New Books in Catholic Studies

Costanzo Gioseffo Beschi was an Italian Jesuit who worked in South India from 1710 to 1747. A brilliant scholar of Tamil, his works include hymns, instructions for catechists, and a robust defense of the Catholic missionary approach. His most famous work is Tēmpāvaṇi (The Unfading Garland), an epic re-telling of the early life of Jesus, set in the context of the whole Biblical story, and surprisingly focused on St. Joseph, spouse of Mary and foster-father of Jesus. St. Joseph in South India argues that Beschi’s distinctively Catholic approach draws on methods already familiar in the Jesuit ethical and dramatic literature in post-Reformation Europe. Francis Xavier Clooney's Saint Joseph in South India: Poetry, Mission and Theology in Costanzo Gioseffo Beschi's Tēmpāvaṇi (Brill, 2022) includes a fresh translation of about 300 verses from Tēmpāvaṇi.Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I talk with a Muslim friend about the places that Islam and Christianity overlap, and also the places where they diverge. Of these subjects, none is more interesting than the role of Jesus Christ whom Muslims call the Prophet Issa (peace be upon him). Muslims hold him in high esteem but do not believe in his divinity or in the Trinity itself. Muslims believe in the Resurrection and Second Coming but interestingly not in the death of Jesus. They also revere Our Lady, the Virgin Mary.Munir Sheikh is a Sunni Muslim from Bangladesh. He’s a management consultant on Wall Street in New York. He joined a Catholic Dads’ group (how I met him) to talk about important issues of faith and family life with some of his oldest American friends (who are Catholic). Munir Sheikh on LinkedIn Derya Little, on Almost Good Catholics, episode 27: Faithful Frontiers: A Turkish Scholar Describes How She Became a Catholic Apologist Mufti Menk, “The Story of Jesus” Omar Suleiman, “The Life and Mission of Jesus” Omar Suleiman, “Islam,” on the Lex Fridman Podcast Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; he is also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

South Asia is home to more than a billion Hindus and half a billion Muslims. But the region is also home to substantial Christian communities, some dating almost to the earliest days of the faith. The stories of South Asia’s Christians are vital for understanding the shifting contours of World Christianity, precisely because of their history of interaction with members of these other religious traditions. In this broad, accessible overview of South Asian Christianity, Chandra Mallampalli shows how the faith has been shaped by Christians’ location between Hindus and Muslims.South Asia's Christians: Between Hindu and Muslim (Oxford UP, 2023) begins with a discussion of south India’s ancient Thomas Christian tradition, which interacted with West Asia’s Persian Christians and thrived for centuries alongside their Hindu and Muslim neighbors. He then underscores the efforts of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries to understand South Asian societies for purposes of conversion. The publication of books and tracts about other religions, interreligious debates, and aggressive preaching were central to these endeavors, but rarely succeeded in yielding converts. Instead, they played an important role in producing a climate of religious competition, which ultimately marginalized Christians in Hindu-, Muslim-, and Buddhist-majority countries of postcolonial South Asia. Ironically, the greatest response to Christianity came from poor and oppressed Dalit (formerly “untouchable”) and tribal communities who were largely indifferent to missionary rhetoric. Their mass conversions, poetry, theology, and embrace of Pentecostalism are essential for understanding South Asian Christianity and its place within World Christianity today.Byung Ho Choi is a Ph.D. candidate in the History and Ecumenics program at Princeton Theological Seminary, concentrating in World Christianity and history of religions. His research focuses on the indigenous expressions of Christianities found in Southeast Asia, particularly Christianity that is practiced in the Muslim-dominant archipelagic nation of Indonesia. More broadly, he is interested in history and the anthropology of Christianity, complexities of religious conversion and social identity, inter-religious dialogue, ecumenism, and World Christianity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Mediating Catholicism: Religion and Media in Global Catholic Imaginaries (Bloomsbury, 2022), the authors and the three editors (Eric Hones del Pinal, Marc Rosco Loustau and Kristin Norget) explore how Catholicism is produced, maintained and challenged through processes of communication.This book focuses on the ethnographic study of Catholicism and media. Chapters demonstrate how people engage with the Catholic media-scape, and analyze the social, cultural, and political processes that underlie Catholic media and mediatization.Case studies examine Catholic practices in North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America, South-East Asia, and Africa, providing a truly comparative, de-centered representation of global Catholicism.Illustrating the vibrancy and heterogeneity of Catholicism world-wide, the book also examines how media work to sustain larger global Catholic imaginaries.Eric Hoenes Del Pinal’s chapter in particular examines “how Guatemalan Catholics have variously used FM radio and internet streaming video to manage the uncertainties of producing spectacular public rituals during Holy Week. Focusing on the devotional labor that Catholic lay leaders do to mount these events and the fact that efficacy of that work is not always easy to asses, he asks how their various media practices, which are meant to counterbalance unprecedented social changes, have contributed to the mediatization of parish life” (9).Lauren Horn Griffin is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University. She researches religion, media, and technology with a focus on Catholic communities around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did liberationist Christianity develop in Argentina between the 1930s and early 1970s? And how did it respond to state terrorism during the Dirty War? How did liberation theology develop in Argentina between the 1930s and early 1970s? And how did it respond to state terrorism during the Dirty War? Understanding the movement to be dynamic and highly diverse, Pablo Bradbury's book Liberationist Christianity in Argentina (1930-1983): Faith and Revolution (Tamesis Books, 2023) reveals that ecclesial and political conflicts, especially over Peronism and celibacy, were at the heart of the construction of a liberationist Christian identity, which simultaneously internalised deep tensions over its relationship to the Catholic Church. It first situates the rise of a revolutionary Christian impulse in Argentina within changes in society, in Catholicism and Protestantism and in Marxism in the 1930s, before analysing how the phenomenon coalesced in the late sixties into a coherent social movement. Finally, the book examines the responses of liberationist Christians to the intense period of repression under the presidency of Isabel Perón and the rule of the military junta between 1974 and 1983. By exploring these distinct responses and uncovering the heterogeneity of liberationist Christianity, the book offers a fresh analysis of a movement that occupies a major role in the popular memory of the period of state terror, and provides a corrective to narratives that depict the movement as monolithic or as a passive victim of the dictatorship.Roland Clark is a Reader in Modern European History at the University of Liverpool, a Senior Fellow with the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, and the Principal Investigator of an AHRC-funded project on European Fascist Movements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert P. George is the indispensable man of American social conservatism. The Princeton professor is a scholar of such intellectual power that he almost single-handedly rescued the anti-abortion movement from the fringes of the American sociopolitical and legal landscape in the 1990s when the secular left assumed that the reign of abortion on demand for any reason was a done deal. George (born 1955) reset the debate and provided the intellectual framework that enabled a generation of pro-life advocates to craft tactics and policies that led ultimately to the Dobbs decision of 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade. Conservatives are not often regarded as innovators. But George changed the paradigm. The book we will discuss today shows how he has done that.And that momentous accomplishment is only one milestone in the career of this multi-faceted scholar. George is one of the few scholars to wield influence in multiple fields of study. A lover of the humanities and liberal learning, he has made major contributions in his primary fields of analytic philosophy and its subbranch, the philosophy of law. He has also done important work both in academic writing and through public service in the form of membership and chairmanship of federal government bodies in such fields as bioethics, religious freedom and civil rights.All of these accomplishments and more are discussed by leading Protestant scholars and thinkers in Social Conservatism for the Common Good: A Protestant Engagement With Robert P. George (Crossway, 2023), edited by the evangelical scholar, Andrew Walker. Walker contributes an introduction and an interview with George himself, both of which make clear why the latter is so admired in evangelical circles and what qualms some of them have about some aspects of his activism. Carl Trueman, for example, suggests that as wokeness has corroded and coarsened public discourse, George’s gentlemanly approach is no longer effective.Let’s hear from the editor of this study, Andrew Walker.Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I talked with Senator Joe Lieberman—who ran for Vice President in 2000 with Al Gore, and for President in 2004 in the Democratic primary—about his book, The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath (2011). Senator Lieberman is a devout Jew and talks with me about the Sabbath tradition, a custom rooted in God’s day of rest at the end of creation (Genesis 2) and the Mosaic Law and the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5). It is the shared practice of all Abrahamic monotheists: Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Senator Lieberman’s book, The Gift of Rest Senator Lieberman’s Wikipedia page Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; he is also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pastors, thoughtful Christians, and students of Scripture must learn how to carefully read and understand the Bible, but it can be difficult to know where to start. In this clear, logical guide, Andreas J. Kostenberger and Gregory Goswell explain how to interpret Scripture from three effective viewpoints: canonical, thematic, and ethical.Biblical Theology: A Canonical, Thematic, and Ethical Approach (Crossway, 2023) is arranged book by book from the Old Testament (using the Hebrew order) through the New Testament. For each text, Kostenberger and Goswell analyze key biblical-theological themes, discussing the book’s place in the overall storyline of Scripture. Next, they focus on the ethical component, showing how God seeks to transform the lives of his people through the inspired text. Following this technique, readers will better understand the theology of each book and its author.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/adchoices

How did American Catholics go from subjects to citizens? Who is the "godfather" of the First Amendment? How can spiritual and temporal duties be reconciled? Michael Breidenbach, Associate Professor of History at Ave Maria University, joins the show to answer these questions and discuss his new book, Our Dear-Bought Liberty: Catholics and Religious Toleration in Early America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I talked to Ninon Dubourg about her new book Disabled Clerics in the Late Middle Ages: Un/Suitable for Divine Service? (Amsterdam UP, 2023).The petitions received and the letters sent by the Papal Chancery during the Late Middle Ages attest to the recognition of disability at the highest levels of the medieval Church. These documents acknowledge the existence of physical and/or mental impairments, with the papacy issuing dispensations allowing some supplicants to adapt their clerical missions according to their abilities. A disease, impairment, or old age could prevent both secular and regular clerics from fulfilling the duties of their divine office. Such conditions can, thus, be understood as forms of disability. In these cases, the Papal Chancery bore the responsibility for determining if disabled people were suitable to serve as clerics, with all the rights and duties of divine services. Whilst some petitioners were allowed to enter the clergy, or - in the case of currently serving churchmen - to stay more or less active in their work, others were compelled to resign their position and leave the clergy entirely. Petitions and papal letters lie at intersection of authorized, institutional policy and practical sources chronicling the lived experiences of disabled people in the Middle Ages. As such, they constitute an excellent analytical laboratory in which to study medieval disability in its relation to the papacy as an institution, alongside the impact of official ecclesiastical judgments on disabled lives.A transcript of this interview is available here.Shu Wan is currently matriculated as a doctoral student in history at the University at Buffalo. As a digital and disability historian, he serves in the editorial team of Digital Humanities Quarterly and Nursing Clio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices