New Books in Christian Studies artwork

New Books in Christian Studies

1,249 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 months ago - ★★★★ - 12 ratings

Interviews with Scholars of Christianity about their New Books
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Christianity Religion & Spirituality
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed

Episodes

Jacob L. Wright, "Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and Its Origins" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

January 13, 2024 09:00 - 55 minutes

Why did no other ancient society produce something like the Bible? That a tiny, out of the way community could have created a literary corpus so determinative for peoples across the globe seems improbable. For Jacob Wright, the Bible is not only a testimony of survival, but also an unparalleled achievement in human history. Forged after Babylon's devastation of Jerusalem, it makes not victory but total humiliation the foundation of a new idea of belonging. Lamenting the destruction of their h...

Kami Fletcher and Ashley Towle, "Grave History: Death, Race, and Gender in Southern Cemeteries" (U Georgia Press, 2023)

January 11, 2024 09:00 - 46 minutes

Kami Fletcher and Ashley Towle’s edited collection Grave History: Death, Race and Gender in Southern Cemeteries (University of Georgia Press, 2023), demonstrates how Jim Crow laws extended into the realms of the dead. Cemeteries throughout the Southern states either relegated Black funerals to the margins in existing cemeteries or excluded the community altogether, often citing the excuse that inclusion would create unrest amongst white lot-holders, and disturb the peace of the cemetery. Buri...

Darnise C. Martin, "Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church" (NYU Press, 2005)

January 11, 2024 09:00 - 48 minutes

Darnise C. Martin's Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church (NYU Press, 2005) draws on rich ethnographic work in a Religious Science church in Oakland, California, to illuminate the ways a group of African Americans has adapted a religion typically thought of as white to fit their needs and circumstances. This predominantly African American congregation is an anomalous phenomenon for both Religious Science and African American religious studies. It stands at the interse...

James Robson, "Word and Spirit in Ezekiel" (T&T Clark, 2006)

January 09, 2024 09:00 - 18 minutes

In comparison with other prophetic books, the Book of Ezekiel sets forth a unique angle on the relationship of the Lord's word and spirit. In his monograph, Word And Spirit in Ezekiel (T&T Clark, 2006), James Robson argues that the relationship between the Lord's spirit and the Lord's word in Ezekiel is to be understood not so much in terms of inspiration and authentication of the prophet, but in terms of the transformation of the book's addressees. James Robson is Principal of Oak Hill Colle...

The Men We Need (with Brant Hansen)

January 08, 2024 09:00 - 1 hour

“What is a man?” asks Hamlet. If all he does is “sleep and feed,” then “a beast, no more.” That’s not enough for Hamlet, and it’s not enough for Brant Hansen, who spreads the Gospel by radio and in print. He’s written a number of books, including his new one, The Men We Need, which asks and answers questions about men’s special role in our world, and the opportunity for joy and meaning. Hansen’s thesis is rooted in scripture and reflects what Catholics will recognize as the theology of the Bo...

Matthew Carr, "Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain, 1492-1614" (Hurst, 2017)

January 08, 2024 09:00 - 1 hour

A centuries-old story with remarkable contemporary resonance, Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain, 1492-1614 (Hurst, 2017) is celebrated journalist Matthew Carr's riveting and "richly detailed" (Choice) chronicle of what was, by 1614, the largest act of ethnic cleansing in European history. Months after King Philip III of Spain signed an edict in 1609 denouncing the Muslim inhabitants of Spain as heretics, traitors, and apostates, the entire Muslim population of Spain was given three...

Margaret M. McGuinness, "Katharine Drexel and the Sisters Who Shared Her Vision" (Paulist Press, 2023)

January 03, 2024 09:00 - 1 hour

Although Katharine Drexel has been the subject of several biographies, they have tended to treat her as a perfect human being whom the Church later transformed into a saint. Katharine Drexel and the Sisters Who Shared Her Vision (Paulist Press, 2023) moves beyond the story of the heiress’s individual life devoted to God and shines a light on the work she did, assisted by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. Drexel could have lived comfortably, wealthy and privileged, as a Philadelphia philan...

Max Deardorff, "A Tale of Two Granadas: Custom, Community, and Citizenship in the Spanish Empire, 1568–1668" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

January 02, 2024 09:00 - 1 hour

In 1570's New Kingdom of Granada (modern Colombia), a new generation of mestizo (half-Spanish, half-indigenous) men sought positions of increasing power in the colony's two largest cities. In response, Spanish nativist factions zealously attacked them as unequal and unqualified, unleashing an intense political battle that lasted almost two decades. At stake was whether membership in the small colonial community and thus access to its most lucrative professions should depend on limpieza de san...

Gregg L. Frazer, "God against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy’s Case Against the American Revolution" (UP of Kansas, 2018)

December 31, 2023 09:00 - 36 minutes

Not everyone was convinced by the arguments of patriots during the American revolution. Among those who retained some degree of loyalty to the British crown were the majority of the clergy of the Episcopalian Church, as well as a smaller number of clergy from Congregational, Presbyterian and other protestant bodies. In this important new work, Gregg L. Frazer, professor of history and political science at The Master’s University, Santa Clarita, CA, surveys the arguments that loyalist clergy p...

Genealogies of Modernity Episode 7: A Genealogy of Gun Violence

December 28, 2023 11:00 - 51 minutes

The problem of gun violence is as old as guns themselves. According to historian Priya Satia, America’s present epidemic of gun violence has its roots in the industrial revolution. Satia tells the story of British gun-maker Samuel Galton, Jr., who was called to task by his Quaker community for manufacturing rifles. As a professed pacifist, Galton had to wrestle with the large-scale uses to which his weapons were put. So where do we look for answers about how to regulate guns? Some claim the a...

Daniel Soars, "The World and God Are Not-Two: A Hindu-Christian Conversation" (Fordham UP, 2022)

December 28, 2023 09:00 - 42 minutes

The World and God Are Not-Two: A Hindu-Christian Conversation (Fordham UP, 2022) is a book about how the God in whom Christians believe ought to be understood. The key conceptual argument that runs throughout is that the distinctive relation between the world and God in Christian theology is best understood as a non-dualistic one. The "two"-"God" and "World" cannot be added up as separate, enumerable realities or contrasted with each other against some common background because God does not b...

Milton Gaither, "Homeschool: An American History" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)

December 26, 2023 09:00 - 30 minutes

With around two million children currently enrolled in home schools in the USA, no-one can doubt that the subject of Milton Gaither’s new book is timely. Gaither, a professor of education at Messiah College, PA, first published this study in 2008, but has updated his text to reflect both the levelling out of the number of children involved in the movement as well as to explain some of the scandals that have brought some parts of the movement into disrepute. Homeschool: An American History (Pa...

David M. Freidenreich, "Jewish Muslims: How Christians Imagined Islam as the Enemy" (U California Press, 2023)

December 21, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutes

Uncovering the hidden history of Islamophobia and its surprising connections to the long-standing hatred of Jews. Hatred of Jews and hatred of Muslims have been intertwined in Christian thought since the rise of Islam. In Jewish Muslims: How Christians Imagined Islam as the Enemy (U California Press, 2023), David M. Freidenreich explores the history of this complex, perplexing, and emotionally fraught phenomenon. He makes the compelling case that, then and now, hate-mongers target "them" in a...

Mario Baghos, "From the Ancient Near East to Christian Byzantium: Kings, Symbols, and Cities" (Cambridge Scholars, 2021)

December 16, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

Mario Baghos's book From the Ancient Near East to Christian Byzantium: Kings, Symbols, and Cities (Cambridge Scholars, 2021) combines concepts from the history of religions with Byzantine studies in its assessments of kings, symbols, and cities in a diachronic and cross-cultural analysis. The work attests, firstly, that the symbolic art and architecture of ancient cities—commissioned by their monarchs expressing their relationship with their gods—show us that religiosity was inherent to such ...

Isaac Soon, "A Disabled Apostle: Impairment and Disability in the Letters of Paul" (Oxford UP, 2023)

December 16, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

For generations, Pauline scholars have responded in different ways to the Apostle’s “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7), our clearest indication that Paul was disabled—some with clinical diagnoses along biomedical lines, more with reticence and agnosticism as to the specifics of Paul’s disability, and others with doubts that Paul could have accomplished his apostolic work had he been physically impaired.  On this episode, Isaac T. Soon joined the New Books Network to discuss his paradigm-pushi...

Between Jesus and Krishna: Christian Encounters with South Indian Temple Dance

December 15, 2023 09:00 - 32 minutes

One of the eight national dances of India, bharatanatyam, partly originates from the area around Tranquebar. During the time that Tranquebar was a Danish colony, devadasis, women who did service at temples through dance, were patronized by the Thanjavur royal court. In 1623, a Danish–Icelandic soldier routinely observed the devadasis dancing outside the Masilamaninathar temple opposite Fort Dansborg, which he was guarding. His accounts of the dancers are interesting at two levels; first, they...

Kathy Stuart, "Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany: Crime, Sin and Salvation" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

December 13, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

Suicide by Proxy became a major societal problem after 1650. Suicidal people committed capital crimes with the explicit goal of “earning” their executions, as a short-cut to their salvation. Desiring to die repentantly at the hands of divinely-instituted government, perpetrators hoped to escape eternal damnation that befell direct suicides.  In Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany: Crime, Sin, and Salvation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), Kathy Stuart shows how this crime emerged as an unin...

Julia Watts Belser, "Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole" (Beacon Press, 2023)

December 12, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

A transformative spiritual companion and deep dive into disability politics that reimagines disability in the Bible and contemporary culture. "What's wrong with you?" Scholar, activist, and rabbi Julia Watts Belser is all too familiar with this question. What's wrong isn't her wheelchair, though--it's exclusion, objectification, pity, and disdain. Our attitudes about disability have such deep cultural roots that we almost forget their sources. But open the Bible and disability is everywhere. ...

Genealogies of Modernity Episode 6: A Medieval Anti-Racist

December 10, 2023 09:00 - 52 minutes

What if racism shared an origin with opposition to racism? What if the condemnation of injustice gave rise both to an early form of anti-racism and to the racial hierarchies that haunt the modern era? Rolena Adornol, David Orique, María Cristina Ríos Espinosa tell the story of how Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican missionary to New Spain, came to racial consciousness in the presence of slavery. His intellectual rebellion spurred slavery’s apologists to more strident and sinister modes of de...

Our Lady of Guadalupe and Aztec True Myth

December 09, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

It turns out that our familiar narrative of the Virgin of Guadalupe, when Mary appeared to Juan Diego in 1531 and left her image on his tilma, resembles an indigenous Mexican myth. And this myth of the Flower World in “Cuicapeuhcayotl” (“Origin of Songs”) has led some secular historians and anthropologists to conclude that the Catholic version must therefore be an imitation, a fabrication.  Yet Joseph Julián and Monique González concluded that the opposite was true. They argue “that God had p...

Gary A. Anderson, "That I May Dwell Among Them: Incarnation and Atonement in the Tabernacle Narrative" (Eerdmans, 2023)

December 06, 2023 09:00 - 20 minutes

The Tabernacle Narrative comprises passages in Exodus and Leviticus that detail the construction, furnishing, and liturgical use of the tabernacle. Given its genre and style, the narrative is often passed over by those reading Scripture for theological insight. What does Israel’s tabernacle mean for Christians today? Join us as Gary Anderson shows how these passages shed light on incarnation and atonement both in ancient Israel’s theology and in Christian theology. Anderson is the author of T...

Abigail Agresta, "The Keys to Bread and Wine: Faith, Nature, and Infrastructure in Late Medieval Valencia" (Cornell UP, 2022)

December 06, 2023 09:00 - 47 minutes

How did medieval people think about the environments in which they lived?  In a world shaped by God, how did they treat environments marked by religious difference? The Keys to Bread and Wine: Faith, Nature, and Infrastructure in Late Medieval Valencia (Cornell UP, 2022) explores the answers to these questions in Valencia in the later Middle Ages. When Christians conquered the city in 1238, it was already one of the richest agricultural areas in the Mediterranean thanks to a network of irriga...

Anna M. Grzymała-Busse, "Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State" (Princeton UP, 2023)

December 03, 2023 09:00 - 55 minutes

In Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State (Princeton University Press, 2023), political scientist Anna Grzymała-Busse corrects a long-standing distortion in the study of state formation in Europe, writing religion back into the story and examining, at once pithily and methodically, the multiple contributions of the Roman Church to the emergence of modern practices of secular statehood. Sacred Foundations expands the conventional geography of medieval Europe...

J. Christopher Edwards, "Crucified: The Christian Invention of the Jewish Executioners of Jesus" (Fortress Press, 2023)

December 02, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

In his book Crucified: The Christian Invention of the Jewish Executioners of Jesus (Fortress Press, 2023), J. Christopher Edwards explores the early Christian teachings regarding who actually killed Jesus. Historians of early Christianity unanimously agree that Jesus was executed by Roman soldiers. This consensus extends to members of the general population who have seen a Jesus movie or an Easter play and remember Roman soldiers hammering the nails. However, for early Christians, the detail ...

D. L. d'Avray, "The Power of Protocol: Diplomatics and the Dynamics of Papal Government, c. 400-c.1600" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

November 30, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

The Power of Protocol: Diplomatics and the Dynamics of Papal Government, c. 400 – c.1600 (Cambridge University Press, 2023) by Dr. David d’Avray asks: How did the papacy govern European religious life without a proper bureaucracy and the normal resources of a state? From late Antiquity, papal responses were in demand. The 'apostolic see' took over from Roman emperors the discourse and demeanour of a religious ruler of the Latin world. Over the centuries, it acquired governmental authority ana...

E. T. Dailey, "Radegund: The Trials and Triumphs of a Merovingian Queen" (Oxford UP, 2023)

November 26, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

A princess born to the Thuringian royal house. A captive in war, forced to marry the Frankish king who killed her family. A queen, who renounced her position, received consecration as a deaconess, and took monastic vows. A religious leader, who acquired a fragment of the Cross of the Crucifixion for her convent of Holy Cross in Poitiers. And, lastly, a saint, remembered for her healings, exorcisms, and extreme self-mortification. Such was Radegund, a woman who lived through an era defined by ...

Diane Carol Fujino, "Nisei Radicals: The Feminist Poetics and Transformative Ministry of Mitsuye Yamada and Michael Yasutake" (U Washington Press, 2020)

November 25, 2023 09:00 - 59 minutes

This episode, which is co-hosted with Michael Nishimura, features a conversation with Dr. Diane C. Fujino, the author of Nisei Radicals: The Feminist Poetics and Transformative Ministry of Mitsuye Yamada and Reverend Michael Yasutake (University of Washington Press, 2020).  The book traces the activism of two siblings who charted their own paths for what it meant to be Nisei. Reverend Mike was an Episcopal minister whose politics changed with the historical contexts and circumstances surround...

Jenny Benham, "International Law in Europe, 700–1200" (Manchester UP, 2022)

November 24, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

Was there international law in the Middle Ages? Using treaties as its main source, International Law in Europe, 700-1200 (Manchester University Press, 2022) by Dr. Jenny Benham examines the extent to which such a system of rules was known and followed in the period 700 to 1200. It considers how consistently international legal rules were obeyed, whether there was a reliance on justification of action and whether the system had the capacity to resolve disputed questions of fact and law. The bo...

Darwinian Accident or Divine Architect? (with Jay Richards)

November 23, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

Jay Richards PhD, OP discusses the new book to which he contributed a chapter, God’s Grandeur: The Catholic Case for Intelligent Design (Sophia Institute Press, 2023), edited by Ann Gauger. We take on the insufficient explanations of Darwinian orthodoxy which insists that our world—from the vast cosmos to the also vast (in its complexity) genetic code in our cells. At the end of this episode (at 55 minutes), we hear an update from Father Piotr Żelazko in Israel as we enter the second month of...

Meghan Henning, "Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature" (Yale UP, 2021)

November 17, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

In her book Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature (Yale University Press, 2021), Meghan Henning illuminates how the bodies that populate hell in early Christian literature are punished after death in spaces that mirror real carceral spaces, effectually criminalizing those bodies on Earth. Contextualizing the apocalypses alongside ancient medical texts, inscriptions, philosophy, and patristic writings, this book demonstrates the...

Richard S. Ascough, "Early Christ Groups and Greco-Roman Associations: Organizational Models and Social Practices" (Cascade Books, 2022)

November 16, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

Exegetes have long relied on the framework of the Acts of the Apostles to understand the behavior and organization of Paul’s various ekklēsiai (assemblies), or church communities, from which Christ-groups have often been conceptualized as extensions from practices of diasporic Jewish synagogues. However, Richard S. Ascough’s work has been at the forefront of a scholarly movement emphasizing the relevance of data from Greco-Roman associations—occupational, cultic, ethnic, and otherwise—not onl...

Briana L. Wong, "Cambodian Evangelicalism: Cosmological Hope and Diasporic Resilience" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2023)

November 15, 2023 09:00 - 56 minutes

The Cambodian Civil War and genocide of the late 1960s and ’70s left the country and its diaspora with long-lasting trauma that continues to reverberate through the community. In Cambodian Evangelicalism: Cosmological Hope and Diasporic Resilience (Pennsylvania State UP, 2023), Briana L. Wong explores the compelling stories of Cambodian evangelicals, their process of conversion, and how their testimonials to the Christian faith helped them to make sense of and find purpose in their trauma. Ba...

Jonathan Greenaway, "Theology, Horror and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

November 15, 2023 09:00 - 43 minutes

When one thinks of your typical horror movie and it’s usual imagery, a number of tropes may come forward. Graveyards behind old cathedrals, crucifixes and holy water, possessions and exorcisms. The uniting thread of all of these is that they are all tied to the religious. One might then wonder if there is some underlying thread of meaning beneath the facade. Addressing this topic directly is Jonathan Greenaway in his book Theology, Horror and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Centur...

Jeffrey Scholes, "Christianity, Race, and Sport" (Routledge, 2021)

November 14, 2023 09:00 - 32 minutes

This book provides a rigorously researched introduction to the relationship between Christianity, race, and sport in the United States. Christianity, Race, and Sport (Routledge, 2021) examines how Protestant Christianity and race have interacted, often to the detriment of Black bodies, throughout the sporting world over the last century. Important sporting figures and case studies discussed include: the sanctification of baseball player Jackie Robinson; the domestication of Muhammad Ali and G...

Walter A. Maier III, "1 Kings 12-22: Concordia Commentary" (Concordia, 2019)

November 12, 2023 09:00 - 16 minutes

The book of Kings tracks the division of Israel's kingdom into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, narrating each one's demise. Yet Kings is no mere history; the sacred record holds a message still relevant for God's people today. Tune in for part two of our interview with Walter Maier III, this time on volume 2 of his commentary on Kings, which covers chapters 12-22. Walter Maier III earned in his PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages, and is Pro...

Walter A. Maier III, "1 Kings 1-11: Concordia Commentary" (Concordia, 2018)

November 11, 2023 09:00 - 15 minutes

The book of Kings in the Bible records more than 380 years of the history of Israel and its monarchy, from the last part of David’s rule to the end of the kingship in Judah, and emphasizes the role of prophets along the way. Join us as we speak with Walter Maier III about the first of his two-volume commentary on 1 Kings, covering chapters 1-11, the rise and failures of Solomon’s kingship. Walter Maier III earned in his PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages, and is Professor o...

Let Us Make Man in Our Image (with Paul Louis Metzger)

November 09, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutes

In our talk about his book, More than Things: A Personalist Ethics for a Throwaway Culture (InterVarsity Press, 2023), and in addition to quoting Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis, Paul Louis Metzger also quotes Indiana Jones. When seeking the Grail, he chooses the clay cup from among the gilded chalices, “that’s the cup of a carpenter,” is the metaphor of the inherent value of human beings, ends unto themselves, priceless and unrepeatable. So I ask him (Dr. Metzger, not Dr. Jones) how we ke...

Megan Nutzman, "Contested Cures: Identity and Ritual Healing in Roman and Late Antique Palestine" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

November 05, 2023 09:00 - 52 minutes

In the ancient Mediterranean world, individuals routinely looked for divine aid to cure physical afflictions. Contested Cures: Identity and Ritual Healing in Roman and Late Antique Palestine (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) by Dr. Megan Nutzman argues that the inevitability of sickness and injury made people willing to experiment with seemingly beneficial techniques, even if they originated in a foreign cultural or religious tradition. With circumstances of close cultural contacts, such as ...

Austin Surls, "Making Sense of the Divine Name in the Book of Exodus: From Etymology to Literary Onomastics" (Eisenbrauns, 2017)

November 05, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutes

The obvious riddles and difficulties in Exodus 3:13-15 and 6:2-8 have attracted an overwhelming amount of attention and comment. These texts make important theological statements about the divine name and the contours of the divine character. In his book Making Sense of the Divine Name in the Book of Exodus: From Etymology to Literary Onomastics (Eisenbrauns, 2017), Austin Surls attempts to move beyond atomistic readings of individual texts and etymological studies of the divine name toward a...

Ed Simon, "Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology" (Cernunnos, 2023)

November 05, 2023 09:00 - 39 minutes

Ineffable, invisible, inscrutable--angels are enduring creatures across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and human experiences of the divine as mediated by spiritual emissaries are an aspect of almost every religious tradition. In popular culture, angels are often reduced to the most gauzy, sentimental, and saccharine of images: fat babies with wings and guardians with robes, halos, and harps. By contrast, in scripture whenever one of the heavenly choirs appears before a prophet or patriarch...

Carson Bay, "Biblical Heroes and Classical Culture in Christian Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

November 04, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour

In this volume entitled Biblical Heroes and Classical Culture in Christian Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2023), Carson Bay focuses on an important but neglected work of Late Antiquity: Pseudo-Hegesippus' On the Destruction of Jerusalem (De Excidio Hierosolymitano), a Latin history of later Second Temple Judaism written during the fourth century CE. Bay explores the presence of so many Old Testament figures in a work that recounts the Roman-Jewish War (66–73 CE) and the destruction of Jerusale...

Horace D. Hummel, "Ezekiel 21-48: Concordia Commentary" (Concordia, 2007)

November 03, 2023 08:00 - 20 minutes

Volume 2 of the commentary on Ezekiel, by the late Horace Hummel, covers chapters 21 through 48, where after the prophesied judgment of nations, the Lord grants Ezekiel a wondrous vision of a new temple-city called "The Lord is There." Join us as we speak with the editor of the Concordia Commentary series, Christopher Mitchell, about the second volume of the commentary on Ezekiel, Ezekiel 21-48 (Concordia, 2007), by the late Horace D. Hummel. Rev. Dr. Horace D. Hummel served as Professor of E...

Marion Gibson, "Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials" (Scribner, 2023)

October 31, 2023 08:00 - 49 minutes

Witchfinder General, Salem, Malleus Maleficarum. The world of witch-hunts and witch trials sounds archaic and fanciful, these terms relics of an unenlightened, brutal age. However, we often hear ‘witch-hunt’ in today’s media, and the misogyny that shaped witch trials is all too familiar. Three women were prosecuted under a version of the 1735 Witchcraft Act as recently as 2018. In Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials (Simon & Schuster, 2023), Professor Marion Gibson uses thirteen signific...

Live from Israel (with Fr. Piotr Zelazko)

October 26, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour

Father Piotr Zelazko is Vicar for the St. James Vicariate in Jerusalem and has been priest in Israel for fifteen years (he is a native of Poland and studied in Rome). He describes the Catholic Church in Israel today and also the broader Christian community. He discusses some of the challenges and many joys of the ecumenical work he does with Jews, Muslims, and the many other Christian denominations in the Holy Land. And he tells a lot of stories of pastoral work in Jerusalem and in the desert...

Ji Li, "At the Frontier of God's Empire: A Missionary Odyssey in Modern China" (Oxford UP, 2023)

October 22, 2023 08:00 - 57 minutes

To a lively cast of international players that shaped Manchuria during the early twentieth century, At the Frontier of God's Empire: A Missionary Odyssey in Modern China (Oxford UP, 2023) adds the remarkable story of Alfred Marie Caubrière (1876-1948). A French Catholic missionary, Caubrière arrived in Manchuria on the eve of the Boxer Uprising in 1899 and was murdered on the eve of the birth of the People's Republic of China in 1948. Living with ordinary Chinese people for half a century, Ca...

Philip Jenkins, "A Storm of Images: Iconoclasm and Religious Reformation in the Byzantine World" (Baylor UP, 2023)

October 22, 2023 08:00 - 33 minutes

In the eighth century, the Byzantine Empire began a campaign to remove or suppress sacred images that depicted Christ, the Virgin, or other holy figures, whether in paintings, mosaics, murals, or other media. In some cases, the campaign extended to breaking or wrecking images through what became known as iconoclasm. Over the following years, the emperors' zealous movement involved other acts that closely foreshadowed the Reformation movement that would sweep Western Europe in the sixteenth ce...

Matthew Thiessen, "A Jewish Paul: The Messiah's Herald to the Gentiles" (Baker Academic, 2023)

October 22, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour

Excavating and interpreting Paul’s thought, belief, ideas, and mission from his authentic letters and those otherwise attributed to him remains an ongoing effort in scholarship, with several competing perspectives vying for prominence. Matthew Thiessen advances an important reading of Paul within first-century Judaism, which he conceives not as a monolith of theological positions but rather as a spectrum of ideas that comfortably included Paul’s new belief in Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and Pau...

Jason C. Bivins, "Embattled America: The Rise of Anti-Politics and America's Obsession with Religion" (Oxford UP, 2022)

October 21, 2023 08:00 - 35 minutes

Histories of political religion since the 1960s often center on the rise of the powerful conservative evangelical voting bloc since the 1970s. One of the beliefs that has united these citizens is the idea that they are treated unfairly or are marginalized, despite their significant influence on public life. From the ascent of Reagan to the "Contract with America," from 9/11 to Obama to Trump--these claims have moved steadily to the center of conservative activism. Scholars of religion have ap...

Kids These Days (with Jane Sloan Peters)

October 19, 2023 08:00 - 57 minutes

Jane Sloan Peters remembers World Youth Day in Toronto back in 2002 when she was a teenager. She also talks about being a young mother and a teacher; she is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx. We also discuss her articles in America Magazine, her teaching philosophy, and the faith journey she has been on since her teenage conversion to the present day. Professor Peters’s faculty webpage at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bron...

A. Katie Harris, "The Stolen Bones of St. John of Matha: Forgery, Theft, and Sainthood in the Seventeenth Century" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2023)

October 16, 2023 08:00 - 48 minutes

On the night of March 18, 1655, two Spanish friars broke into a church to steal the bones of the founder of their religious institution, the Order of the Most Holy Trinity. This book investigates this little-known incident of relic theft and the lengthy legal case that followed, together with the larger questions that surround the remains of saints in seventeenth-century Catholic Europe. Drawing on a wealth of manuscript and print sources from the era, A. Katie Harris uses the case of St. Joh...

Guests

Dan Jones
1 Episode

Books

In the Beginning
1 Episode
The Age of Reason
1 Episode
The End of Days
1 Episode
The New Testament
1 Episode

Twitter Mentions

@allisonisidore1 19 Episodes
@jonrichwright 17 Episodes
@babakristian 12 Episodes
@jakebarrett25 5 Episodes
@talkartculture 5 Episodes
@emmyru91 4 Episodes
@bookreviewsasia 4 Episodes
@nickrigordon 4 Episodes
@culturedmodesty 3 Episodes
@djgonzophd 2 Episodes
@spattersearch 2 Episodes
@elspragins 2 Episodes
@takeshimorisato 2 Episodes
@guthfana 2 Episodes
@dannahdennis 1 Episode
@susanliebell 1 Episode
@johnwphd 1 Episode
@danagfield 1 Episode
@staxomatix 1 Episode
@matthewalapine 1 Episode