New Books in Christian Studies

Anthropological theory can radically transform our understanding of human experience and offer theologians an introduction to the interdisciplinary nature between anthropology and Christianity. Both sociocultural anthropology and theology have made fundamental contributions to our understanding of human experience and the place of humanity in the world. But can these two disciplines, despite the radical differences that separate them, work together to transform their thinking on these topics? In Theology and the Anthropology of Christian Life (Oxford UP, 2020), Joel Robbins argues that they can. To make this point, he draws on key theological discussions of atonement, eschatology, interruption, passivity, and judgement to rethink important anthropological debates about such topics as ethical life, radical change, the ways people live in time, agency, gift-giving, and the nature of humanity. The result is both a major reconsideration of important aspects of anthropological theory through theological categories and a series of careful readings of influential theologians such as Moltmann, Pannenberg, Jüngel, and Dalferth informed by rich ethnographic accounts of the lives of Christians from around the world.In conclusion, Robbins draws on contemporary secularism discussions to interrogate anthropology's secular foundations and suggests that the differences between anthropology and theology surrounding this topic can provide a foundation for transformative dialogue between them rather than being an obstacle to it.Tiatemsu Longkumer is a Ph.D. scholar working on ‘Anthropology of Religion’ at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong: India. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has always been globally situated, argues Montana State history professor Amanda Hendrix-Komoto in Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific (U Nebraska, 2022). Through mission work, polygamous marriage, and extensive kinship networks, LDS members sought to create Zions - holy Mormon spaces - throughout the world through relationships with Indigenous people from the Intermountain West to Tahiti and the Hawai'ian islands. This process found both successful conversions, as well as pain and violence, since despite LDS insistence that they offered an alternative to American settler colonialism, often church members could be just as imperially-minded as their non-Mormon peers. Nonetheless, Hendrix-Komoto argues that the history of Indigenous people and the LDS Church is complex, and cannot be understood without placing a uniquely Mormon idea of the family at the very center. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Lauren Nelson discusses St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Way, the communion of saints, which is really quite close. She also talks about her ministries and classes and what St. Thérèse has taught he about life and being a mother. Lauren Nelson's classes are here. The Coffee & Catholics podcast is here. The Gathering Manna Facebook community is here. St. Thérèse of Lisieux's The Story of a Soul is available here. An audio recording is here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Author Heather King discusses her journey from the alcoholic abyss to redemption and new life (which she described in her book, Parched, 2006), St. Thérèse of Lisieux and the Little Way (whom she wrote about in her book, Shirt of Flame, 20011), the Communion of Saints, literature, women in the Church. In this conversation, we talk over the “Little Ways” that we may look for in our lives to follow the Way of Jesus—as women, men, parents, clerics, lay-people, writers, teachers, workers, and every other kind of human—whether or not anyone see us doing it, except God. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Professor Matthew Thomas returns to explain how we can place the Gospels in time and context using both internal clues (literary evidence) and the external ones (anthropological evidence). These are the first steps on a path of the many centuries of transmission toward the Bible we have today; Matthew Thomas tells why they are so important and where they have led us.The papyrus (P66) of the Gospel of John in the Bodmer Library, Switzerland, 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

Makoto Fujimura, world-famous contemporary painter with global cultural influence, talks about his art, his thinking and writing about Shūsaku Endō's novel Silence (1966), and his work on Martin Scorsese's film Silence (2016). I ask him about Scorsese’s long collaborative friendship with Akira Kurosawa and his participation in Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990).Mako also describes his work with his wife, Haejin Shim Fujimura, for Embers International and Kintsugi Academy, protecting and serving women and children in the brothels of Mumbai who are in danger of exploitation and trafficking.Both in the lives of the suffering poor and in the trials of struggling Christians, Mako sees redemptive beauty that he compares to the Japanese art of kintsugi in which broken vessels are lovingly restored with gold and lacquer and to our Lord, Jesus Christ, who is always pictured with His five wounds. Embers International website. Silence (2016), official trailer Art & Theology: Mr. Fujimura explains 'Kintsugi Theology' Mr. Fujimura's essay, 'Kintsugi Generation' Mr. Fujimura's paintings, 'The Four Holy Gospels' David Brooks about Mako Fujimura, The New York Times, “Longing for an Internet Cleanse” Michael John Cusick with Mako Fujimura, Restoring the Soul Podcast, “Silence and Beauty: Part I, Ep. 13, and Part II, Ep. 14,” and again, “Kintsugi Reflects Life, Ep. 193” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

For two years Sr Nathalie Becquart has been in charge of the Church’s Synod on Synodality, coordinating the responses of millions of Catholics from 112 out of 114 Episcopal Conferences and from all the 15 Oriental Catholic Churches. She and I talk about the spirit of this Synod, its progress and direction, and the recently published Working Document for the Continental Stage (DCS), Enlarge the Space of Your Tent.Sr Nathalie Becquart was appointed by Pope Francis to be Undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops. She's the first woman in church history to hold that office and to vote with that body of clerics. Working Document for the Continental Stage (DCS), Enlarge the Space of Your Tent. About Sr Nathalie Becquart, Global Sisters Report, “Meet Sr. Nathalie Becquart” About Sr Nathalie Becquart, Boston College News, “Papal Appointment” About Sr Nathalie Becquart, Rome Reports, “The Synod Special” Inside the Vatican, “Deep Dive: The Synod on Synodality” 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 chaos of the end of WWI, the Russian Civil War, and a brief period of Ukrainian independence there occurred a series of massacres of German Mennonites. Sean Patterson's recent book Makhno and Memory: Anarchist and Mennonite Narratives of Ukraine's Civil War, 1917-1921 (University of Manitoba Press, 2020) analyzes the varying historical memories of these massacres. Patterson's book raises numerous and timely issues of national memory and identity, and contains much poignant reflection on the problems faced by an historically pacifist community facing down violent circumstances. What it means to be a member of a national community is an interesting and important question in any circumstances, but the construction of Ukrainian national identity is a subject of more-than-casual interest, in 2022. Makhno and Memory discusses a complicated and important series of event in accessible fashion, and usefully circumscribes what can and cannot be known about Nestor Makhno's specific role in those events.Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Matthew Thomas, theologian and biblical scholar, explains how the Bible got to be the Bible, how confident we can be in its historicity, and on what authority we can trust such judgments. We talk about the languages of the Scripture and their transmission over time, and how we see the emergence of the documents that would later become the Bible already in first-century Christian communities.Professor Thomas teaches Biblical languages and the history of the Bible, Patristics, and Early Christian interpretation of the Scriptures, especially Pauline Theology, at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at UC Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

David Basile explains Thomas Aquinas's cosmological proofs for God. David is department chair of Theology at Archbishop Rummel High School in Metarie, Louisiana; he is also an old friend of mine so he was a natural choice to be the first guest of this new podcast. He talked about his own journey from atheism to Buddhism and finally to the Catholic Church. (He spent a decade as a Buddhist monk, where he first encountered Catholic contemplative mystics.)I asked David to explain how we know there is a God in the way he might make the case to his own students, to the skeptical—and maybe sometimes cynical—teenagers who native to our secular and materialistic society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies