Monthly Updates on Recent Books in the History of Christianity
To raise awareness of recent books in the history of Christianity, the editorial staff of Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture highlights each month a list of 10-15 books in diverse periods and geographical regions that we hope will be of interest to our members. We include here below the 46th monthly list, chosen by our staff, with excerpts from the publishers’ blurbs.
Walter R. Strickland II, Swing Low, volume 1. A History of Black Christianity in the United States. 2024
The history of African American Christianity is one of the determined faith of a people driven to pursue spiritual and social uplift for themselves and others to God's glory. Yet stories of faithful Black Christians have often been forgotten or minimized. The dynamic witness of the Black church in the United States is an essential part of Christian history that must be heard and dependably retold.
In this groundbreaking two-volume work, Walter R. Strickland II does just that through a theological-intellectual history highlighting the ways theology has formed and motivated Black Christianity across the centuries.
In volume 1, a narrative history, Strickland tells the story of these themes from the 1600s to the present. He explores the crucial ecclesiastical, social, and theological developments, including the rise of Black evangelicalism as well as broader contributions to politics and culture.
Andrew Jotischky, The Monastic World: A 1,200-Year History. 2024
From the late Roman Empire onwards, monasteries and convents were a common sight throughout Europe. But who were monasteries for? What kind of people founded and maintained them? And how did monasticism change over the thousand years or so of the Middle Ages?
Andrew Jotischky traces the history of monastic life from its origins in the fourth century to the sixteenth. He shows how religious houses sheltered the poor and elderly, cared for the sick, and educated the young. They were centres of intellectual life that owned property and exercised power but also gave rise to new developments in theology, music, and art. This book brings together the Orthodox and western stories, as well as the experiences of women, to show the full picture of medieval monasticism for the first time. It is a fascinating, wide-ranging account that broadens our understanding of life in holy orders as never before.
Jared E. Alcántara, The Challenge of Joseph H. Jackson: How America's Most Powerful Black Preacher Became a Forgotten Man. 2024
This book explores the challenge of Joseph H. Jackson through a definitive academic biography. Jackson remains a person whose significance to twentieth-century Black Christianity and U.S. history more broadly has not yet been understood or appreciated. The biography chronicles Jackson’s rise to power as pastor of the largest Black church in the United States, the fifteen-thousand-member Olivet Baptist in Chicago, and as the longest-tenured president of the six-million-member National Baptist Convention (1953–1982), at one time the nation’s largest Black organization. It examines Jackson’s political alliances, describes his controversial views on race, catalogues his global ecumenical work, explains his fallout with the family of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and connects his eloquence to the maintenance of power in a tradition that prizes sacred oratory. By making the life and legacy of Dr. Jackson available, this book produces new homiletical (i.e., preaching) knowledge of his theory and practice, recovers neglected civil rights–era church history, and explores how leadership and power is a double-edged sword in modern American religious life.
Markus Bockmuehl and Nathan Eubank, eds. The Creed and the Scriptures. 2024
Were ancient Christian creeds designed as summaries of Scripture, or, conversely, was the formation of Scripture itself subject to creedal as well as canonical considerations? To what extent were there non-Christian antecedents and analogies to the church's habit of making creeds? The contributors to this volume investigate the relationship between Scripture and ancient Christian creeds. The essays in this volume are divided into four sections devoted to related lines of inquiry. The first asks whether the Christian creeds are sui generis as sometimes claimed, or whether there are close analogies in Jewish and Graeco-Roman antiquity. The second section investigates key critical issues in scholarly study of the creeds. The third turns to case studies illustrating how early Christian writers deploy the creeds in their engagement with scriptural topics. The fourth section turns to thematic studies in the creed.
Cristinel Ioja, A History of Dogmatics in the Romanian Orthodox Theology: From the Establishment of Communism to the Challenges of Postmodernity. 2024
The book presents the essential stages and contributions of Romanian dogmatic thinking from the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Written from a historical and doctrinal perspective, the book aims to be a history of Romanian dogmatic thinking analyzed in the context of the establishment of communism, the intensification of ecumenical dialogue, and postmodern society. The book captures and explains what the author calls the "paradigm change" in Orthodox Dogmatics from the second half of the 20th century, the theological meanings of the renewal of Dogmatics in the context of neopatristic synthesis and the gradual delimitation of the schemes of a Dogmatics influenced by medieval scholasticism. At the same time, the book also presents the influences of medieval scholasticism in Orthodox Dogmatics and the effort of Romanian dogmatists to express a renewed and ecclesial Dogmatics by rediscovering the method, spirit, and ecclesial experience of the Fathers.
Clair McPherson, Nilus of Ancyra: Byzantine Theologian and Ascetic. 2024
Nilus of Ancyra was one of the most significant theologians and spiritual guides of the fifth century. His Scriptural commentaries include a truly distinctive interpretation of the Song of Songs, his treatises such as On Voluntary Poverty and Monastic Asceticism comprise invaluable and unique evidence of fifth spirituality and theology precisely when Christian teaching was reaching a definite and consensual form in the fifth century, and his letters, with their all-inclusive range of correspondents, from slaves to emperor, provide a unique window into the politics, controversies, and daily life in the later Roman Empire. And his style, featuring humor, wit, word play, and his own invented vocabulary, make Nilus one of the most, if not the most, creative and innovative writers of the early church. Long neglected because his name was used to protect the works of his predecessor, Evagrius Pontikos, Nilus’ work is unquestionably valuable in its own right. This translation offers a modern and accurate selection from his innovative, deeply spiritual, and delightfully poetic ouvre.
Christian Beneke, Free Exercise: Religion, the First Amendment, and the Making of America. 2024
CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF. Those words, scratched on parchment in 1789, open the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. From them, countless interpretations have been drawn. As a consequence, an astonishing variety of activities in modern America-prayer after football games, Bible reading in classrooms, company healthcare policies, the baking of wedding cakes, and Ten Commandment displays around courthouses-have been alternately authorized, prohibited, or modified.
In this compelling historical account, Chris Beneke explains how the religion clauses came into existence and how they were woven into American culture. He brings prominent early national figures to life, including George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Paine, while chronicling the First Amendment's relationship to defining social conditions like slavery, civility, family life, and the free market. Beneke probes what kind of nation America was when the religion clauses were framed and what kind of nation it was becoming.
Going beyond traditional church-state scholarship, Beneke also demonstrates how white women, African Americans, Roman Catholics, Jews, and nonbelievers widened religious liberty's application and illuminated its boundaries. In doing so he makes a groundbreaking contribution to both constitutional history and the history of American pluralism.
David D. Grafton, Muhammad in the Seminary: Protestant Teaching about Islam in the Nineteenth Century. 2024
Throughout the nineteenth century, Islam appeared regularly in the curricula of American Protestant seminaries. Islam was not only the focus of Christian missions, but was studied as part of the history of the Church as well as in the new field of comparative religions. Moreover, Arabic was taught as a cognate biblical language to help students better understand biblical Hebrew. Passages from the Qur’an were sometimes read as part of language instruction.
Christian seminaries were themselves new institutions in the nineteenth century. Though Islam had already been present in the Americas since the beginning of the slave trade, it was only in the nineteenth century that the American public became more aware of Islam and had increasing contact with Muslims. It was during this period that extensive trade with the Ottoman empire emerged and more feasible travel opportunities to the Middle East became available due to the development of the steamship.
Providing an in-depth look at the information about Islam that was available in seminaries throughout the nineteenth century, Muhammad in the Seminary examines what Protestant seminaries were teaching about this tradition in the formative years of pastoral education. In charting how American Christian leaders’ ideas about Islam were shaped by their seminary experiences, this volume offers new insight into American religious history and the study of Christian-Muslim relations.
Edward Kessler and Neil Wenborn, eds. A Documentary History of Jewish–Christian Relations: From Antiquity to the Present Day. 2024
Jews and Christians have interacted for two millennia, yet there is no comprehensive, global study of their shared history. This book offers a chronological and thematic approach to that 2,000-year history, based on some 200 primary documents chosen for their centrality to the encounter. A systematic and authoritative work on the relationship between the two religions, it reflects both the often troubled history of that relationship and the massive changes of attitude and approach in more recent centuries. Written by a team leading international scholars in the field, each chapter introduces the context for its historical period, draws out the key themes arising from the relevant documents, and provides a detailed commentary on each document to shed light on its significance in the history of the Jewish–Christian relationship. The volume is aimed at scholars, teachers and students, clerics and lay people, and anyone interested in the history of religion.
Taylor G. Petrey, Queering Kinship in the Mormon Cosmos. 2024.
University of North Carolina Press
Exploring the intersections of gender, sexuality, and kinship within the context of Latter-day Saint theology and history, this book contains elements that can be reinterpreted through a queer lens. Taylor Petrey reexamines and resignifies Mormon cosmology in the context of queer theory, offering a fresh perspective on divine relationships, gender fluidity, and the concept of kinship itself.
Petrey's work draws together queer studies and the academic study of religion in new ways, providing a nuanced understanding of how religious narratives and doctrines can be reimagined to include more diverse interpretations of identity and community.
Ulriika Vihervalli, Desire and Disunity: Christian Communities and Sexual Norms in the Late Antique West. 2024
Desire and Disunity explores the struggles of Christianising late ancient sexuality in the late Roman West. Through an examination of fourth to sixth century sermons, letters, laws, and treatises in Latin-speaking communities, the difficulties of late antique clerics in moving ascetically influenced sexual ideals into wider practice become evident. Western clerics faced challenges on several fronts: the dedication and devoutness of lay Christians varied, while the military-political upheavals of the fifth century created new challenges and opportunities for influencing one’s flock. Furthermore, Roman sexual norms continued to inform the thinking of many clerics and lay figures alike, even when in opposition to more scripturally based moral reasoning. Problems of bigamy, concubinage, sex work, incest, homosexual acts, adultery, and more troubled western Christian communities, with contradicting rules and traditions on what was acceptable and what was not. What reach did elite clerical perspectives on sexual norms have amongst the non-elite? How did clerics navigate tensions between the idealisation of Christian communal purity and the actions of congregants that fell short of these ideals? What influenced clerical perceptions of sex and how did they articulate these ideas to their audiences? Clerical sources of this time reflect these challenges as well as varying church attempts to reform the sex lives of their congregants – and, indeed, church failure in doing so.
Finally, for staying up-to-date on the latest titles in all fields, we recommend regularly perusing New Books Network and its "New Books in Christian Studies” page. These pages are updated regularly.