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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1476
Robert Hunt Ferguson, “Remaking the Rural South...
In an unlikely place at an unlikely time, a group of black and white former sharecroppers, socialist organizers, and Christian reformers began an agricultural experiment in pursuit of economic subsistence and human dignity.
51 min
1477
Tam T. T. Ngo, “The New Way: Protestantism and ...
Think of Christianity in Southeast Asia today and what might come to mind is the predominantly Catholic Philippines, or the work of the Baptist church among linguistic and cultural minorities in Myanmar, or any one of the thousands of Christian communi...
44 min
1478
Mark Rozell and Clyde Wilcox, “God at the Grass...
In the wake of the Alabama Senate election in December, 2017, attention has been drawn to the intersection of religion and politics. This is the subject of God at the Grassroots 2016: The Christian Right in American Politics (Rowman and Littlefield,
18 min
1479
Crawford Gribben, “John Owen and English Purita...
Though the preeminent English theologian of the 17th century, there is much about John Owen’s life which remains obscured to us today. One of the achievements of Crawford Gribben‘s new book John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat (Oxfor...
48 min
1480
Patrick Breen, “The Land Shall be Deluged in Bl...
How did African-American slaves react to slavery? What factors, particularly religion, might shape those reactions, even making them violent? Patrick Breen, in his carefully researched and cogently written The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood: A New Hist...
60 min
1481
James K. Lee, “Augustine and the Mystery of the...
When teaching the first half of world history, I always do a little section on Augustine. My focus is on how he was an important theologian who shaped Christian understandings of war and even influenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
66 min
1482
Finbarr Curtis, “The Production of American Rel...
There is no such thing as religious freedom, or at least just one understanding of what that means. That’s the crux of the argument in Finbarr Curtis’ (Assistant Professor at Georgia Southern University), The Production of American Religious Freedom (N...
63 min
1483
Drew Lopenzina, “Through an Indian’s Looking-Gl...
Through meticulous archival research, close readings of key works, and informed and imaginative speculation about a largely enigmatic life, Red Ink author Drew Lopenzina provides a vivid portrait of a singular Native American figure in Through an India...
56 min
1484
Andrew R. Lewis, “The Rights Turn in Conservati...
Andrew R. Lewis is the author of the new book, The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics: How Abortion Transformed the Culture Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Lewis is assistant professor of political science at the University of Cinc...
26 min
1485
Marie Alohalani Brown, “Facing the Spears of Ch...
It’s not often that a single person’s life can reveal the dramatic social and political shifts of a community. From his youth, John Papa I’i, an important statesman and author, played a pivotal role in shaping and supporting the 19th century Kingdom of...
49 min
1486
James L. Kugel, “The Great Shift: Encountering ...
In a career spanning several decades, James L. Kugel has illuminated the Hebrew Bible from the perspectives of both a biblical scholar of enormous skill and eloquence and as an engaged and imaginative reader.
46 min
1487
David L. Weddle, “Sacrifice in Judaism, Christi...
Is there one principal avenue of exploration that could lead to the very heart of the religious experience? For David L. Weddle, professor emeritus of Religion at Colorado College, that way in is the practice of ritual sacrifice. In his new book,
37 min
1488
David C. Mitchell, “Messiah ben Joseph” (Campbe...
Messiah ben Joseph, the slain Galilean messiah, is the most enigmatic figure in Rabbinic Judaism. David C. Mitchell‘s Messiah ben Joseph (Campbell Publications, 2016) proposes that this messiah is not a rabbinic invention at all, however,
18 min
1489
John Fea, “The Bible Cause: A History of the Am...
I own many Bibles, but curiously, I didn’t purchase any of them. They were all given to me, almost all by Protestant Christians. And, considering the history of Protestant Christianity, that impulse to freely offer “God’s word” makes a lot of sense.
59 min
1490
Adrian Reimers, “Hell and the Mercy of God” (Ca...
A central theological and philosophical problem facing Christians is the question “How could a merciful God damn people to hell?” It is tempting to solve this issue by developing an image of God that leaves out mercy or an understanding of Christian do...
52 min
1491
Anthony Kaldellis, “Streams of Gold, Rivers of ...
In the 10th century, a succession of Byzantine rulers reversed centuries of strategic policy by embarking on a series of campaigns that dramatically reshaped their empire. This effort and its consequences for the history of the region is the focus of A...
55 min
1492
Daniel Bennett, “Defending Faith: The Politics ...
This week on the podcast, Daniel Bennet joins us to talk about his new book, Defending Faith: The Politics of the Christian Conservative Legal Movement (University Press of Kansas, 2017). Bennett is assistant professor of political science at John Brow...
19 min
1493
Hussein Fancy, “The Mercenary Mediterranean: So...
Hussein Fancy’s book The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (University of Chicago Press, 2016) begins with the description of five Muslim jenets, or cavalrymen,
45 min
1494
Daniel Dreisbach, “Reading the Bible with the F...
No book was more accessible or familiar to the American founders than the Bible, and no book was more frequently alluded to or quoted from in the political discourse of the age. How and for what purposes did the founding generation use the Bible?
38 min
1495
Joyce Salisbury, “Rome’s Christian Empress: Gal...
The daughter of the emperor Theodosius I, Galla Placidia successfully navigated the tumultuous politics of the late Roman Empire to rule as regent for her son Valentinian III. In Rome’s Christian Empress: Galla Placidia Rules at the Twilight of the Emp...
42 min
1496
Benjamin J. Ribbens, “Levitical Sacrifice and H...
Were the sacrifices of the Old Testament effectual? The book of Hebrews offers a critique of the Levitical cult and the sacrifices of the old covenant, even while explaining Christ’s new covenant sacrifice by comparison to them. Yet,
32 min
1497
Matthew Gillis, “Heresy and Dissent in the Caro...
In the popular imagination, heresy belongs to the Christian Middle Ages in much the way that the Crusades or courtly culture do. Non-specialists in the medieval field may assume that the problem of heresy always existed, uniformly,
47 min
1498
Pekka Pitkanen, “A Commentary on Numbers: Narra...
Mainstream readings of Numbers have tended to see the book as a haphazard junkyard of material that connects Genesis—Leviticus with Deuteronomy and Joshua, composed at a late stage in the history of ancient Israel. By contrast,
60 min
1499
Did the Protestant Reformation Have to Happen?
In the second podcast of Arguing History, historians Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie address the question of whether the Protestant Reformation, an event which transformed Christianity in the Western world, was an inevitable event.
54 min
1500
Albert Wu, “From Christ to Confucius: German Mi...
Where Europeans have gone, so, too, have their ideas about religion. We know that this was no one-way street, that Christian missionaries have both changed and been changed by their interaction with nonwhite, non-Christian peoples,
56 min