kansas, 2017). Bennett is assistant professor of political science at John Brown University. From Hobby Lobby to Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court has ruled on controversial social policy issues. At the center of many of these cases are a set of legal organizations, what Bennett calls Christian Conservative Legal Organizations or CCLOs, including the American Center for Law and Justice and Alliance Defending Freedom. In his book, he explains how CCLOs advocate for issues central to Christian conservatives, highlights the influence of religious liberty on the CLM’s broader agenda, and reveals how the Christian Right has become accustomed to the courts as a field of battle in today’s culture wars. Bennett studies these groups as a type of interest group and legal advocacy the primary strategy to fulfill their interests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies