New Books in Christian Studies

The Enthusiast: Anatomy of the Fanatic in Seventeenth-Century British Culture (Cornell UP, 2023) tells the story of a character type that was developed in early modern Britain to discredit radical prophets during an era that witnessed the dismantling of the Church of England's traditional means for punishing heresy. As William Cook Miller shows, the caricature of fanaticism, here called the Enthusiast began as propaganda against religious dissenters, especially working-class upstarts, but was adopted by a range of writers as a literary vehicle for exploring profound problems of spirit, soul, and body and as a persona for the ironic expression of their own prophetic illuminations.Taking shape through the public and private writings of some of the most insightful authors of seventeenth-century Britain-Henry More, John Locke, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Mary Astell, and Jonathan Swift, among others-the Enthusiast appeared in various guises and literary modes.By attending to this literary being and its animators, The Enthusiast establishes the figure of the fanatic as a bridge between the Reformation and the Enlightenment, showing how an incipient secular modernity was informed by not the rejection of religion but the transformation of the prophet into something sparkling, witty, ironic, and new.William Cook Miller is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Rochester. His work has appeared in the journals New Literary History and Studies in Philology.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Covenant shapes our life with God. In Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction (Lexham Academic, 2024), Harrison Perkins shows how Christ and his work are the heart of that covenant relationship. Since God lives in covenant with his redeemed people, covenant theology provides a framework for Christians to grow in their life with God, to read the Bible, and to love the church. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

A question has long hung over the the United States regarding the proper role of religion in public life. Those who long for a Christian America claim that the Founders intended a nation with political values and institutions shaped by Christianity. Secularists argue that those same Founders designed an enlightened republic where church and state should be kept separate. American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order (Yale UP, 2024), Jerome E. Copulsky examines the Americans who rejected the secularism of American society, predicted the collapse of the nation, and hoped to develop a new and decidedly Christian commonwealth. By reviewing extreme religious dissent from colonial times through the current age, Copulsky shows how these thinkers opposed the American orthodoxy of pluralist democracy on theological grounds. Their views are diametrically opposed to the idea of America as a place where multiple sects and creeds peacefully coexist. Each chapter explains a different strain of heresy, beginning with loyal Anglicans who opposed the American Revolution and ending with current National Conservatives who embrace illiberal populism in an effort to enact their vision of a Christian America.Author recommended reading: The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy by Matthew D. TaylorHosted by Meghan Cochran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Reanne Newquist tells me about her voyage on Mercy Ships bringing healthcare to some of the poorest people in the world, a mission started by Don Stephens in the 1970s and encouraged by Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Reanne, her husband, and her kids left everything behind, sold their home and sailed off to adventure and service. Most people go back to normal life, but Reann stayed on with Mercy Ships as part of the communications staff, spreading the word by talking with people like me (and you). Here is her story. Mercy Ships website. Mercy Minute podcast. Reanne’s website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

A compelling work that explores the lives and aspirations of young footballers with deep nuance and insight, The Precarity of Masculinity: Football, Pentecostalism, and Transnational Aspirations in Cameroon (Berghahn Books, 2022) shows how precarious masculinity, Pentecostal spirituality, and aspirations of prosperous futures are intertwining and interrelated in the everyday lives in Southwest regions of Cameroon.Since the 1990s, an increasing number of young men in Cameroon have aspired to play football as a career and a strategy to migrate abroad. Migration through the sport promises fulfillment of masculine dreams of sports stardom, as well as opportunities to earn a living that have been hollowed out by the country’s long economic stalemate. The aspiring footballers are increasingly turning to Pentecostal Christianity, which allows them to challenge common tropes of young men as stubborn and promiscuous, while also offering a moral and bodily regime that promises success despite the odds. Yet the transnational sports market is tough and unpredictable: it demands disciplined young bodies and introduces new forms of uncertainty. The book unpacks young Cameroonians’ football dreams, Pentecostal faith, obligations to provide, and desires to migrate to highlight the precarity of masculinity in structurally adjusted Africa and neoliberal capitalism.Uroš Kovač is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Groningen’s Centre for Religion, Conflict, and Globalization. He is a social anthropologist researching gender, migration, religion and development, often through the prism of sports in Africa and Europe.Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Egypt is revered as the home of the famous Desert Ascetics, who first embraced a monastic life and established homosocial communities on the borders of their urban centres in the Nile Valley. Regarded as angels and warriors, the wisdom of the Desert Ascetics formed part of the oral and literary tradition of wonder-working saints whose commitment to asceticism was legendary and inspirational. Desert Ascetics of Egypt (ARC Humanities Press, 2020) grounds the mythologized stories of Desert Ascetics in the materiality of the desert, demonstrating the closeness of the desert, the connections between non-monastic and monastic communities, and the exciting insights into lived monasticism through the archaeology of monasticism in Egypt.New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review.Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom is the Myra and Robert Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Associate Professor of Christian Studies at Brandeis University, the Senior Archaeological Consultant for the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project, and Co-Director of Monastic Archaeology in Scotland at Lindores Abbey.Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

It is well-known that the institution of marriage has changed dramatically in the past few decades. However, very little research has focused on the role of religious institutions in helping couples form and maintain their relationships.Guiding God's Marriage: Faith and Social Change in Premarital Counseling (NYU Press, 2024) by Dr. Courtney Irby offers an examination of Christian marriage preparation programs, exploring their efforts to stabilise the institution of marriage and highlighting the tension between individualism and community in people’s relational lives. Marriage preparation programs offer a useful lens through which to trace shifts in both religious and family institutions because they set out clear and intentional articulations of marriage ideologies and gendered relationship scripts by faith communities. By documenting the changes in content and practices of Christian premarital education along with its advice regarding what makes a good marriage, the book charts the ways that religious communities have been transformed by and have helped to contribute to the individualization of faith and relationships.Featuring archival research as well as first hand observations of four marriage preparation courses—two Protestant and two Catholic—along with seventy interviews with participating couples and leaders of these and other programs, the book offers a rare view of visions about how to realise a successful and faith-filled relationship. This examination of marriage classes offers key insight into how religious communities have responded to cultural changes in marriage, gender, sexuality, and intimacy.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

In Crusader Criminals: The Knights Who Went Rogue in the Holy Land (Yale University Press, 2024), Dr. Steve Tibble presents a vivid new history of the criminal underworld in the medieval Holy Land.The religious wars of the crusades are renowned for their military engagements. But the period was witness to brutality beyond the battlefield. More so than any other medieval war zone, the Holy Land was rife with unprecedented levels of criminality and violence.In the first history of its kind, Dr. Tibble explores the criminal underbelly of the crusades. From gangsters and bandits to muggers and pirates, Tibble presents extraordinary evidence of an illicit underworld. He shows how the real problem in the region stemmed not from religion but from young men. Dislocated, disinhibited, and present in disturbingly large numbers, they were the propellant that stoked two centuries of unceasing warfare and shocking levels of criminality.Crusader Criminals charts the downward spiral of desensitisation that grew out of the horrors of incessant warfare—and in doing so uncovers some of the most surprising stories of the time.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

In this episode, we are joined by the anthropologist Tone Bleie for a discussion of her book A New Testament: Scandinavian Missionaries and Santal Chiefs from Company and British Crown Rule to Independence (Solum Bokvennen, 2023), a pioneering piece of scholarship that innovatively rethinks the economic, legal, and social history of the power-laden relationship between a Scandinavian Transatlantic mission and the Santals, Boro and Bengalis of Eastern India, Northern Bangladesh, and Eastern Nepal. Based on decades of research, the book offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of historical encounters across the longue durée, transporting readers back to the medieval period and Danish and British Company Rule, through to the British Raj and the early post-Independence period.Tone Bleie is Professor of Public Planning and Cultural Understanding at the University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway.Kenneth Bo Nielsen is a social anthropologist based at the University of Oslo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Today I talked to Iemima Ploscariu about Alternative Evangelicals: Challenging Nationalism in Interwar Romania's Multi-ethnic Borderlands (Brill, 2024).Evangelicals in interwar Romania were a vibrant mix of ethnicities, languages, and social statuses. Jews, Roma, Germans, Hungarians, Serbs, Ukrainians, and Russians sang, prayed, and preached in their native languages. Romanian statesmen perceived them as a danger for the construction of a strong post-WWI national identity. The lived religion of interwar Romanian evangelicals and their struggle through music for legitimacy demonstrates the close ties between national self-understanding and religion. The diverse groups of Romanian evangelicals reveal how minorities in 20th century Europe challenged established religious concepts and constructed their new identities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies