By the election year of 1844, Joseph Smith, the controversial founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had amassed a national following of some 25,000 believers. Nearly half of them lived in the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, where Smith was not only their religious leader but also the mayor and the commander-in-chief of a militia of some 2,500 men. In less than twenty years, Smith had helped transform the American religious landscape and grown his own political power substantially. Yet the standing of the Mormon people in American society remained unstable. Unable to garner federal protection, and having failed to win the support of former president Martin Van Buren or any of the other candidates in the race, Smith decided to take matters into his own hands, launching his own bid for the presidency. While many scoffed at the notion that Smith could come anywhere close to the White House, others regarded his run―and his religion―as a threat to the stability of the young nation. Hounded by mobs throughout the campaign, Smith was ultimately killed by one―the first presidential candidate to be assassinated.Though Joseph Smith's run for president is now best remembered―when it is remembered at all―for its gruesome end, the renegade campaign was revolutionary. Smith called for the total abolition of slavery, the closure of the country's penitentiaries, and the reestablishment of a national bank to stabilize the economy. But Smith's most important proposal was for an expansion of protections for religious minorities. At a time when the Bill of Rights did not apply to individual states, Smith sought to empower the federal government to protect minorities when states failed to do so.In his book Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom (Oxford UP, 2021),  Spencer W. McBride tells the story of Joseph Smith's quixotic but consequential run for the White House and shows how his calls for religious freedom helped to shape the American political system we know today.Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Any study of the Crusades — the religious wars waged by Latin Catholics to recapture the Holy Land — is primarily an exploration of men and their military deeds, with scant consideration of women, save perhaps the redoubtable Eleanor of Aquitaine who accompanied her husband, King Louis VII of France, on the Second Crusade. But the history of the Christian Crusader states established after the success of the First Crusade is a different matter. From 1099 to 1187, the four polities, known collectively as “Outremer” or “the lands beyond the sea” — the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, and the Counties of Tripoli and Edessa — were more often ruled by queens, princesses, and countesses in their own right.The captivating story of these women is the subject of Queens of Jerusalem: The Women Who Dared to Rule (Hachette, 2021) by Katherine Pangonis. In taking up the story of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem, her rebel sister, Princess Alice of Antioch, and their descendants, Pangonis set herself the challenging task of peeling back the layers of recorded history — primarily chronicles written by men — to create a realistic portrait of these vital, ambitious, and dynamic women, a task that requires the historian to wear many hats: archivist, detective, archeologist, and psychologist.Pangonis is well up to the task; she is an outstanding narrative historian, and in addition to scrutinizing all extant sources on Outremer, Pangonis also took the time to walk in the footsteps of her protagonists, and this allows readers of “Queens of Jerusalem” to experience medieval Outremer in vibrant detail. The queens, princesses, and countesses of Outremer were keen builders of edifices, which still form parts of the skylines of of the region: the Crusader castles, the Convent of Bethany, and the all-important Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In “Queens of Jerusalem” this topography leaps off the page in very satisfying detail.Pangonis’s writing is elegant and evocative, always informative but never pedantic. Her ability to marshall her sprawling cast of characters, many of whom confusingly share the same names, is impressive, with each person emerging as a separate and vivid personality with distinct character traits. Pangonis argues that like their European cousins, none of the women of Outremer was ever destined to rule, but that the inherent violence of Outremer rendered the mortality rate for men such that women were often the only potential heirs. Some women, such as Queen Melisende of Jerusalem, were well prepared for their task from childhood, while others, like her sister Alice, struggled to establish and maintain power. Pangonis also considers the fates of several Byzantine princesses who married into the Crusader states, such as the colorful Theodora Komnene, foreigners forced to weather their own challenges in navigating power in Outremer.Jennifer Eremeeva is an American expatriate writer who writes about travel, culture, cuisine and culinary history, Russian history, and Royal History, with bylines in Reuters, Fodor's, USTOA, LitHub, The Moscow Times, and Russian Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Although there were no self-avowed British atheists before the 1780s, authors including Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Sarah Fielding, Phebe Gibbes, and William Cowper worried extensively about atheism's dystopian possibilities and routinely represented atheists as being beyond the pale of human sympathy. In Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century: A Literary History of Atheism (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Dr. James Bryant Reeves challenges traditional notions of secularization that equate modernity with unbelief, revealing how reactions against atheism instead helped sustain various forms of religious belief throughout the “Age of Enlightenment.” He demonstrates that hostility to unbelief likewise produced various forms of religious ecumenicalism, with authors depicting non-Christian theists from around Britain's emerging empire as sympathetic allies in the fight against irreligion. Godless Fictions traces a literary history of atheism in eighteenth-century Britain for the first time, revealing a relationship between atheism and secularization far more fraught than has previously been supposed.James Bryant Reeves is an assistant professor of English at Texas State University in San Marcos. His work has appeared in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, the Keats-Shelley Journal, and SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar, Linacre College, Oxford, and UCLA, where he earned his PhD in 2016.Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Rituality and Social (Dis)Order: The Historical Anthropology of Popular Carnival in Europe (Routledge, 2020) is the first comparative historical anthropology of popular European Carnival in the English language, with a focus on its symbolic, religious, and political dimensions and transformations throughout the centuries. It builds on a variety of theories of social change and social structures, questioning existing assumptions about what folklore is and how cultural gaps and differences take shape and reproduce through ritual forms of collective action. It also challenges recent interpretations about the performative and political dimension of European festive culture, especially in its carnivalesque declension. While presenting and exploring the most important features and characteristics of European pre-modern Carnival and discussing its origins and developments, Dr. Alessandro Testa offers fresh evidence and up-to-date analyses about its transversal and long-lasting significance in European societies.Dr. Alessandro Testa is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University, Prague.Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) is a PhD candidate in Musicology at Florida State University. She is currently working on a dissertation about parade musics in Mobile, Alabama’s Carnival celebrations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

In today's program, I speak with Richard E. Antaramian about his recent monograph, Brokers of Faith, Brokers of Empire: Armenians and the Politics of Reform in the Ottoman Empire (Stanford University Press, 2020). In Brokers of Faith, Brokers of Empire, Antaramian shows that the Armenian Church and clergy--spread across the empire in a vast ecclesiastical network--played an important role in the application of Ottoman reform programs during the mid-nineteenth century. His main intervention to the scholarship is to show that Armenians were not uniformly opposed to Ottoman centralization. Furthermore, Through his study of the Armenian Church, he challenges the well-known paradigm of "center and periphery" by offering a networked model of empire. For experts and novices alike, this book will not only offer a compelling new perspective into Ottoman and Armenian history, but also surprise you with new insights on Kurdish-Armenian relations in Eastern Anatolia in the 19th century.Deren Ertas is a PhD student in the joint program in History and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. You can reach her on Twitter @drnrts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Gary Lee Steward's Justifying Revolution: The Early American Clergy and Political Resistance (Oxford University Press, 2021) explores the patriot clergymen's arguments for the legitimacy of political resistance to the British in the early stages of the American Revolution. It reconstructs the historical and theological background of the colonial clergymen, showing the continued impact that Stuart absolutism and Reformed resistance theory had on their political theology. As a corrective to previous scholarship, this work argues that the American clergymen's rationale for political resistance in the eighteenth century developed in general continuity with a broad strand of Protestant thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Zach McCulley (@zamccull) is a historian of religion and literary cultures in early modern England and PhD candidate in history at Queen's University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Does the author of Luke-Acts write off the Jewish people, or does his presentation demonstrate that hopes for the restoration of Israel were very much still alive within the early church? In Luke's Jewish Eschatology (Oxford University Press, 2021), Isaac W. Oliver investigates Luke's perspective on the salvation of Israel in light of Jewish restoration eschatology, situating Luke-Acts in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. The author of Luke-Acts, Oliver cogently argues, still awaited the restoration of Israel. Luke conceived of Israel's eschatological restoration in traditional Jewish terms. Join us as we hear from Isaac Oliver on his latest book, Luke's Jewish Eschatology: The National Restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts (Oxford UP, 2021).Isaac Oliver (PhD, University of Michigan) is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies, Bradley University.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), Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus(IVP Academic, 2015), and Exodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption(IVP Academic, 2020). 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

John Calvin in Context (Cambridge UP, 2019) offers a comprehensive overview of Calvin's world. Including essays from social, cultural, feminist, and intellectual historians, each specially commissioned for this volume, the book considers the various early modern contexts in which Calvin worked and wrote. It captures his concerns for Northern humanism, his deep involvement in the politics of Geneva, his relationships with contemporaries, and the polemic necessities of responding to developments in Rome and other Protestant sects, notably Lutheran and Anabaptist. The volume also explores Calvin's tasks as a pastor and doctor of the church, who was constantly explicating the text of scripture and applying it to the context of sixteenth-century Geneva, as well as the reception of his role in the Reformation and beyond. Demonstrating the complexity of the world in which Calvin lived, John Calvin in Context serves as an essential research tool for scholars and students of early modern Europe.Zach McCulley (@zamccull) is a historian of religion and literary cultures in early modern England and PhD candidate in history at Queen's University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

In Duplex Regnum Christi: Christ's Twofold Kingdom in Reformed Theology (Brill, 2020), Jonathon D. Beeke surveys the development of thinking among early modern Reformed theologians about the relationship between religion and civil government. Taking cues from Calvin, but showing how the Reformed tradition variegates around his contribution, Beeke shows how the medieval ideas of two cities and two swords were brought into the "two kingdoms" ideas of the earlier magisterial reformers, and how later generations of protestants, especially among the Reformed, preferred to refer in the singular to the "two-fold kingdom" of Christ. Beeke's new work promises to add significant historical light to recent discussions among protestant theologians as to the relationship between church and state. What kinds of government did early modern Reformed theology prefer? Why was Calvin consistent in arguing that heretics who disturbed public peace should face the ultimate sanction? And why were these views so normative among Reformed thinkers - and for so long?Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Notre-Dame of Amiens is one of the great Gothic cathedrals. Its construction began in 1220, and artistic production in the Gothic mode lasted well into the sixteenth century. In Notre-Dame of Amiens: Life of the Gothic Cathedral (Columbia UP, 2020), Stephen Murray invites readers to see the cathedral as more than just a thing of the past: it is a living document of medieval Christian society that endures in our own time.Murray tells the cathedral’s story from the overlapping perspectives of the social groups connected to it, exploring the ways that the layfolk who visit the cathedral occasionally, the clergy who use it daily, and the artisans who created it have interacted with the building over the centuries. He considers the cycles of human activity around the cathedral and shows how groups of makers and users have been inextricably intertwined in collaboration and, occasionally, conflict. The book travels around and through the spaces of the cathedral, allowing us to re-create similar passages by our medieval predecessors. Murray reveals the many worlds of the cathedral and brings them together in the architectural triumph of its central space.A beautifully illustrated account of a grand, historically and religiously important building from a variety of perspectives and in a variety of time periods, this book offers readers a memorable tour of Notre-Dame of Amiens that celebrates the cathedral’s eight hundredth anniversary.Notre-Dame of Amiens is enhanced by high-resolution images, liturgical music, and animations embedded in an innovative website.Bryan Toepfer, AIA, NCARB, CAPM is the Principal Architect for TOEPFER Architecture, PLLC, an Architecture firm specializing in Residential Architecture and Virtual Reality. He has authored two books, “Contractors CANNOT Build Your House,” and “Six Months Now, ARCHITECT for Life.” He is an Adjunct Professor at Alfred State College and the Director of Education for the AIA Rochester Board of Directors. Always eager to help anyone understand the world of Architecture, he can be reached by sending an email to btoepfer@toepferarchitecture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies