New Books in Christian Studies

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.

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Religion & Spirituality
Christianity
1426
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One ...
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention...
61 min
1427
Diarmaid MacCulloch, "Thomas Cromwell: A Revolu...
45 min
1428
Danna Agmon, "A Colonial Affair: Commerce, Conv...
People sometimes forget—if they are even aware—that France’s empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries included a colonial presence in South Asia, a presence that at one time rivaled that of the British.
54 min
1429
Tracy Fessenden, “Religion Around Billie Holida...
Billie Holiday is one of the most iconic jazz performers of all time. Her voice is certainly unmistakable but for many her religious sensibilities may be invisible. In Religion Around Billie Holiday (Penn State University Press, 2018),
58 min
1430
Arlene M. Sánchez Walsh, “Pentecostals in Ameri...
Arlene M. Sánchez Walsh‘s Pentecostals in America (Columbia University Press, 2018) offers a critical look at the history, key figures, and ideas that make Pentecostalism unique and challenges the narrative gloss offered by its adherents and church his...
60 min
1431
Lilian Calles Barger, “The World Come of Age: A...
A searching and richly textured history of the affinities and common origins of Latin American and North American liberation theologies, The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press 2018) dives into the...
54 min
1432
Paul Djupe and Ryan L. Claassen, eds., “The Eva...
In 2016, despite only mixed support from evangelical leaders, Donald Trump won an enormous share of the white evangelical vote. How did Trump manage to overcome the seeming mix-match between his record on social and moral issues and the longstanding vi...
21 min
1433
Donald H. Akenson, “Exporting the Rapture: John...
Don Akenson, who is Douglas Professor of Canadian and Colonial History at Queen’s University, Ontario, is one of the most eminent scholars of Irish history. Exporting the Rapture: John Nelson Darby and the Victorian Conquest of North American Evangelic...
34 min
1434
Iain Provan, “The Reformation and the Right Rea...
Exactly five centuries after Martin Luther posted his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Christians continue to debate the best approach to the reading of their sacred book. The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Bay...
35 min
1435
Robert G. Ingram, “Reformation Without End: Rel...
Robert G. Ingram’s Reformation Without End: Religion, Politics and the Past in Post-Revolutionary England (Manchester University Press, 2018) radically reinterprets the English Reformation. Subjects in eighteenth-century England didn’t know they were l...
40 min
1436
James S. Bielo, “Ark Encounter: The Making of a...
In his new book, Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park (NYU Press, 2018), James Bielo, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Miami University, goes behind the scenes at Grant County, Kentucky’s creationist theme park,
79 min
1437
Stefan M. Wheelock, “Barbaric Culture and Black...
In Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic (University of Virginia Press, 2015), Dr. Stefan M. Wheelock analyses a little-discussed episode in the the late Enlightenment, namely,
51 min
1438
Stephanie L. Derrick, “The Fame of C. S. Lewis:...
C. S. Lewis remains one of the most popular religious writers, and one of the most widely discussed children’s writers. I had the chance to catch up with Stephanie L. Derrick about her new book, The Fame of C. S.
34 min
1439
Ann Taves, “Revelatory Events: Three Case Studi...
I’ve often asked myself this question: “How do religions begin?” I don’t know about you, but I think I would be very, very skeptical if someone told me that they’d had just received a revelation, communicated with some spiritual “higher power,
42 min
1440
Joshua J. F. Coutts, “The Divine Name in the Go...
Unlike many of the other early Christian texts, the Gospel of John emphasizes the name of the Father alongside the name of Jesus—why? One reason, says Joshua Coutts, is because of the significance of God’s name in the Old Testament book of Isaiah.
43 min
1441
Brian Stanley, “Christianity in the Twentieth C...
Today I talked with Brian Stanley, professor of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh, about his new book, Christianity in the Twentieth Century: A World History (Princeton University Press, 2018).
34 min
1442
Matthew Harper, “The End of Days: African Ameri...
In the wake of the bloody Civil War, millions of slaves were emancipated. How did those freed slaves, along with African Americans freed before the Civil War, interpret this new post-war world? Dr. Matthew Harper’s The End of Days: African American Rel...
61 min
1443
Tala Jarjour, “Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant ...
Religious music can be a source of comfort and release, but also a remembrance of sadness and loss. In Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo (Oxford University Press, 2018), Tala Jarjour analyzes the Syriac chant sung in Aramaic used by the small C...
47 min
1444
Adam D. Hensley, “Covenant Relationships and th...
Was the Hebrew Psalter purposefully shaped and arranged by editors to convey a particular theological message? Adam Hensley says yes. By examining the relationship between the Davidic covenant and the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants,
48 min
1445
Robert D. Miller II, “Covenant and Grace in the...
How would Israelites have understood their nation’s covenant relationship with Yahweh? Dr. Robert Miller II offers a study of the Old Testament language of covenant within its ancient context, especially in light of Assyrian ideology.
24 min
1446
Luis Cortest, “Philo’s Heirs: Moses Maimonides ...
The tensions found between Reason and Revelation, between the traditions of the Bible and Greek thought, were central to pre-modern philosophy and in a sense remain so today. We live in an age beholden to both the religious and the secular as ways of u...
53 min
1447
Jessica Johnson, “Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor,...
In her book Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire (Duke University Press, 2018), Dr. Jessica Johnson chronicles the rise and fall of Mars Hill Church, an evangelical megachurch that started in Seattle in the 1990’s...
61 min
1448
Christopher Grasso, “Skepticism and American Fa...
Christopher Grasso is a professor of history at the College of William and Mary. His book Skepticism and American Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2018) explores the tensions and ongoing dialogue between religious f...
57 min
1449
Lev Weitz, “Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Mar...
Recent years have seen new waves of research in Syriac studies, the medieval Middle East, and family history. Combining all three, Lev Weitz’s Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam (University of Pennsylvania ...
64 min
1450
D. G. Hart, “Calvinism: A History” (Yale UP, 2013)
Today I talked with D. G. Hart, an historian at Hillsdale College, MI, and the author of many books, including Calvinism: A History (Yale University Press, 2013). Listed on the front cover of Time (2009) as one of the ten “ideas changing the world righ...
39 min