News
Patricia A. Ward's Experimental Theoogy in America received a recent review in Religion and the Arts. "Ward’s careful handling of primary sources and her detailed reconstruction of Quietism’s legacy within American Protestantism guarantee her book an authoritative place at the table in future discussions of American popular piety" (p. 488). Read more reviews on the book's page on our Web site.
H-Net Reviews published a recent review of Michael J. Hyde's February release Perfection: Coming to Terms with Being Human. The review is quite substantial and provides a great overview of the work, moving through the practical, medical, and even spiritual effects of our very human desire for perfection. You can read the full review online by clicking here and can learn more about Perfection by visiting the book's page.
In the latest issue of Homiletic (35, 1), Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm reviews Preaching the Inward Light: Early Quaker Rhetoric by Michael P. Graves.
Preaching the Inward Light is an excellent resource not only for students of religious rhetoric, preaching, and history, but also for persons who would encounter a radically different approach to discerning God’s living word amid the community of faith. The extraordinary history of Quaker preaching bespeaks the integrity of a tradition that seeks to worship in spirit and truth, in word and deed.
Preaching the Inward Light is part of our Studies in Rhetoric & Religion series, which announces a new addition to the series in October with The Faithful Citizen: Popular Christian Media and Gendered Civic Identities by Kristy Maddux. You can find out more about these titles on the Studies in Rhetoric & Religion page and read the full review of Graves's book online by clicking here.
Patricia J. Sotirin, co-author of Aunting: Practices that Sustain Family and Community Life, has launched a new Web sited, "All About Aunting", dedicated to the practice of "Aunting," which includes a blog and even more information about the upcoming book. You can visit the Web site by clicking here.
Writing for the latest volume of Catholic Biblical Quarterly (72, 2010), Timothy R. Carmody calls Reading the Bible Intertextually, edited by Hays, Alkier, and Huizenga, a "very informative and insightful" volume "with a good balance of theoretical discussion and practical examples" (p. 643).
Publishers Weekly calls Douglas E. Cowan's forthcoming title Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and Television, "An intriguing and entertaining look into some of the questions that science fiction raises, especially what it means to be human, and sometimes more than human....[E]ven casual Trekkies and sci-fi buffs will be engaged by Cowan's interpretations and possibilities." You'll be able to read the full review when it is published this September. For more, visit the Sacred Space book page.
Caring Cultures: How Congregations Respond to the Sick by Susan J. Dunlap received a new review in Pneuma, the journal for the Society of Pentacostal Studies. One portion of the review states:
Weaving theological, sociological, psychological, and pastoral perspectives together articulately and sensitively in her analysis of the insights gained of the ways these churches dealt with illness, Dunlap has modeled very well the ways in which congregational studies can yield fruit, not just for pastors and congregations, but for researchers across the disciplines.
Find out more about Caring Cultures on the books page here.
Laura Hobgood-Oster, forthcoming author of The Friends We Keep: Unleashing Christianity's Compassion for Animals, was in the news this week. Inside Higher Ed reported that the number of university-level courses focusing on the human-animal interaction are growing. Hogbood-Oster began teaching her course in 2001. Also, The Huffington Post ran an article from the Religion News Service titled, "Do All Dogs Go to Heaven?" In the article, she says, "It seems that the question of animals and the soul was much more plausible ... in Christian history up almost until the Enlightenment or up into the Reformation."
Find out more about her new book by clicking here.
Ruth: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text by Robert D. Holmstedt received a great review in the July 2010 issue of Bible Today. "In short, the author has given students a valuable step-by-step introduction to reading the text of the Hebrew Bible." You can read the full review on Ruth's book page by clicking here.
The Chicago Crescent reviewed Michael Henderson's No Enemy to Conquer: Forgiveness in an Unforgiving World for the July 2010 issue:
No Enemy to Conquer offers a passionate, well-researched defense of the virtue of forgiveness and its place in healing hate and conflict while establishing peace and justice at a grassroots level all over the world.
Read the full review online by clicking here.
A new review of John Howard Yoder's Nonviolence A Brief History: The Warsaw Lectures was published on the blog Inhabitatio Dei. The reviewer states:
The editors of Nonviolence ... are invested in advancing arguments about how Yoder ought to be read and the direction of his thought. However, none of this agenda is brought to bear on the text of the lectures .... For this kind of editorial judiciousness, I am very grateful.
You can read the entire review online by clicking here.
Robert A. Wortham's W. E. B. Du Bois and the Sociological Imagination has been reviewed in the latest issue of Sociation Today by Robert Davis. Davis calls the reader "a convincing case for the inclusion of Du Bois as a founding father in the development of the discipline of sociology." Click here to read the full review online.
A new blog post on Verité Sport reviews Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports by Shirl James Hoffman. "Shirl Hoffman’s long awaited book does not disappoint. In eleven chapters he traces the history of the relationship between sport and Christianity from the ancient Olympics to the modern day. The final chapter sets out his manifesto for a way forward." You can read the full blog review online.
Both Randall Balmer and Diana R. Garland received reviews in the most recent issue of The Baptist Standard. Writing of Balmer's The Making of Evangelicalism, Ken Camp states:
Balmer writes with the insight of one who knows evangelicalism from the inside out. He points with favor to ways evangelicals moved from the cocoon of a separationist subculture in the first half of the 20th century toward cultural engagement in the latter half. At the same time, he laments the way evangelicals essentially lost their prophetic voice by capitulating to right-wing political brokers in recent decades. But he concludes with the hope that American evangelical Christianity will reclaim its birthright as a movement that honors the teachings of the Hebrew prophets who railed against injustice and the Savior who called his followers to care for those who are most vulnerable.
Both reviews can be found on The Baptist Standard's Web site.
Writing in the most recent issue of Chruch History (2010, 79:2), Anne C. Rose, Pennsylvania State University, calls Patricia A. Ward's Experimental Theology in America "a highly original and engrossing book" ... "filled with intellectual surprises." The review comes not long after Mark Noll, Books and Culture, called the book "ecumenical history at its best."
"Among the Misfits": A Christian Century review of Greg Carey's Sinners: Jesus and His Earliest Followers. Writing for The Christian Centrury, J. Nelson Kraybill calls Sinners "a terrific read, an exemplary attempt by a serious scholar to make Jesus and the gospel relevant for the mission of the church today."
If Jesus and his improbable band of followers loitered in the town square today or showed up at church, what reception would they receive?
Click here to read the rest of the review on The Christian Century Web site.
With economic stress feeding anti-immigrant prejudice, debates over sexuality heating up, and fear of terrorism percolating, Christians would do well to consider that Jesus fraternized with misfits and was himself a social deviant. Greg Carey—winsome communicator and professor of New Testament at Lancaster Theological Seminary—offers us colorful and compelling evidence that Jesus and his early followers often did not fit the mold.
Click here to read the latest thought-provoking interview with Shirl James Hoffman, author of Good Game, this from Church Executive Magazine.
"...Williams enables the reader to look more perceptively into the depictions that emerge from Dostoevsky's literary and religious imagination." The full text of this excerpt from Books and Culture's review of Rowan Williams' Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction can be found here.
To hear Shirl James Hoffman's recent interview on "The American View," discussing Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports, click here.
Or click here to read The Orlando Sentinel's recent blog post on Good Game.
Catholic Epistles and Apostolic Tradition, edited by Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr and Robert W. Wall, is garnering online attention. Read one blogger's recent, glowing review.
The London Times (online) posted an article on Michael Henderson's No Enemy to Conquer: Forgiveness in an Unforgiving World. Read it here.
"... this book is ecumenical history at its best." So writes Mark Noll of Patricia Ward's Experimental Theology in America: Madam Guyon, Fenelon, and Their Readers. Read the full review from Books and Culture.
Is it "Time for a Separation of Church and Sports?" a recent article asks. Shirl James Hoffman's Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sport continues to provoke conversation. Read the latest from Politics Daily here.
"Does God want competition? Does God want competition redeemed?" Read the recent discussion Shirl James Hoffman's Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sport has been stirring up on beliefnet.com. Click here to see the initial post and here to see the follow-up.
"For Nikki Bado-Fralick, it began with the board game Mormon-Opoly. For Rebecca Sachs Norris, the object was an action figure of Job, boils covering his plastic body." This week, the Chronicle of Higher Education published these leading lines in its February 14 review of Bado-Fralick and Norris's Toying with God: The World of Religious Games and Dolls. You can read the full review at The Chronicle Review online.
Gregory Ganssle, author of A Reasonable God: Engaging the New Face of Atheism, recently sat down for an interview with the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Click here to read his interview on the EPS blog.
Read Shirl James Hoffman's (author of Good Game) follow-up to his interview on Fox and Friends here.
Catch Michael Hyde, author of Perfection: Coming to Terms with Being Human, on recent radio interviews with WPR's Here on Earth (click here to download the mp3) and American Variety Radio (click here to download the mp3).
Read The Christian Post's recent Q&A with Shirl James Hoffman regarding his latest book, Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sport. Hoffman's book is also garnering discussion on a broad spectrum of noteworthy blogs and online journals. Check out what The Wall Street Journal (online), the Philosophy of Sport blog, and the Paul Edwards blog have been saying about the book.
Christopher H. Evans, author of Liberalism Without Illusions: Renewing an American Christian Tradition, has provided commentary for pbs.org, discussing President Obama's "State of the Union" address in light of "prophetic civil religion" and "populist angst." Click here to read Christopher H. Evans' comments.
Booklist Magazine has reviewed Shirl James Hoffman's Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sport in its January 2010 edition. "The essential problem, [Hoffman] says, is that, in harnessing itself to sports, the Christian community doesn’t really have a clear sense of its goal or a coherent plan to achieve it. As a result, sport is becoming, in many ways, a mockery of Christianity, a superficial set of rites and behaviors with no spiritual or philosophical foundation. Many readers may disagree with the author’s thesis, but even they will agree that he supports it abundantly and argues it well." Read more of the review and others on the Good Game book page.
Michael J. Hyde's Perfection: Coming to Terms with Being Human has been reviewed in the January 2010 edition of Library Journal. "[Hyde's] review of the pertinent thinking of the included writers is interesting, engaging, and informative in a way that draws the reader in.... This book should be of interest to a large readership from scholars to lay readers; highly recommended for philosophy and cultural studies collections in most libraries." You can read more of this review and learn more about the book on the Perfection book page.
Christopher H. Evans' Liberalism Without Illusions: Renewing an American Christian Tradition was reviewed in the January 26, 2010 issue of Publishers Weekly. "... here Evans is at his finest.... Anyone interested in 20th- and 21st-century American Christianity needs to read and consider the suggestions Evans has to offer." Read the full review on the Liberalism Without Illusions book page.
Michael Gilmour’s Gods and Guitars: Seeking the Sacred in Post-1960s Popular Music was reviewed in the October 5, 2009 issue of Publishers Weekly. “What do Salman Rushdie and literary criticism have to do with rock music?...[Gilmour’s] treatment enriches the dialogue between religion and rock well beyond the usual Judeo-Christian interpretations. Tune in, read on and enjoy.” Read the entire review here on the Gods and Guitars book page.
Terence L. Donaldson’s Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 CE) was awarded the Beare award for best book in New Testament / Christian Origins at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies held in May 2009. Donaldson is Lord and Lady Coggan Professor of New Testament Studies at Wycliffe College and the Director of Advanced Degree Programs at the Toronto School of Theology.
Diane Winston, author of Small Screen, Big Picture: Television and Lived Religion, was featured on Minnesota Public Radio’s syndicated Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett this July. The show “TV and Parables of Our Time” can be heard on podcast at http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/tv/. Winston holds the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.
Alfred I. Tauber’s newly released Science and the Quest for Meaning has been awarded a generous grant from the Templeton Publishing Subsidy Foundation. Tauber is Professor of Philosophy and Zoltan Kohn Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University.
