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.
Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com
Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/
Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork
1501
Marlene Banks, “Ruth’s Redemption” (Lift Every ...
It’s A Love Story. Set in the 1800s, Ruth’s Redemption (Lift Every Voice, 2012), is an unusual depiction of the lives of slaves and free blacks in pre-Civil War America. Although a slave, Bo is educated. When he gets his freedom,
27 min
1502
David I. Shyovitz, “A Remembrance of His Wonder...
In A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), David I. Shyovitz, Associate Professor of History, and of Jewish and Israel Studies, at Northwestern University,
34 min
1503
Ellen Wayland-Smith, “Oneida: From Free Love Ut...
Ellen Wayland-Smith, a descendent of the Oneida community, teaches writing at the University of Southern California. Her book Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well-set Table (Picador Press, 2016) is an insightful and beautifully written history of ...
55 min
1504
Peter Marshall, “Heretics and Believers: A Hist...
Few events in English history are as familiar to people today as the English Reformation, yet the vast amount of attention it has received can distort our understanding of it. In Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation (Yale Univer...
48 min
1505
Augustine’s “Confessions,” a new translation by...
Sarah Ruden holds a Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Harvard University and an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. She has taught Latin, English, and writing at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Cape Town and has been a tutor for the Sout...
63 min
1506
Gregory Reichberg, “Thomas Aquinas on War and P...
When is war justified? What makes a just war? These are difficult questions to answer, but particularly so for Christians, followers of Jesus, who suffered violence without responding in kind. One philosopher-theologian who wrestled with these issues w...
75 min
1507
David Mitchell, “The Song of Ascents: Psalms 12...
Psalms 120-134, designated the “Songs of Ascents,” form their own distinct collection within the Psalter. Who wrote these psalms and for what occasion? David Mitchell, a biblical scholar, musicologist, and Hebraist, is here to answer these questions.
15 min
1508
Patrick J. Hayes, “The Civil War Diary of Rev. ...
During the Civil War Father James Sheeran served as a Catholic chaplain for the 14th Louisiana Infantry. Between his various responsibilities Sheeran kept a journal in which he recounted his experiences with, and observations of,
55 min
1509
Ashon T. Crawley, “Blackpentecostal Breath: The...
Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility (Fordham University Press, 2016) is innovative and lyrical, challenging and beautiful. Ashon Crawley brings together black studies, queer theory, theology,
59 min
1510
Sarah Ruden, “The Face of Water: A Translator o...
On this program, we talk to Sarah Ruden about her new book, The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible (Pantheon, 2017). Novelist J. M. Coetzee praised the book, saying, “If you seriously want to know what the Bible says but don...
58 min
1511
Don Baker, “Catholics and Anti-Catholicism in C...
Shortly after the introduction of Catholicism into Korea in the late 18th century, Korea’s Confucian government began to persecute Catholics. Why would a Confucian government torture and kill the people it was supposed to protect and nurture?
57 min
1512
David Bryan and David Pao, eds, “Ascent into He...
The ascension of Christ is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity, and yet Luke’s two-volume work contains the only narrative depictions of Jesus’ ascent into heaven in the New Testament–all the more reason to take a closer look at these ascension narr...
44 min
1513
S. Brent Plate ed., “Key Terms in Material Reli...
In recent years, several scholars of religion have moved away from the examination of discursive textual domains or the meaning of ritual practices towards analyzing the material worlds in which these practices and beliefs exists. S. Brent Plate,
49 min
1514
Rhiannon Graybill, “Are We Not Men? Unstable Ma...
Rhiannon Graybill‘s Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets (Oxford University Press, 2016) offers an innovative approach to gender and embodiment in the Hebrew Bible, revealing the male body as a source of persistent difficulty for...
33 min
1515
Alec Ryrie, “Protestants: The Faith that Made t...
500 years ago, a German monk and professor named Martin Luther started a well-intentioned movement to reform “the Church” (Jesus founded only one, after all). Luther’s object was not to split the Church, but to bring it into conformity with what he tho...
64 min
1516
Brandon D. Crowe, “The Last Adam: A Theology of...
One scholar famously referred to the Gospels of the New Testament as passion narratives with long introductions. Such a view, however, tends to minimize the theological importance of Jesus’ life and ministry before his death. In today’s podcast, Dr.
32 min
1517
Michael E. Stewart, “The Soldier’s Life: Martia...
The prowess of the Roman empire was imbued with courage and militarism. Symbolised by the combative male soldier, Michael Edward Stewart‘s tool of historical enquiry is masculinity. In his book, The Soldier’s Life: Martial Virtues and Manly Romanitas i...
45 min
1518
Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez, “The Valiant Woman: Th...
When people think of the Virgin Mary in terms of American religious history, there is a tendency to focus on opposition. For instance, Catholic devotion to Mary on the one side, and Protestant critique of that devotion on the other side. However,
61 min
1519
Molly Worthen, “Apostles of Reason: The Crisis ...
Beginning with a network of reformed figures that orbited around Billy Graham, from J. Howard Pew’s money to Carl Henry’s passion for cultural esteem, Molly Worthen’s Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (Oxford Univer...
66 min
1520
Glen A. Fritz, “The Lost Sea of the Exodus, 2nd...
The crossing of the Israelites through the Red Sea is one of the most famous scenes in the story of the Exodus out of Egypt. But can it be that for the last couple thousand years, historians, geographers, and scholars have had the wrong sea in mind?
34 min
1521
Steven Dilday, “The Exegetical Labors of the Re...
Matthew Poole (1624-1679) was an English Nonconformist theologian educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; he held the rectory of St Michael le Querne in London from 1649 to 1662. Poole is principally associated with the work Synopsis Criticorum Biblic...
30 min
1522
David Rohl, “Exodus: Myth or History? (Thinking...
Archaeologists and scholars of the ancient Near East regularly make statements to the effect that there is absolutely no archaeological evidence for many events of the Bible, including Israel’s sojourn in Egypt, the Exodus out of Egypt,
40 min
1523
Kerry Pimblott, “Faith in Black Power: Religion...
When you think of black power, do you think about churches and religious institutions, or do you relate them more to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s? How do the social justice struggles of the past relate to those of today?
48 min
1524
Piotr Kosicki, “Vatican II Behind the Iron Curt...
Many historians have documented the Second Vatican Council yet virtually no attention has been devoted to the Catholics who found themselves living behind an iron curtain at the end of the 1940s. Piotr Kosicki’s edited volume,
64 min
1525
Joshua Guthman, “Strangers Below: Primitive Bap...
Before the Bible Belt fastened itself across the South, competing factions of evangelicals fought over the faith’s future, and a contrarian sect, self-named the Primitive Baptists, made its stand. In Strangers Below: Primitive Baptists and American Cul...
48 min