Book List on Women, Gender, and Sex in American Religious History

Andrea L. Turpin
  
This fall I get to teach one of my favorite classes: my graduate course on Women, Gender, and Sex in American Religious History. One of the readings I assign for the first day is quite possibly my favorite historiographic essay of all time, Catherine Brekus's “Introduction: Searching for Women in Narratives of American Religious History,” in The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past, ed. Brekus (North Carolina, 2007).

In this ten-year-old essay, Brekus examines why so many synthetic works of American religious history ignore women and why so many synthetic works of American women's history ignore religion. She makes a compelling case that the answer is not that scholarship on American women's religious history doesn't exist--and that both omissions leave our understanding of our collective past significantly impoverished.

Yet five years after the release of The Religious History of American Women, the December 2012 issue of the Journal of American History dedicated to a state-of-the-field analysis of American women's and gender history hardly mentioned religion at all. And as late as 2016 I was still seeing so many book lists for lay readers interested in American religious history that didn't include books by or about women that I was moved to write my first ever blog post on the subject.

But I am encouraged by my class, both the students in it and the books available to assign for it. The course has enrolled a large number of students, and roughly equal numbers of women and men are interested in the topic. (I wrote a guest post last year over at the Anxious Bench reflecting on my experience teaching an earlier version of this course to 6 men and 1 woman!) And even though I last taught the course only a year and half ago, I changed about one-third of the books on the syllabus because so much excellent work has been published in the last two years.

Each week the class reads one book and an additional article or book chapter on a complementary topic. In the readings for the course, I strive for diversity of multiple types: religious traditions, race and ethnicity, historical time period, styles of writing, and classic vs. recent works. In different years the course ends up having slightly different emphases depending on the interests of the students enrolled, my research at the time, what books have recently been published, and the directions in which the field is developing. 

Particularly noteworthy in this iteration is the recent expansion of scholarship on religion and sexuality. And it is a sign of the vitality of the field of women, gender, and sex in American religious history that there are so many excellent books that I could have included that did not make this particular semester's list. Judging from the books on this year's syllabus, shout out to the university presses of Oxford, North Carolina, and Cornell, who have all published multiple titles in this area.

Now without further ado, for your reading pleasure, here are the books for this year: 
 

Joan Wallach Scott, Sex and Secularism (Princeton, 2017) 

Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (W.W. Norton, 1987)

Susan Juster, Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics & Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England (Cornell, 1994)

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 (Knopf, 2017)

Kathi Kern, Mrs. Stanton’s Bible (Cornell, 2001)

Andrea L. Turpin, A New Moral Vision: Gender, Religion, and the Changing Purposes of American Higher Education, 1837–1917 (Cornell, 2016)

*I offer the book to my students at my author's discount so I don't make a profit. We use this day to discuss not only the topic, but also the process of writing a dissertation and turning it into a book.

Sarah Imhoff, Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana, 2017)

Kristin Kobes DuMez, A New Gospel for Women: Katharine Bushnell and the Challenge of Christian Feminism (Oxford, 2015)

Marie Griffith, Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics (Basic, 2017)

Heather R. White, Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights (North Carolina, 2015)

Daniel Williams, Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade (Oxford, 2016)

Ula Yvette Taylor, The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam (North Carolina, 2017)

James M. Ault, Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church (Knopf, 2004)

As I mentioned earlier, in addition to these books, the class reads several standalone articles and book chapters. I want to highlight three 2018 edited volumes that make helpful contributions to the field and are the source of some of these chapters:

Eds. Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, & Heather R. White, Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the United States (North Carolina, 2018)

Eds. Michele Lise Tarter & Catie Gill, New Critical Studies on Early Quaker Women, 1650-1800 (Oxford, 2018)

Eds. Leilah Danielson, Marian Mollin, & Doug Rossinow, The Religious Left in Modern America: Doorkeepers of a Radical Faith (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)

I suspect next time I teach this course, several readers of this blog will have produced excellent new work in the field to include!

Continue Reading...

New Books in American Religious History: 2018 Year in Preview, Part Two (May-July)

Four of us—Erin Bartram (University of Hartford), William Black (Rice University), Michel Sun Lee (University of Texas at Austin), and Moxy Moczygemba (University of Florida)—are excited to present part two of the 2018 book preview list! This post covers releases from May through July 2018.

Books are grouped by publication month. As always, feel free to leave a comment if you believe a book has been mistakenly overlooked by our editorial team.

May

Devery S. Anderson, ed. Salt Lake School of the Prophets, 1867–1883 (Signature Books)
From the publisher: “Ministerial training was an early goal of Mormonism. The priesthood-led institution called the School of the Prophets, established in Kirtland, Ohio, in 1833, was basically a divinity school for prospective missionaries. . . . Brigham Young re-established the school in the Salt Lake Valley in 1867; his successor, John Taylor, resuscitated it for a while in 1883. Young’s emphasis was theology, first as an appendage to Deseret University, and then as a separate institution. Presented here for the first time are all available minutes for the Utah period.”

Catherine R. Osborne, American Catholics and the Church of Tomorrow: Building Churches for the Future, 1925-1975 (University of Chicago Press)
Paula M. Kane: “American Catholics and the Church of Tomorrow shows how by the mid-twentieth century, certain aspects of modernity began to affect the tradition-bound Catholic Church. The impact was seen in the Church’s changing outlook on church design and furnishing, on social issues such as psychedelic drug experimentation and civil rights activism, and on the sacred liturgy itself. Osborne’s book is accomplished, well-written, and thoroughly researched.”

Rani-Henrik Andersson, ed. A Whirlwind Passed through Our Country: Lakota Voices of the Ghost Dance (University of Oklahoma Press)

Jeffrey Ostler: “Rani-Henrik Andersson has assembled by far the most comprehensive collection of primary sources on the Lakota Ghost Dance, including many he has skillfully translated from Lakota. His introduction and commentary provide excellent guidance into the diversity of Lakota voices that speak about this vitally important movement.”

Matteo Binasco, Roman Sources for the History of American Catholicism, 1763-1939 (University of Notre Dame Press)
Steven M. Avella: “The author and the Cushwa Center, which commissioned this project, have made a signal contribution to the desire to ‘transnationalize’ the history of American Catholicism.”

Melissa Daggett, Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans: The Life and Times of Henry Louis Rey (University Press of Mississippi)
Caryn Cossé Bell: “Melissa Daggett’s unrivaled grasp of a voluminous collection of French-language spiritualist texts makes Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans a must-read for anyone interested in the city’s multifaceted religious culture with its links to the North, the Caribbean, and Europe.”

Leilah Danielson, Marian Mollin, and Doug Rossinow, eds. The Religious Left in Modern America: Doorkeepers of a Radical Faith (Palgrave Macmillan)
Darren Dochuk: “Cutting across faith traditions and the entire twentieth century, glimpsing radical social gospels in local and global contexts, and political circumstances of sweeping significance, The Religious Left in Modern America is an important and timely reminder that a dynamic religious left has always operated at the heart of American life.”

Jessica Johnson, Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire (Duke University Press)

Susan Friend Harding: “Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill churches in Seattle took Calvinist insecurity to new levels, producing an everyday world of acute affective precarity. His church people lived in a slurry of shame, fear, threat, care, intimidation, hope, joy, and paranoia. Wives were exhorted to be their husbands' porn stars 24/7, and men—the victims of a nation ‘pussified’ by feminists—should man-up, have sex on demand with their wives, and pursue air and ground war campaigns of ‘riot evangelism.’ After nearly a decade of summary dismissals, shunning, demon trials, disciplinary interrogations, mass surveillance, and financial scandals, Driscoll's evangelical empire imploded. Jessica Johnson was there for the long haul and provides us with a theoretically rich and evocative reading of this traumatic episode of pastoral governance.”

Zach Mills, The Last Blues Preacher: Reverend Clay Evans, Black Lives, and the Faith that Woke the Nation (Fortress)
Victor Anderson: “Mills’s biography of the Reverend Clay Evans brings into cultural focus the sound, passion, and commitments of one of the most recognized voices in the history of black preaching and gospel musicology of the twentieth century. Rev. Evans reminded many of us growing up in Chicago every Sunday evening that ‘there is room at the cross for you.’”

Erin Michael Salius, Sacraments of Memory: Catholicism and Slavery in Contemporary African American Literature (University Press of Florida)
Katherine Clay Bassard: “Brilliant and insightful. Fills a gap in the study of African American literature and religion, which has traditionally assumed a Protestant theological and cultural landscape as the ground for discussions of religion and spirituality among the enslaved. Adds to our knowledge of how religious tropes, archetypes, and theological claims inform readings of African American literary texts.”

Michele Lise Tarter and Catie Gill, eds. New Critical Studies on Early Quaker Women, 1650–1800 (Oxford University Press)
From the publisher: “. . . takes a fresh look at archival and printed sources from England and America, elucidating why women were instrumental to the Quaker movement from its inception to its establishment as a transatlantic religious body. This authoritative volume, the first collection to focus entirely on the contributions of women, is a landmark study of their distinctive religious and gendered identities. The chapters connect three richly woven threads of Quaker women's lives—Revolutions, Disruptions and Networks—by tying gendered experience to ruptures in religion across this radical, volatile period of history.”

Fred E. Witzig, Sanctifying Slavery and Politics in South Carolina: The Life of the Reverend Alexander Garden, 1685–1756 (University of South Carolina Press)
Thomas S. Kidd: “Fred E. Witzig’s Sanctifying Slavery and Politics in South Carolina delivers a much-needed biography of Alexander Garden, arguably the most prominent religious figure in the eighteenth-century lower South. But it also illuminates fascinating facets of colonial South Carolina’s religion, culture, and its ‘Great Anti-Awakening.’”

June

Steven M. Avella, The Catholic Church in Southwest Iowa: A History of the Diocese of Des Moines (Liturgical Press)
Timothy Walch: “Fr. Steven Avella has produced an exceptional history of Catholicism in the American heartland. Based on rigorous scholarly research and written in clear compelling prose, Fr. Avella tells the story of the Diocese of Des Moines during the ten tumultuous decades of the twentieth century. This book will be of value not only to academic historians, but also to general readers interested in the evolution of the Catholic Church in a diverse American diocese composed of small cities and big towns bound together by hundreds of bustling farms.”

Grant Brodrecht, Our Country: Northern Evangelicals and the Union during the Civil War Era (Fordham University Press)
Mark Noll: “Grant Brodrecht’s illuminating study shows how highly northern evangelical Protestants exalted their idea of the national Union before, during, and after the Civil War. With deep research and absolute mastery of standard historical scholarship, Our Country explains why this evangelical commitment to the Union as a providential, Christian nation exerted such influence during the war. Even more impressive is Brodrecht’s account of how this evangelical vision of the Christian nation undercut the push for African American equality and hastened the end of Reconstruction. It is an unusually impressive book.”

Harold K. Bush and Brian Yothers, eds., Above the American Renaissance (University of Massachusetts Press)
Elizabeth Fenton: “This collection is the first to assess nineteenth-century American literature in this way, and it will be of tremendous use to both scholars interested in U.S. religious traditions, Christianity specifically, and those who study the writers examined here. Above the American Renaissance is also a timely and important reengagement with David Reynolds’s work, a text that has laid the groundwork for nearly three decades of scholarship.”

Joel Cabrita, The People’s Zion: Southern Africa, the United States, and a Transatlantic Healing Movement (Harvard University Press)
Derek Peterson: “Drawing on archives in South Africa, Swaziland, Sweden, and Illinois, this remarkable book tells an altogether unlikely story. It features an Australian preacher who, in the late nineteenth century, established a Christian utopia in tiny Zion, Illinois, a town which was to be the launching pad for one of southern Africa’s leading Christian movements. The People’s Zion brings to light a whole network of textual, intellectual, and theological exchange that drew American midwesterners into close dialogue with co-travelers in southern Africa. In so doing, Cabrita places African Christians at the center of the history of global Christianity.”

Marc Dollinger, Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s (University Press of New England/Brandeis University)
Shaul Magid: “Dollinger’s illuminating book illustrates that many American Jewish leaders were not only sympathetic to Black Power but were supportive of it. Dollinger shows that the American Jewish turn toward issues of Jewish continuity owes a great debt to the Black Power movement and that Jewish leaders understood that early on. This book will significantly change how we view the American Jewish 1960s and their aftermath.”

Christopher Grasso, Skepticism and Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War (Oxford University Press)
Mark Noll: “Christopher Grasso has pursued what other historians have considered by-ways in order to show that deism, skepticism, and religious doubt were anything but marginal in the formative decades of the United States.”

Daniel Judson, Pennies for Heaven: The History of American Synagogues and Money (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England)
Beth Wenger: “Judson demonstrates not only the mechanisms used to fund synagogues but also what they reveal about American Jewish culture. A fascinating exploration of the complex junctures between American Judaism and the market.”

Elaine Allen Lechtreck, Southern White Ministers and the Civil Rights Movement (University Press of Mississippi)
From the publisher: “Based on interviews and personal memoirs, Southern White Ministers and the Civil Rights Movement traces the efforts of [white] clergymen who--deeply moved by the struggle of African Americans--looked for ways to reconcile the history of discrimination and slavery with Christian principles and to help their black neighbors.”

Reid Neilson and Scott Marianno, eds., A Voice in the Wilderness: The 1888-1930 General Conference Sermons of Mormon Historian Andrew Jenson (Oxford University Press)
J. Spencer Fluhman: “Jenson's sermons offer windows into a largely forgotten Latter-day Saint past and remind us, again, how profoundly historical sensibility shapes the tradition.”

Anna M. Nogar, Quill and Cross in the Borderlands: Sor María de Ágreda and the Lady in Blue, 1628 to the Present (University of Notre Dame Press)
John Morán González: “Thanks to Nogar’s clear style and ground-breaking research, this book provides a fascinating account of how one nun’s writings influenced the course of the Spanish colonial project even as she became a legend in the Americas despite never crossing the Atlantic.”

Seth Perry, Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States (Princeton University Press)
David Holland: “Early national Americans, [Perry] argues, used the Bible as an instrument of self-fashioning and for the construction of intersubjective relationships during the unstable period that followed the American Revolution. I will think about the early republic's processes of scripturalization differently and more profitably because of Perry's book.”

Arlene M. Sánchez Walsh, Pentecostals in America (Columbia University Press)
Paul Harvey: “. . . explores, describes, and interprets the almost infinitely varied and complex world of American Pentecostalism. The result is an impressionist painting of Pentecostalism in America, beautifully colored and bursting with vivid description and stimulating interpretations, both useful and delightfully interesting to read.”

Saher Selod, Forever Suspect: Racialized Surveillance of Muslim Americans in the War on Terror (Rutgers University Press)
Moustafa Bayoumi: “Scholars of Muslim Americans have long needed a rigorous study of how Muslims get racialized during the War on Terror. Saher Selod has not only provided us with the answers we were seeking but importantly shows how this racialization is both profoundly gendered and deeply institutionalized into today’s surveillance state.”

July

Elisabeth Ceppi, Invisible Masters: Gender, Race, and the Economy of Service in Early New England (University Press of New England)
Christopher Tomlins: “In this wise and subtle exploration of the culture of service in Puritan New England, Ceppi teaches us both the true depth of meaning in the familiar expression ‘work ethic’ and the centrality of mastering others to mastering oneself.”

Edwin S. Gustad, Heath W. Carter, and Mark A. Noll (eds), A Documentary History of Religion in America, 4th edition (Eerdmans Press)
Kate Bowler: “This updated collection of primary documents has been expertly pulled into a single volume to give a new generation of students access to a wide range of prominent religious voices. Beautifully narrated and carefully curated, these readings are thoughtfully chosen to showcase fundamental debates about the character of American religion.”

Forrester A. “Woody” Lee and James S. Pringle, A Noble and Independent Course: The LIfe of Reverend Edward Mitchell (University Press of New England)
From the publisher: “In 1828 Edward Mitchell was the first student of African descent to graduate from Dartmouth College, more than thirty-five years before any other Ivy League school admitted a black student. This book tells Mitchell’s life story with the help of a recently rediscovered trove of his college essays, notes on his religious conversion, and hand-copied versions of his sermons.”

David C. Posthumus, All My Relatives: Exploring Lakota Ontology, Belief, and Ritual (University of Nebraska Press)
Philippe Descola: “In this superb ethnography of North American animism, David Posthumus paints a vivid and poetic picture of what it meant for the nineteenth-century Lakota Sioux to live in a world beyond the human that they shared with scores of animal persons and spirits. A remarkable achievement.”

Continue Reading...

New Books in American Religious History: 2017 Year in Preview, Part Three (September-December)

Erin Bartram, William Black, Michel Sun Lee, and Moxy Moczygemba

Four of us—Erin Bartram (University of Hartford), William Black (Rice University), Michel Sun Lee (University of Texas at Austin), and Moxy Moczygemba (University of Florida)—are excited to present part three of the 2017 book preview list! This post covers releases from September through December 2017. Thank you, Paul Putz, for all your incredible work with the book lists thus far and for entrusting us with the reins. By the way, check out part one and part two if you missed them earlier this year.

As is the custom, here’s a little preface we’ve mostly borrowed from Paul: we’ve listed the books in roughly chronological order based on the month of their tentative release date. We’ve tried to include as many relevant and interesting titles as we could find, but are sure we’ve missed some worthy new books. Our reason may be that some publishers don't have updated information on their websites, or because we’ve simply missed it. Please feel free to use the comments to add to this list and we’ll update the post as needed.

We four each define "American” and “religion” a little differently. But for the purposes of these lists we follow Paul’s lead in adopting Kathryn Gin Lum's response in this IUPUI RAAC forum, where she articulated an understanding of "America" as the region that eventually became known as the United States. That definition does have problems, of course, which is why your contributions to this list—contributions which envision "America" differently—are more than welcome.

SEPTEMBER

James B. Bell, Anglicans, Dissenters and Radical Change in Early New England, 1686–1786 (Palgrave Macmillan)
Stephen Taylor: “...grounded on an unrivaled knowledge of the clergy serving in the American colonies in the century before the Revolution. The result is an important book, offering a rich and sophisticated account which reveals clearly the distinctiveness of Anglican experience and identity in New England compared both with the mother country and with the middle and southern colonies.”


Damon T. Berry, Blood and Faith: Christianity in American White Nationalism (Syracuse University Press)
Hugh Urban: "A powerful, original, and extremely timely book. Tracing the history of white nationalism in the United States, Berry examines a series of hugely influential but today little known figures and movements, revealing their key role in the broader landscape of American religious, political, and racist discourses. Perhaps most importantly, Berry’s book also highlights the continuities between these twentieth-century racist currents and our own historical moment, with the rise of the alt-right movement, and the resurgence of white nationalism."


Tricia Colleen Bruce, Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church (Oxford University Press)
Nancy T. Ammerman:"Parish matters, but so too does diocese. This book brilliantly shows us how the Catholic Church as an institution has made decisions about how to respond to the diversity and voluntarism of American religion. Combining vivid ethnographic detail with astute organizational analysis, Parish and Place adds a critical piece to the puzzle that is contemporary religious practice."


R. Andrew Chesnut, Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint 2nd Edition (Oxford University Press)
Timothy Matovina: "Chesnut provides a much-needed analysis of the meteoric rise in devotion to La Santa Muerte, the saint of death whose appeal has attracted the attention of immigrants, jilted lovers, journalists, drug dealers, clergy, the infirmed, and a host of needy petitioners. This first book-length study of the devotion will be a foundational reference point for future researchers as the Santa Muerte phenomenon continues to evolve."


Arun W. Jones, Missionary Christianity and Local Religion: American Evangelicalism in North India, 1836-1870 (Baylor University Press)
Geoffrey A. Oddie: “...highlights two especially important sources of influence affecting the ethos and character of mission communities: bhakti ideas that were popular in the towns and countryside of North India and the influence of mid-nineteenth-century Princeton theology on the North Indian Christian leadership.”


Rosalyn R. LaPier, Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet (University of Nebraska Press)
Frederick E. Hoxie: “...guides us through the meanings the Blackfeet community has attached to the plants and natural phenomena that surround them and at the same time makes clear the boundless complexity and stunning beauty of this indigenous cultural tradition.”


Kathryn Lofton, Consuming Religion (University of Chicago Press)
Robert A. Orsi: “...probes the most cunning junctures of contemporary neoliberal religion. Ranging over corporate cubicles; the advertising industry; finance; the dark arts of the creation, promotion, and destruction of celebrity; and much, much more, Lofton shows how at the deepest levels of imagination, desire, and discipline the modern histories of neoliberalism and religion—and the contemporary practices of both—have been and remain utterly entwined.”


Elizabeth Schleber Lowry, Invisible Hosts: Performing the Nineteenth-Century Spirit Medium’s Autobiography (SUNY Press)
From the publisher: “... explores how the central tenets of Spiritualism influenced ways in which women conceived of their bodies and their civic responsibilities, arguing that Spiritualist ideologies helped to lay the foundation for the social and political advances made by women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As public figures, female spirit mediums of the Victorian era were often accused of unfeminine (and therefore transgressive) behavior. A rhetorical analysis of nineteenth-century spirit mediums’ autobiographies reveals how these women convinced readers of their authenticity both as respectable women and as psychics.”


Carol A. Mortland, Cambodian Buddhism in the United States (SUNY Press)
From the publisher: “Cambodian Buddhism in the United States is the first comprehensive anthropological study of Khmer Buddhism as practiced by Khmer refugees in the United States. Based on research conducted at Khmer temples and sites throughout the country over a period of three and a half decades, Carol A. Mortland uses participant observation, open-ended interviews, life histories, and dialogues with Khmer monks and laypeople to explore the everyday practice of Khmer religion, including spirit beliefs and healing rituals.”


Max Perry Mueller, Race and the Making of the Mormon People (University of North Carolina Press)
Philip L. Barlow: “Racial issues, shifting though Max Perry Mueller shows them to be, remain a part of Mormon identity, self-understanding, and understanding of the world. Mueller’s book makes a significant contribution to our view of Mormonism and race and provides a rich and discerning look at the larger picture of race, religion, and American history.”


S. Brent Plate, Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-creation of the World (Columbia University Press)
David Chidester: “Plate gives us the best introduction into the exploration of religion and film by brilliantly interweaving the worldmaking of religious myths and rituals, sacred times, and spaces, with the worldmaking of cinema.”


Marcus Rediker, The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist (Beacon Press)
Gary Nash: “The unswerving eighteenth-century abolitionist Benjamin Lay, maligned when not ignored for many generations, has at last found his sympathetic biographer. In this captivating, must-read book, Marcus Rediker shows that Lay’s disfigured body contained a mind of steel and a heart overflowing with compassion for victims of the Atlantic slave trade. Lay’s place in the annals of American reform is now secure. If you’re ready to have your mind changed about received wisdom on the eccentric, lonely early abolitionist who blazed the way for later antislavery stalwarts, read this brilliantly researched and passionately written book.”


Joy Schulz, Hawaiian by Birth: Missionary Children, Bicultural Identity, and U.S. Colonialism in the Pacific (University of Nebraska Press)
Gary Y. Okihiro: “We understand that the normative, heterosexual family constitutes the nation-state. This remarkable, innovative study reveals the centrality of that family in ‘birthing empire’ through a history of childhood. Race, gender, sexuality, class, and religion intersect to advance U.S. imperialism in the Pacific and settler colonialism in Hawai‘i.”


Douglas Stark, When Basketball Was Jewish: Voices of Those Who Played the Game (University of Nebraska Press)
Ernie Grunfeld, president of the Washington Wizards: “The players and coaches chronicled in this book are not only important figures in Jewish basketball history; they played an important part in the history of the game. As a student of the game, a basketball lifer, and someone who is extremely proud of his Jewish heritage, I can appreciate the doors that they opened, and I’m glad that their stories are being told.”


OCTOBER

Barry M. Andrews, Transcendentalism and the Cultivation of the Soul (University of Massachusetts Press)
From the publisher: “American Transcendentalism is often seen as a literary movement—a flowering of works written by New England intellectuals who retreated from society and lived in nature. In Transcendentalism and the Cultivation of the Soul, Barry M. Andrews focuses on a neglected aspect of this well-known group, showing how American Transcendentalists developed rich spiritual practices to nurture their souls and discover the divine.”


Eugene Ford, Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America’s Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia (Yale University Press)
Christopher Goscha: “...a pathbreaking study of how Thai Buddhists interacted with American attempts to use their church in the war on communism in Southeast Asia and how Buddhists transformed their faith, indeed their country, in so doing. Superbly researched and brilliantly argued, it places Thailand in the broader sweep of international history—right where it should be.”


Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (University of Chicago Press)
From the publisher: “...Greenblatt shows that the experience of the marvelous, central to both art and philosophy, was manipulated by Columbus and others in the service of colonial appropriation.”


Hami İnan Gümüş, American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire: A Conceptual Metaphor Analysis of Missionary Narratives, 1820–1898 (Transcript-Verlag)
From the publisher: “...a metaphor-based analysis of the texts produced by the missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in the Ottoman Empire from 1820-1898. It explores the conceptual metaphor networks inherent to official missionary discourse. The explication of these networks uncovers how the missionaries defined and depicted themselves and what they encountered.”


Adam Gussow, Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition (UNC Press)
James H. Cone: "Adam Gussow is an excellent interpreter of the blues. He has earned the right to speak. We should listen to him and be informed about one of the most important musical expressions in American history. I strongly recommend Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition."


John Hayes, Hard, Hard Religion: Interracial Faith in the Poor South (University of North Carolina Press)
Paul Harvey: “...a powerfully epic evocation and analysis of the biracial religious world of ordinary southerners who encountered and struggled with God, life, and death through visions, dreams, oral poetry, and song more than they did in formal religious institutions. It's a beautiful work, and a landmark in the field of American religious studies."


David A. Hollinger, Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (Princeton University Press)
Kai Bird: “Hollinger tells an astonishing, counterintuitive story of how American Protestant missionaries went abroad armed with a radical egalitarian ideology and eventually came home to spread the gospel of multiculturalism, racial equality, and human rights. With verve and passion, he shines a brilliant light on their long-overlooked influence, showing how they transformed American society in ways we have not fully realized.”


Rachel McBride Lindsey, A Communion of Shadows: Religion and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press)
Paul Gutjahr: “...opens up new avenues of investigation by linking photography to religious practice, demonstrating how religious views are shaped by the interaction between material objects and the beholder of these objects. With her sharp insight and impressive research, Lindsey accents, complements, and complicates the all-too-sparse scholarship on photography in nineteenth-century America."


Lynne Marks, Infidels and the Damn Churches: Irreligion and Religion in Settler British Columbia (University of British Columbia Press)
Callum G. Brown: “This is the finest historical study yet done on the culture of atheism and non-religionism in the late modern Western world. It explores the origins of modern secularity in the most secular part of North America. Marks excels in moving from the micro study of individual families and small communities up to cities and the nation. This is a path-breaking work.”


Deborah Dash Moore et al., Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and a People (NYU Press)
Robert W. Snyder: "Jewish New York deftly combines crisp writing, sharp analysis and sophisticated discussions of visual images to explore the evolving relationship between a world city and its Jews. Reaching from the seventeenth century to the present, and weaving together big themes and illuminating lives, the book delves into topics as varied as religion, politics, popular culture and gender. Essential for understanding both Jewish experiences and the broad contours of New York’s history."


Candida R. Moss & Joel S. Baden, Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby (Princeton University Press)
Eric H. Cline: "Absolutely riveting. Without exaggeration, this is one of the most interesting books I have read in years. Moss and Baden have embedded a searing indictment within a compelling detective story that ranges from academic intrigue to divinely inspired business acumen, with a driving narrative and a cast of characters worthy of Hollywood, except that this is real life. Bible Nation should be required reading for anyone even thinking of visiting the Museum of the Bible."


Gary B. Nash, Warner Mifflin: Unflinching Quaker Abolitionist (University of Pennsylvania Press)
Thomas P. Slaughter: “...brings the Quaker abolitionist from the historical shadows and into the blazing light of his moral courage and singular efforts to right the terrible wrongs of American slavery and racism. The story may be an old one, but Mifflin's is as important for our own times as it is for our understanding of the Revolutionary era."


Mark J. Rozell and Gleaves Whitney, eds., Religion and the American Presidency (Palgrave Macmillan)
Raymond Tatalovich: "A commitment to religion has persisted across American history regardless of whether the president was a Federalist like Washington, a Jeffersonian like Madison, a Republican like Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan, or a Democrat like Truman, Carter, and Clinton. Religion and the American Presidency is a scholarly benchmark in the presidency studies, and a pioneering new perspective on the highest office in the land."


Julius H. Rubin, Perishing Heathens: Stories of Protestant Missionaries and Christian Indians in Antebellum America (University of Nebraska Press)
From the publisher: “...tells the stories of missionary men and women who between 1800 and 1830 responded to the call to save Native peoples through missions, especially the Osages in the Arkansas Territory, Cherokees in Tennessee and Georgia, and Ojibwe peoples in the Michigan Territory. Rubin also recounts the lives of Native converts, many of whom were from mixed-blood métis families and were attracted to the benefits of education, literacy, and conversion.”


David Tavárez, ed., Words and Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Colonial Latin America (University Press of Colorado)
Felipe Fernández-Armesto: “These intriguingly rich papers help show what happened on some of the most daunting frontiers of cultural exchange, where distinctive forms of Catholicism emerged. Creative misunderstandings, tense collaborations, fruitful contention: every type of encounter is represented here, with vivid evocations.”


Ula Yvette Taylor, The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam (UNC Press)
Tera W. Hunter: “While much has been written about the Nation of Islam, male-centered narratives of the most controversial and high-profile leaders have predominated. And yet, as Taylor demonstrates, without the work and foresight of women, the NOI would have been a far-less-effective organization. This study moves the women of the NOI from the periphery to the center to unveil layers of insight into the politics of black intimacy. It combines compelling storytelling of individual biographies and deft analysis of the larger cultural and political forces impacting the lives of ordinary black people using a rich treasure trove of archival records and interviews. This is a stellar contribution to gender studies, African American studies, and late twentieth-century U.S. history.”


Tisa Wenger, Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (UNC Press) 

Sylvester Johnson: "Tisa Wenger has crafted a riveting account of how the Western deployment of religious freedom emerged within the immanent frame of empire. As she examines transnational networks of race, colonialism, and religion, Wenger elucidates the historical and theoretical conundrums of civilizing missions, Indigeneity, democratization, subaltern agencies, and modern terrors that have rendered freedom of religion as a global formation. This is surely the high-water mark of interdisciplinary scholarship on religious freedom, and it sets a new standard."

NOVEMBER

Eliyana R. Adler and Sheila E. Jelen eds., Reconstructing the Old Country: American Jewry in the Post-Holocaust Decades (Wayne State University Press)
Antony Polonsky: "This path-breaking and moving volume examines how American Jewry, now the largest Jewish community in the world, reacted in the postwar years to the decimation of East European Jewry in the Holocaust. It investigates how American Jews absorbed the influx of East European survivors, commemorated the destruction of what had been for many centuries one of the main centers of Jewish life, and sought to intervene to defend the still-existing Jewish communities in the area. It is essential reading for all students of modern Jewish history and of the postwar world.”


Wallace D. Best, Langston’s Salvation: American Religion and the Bard of Harlem (NYU Press)
Edward J. Blum: “With close readings of Langston Hughes's poetry and with finely tuned arguments about the place of religion during the early twentieth century, Wallace Best provides what none has offered before: he shows the beautiful mind of Langston Hughes as a 'thinker about religion.' Langston's Salvation heralds a new day, perhaps even a renaissance, not only in the study Hughes and his poetry, but also of liberal religion in the United States.”


John Corrigan, ed., Religion, Space, and the Atlantic World (University of South Carolina Press)
From the publisher: “Focusing on four domains that most readily reflect the importance of Atlantic world spaces for the shape and practice of religion (texts, design, distance, and civics), these essays explore subjects as varied as the siting of churches on the Peruvian Camino Real, the evolution of Hispanic cathedrals, Methodist identity in nineteenth-century Canada, and Lutherans in early eighteenth-century America. Such essays illustrate both how the organization of space was driven by religious interests and how religion adapted to spatial ordering and reordering initiated by other cultural authorities.”


Matthew J. Cressler, Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migration (NYU Press)
Judith Weisenfeld: “...offers an original and insightful portrait of Chicago’s Black Catholics from the community’s early years through the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements and sheds new light on the dynamic relationship between race and religion in twentieth-century America. With Chicago at the center of the broader story of a 'revolution in Black Catholic identity,' this well-researched and engaging study reveals the complexity and texture of Black Catholics’ religious lives and negotiations of what it meant to be committed to both Black solidarity and community life and to the Roman Catholic Church. Cressler advances the study of Black Catholic history in exciting ways and makes an invaluable contribution."


Paul J. Croce, Young William James Thinking (Johns Hopkins University Press)
James T. Kloppenberg: “This book sets out to solve the deepest and most enduring problem in studies of Williams James: through a developmental biography, Croce has put back together a multi-dimensional thinker who has been taken apart in the multiple, self-contained literatures produced by scholars in every one of the now-distinct disciplines in which James did path-breaking work. Croce’s innovative book brings into focus the multiple efforts James made to combine science and religion, psychology and philosophy, religion and art.”


Julia Duin, In the House of the Serpent Handler: A Story of Faith and Fleeting Fame in the Age of Social Media (University of Tennessee Press)
Ralph Hood: “In the House of the Serpent Handler unfolds in ways that could not have been predicted. Julia Duin intimately recounts the story of serpent handlers raised in an Appalachian religious tradition where their ritualistic expression of faith is more ridiculed than understood. When she began her journey, little could she have known that pastors Mack Wolford and Jamie Coots would suffer fatal bites, and their deaths would lead to the story of a young handler, Andrew Hamblin, who proves to be a tragic figure of youth, social media, and a fall from grace. In the shadow of two deaths, Hamblin’s collapse is doubly sad, but his story sheds a modern light on a misunderstood religious practice.”


Paul Gutjahr, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America (Oxford University Press)
From the publisher: “This Handbook is designed to address a noticeable void in resources focused on analyzing the Bible in America in various historical moments and in relationship to specific institutions and cultural expressions…. This Handbook brings together a number of established scholars, as well as younger scholars on the rise, to provide a scholarly overview—rich with bibliographic resources—to those interested in the Bible's role in American cultural formation.”


Sarah Ruth Hammond, God’s Businessmen: Entrepreneurial Evangelicals in Depression and War, ed. Darren Dochuk (University of Chicago Press)
Kevin M. Kruse: “Well-researched and well-argued, God’s Businessmen builds well on the recent literature on the intersection of religion, business, and politics and advances the field in important new directions. Equally well-written, it will appeal not just to interested academics but to educated general audiences as well. It is, in short, a triumph.”


Felix Harcourt, Ku Klux Kulture: America and the Klan in the 1920s (University of Chicago Press)
Elaine Frantz: “In a time when white supremacy was widespread and unapologetic, the Ku Klux Klan was enormously popular….Klannish Americans played songs like ‘Onward Christian Klansman’ and ‘Daddy Swiped our Last Clean Sheet and Joined the Ku Klux Klan’ on their phonographs and radios...Klan baseball teams and basketball teams were widespread, and sometimes sensationally competed against Catholic, Jewish, and African-American rivals. While Harcourt shows that many found the Klan profoundly un-American, it was very much present at the creation of, and influenced the shape of modern popular culture.”


Rachel Kranson, Ambivalent Embrace: Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar America (University of North Carolina Press)
From the publisher: “This new cultural history of Jewish life and identity in the United States after World War II focuses on the process of upward mobility. Rachel Kranson challenges the common notion that most American Jews unambivalently celebrated their generally strong growth in economic status and social acceptance during the booming postwar era. In fact, a significant number of Jewish religious, artistic, and intellectual leaders worried about the ascent of large numbers of Jews into the American middle class.”


Mark Massa and Catherine Osborne, American Catholic History: A Documentary Reader, Second Edition (NYU Press)

Julie Byrne: "The documents collected in the first edition topped the list of best resources for teaching the diversity and complexity of US Catholic history, and now this revised edition is even better. From mission manager Eulalia Pérez in California in the 1800s to Pope Francis addressing Congress in 2015, the varied voices summon an astonishing story of solace and conflict in the Roman church, in the American nation, and in the human heart."


William L. Portier, Every Catholic An Apostle: A Life of Thomas A. Judge, CM, 1868–1933 (Catholic University of America Press)
David O’Brien: “...will be of great interest to scholars interested in the history of American religion and theologians and religious studies professionals interested in the laity, vowed religious life and social movements.”


Ronit Y. Stahl, Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America (Harvard University Press)
Darren Dochuk: “Cutting across a century of perpetual war, shifting its analytic gaze from bureaucratic functions of the state to the people of faith who served, from mainline denominations to religious movements on the rise, Ronit Stahl’s study of the military chaplaincy brilliantly recasts our understanding of church-state relations in the modern era. Stahl vividly shows how the military chaplaincy has offered the means for Washington to encourage proper religious expression in a pluralist society, and for faith communities to earn political legitimacy in the eyes of their peers. An essential book for students of American religion, politics, and history.”


Harry Stout, American Aristocrats: A Family, A Fortune, and the Making of American Capitalism (Basic Books)
Grant Wacker: "Using the story of one multi-generational family as the narrative thread, Harry S. Stout weaves the economic, social, and cultural history of 19th century America into a saga of relentless quest for land. Stout is a master stylist, and his prose is crisp, elegant, and, often enough, both witty and poignant. American Aristocrats gives erudition new dimensions of meaning. It draws readers not only to think about, but also to wrestle with the moral complexities of the building of the nation."


Jim Towns, The Legacy of W.A. Criswell (Stephen F. Austin University Press)
From the publisher: “Towns’s book examines selected speeches from 1956 to 2002, revisiting events that provoked the rhetorical situations of the era and exploring speaker-leader propositions and perspectives.”


Wylin D. Wilson, Economic Ethics & the Black Church (Palgrave Macmillan)
From the publisher: “...The book features unheard voices of individuals experiencing economic deprivation and the faith communities who serve as their refuge. Thus, this project examines the economic ethics of black churches in the rural South whose congregants and broader communities have long struggled amidst persistent poverty."

DECEMBER

Michael R. Cohen, Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era (NYU Press)
Jonathan D. Sarna: "This model study exposes the previously unknown Jewish ethnic network that filled a critical niche in the southern cotton trade during the second half of the nineteenth century. A major contribution with broad implications for students of economic history, Jewish history, and the history of the American South."


R. Marie Griffith, Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics (Basic Books)
From the publisher: “From the 1920s onward, a once-solid Christian consensus regarding gender roles and sexual morality began to crumble, as liberal Protestants sparred with fundamentalists and Catholics over questions of obscenity, sex education, and abortion. Both those who advocated for greater openness in sexual matters and those who resisted new sexual norms turned to politics to pursue their moral visions for the nation. Moral Combat is a history of how the Christian consensus on sex unraveled, and how this unraveling has made our political battles over sex so ferocious and so intractable.”


April E. Holm, A Kingdom Divided: Evangelicals, Loyalty, and Sectionalism in the Civil War Era (LSU Press)
From the publisher: “...provides the first analysis of the crucial role of churches in border states in shaping antebellum divisions in the major evangelical denominations, in navigating the relationship between church and the federal government, and in rewriting denominational histories to forestall reunion in the churches. Offering a new perspective on nineteenth-century sectionalism, it highlights how religion, morality, and politics interacted—often in unexpected ways—in a time of political crisis and war.”


P. Allen Krause, To Stand Aside or Stand Alone: Southern Reform Rabbis and the Civil Rights Movement, ed. Mark K. Bauman with Stephen Krause (University of Alabama Press)
Jonathan D. Sarna: “In 1966, Rabbi Allen Krause conducted frank interviews with Southern rabbis concerning Jews and the American civil rights movement. Now, fifty years later, transcripts of these precious interviews have finally been unsealed. The results—some of them explosive, some disturbing, and all of them illuminating—form the core of this book. It makes a unique contribution.”


Todd LeVasseur, Religious Agrarianism and the Return of Place: From Values to Practice in Sustainable Agriculture (SUNY Press)
Paul B. Thompson: “The blend of empirical sociology and philosophical/religious ethics is impressive. I found the book not only interesting but valuable for my own scholarship.”


Thomas R. McKibbens, ed., Baptists in Early North America—First Baptist Church, Boston, Massachusetts, Volume IV (Mercer University Press)
From the publisher: “The records span the time from the founding in 1665 until the death of Samuel Stillman in 1807. They reflect the extraordinary times in which the church grew and flourished, including a vivid description of the day in March, 1679, when the little congregation discovered that the Puritan authorities had sent a marshal to nail shut the doors of their place of worship.”


Jamie L. Pietruska, Looking Forward: Prediction and Uncertainty in Modern America (University of Chicago Press)
From the publisher: “...Pietruska uncovers a culture of prediction in the modern era, where forecasts became commonplace as crop forecasters, 'weather prophets,' business forecasters, utopian novelists, and fortune-tellers produced and sold their visions of the future.”


Stafford Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531-1797, Revised Edition (University of Arizona Press)
From the publisher: “For decades, Stafford Poole has stood at the forefront of scholarship on the historicity of the Virgin of Guadalupe, an icon that serves as one of the most important formative religious and national symbols in the history of Mexico. Poole’s groundbreaking first edition of Our Lady of Guadalupe was the first ever to examine in depth every historical source of the Guadalupe apparitions. In this revised edition, Poole employs additional sources and commentary to further challenge common interpretations and assumptions about the Guadalupan tradition.”


Peter Kerry Powers, Goodbye Christ? Religion, Masculinity, and the New Negro Renaissance (University of Tennessee Press)
From the publisher: “Despite the proliferation of criticism on the cultural work of the Harlem Renaissance over the course of the past two decades, surprisingly few critics have focused on the ways in which religious contexts shaped the works of New Negro writers and artists during that time. In Goodbye Christ? Masculinity and Christianity in the New Negro Renaissance, Peter Kerry Powers fills this scholarly void, exploring how the intersection of race, religion, and gender during the Harlem Renaissance impacted the rhetoric and imagination of prominent African American writers of the early twentieth century.”


Shari Rabin, Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America (NYU Press)
Lila Corwin Berman: "For far too long, historians of American Jews have glossed over most of the nineteenth century, as preamble for the truer or more interesting histories of twentieth-century American Jewry. Rabin offers a deeply researched, beautifully rendered case for the centrality of the nineteenth century to how we understand American Judaism. By looking toward ethnographic models, material culture, and narrative techniques, she argues that the provisionality, the instability, and the mobility of nineteenth-century Judaism created new modes of Jewish life suitable to endure in the American environment. Following in the footsteps of Robert Orsi, Leigh Eric Schmidt, and Kathryn Lofton, who all expertly wed ethnography to deep historical inquiry, Rabin allows the reader to understand the human contours of Jewish life in motion."


Anthony Wonderley, Oneida Utopia: A Community Searching for Human Happiness and Prosperity (Cornell University Press)
From the publisher: “...seamlessly combines the evidence of social life and intellectual endeavor with the testimony of built environment and material culture. Wonderley shares with readers his intimate knowledge of evidence from the Oneida Community: maps and photographs, quilts and furniture, domestic objects and industrial products, and the biggest artifact of all, their communal home. Wonderley also takes a novel approach to the thought of the commune’s founder, examining individually and in context Noyes’s reactions to interests and passions of the day, including revivalism, millennialism, utopianism, and spiritualism.”

Continue Reading...

Of "Of Gods And Games"

Paul Putz

There is only one rule when reviewing sport history books in a forum that is not focused primarily on sports: you must use a sports metaphor or allusion at some point. Allow me to check that box right off the bat (and no, that last phrase doesn't count): William J. Baker's Of Gods And Games: Religious Faith and Modern Sports (University of Georgia Press, 2017) is kind of like an end-of-the-season sports highlight show. Clocking in at about seventy-five pages, it provides a primer on a few of the key themes that scholars of sports and religion have explored, while at the same time offering a couple intriguing hints at what might be on the horizon next season.

There. The painful part is done. No more forced sports comparisons, I promise.

For historians doing the sport and religion thing, Baker is impossible to ignore. His 2007 book Playing With God: Religion and Modern Sport (Harvard University Press) stands as the single best volume on the history of sport and religion in the United States. It stands out in part because of Baker's historical methodology and narrative presentation, a marked contrast from much of the published scholarship on religion and sports that focuses on questions like "Is sport a religion?" or (when written by Christian insiders, as it often is) "Does sport corrupt 'true' or 'good' Christian theology?"

Those questions are valuable to ask, but they have tended to isolate work at the intersection of sports and religion from broader conversations in the field of U.S. history. This problem is especially pronounced when it comes to Christianity and sports. The book on that subject most recognizable to U.S. historians is probably Clifford Putney's Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880-1920 (Harvard University Press, 2001) -- a book that features exactly one chapter on sports. Scholars of American Jewish history, on the other hand, have been much more attentive to sport, with prominent examples including Peter Levine's Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport and the American Jewish Experience (Oxford University Press, 1992), Steven A. Riess, ed., Sports and the American Jew (Syracuse University Press, 1998), Jeffrey S. Gurock's Judaism’s Encounter with American Sports (Indiana University Press, 2005), and Rebecca T. Alpert's Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball (Oxford University Press, 2011).

All that to say: when William Baker writes something about sports and religion, I'm going to read it.

Because Of Gods and Games is based on talks Baker gave as part of Stetson University's George H. Shriver Lecture Series, it is not intended to explore the subject in great detail. And although the subtitle says that it examines "religious faith and modern sports," Baker's focus is almost exclusively on Christians in the United States. Still, Baker offers intriguing analysis throughout the book's three chapters. The first chapter brings together two athletes known at least in part because of their chastity: Tim Tebow and Shelly Pennefather. The latter was a star basketball player at Villanova in the 1980s who played professional basketball in Japan before retiring early to become a cloistered Poor Clare nun. The former was Tim Tebow.

The second chapter places coaches under the spotlight, with Bill McCartney, Dean Smith, Steve Spurrier, and John Wooden (among others) getting Baker's attention. Baker's description of Wooden is a bit off the mark; he claims that none of Wooden's biographers make much of Wooden's faith. But the best account of Wooden -- John Matthew Smith's The Sons of Westwood: John Wooden, UCLA, and the Dynasty That Changed College Basketball -- certainly does not ignore it. And Christian publishers have put out numerous hagiographies that use Wooden as a guide to practical success while emphasizing the Christian roots of his life philosophy.

The final chapter is, to my mind, the most interesting. Baker takes up the topic of sports media, looking at Grantland Rice, Arch Ward, Watson Spoelstra, and other prominent sports journalists. From my own research on the origins of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, I know the crucial role that sports journalists played in getting the organization off the ground. Baker's chapter suggests that much more work could and should be done on religion and sports media.

Because Of Gods and Games is intended to be limited in scope, its appeal derives largely from Baker's importance as a scholar and from the suggestive hints for further topics of study. Non-specialists would likely enjoy reading it as well, thanks to its accessible style. For those interested in more robust historical work on the intersection of religion and sports in the United States, Baker's 2007 book Playing With God is the best place to start (but keep an eye out for Art Remillard's current project).

Continue Reading...

New Books in American Religious History: 2017 Year in Preview, Part Two (May-August)

Paul Putz

It's time for part two of the 2017 book preview list! This one will cover books published from May through August. (If you missed part one check it out here). Shout out to Hunter Hampton, who culled through the university press catalogs to help me put this list together.

The usual preface: I've listed the books in roughly chronological order based on the month of their tentative release date. Although I've tried to include as many relevant and interesting titles as I could find, I'm sure that I left out some deserving books. Sometimes this is because publishers don't have updated information on their websites, and sometimes it's because I just missed it. Please feel free to use the comments to add to this list and I can update the post as needed.

As for how I define what is "American" in American religion (to say nothing of what is "religion" in American religion), for the purposes of these lists I mostly follow Kathryn Gin Lum's response in this IUPUI RAAC forum. There, she articulated an understanding of "America" as the region that eventually became known as the United States. That definition does have problems, of course, which is why your contributions to this list -- contributions which envision "America" differently -- are more than welcome.

Now, on to the books! (after this collage to add some color to any social media links)

MAY


David Harrington Watt, Antifundamentalism in Modern America (Cornell University Press)
Diane Winston: "...a timely and provocative book that deserves wide readership. David Harrington Watt questions taken-for-granted assumptions about fundamentalism, probing to understand the meaning, uses, and political work that surround this familiar term. His intention is not just to retrieve fundamentalism's original meaning, but also to explore how and why it came to characterize so much more than its initial denotation of a specific strand of American Protestantism. Watt stakes out the word’s journey through academia, sermons, newspapers, and popular culture, explaining its early and ongoing attraction for secular and religious polemicists. He also shows why from the 1970s on, 'fundamentalist' became a convenient label for religious others who roiled the burgeoning secular and capitalist global world order."

Robert E. Hooper, If Your Enemy Hungers, Feed Him: Church of Christ Missionaries in Japan, 1882-1970 (Abilene Christian University Press)
From the publisher: In this book, Robert E. Hooper, the former chair of the History department at Lipscomb University, shares the fruit of more than forty years of historical research....The world of the early twentieth century was dominated by nationalism and propaganda—an “us versus them” mentality. If Your Enemy Hungers Feed Him tells the story of how the gospel redirected a generation of Christians away from violence so that they could see the people of Japan in a new way.

Judith Casselberry, The Labor of Faith: Gender and Power in Black Apostolic Pentecostalism (Duke University Press)
Marla Frederick: "...an important contribution to the study of American religion and African American religious culture in particular. Casselberry's attention to the concept of 'labor' helps reshape our well-worn attention to agency in the study of faith-filled women. The beauty of her narrative voice brings alive in striking detail the lives of the women of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ."

Tera W. Hunter, Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century (Harvard University Press)
From the publisher: "...the first comprehensive history of African American marriage in the nineteenth century. Uncovering the experiences of African American spouses in plantation records, legal and court documents, and pension files, Tera W. Hunter reveals the myriad ways couples adopted, adapted, revised, and rejected white Christian ideas of marriage. Setting their own standards for conjugal relationships, enslaved husbands and wives were creative and, of necessity, practical in starting and supporting families under conditions of uncertainty and cruelty."

Karissa Haugeberg, Women Against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century (University of Illinois Press)
Linda Gordon: "Even to someone who has been studying reproductive rights for forty years, this book is an eye opener--a serious, feminist, and respectful history of women in the anti-abortion movement. It challenges some of the most often repeated generalizations about anti-abortion activists by examining the varied strategies and personalities as well as the internal conflicts. Possibly the best book yet on that movement, it is also a vivid and fast-moving read."

Robert S. Kim, Project Eagle: The American Christians of North Korea in World War II (Potomac Books)
From the publisher: "Robert S. Kim contributes to a fuller understanding of Asia in World War II by revealing the role of American Christian missionary families in the development of the Korean independence movement and the creation of Project Eagle, the forgotten alliance between that movement and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)."

M. Cooper Harriss, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Theology (New York University Press)
Paul Harvey: "In this wide-ranging analysis, incorporating everything from biblical texts to Puritan sermons, from the Harlem Renaissance to mid-century political theologians to contemporary debates, M. Cooper Harriss excavates the 'lower frequencies' of Ralph Ellison's central metaphor of invisibility. He shows how Ellison injects race into contemporary discussions of secularism, and in the process illuminates much not just about Invisible Man, but about how race orders the American cosmos."

Antony Alumkal, Paranoid Science: The Christian Right's War on Reality (New York University Press)
Jerry Park: "A small but highly organized network of conservative Christians maintains a successful pseudo-scientific campaign to challenge established scientific topics including evolution, sexual orientation, bioethics, and climatology that they find threatening to their worldview. Alumkal’s unflinching critical analysis of their popular writings and educational media provides an excellent window into the political culture and theological motivations, mindsets and machinations within this movement. Fit for the times, Paranoid Science is engaging reading that elucidates the extent to which religious motivations can distort scientific inquiry for political ends."

Erik Love, Islamophobia and Racism in America (New York University Press)
Hisham Aidi: “Wedding institutional analysis with rigorous empirical research, Love shows how Middle Eastern American political identity was born at the intersection of state policy and societal hostility. Original, timely, and chillingly lucid, this work falls within the best traditions of sociology, critical race theory, and institutional history.”

Holly Folk, The Religion of Chiropractic: Populist Healing from the American Heartland (University of North Carolina Press)
Pamela Klassen: “Offering fascinating insights into the chiropractic movement, its leaders, changing etiologies, and wider significance, Holly Folk provides a robust and original interpretation of the chiropractic narratives. With the fascinating and sometimes bizarre stories of the Palmer family here set into an argument of broad interest to scholars of religion and lay readers alike, I find myself thinking about the Palmers through the lens of today’s manifestations of populist rhetoric.”

Krister Knapp, William James: Psychical Research and the Challenge of Modernity (University of North Carolina Press)
Amanda Porterfield: "Krister Dylan Knapp's William James helps us better understand why James's pragmatic approach to religion caught on and why it continues to attract followers today. James's interest in paranormal activity, telepathy, hypnotism, and communications with the dead was not merely a sideline or a passing phase, Knapp shows, but an enduring, relentless, and critical search for evidence that such things might stand up to scientific scrutiny. In addition to chronicling James's doggedness in pursuit of psychic phenomena, Knapp shows how closely this pursuit was intertwined with other aspects of James's work that proved more influential. His discussion of James's tertium quid offers keen insight into James's disposition as a thinker, and I expect others will come to rely on Knapp's thesis."

Robert A. Kittle, Franciscan Frontiersmen: How Three Adventurers Charted the West (University of Oklahoma Press)
Iris Engstrand: "...brings together the lives of three distinctly different priests with a common Christian mission who followed Native trails to California. Robert A. Kittle provides new insights into the rigors of daily life on the frontiers of New Spain as the priests accompanied such well-known travelers as Father Junípero Serra, Juan Bautista de Anza, and Gaspar de Portolá on their respective journeys. Drawing on multiple Spanish sources in his quest for accuracy, the author comes to grips with the question of whether the Franciscans should be remembered as saints or sinners. This book is both an indispensable reference for scholars and an enjoyable read for all those interested in the saga of three lesser-known heroes of the Spanish Southwest.”

Richard E. Turley Jr., Janiece L. Johnson, LaJean Purcell Carruth, eds., Mountain Meadows Massacre: Collected Legal Papers, Initial Investigations and Indictments (University of Oklahoma Press)
From the publishers: "The editors of this two-volume collection of documents have combed public and private manuscript collections from across the United States to reconstruct the complex legal proceedings that occurred in the massacre’s aftermath. This exhaustively researched compilation covers a nearly forty-year history of investigation and prosecution—from the first reports of the massacre to the dismissal of the last indictment in 1896."

Terry Rey, The Priest and the Prophetess: Abbé Ouvière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World (Oxford University Press)
James H. Sweet: "Tracing the collaboration and divergence of two remarkable figures—one a defrocked French priest, the other an African-descended prophetess—Terry Rey brilliantly illuminates the role of popular Catholicism as an intellectual force in the revolutionary Atlantic world. Along the way, Rey resurrects little-known life histories of the Haitian Revolution. Deeply researched and engagingly written, this is micro-history at its very best."

David Delbert Kruger, J. C. Penney: The Man, the Store, and American Agriculture (University of Oklahoma Press)
From the publisher: "What is now called JCPenney, a fixture of suburban shopping malls, started out as a small-town Main Street store that fused its founder’s interests in agriculture, retail business, religion, and philanthropy. This book—at once a biography of Missouri farm boy–turned–business icon James Cash Penney and the story of the company he started in 1902—brings to light the little-known agrarian roots of an American department store chain. David Delbert Kruger explores how the company, its stores, and their famous founder shaped rural America throughout the twentieth century."

Kevin J. Hayes, George Washington: A Life in Books (Oxford University Press)
From the publisher: "Based on a comprehensive amount of research at the Library of Congress, the collections at Mount Vernon, and rare book archives scattered across the country, Kevin J. Hayes corrects this misconception and reconstructs in vivid detail the active intellectual life that has gone largely unnoticed in conventional narratives of Washington....The sheer breadth of titles under review here allow readers to glimpse Washington's views on foreign policy, economics, the law, art, slavery, marriage, and religion, and how those views shaped the young nation."

Jenna Weissman Joselit, Set in Stone: America's Embrace of the Ten Commandments (Oxford University Press)
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett: "A brilliant reading of a durable icon, the Ten Commandments, in word and substance. There are many a surprising twist and turn in this imaginatively researched study of a ubiquitous object of material religion, whether in synagogues and churches, comic books and movies, at the Passover table, or in courts of law. The writing sparkles with wit and insight, a delight to read. Set in Stone is simply exemplary in every regard."

Jeff W. Dennis, Patriots and Indians: Shaping Identity in Eighteenth-Century South Carolina (The University of South Carolina Press)
From the publisher: "...examines relationships between elite South Carolinians and Native Americans through the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods. Eighteenth-century South Carolinians interacted with Indians in business and diplomatic affairs, as enemies and allies during times of war and less frequently in matters of scientific, religious, or sexual interest. Jeff W. Dennis elaborates on these connections and their seminal effects on the American Revolution and the establishment of the state of South Carolina."

Doris Andrea Dirks and Patricia A. Relf, To Offer Compassion: A History of the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion (University of Wisconsin Press)
Cynthia Gorney: “This compelling history explores one of the twentieth century's most unusual religious endeavors—the collective defiance of American clergy who were willing to help direct women to illegal but safe abortions. No previous account of the Clergy Consultation Service has told their whole story so thoroughly and vividly.”

Thomas S. Kidd, Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father (Yale University Press) 
Catherine A. Brekus: “Was Benjamin Franklin a Christian? A polytheist? A skeptic? A deist? This lucid, engaging book offers a compelling new interpretation of Franklin’s faith. A must read for anyone interested in the beliefs of the Founders.”

Joseph Kip Kosek, ed., American Religion, American Politics: An Anthology (Yale University Press)

Mark Noll: "Joseph Kip Koseck’s intelligent, informative, and insightful assemblage of documents illuminates questions central to American history and intensely relevant at the present."

Peter Manseau, Objects of Devotion: Religion in Early America (Smithsonian Books)
From the publisher: "...tells the story of religion in the United States through the material culture of diverse spiritual pursuits in the nation's colonial period and the early republic. The beautiful, full-color companion volume to a Smithsonian National Museum of American History exhibition, the book explores the wide range of religious traditions vying for adherents, acceptance, and a prominent place in the public square from the 1630s to the 1840s."

Justo L. Gonzalez, A Brief History of Sunday: From the New Testament to the New Creation (Eerdmans)
From the publisher: "In this accessible historical overview of Sunday, noted scholar Justo González tells the story of how and why Christians have worshiped on Sunday from the earliest days of the church to the present."


JUNE


Douglas E. Thompson, Richmond's Priests and Prophets: Race, Religion, and Social Change in the Civil Rights Era (University of Alabama Press)
Andrew Manis: “Thoroughly examining the clergy in one upper-South city, but one that just happened to have been the capital of the Confederacy, Thompson provides a compelling argument that the standard evaluation of the white southern clergy as too invested in advancing up the ministerial ladder ‘ain’t necessarily so’ and raises a cautionary voice against the ‘Silent South’ thesis."

Lisa Vox, Existential Threats: American Apocalyptic Beliefs in the Technological Era (University of Pennsylvania Press)
Ronald L. Numbers: "...offers lucidly written and knowledgeable discussions of fundamentalism, Pentecostalism, premillennialism, and dispensationalism and brings them to bear on a topic of interest to both religion and science: the end of the world as Americans imagine it."

Samuel C. Heilman, Who Will Lead Us?: The Story of Five Hasidic Dynasties in America (University of California Press)
Ada Rapoport-Albert: "...brilliantly demonstrates that the remarkable resurrection of Hasidism has been due to its capacity for maintaining the charismatic authority of its dynastic leadership. This is by far the most insightful study of the social, economic, and political dynamics of Hasidim today.”

J. Patrick Mullins, Father of Liberty: Jonathan Mayhew and the Principles of the American Revolution (University of Kansas Press)
Rosemarie Zagarri: “Long before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, the Reverend Jonathan Mayhew preached a message from his Boston pulpit that powerfully blended a defense of religious liberty with an emerging notion of constitutional resistance to British tyranny. His ideas shaped the thinking of future leaders of the American Revolution such as John Adams, James Otis, Robert Treat Paine, Josiah Quincy, Paul Revere, and many others. Seamlessly integrating political, intellectual, and religious history, Mullins’s elegant and illuminating study restores Mayhew to his rightful place in emergence of Revolutionary protest while also conveying the full complexity and originality of Mayhew’s thought.”

Jack R. Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro, Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place (University of Kentucky Press)
Matt Bonzo: "...offers a helpful and much-needed counternarrative to the pragmatic visions of higher education that dominate the current discussion. Works like this are essential for finding a way forward in a time marked by the arrogance of Wall Street, the failure of political discourse, and educational practices that hide more problems than they address."

Peter B. Dedek, The Cemeteries of New Orleans A Cultural History (Louisiana State University Press)
Andrew Gulliford: “Peter Dedek has authored a definitive cultural history of New Orleans’ historic cemeteries. Well researched and illustrated with photos, maps, and engravings, The Cemeteries of New Orleans tells tales of immigrants, Creoles, Africans, free people of color, and the diverse burial practices of the Crescent City from Civil War soldiers to voodoo practitioners. Dedek writes about the cities of the dead and their connections to Roman and Greek mortuary traditions as well as the impact of Parisian architects and mixed-race stonecutters. Dedek has done careful scholarly research on the fusion of Louisiana disease and death, race and caste, tomb building and social status..."

Mark Hollabaugh, The Spirit and the Sky: Lakota Visions of the Cosmos (University of Nebraska Press)
Harry Thompson: “Through a comprehensive introduction to Lakota cultural astronomy, Mark Hollabaugh invites the reader to see the limitless skies over the Northern Plains much as did the Lakota of the nineteenth century. His incisive assessment of winter counts, ledger books, written records, celestial phenomena, and the Sun Dance is remarkably illuminating and heartily welcome.”

Alexander B. Haskell, For God, King, and People: Forging Commonwealth Bonds in Renaissance Virginia (University of North Carolina Press)
Alison Games: "Anchored in prodigious research in contemporary texts, Alexander Haskell's learned book recasts the story of English overseas enterprises in general and of Virginia in particular. His innovative insistence on delineating Virginia's Renaissance origins offers a fresh perspective on that most familiar of places, turning our attention from tobacco to Christian humanism and the proper relationship of planters and rulers."

Benjamin R. Kracht, Kiowa Belief and Ritual (University of Nebraska Press)
Michael Paul Jordan: "...offers a meticulously researched and richly detailed account of pre-reservation Kiowa religious life. Benjamin Kracht makes extensive use of interviews conducted with Kiowa elders in 1935, and their recollections and experiences make for compelling reading. This is a significant contribution to the literature on Native North America.”

Ruth Braunstein, Todd Nicholas Fuist, and Rhys H. Williams, eds., Religion and Progressive Activism: New Stories about Faith and Politics (New York University Press)
E.J. Dionne Jr.: “Social scientists have invested a great deal of energy in trying to understand the religious right, but not nearly enough time and effort has been devoted to the crucial role, in our past and present, of the religious left. This book is thus an enormous contribution and a groundbreaking work. This timely volume shatters the myth of the religious right’s monopoly on faith-based political activism. While acknowledging the difficulties confronted by religious liberals in organizing for social justice, the authors provide a wealth of new evidence-based insights about how to strengthen the progressive religious movement at a time when its witness is badly needed.”

Sarah Azaransky, This Worldwide Struggle: Religion and the International Roots of the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press)
Traci C. West: "Azaransky offers a savvy, cogently written understanding of the internationalism of early twentieth-century black Christian intellectuals and activists. She comprehensively details previously neglected history of African American religious contributions to global moral commitments challenging white supremacy and socioeconomic inequalities. This book is an inspiring primer in deliberately crafted frontiers of justice-oriented black Christianity, so timely for anyone seeking hopeful roadmaps for similar contemporary forms of religious solidarity supporting human dignity across borders."

Prema A. Kurien, Ethnic Church Meets Megachurch: Indian American Christianity in Motion (New York University Press)
John J. Thatamanil: "With careful fieldwork done over decades in two countries, Prema Kurien’s work will serve as a model for how to do sociological and ethnographic work within immigrant communities that remain in robust connection to their countries of origin, even as they try to find their footing in their new home. A must read for all who seek to understand the transformation of American religious life under the pressures of migration and globalization!"

Bruce B. Lawrence, The Koran in English: A Biography (Princeton University Press)
Kecia Ali: "At a moment when historically grounded reflection on European and American interactions with Islam and Muslims is vital, Bruce Lawrence offers an engaging and opinionated book based on wide-ranging scholarship. Accessible to adventurous beginners and illuminating for specialists, The 'Koran' in English is a terrific read."

Samuel L. Perry, Growing God’s Family: The Global Orphan Care Movement and the Limits of Evangelical Activism (New York University Press)
Christian Smith: "This fascinating case study deftly captures the authentic spirit of so many American evangelical 'movements' for change, explaining with empathetic and fair but brutally honest criticism why and how religiously motivated people and activism can prove in the end to be ironically self-undermining and ineffective. A valuable contribution to our sociological understanding of American evangelicalism and religious movements and culture."

Andrew Finstuen, Grant Wacker, and Anne Blue Wills, eds., Billy Graham: American Pilgrim (Oxford University Press)
Randall Balmer: "Billy Graham's emergence as a religious celebrity provided legitimacy for the entire movement we know today as evangelicalism. In this remarkable volume, a stellar lineup of contributors provides fresh insight into the most famous and influential evangelical of the twentieth century."

Daniel A. Grano, The Eternal Present of Sport: Rethinking Sport and Religion (Temple University Press)
From the publisher: "In his persuasive study The Eternal Present of Sport, Daniel Grano rethinks the sport-religion relationship by positioning sport as a source of theological trouble. Focusing on bodies, time, movement, and memory, he demonstrates how negative theology can be practically and theoretically useful as a critique of elite televised sport."

Susan M. Ouellette, An Extraordinary Ordinary Woman: The Journal of Phebe Orvis, 1820–1830 (SUNY Press)
Jacqueline Barbara Carr: “Ouellette’s chronicle offers the reader a beautifully crafted and richly textured account of ten years in the life of a young woman as she transitions from unmarried to married life on the New York and Vermont frontier. In the hands of Ouellette, the diary of Phebe Orvis is interpreted with skill and grace, and her life experiences are firmly grounded in the vibrant world of post-revolutionary America. This engaging work will be liked by those readers seeking a deeper understanding of the lives of women and family in the Early Republic as well as those interested in the history of New York, Vermont, and the American frontier.”

George F. Bagby, Hollis F. Price Uncommon Man, Educator, Leader (University of Tennessee Press)
From the publisher: "...tells the extraordinary story of a man who for nearly thirty years led a small, historically black college through turbulent times in Memphis and sought to achieve racial progress through cooperation rather than confrontation. As president of LeMoyne (later LeMoyne-Owen) College from 1943 to 1970, Hollis Price oversaw dramatic growth in the size and quality of the college’s student body, faculty, and physical plant. As a member of the Congregational Church/United Church of Christ, he was a leader both in his own congregation and in the church nationally. As a worker for the United Negro College Fund from its inception in 1943 until his death in 1982, he was a leading fundraiser, offered creative solutions to problems, and pushed for the UNCF’s history to be recorded..."

Catherine A. Brekus, ed., Sarah Osborn’s Collected Writings (Yale University Press)
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: “In a magnificent biography, Catherine Brekus introduced readers to the life of Sarah Osborn. In this generous and beautifully-edited anthology, she has done even more. To use Osborn's own words, she has managed "to roll the work of instruction" into the hands of others. Teachers, scholars, specialists, and general readers can now discover Osborn and her world on their own.”

Ángel Cortés, Sectarianism and Orestes Brownson in the American Religious Marketplace (Palgrave Macmillan)
Daniel Walker Howe: “This cogent, fluently written account illuminates the diversity of 19th century American society and religion through the surprising career of Orestes Brownson. By turns a Universalist, Presbyterian, nonsectarian, Unitarian, and Transcendentalist, Brownson finally converted to Catholicism, but never escaped controversy.”

William Harrison Taylor, Unity in Christ and Country: American Presbyterians in the Revolutionary Era, 1758–1801 (University of Alabama Press)
From the publisher: "William Harrison Taylor investigates the American Presbyterian Church’s pursuit of Christian unity and demonstrates how, through this effort, the church helped to shape the issues that gripped the American imagination, including evangelism, the conflict with Great Britain, slavery, nationalism, and sectionalism."


JULY


Fred Behrend and Larry Hanover, Rebuilt from Broken Glass: A German Jewish Life Remade in America (Purdue University Press)
From the publisher: "Behrend went from a sheltered life of wealth in a long-gone, old-world Germany, dwelling in the gilded compound once belonging to the manufacturer of the zeppelin airships, to a poor Jewish immigrant in New York City learning English from Humphrey Bogart films. Upon returning from service in the U.S. Army, he rose out of poverty, built a successful business in Manhattan, and returned to visit Germany a dozen times, giving him unique perspective into Germany's attempts to surmount its Nazi past."

Laura Dasso Walls, Henry David Thoreau: A Life (The University of Chicago Press)
Robert D. Richardson: "Laura Dassow Walls has written a grand, big-hearted biography, as compulsively readable as a great nineteenth century novel, chock-full of new and fascinating detail about Thoreau, his family, his friends, and his town. Walls's magnificent--landmark--achievement is the best all around biography of Thoreau ever written. It not only brings Thoreau vividly back to life, it will fundamentally change how we see him. We will hear no more about the 'hermit of Walden Pond.' Walls has given us a new socially engaged Thoreau for a new era, a freedom fighter for John Brown and America, and a necessary prophet and spokesman for Concord Mass. and Planet Earth."

Nicholas K. Rademacher, Paul Hanly Furfey: Priest, Scientist, Social Reformer (Fordham University Press)
From the publisher: "Nicholas Rademacher's book is meticulously researched and clearly written, shedding new light on Monsignor Paul Hanly Furfey's life by drawing on Furfey's copious published material and substantial archival deposit. Paul Hanly Furfey (1896-1992) is one of U.S. Catholicism's greatest champions of peace and social justice. He and his colleagues at The Catholic University of America offered a revolutionary view of the university as a center for social transformation, not only in training students to be agents for social change but also in establishing structures which would empower and transform the communities that surrounded the university."

Michael L. Clemons, Donathan L. Brown, and William H. L. Dorsey, eds., Dream and Legacy: Dr. Martin Luther King in the Post-Civil Rights Era (University Press of Mississippi)
From the publisher: "This book examines how Martin Luther King's life and work had a profound, if unpredictable, impact on the course of the United States since the civil rights era....With unique, multidisciplinary works by scholars from around the country, this anthology focuses on contemporary social policies and issues in America. Collectively, these pieces explore wide-ranging issues and contemporary social developments through the lens of Dr. King's perceptions, analysis, and prescriptions. Essayists bring a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to social policies and current issues in light of his ideals. They strive to glean new approaches and solutions that comport with Dr. King's vision."

Mark Stein, Vice Capades: Sex, Drugs, and Bowling from the Pilgrims to the Present (Potomac Books)
From the publisher: "From outlawing bowling in colonial America to regulating violent video games and synthetic drugs today, Mark Stein’s Vice Capades examines the nation’s relationship with the actions, attitudes, and antics that have defined morality. This humorous and quirky history reveals that our views of vice are formed not merely by morals but by power."

Brandi Denison, Ute Land Religion in the American West, 1879–2009 (University of Nebraska Press)
Tisa Wenger: “This terrific book shows how white settlers in Colorado used the construct of ‘Ute Land Religion’ to justify their appropriation of Native land, how Ute people both resisted and participated in that invention, and how the category of religion has functioned in the making and remaking of the American West.”

Erika Gasser, Vexed with Devils: Manhood and Witchcraft in Old and New England (New York University Press)
Thomas A. Foster: "Vexed with Devils focuses on how manhood figures in the published texts that circulated in seventeenth-century England and New England. Professor Gasser’s work will quickly be taken up by scholars in a broad range of early American and English fields, including studies of religion, race, gender, and politics, and will change the way that we think about witchcraft."

David N. Hempton and Hugh McLeod, eds., Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World (Oxford University Press)
From the publisher: "...provides a systematic comparison between the religious histories of the United States and western European countries from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century, noting parallels as well as divergences, examining their causes and especially highlighting change over time. This is achieved by a series of themes which seem especially relevant to this agenda, and in each case the theme is considered by two scholars. The volume examines whether American Christians have been more innovative, and if so how far this explains the apparent "God Gap." It goes beyond the simple American/European binary to ask what is "American" or "European" in the Christianity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in what ways national or regional differences outweigh these commonalities."

Terryl L. Givens, Feeding the Flock: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Church and Praxis (Oxford University Press)
From the publisher: "...the second volume of Terryl L. Givens's landmark study of the foundations of Mormon thought and practice, traces the essential contours of Mormon practice as it developed from Joseph Smith to the present. Despite the stigmatizing fascination with its social innovations (polygamy, communalism), its stark supernaturalism (angels, gold plates, and seer stones), and its most esoteric aspects (a New World Garden of Eden, sacred undergarments), as well as its long-standing outlier status among American Protestants, Givens reminds us that Mormonism remains the most enduring-and thriving-product of the nineteenth-century's religious upheavals and innovations."

Joseph L. Locke, Making the Bible Belt: Texas Prohibitionists and the Politicization of Southern Religion (Oxford University Press)
From the publisher: "...upends notions of a longstanding, stable marriage between political religion and the American South. H.L. Mencken coined the term 'the Bible Belt' in the 1920s to capture the peculiar alliance of religion and public life in the South, but the reality he described was only the closing chapter of a long historical process....Exploring the controversies surrounding the religious support of prohibition in Texas, Making the Bible Belt reconstructs the purposeful, decades-long campaign to politicize southern religion, hints at the historical origins of the religious right, and explores a compelling and transformative moment in American history."

Pamela Winfield and Steven Heine, ed., Zen and Material Culture (Oxford University Press)
From the publisher: "The stereotype of Zen Buddhism as a minimalistic or even immaterial meditative tradition persists in the Euro-American cultural imagination. This volume calls attention to the vast range of 'stuff' in Zen by highlighting the material abundance and iconic range of the Soto, Rinzai, and Obaku sects in Japan. Chapters on beads, bowls, buildings, staffs, statues, rags, robes, and even retail commodities in America all shed new light on overlooked items of lay and monastic practice in both historical and contemporary perspectives."

James B. Bell, Anglicans, Dissenters and Radical Change in Early New England, 1686-1786 (Palgrave Macmillan) 
From the publisher: "This book considers three defining movements driven from London and within the region that describe the experience of the Church of England in New England between 1686 and 1786. It explores the radical imperial political and religious change that occurred in Puritan New England following the late seventeenth-century introduction of a new charter for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Anglican Church in Boston and the public declaration of several Yale ‘apostates’ at the 1722 college commencement exercises. These events transformed the religious circumstances of New England and fuelled new attention and interest in London for the national church in early America."

Chad Alan Goldberg, Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought (University of Chicago Press)
Lila Corwin Berman: “Above all, a singularly lucid summation of the modern ‘Jewish question’ as a sociological question, Modernity and the Jews makes a compelling case for the value of historical sociology. Goldberg situates French, German, and American social thinkers in their historical contexts in order to show how and why they produced the Jew, as a category of analysis and a means of social criticism. By employing a comparative mode, he shows how social thought about the Jew reflected specific circumstances and, also, replicated habits of thought about political modes, economic systems, and cultural forms. A bold book, unafraid to step into the fray of debates about Orientalism, the role of the Muslim in today’s social thought, and the claims of anti-Zionism, Modernity and the Jews brings the history of western social thought directly into our own moment in time.”


AUGUST

Christina Zanfagna, Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels (University of California Press)
From the publisher: "In the 1990s, Los Angeles was home to numerous radical social and environmental eruptions. In the face of several major earthquakes and floods, riots and economic insecurity, police brutality and mass incarceration, some young black Angelenos turned to holy hip hop—a movement merging Christianity and hip hop culture—to “save” themselves and the city....Zanfagna’s fascinating ethnography provides a contemporary and unique view of black LA, offering a much-needed perspective on how music and religion intertwine in people's everyday experiences."

Bryce Traister, ed., American Literature and the New Puritan Studies (Cambridge University Press)
From the publisher: "This book contains thirteen original essays about Puritan culture in colonial New England. Prompted by the growing interest in secular studies, as well as postnational, transnational, and postcolonial critique in the humanities, American Literature and the New Puritan Studies seeks to represent and advance contemporary interest in a field long recognized, however problematically, as foundational to the study of American literature. It invites readers of American literature and culture to reconsider the role of seventeenth-century Puritanism in the creation of the United States of America and its consequent cultural and literary histories. It also records the significant transformation in the field of Puritan studies that has taken place in the last quarter century."

Brett Hendrickson, The Healing Power of the Santuario de Chimayo: America’s Miraculous Church (New York University Press)
Tisa Wenger: "In this tenderly and often profoundly written book, Brett Hendrickson unpacks the overlapping claims to religious ownership that locals, church leaders, pilgrims, tourists, and sometimes scholars make to the Santuario de Chimayó, a place layered with experiences of miraculous dirt and shaped by the legacies of competing empires. This is a story that needed to be told, and Hendrickson shows how it resonates far beyond the borders and borderlands of New Mexico."

Amanda Porterfield, Darren Grem, and John Corrigan, eds., The Business Turn in American Religious History (Oxford University Press)
From the publishers: "Business has received little attention in American religious history, although it has profound implications for understanding the sustained popularity and ongoing transformation of religion in the United States. This volume offers a wide ranging exploration of the business aspects of American religious organizations. The authors analyze the financing, production, marketing, and distribution of religious goods and services and the role of wealth and economic organization in sustaining and even shaping worship, charity, philanthropy, institutional growth, and missionary work. Treating religion and business holistically, their essays show that American religious life has always been informed by business practices."

Almeda Wright, The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans (Oxford University Press)
From the publisher: "How do young African Americans approach their faith in God when continued violence and police brutality batters the news each day? In The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans, Almeda M. Wright argues that African American youth separate their everyday lives and their spirituality into mutually exclusive categories. This results in a noticeable division between their experiences of systemic injustices and their religious beliefs and practices. Yet Wright suggests that youth can and do teach the church and society myriad lessons through their theological reflections and actions."

John Wigger, PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire (Oxford University Press)
From the publisher: "PTL is more than just the spectacular story of the rise and fall of the Bakkers, John Wigger traces their lives from humble beginnings to wealth, fame, and eventual disgrace. At its core, PTL is the story of a group of people committed to religious innovation, who pushed the boundaries of evangelical religion's engagement with American culture. Drawing on trial transcripts, videotapes, newspaper articles, and interviews with key insiders, dissidents, and lawyers, Wigger reveals the power of religion to redirect American culture. This is the story of a grand vision gone wrong, of the power of big religion in American life and its limits."

Michael J. Altman, Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American Representations of India, 1721-1893 (Oxford University Press)
Andrea R. Jain: "Michael Altman's Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu revolutionizes how we think about the history of Hinduism in American culture. Avoiding the usual anachronisms, essentialisms, and orientalisms, Altman analyzes an ever-shifting discourse fashioned from fragments and bearing many labels. He carefully documents the genealogies of those terms and shows to what ends they were put, from how they shaped American conceptions of religion itself to how Americans imagined their own religious identities."

Tricia Colleen Bruce, Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church (Oxford University Press)
From the publisher: "The Catholic Church stands at the forefront of an emergent majority-minority America. Parish and Place tells the story of how the largest religion in America is responding at the local level to unprecedented cultural, racial, linguistic, ideological, and political diversification among its membership."

Sally K. Gallagher, Getting to Church: Exploring Narratives of Gender and Joining (Oxford University Press)
Penny Edgell: "Sally Gallagher's thoughtful and well-researched analysis gives us new insight into how gender shapes the ways that people experience and enact religious commitment, and how they choose to join or to leave religious communities. This nuanced account takes into account a wide range of contemporary American religious communities and helps us to move beyond tired stereotypes about women's-and men's-religiosity."

Richard J. Janet, In Missouri’s Wilds: St. Mary’s of the Barrens and the American Catholic Church, 1818 to Present (Truman State University Press)
From the publisher: "In 1818, a small group of Catholic clerics established a religious community in southeastern Missouri and opened a school, grounded in its European Vincentian roots but influenced by the isolation of its rural location. St. Mary’s of the Barrens became the first American institution of higher learning west of the Mississippi River and only the fourth Catholic seminary in the United States....In this history of “the Barrens,” Rick Janet demonstrates how its story reflects the broader sweep of the American Catholic experience."

Lincoln A. Mullen, The Chance of Salvation: A History of Conversion in America (Harvard University Press) 
From the publisher: "The United States has a long history of religious pluralism, and yet Americans have often thought that people’s faith determines their eternal destinies. The result is that Americans switch religions more often than any other nation. The Chance of Salvation traces the history of the distinctively American idea that religion is a matter of individual choice. Lincoln Mullen shows how the willingness of Americans to change faiths, recorded in narratives that describe a wide variety of conversion experiences, created a shared assumption that religious identity is a decision."

Robert D. Benne, Keeping the Soul in Christian Higher Education: A History of Roanoke College (Eerdmans)
From the publisher: "Many colleges with historical church ties experience significant tension between the desire to compete in the secularized world of higher education and the desire to remain connected to their religious commitments and communities. In this history of one such school, Roanoke College, Robert Benne not only explores the school's 175-year tradition of educational excellence but also lays bare its complicated and ongoing relationship with its religious heritage."

Robert Wuthnow, American Misfits and the Making of Middle-Class Respectability (Princeton University Press)
Darren Dochuk: "This is an outstanding book—impressively researched, boldly argued with interdisciplinary breadth, and innovative in the way it depicts the middle-class American dream as perpetually fleeting and tenuous, marked off by day-to-day practices of the rank-and-file and prone to negotiation among those who seek to patrol the boundaries of belonging. It is also a riveting read, driven by rich description and detailed investigation of countless colorful characters who have tested those boundaries and found themselves held up as test cases of what America should and shouldn't look like, and who should and shouldn't be counted as respectable citizens."

Max Perry Mueller, Race and the Making of the Mormon People (University of North Carolina Press)
J. Spencer Fluhman: "Max Perry Mueller’s brilliant analysis substantively enriches a growing body of excellent work on Mormonism and race. His reading of the complicated texts and histories of the Latter-day Saints offers profound insight into both the tradition’s American sojourn and the nation’s wrenching engagement with race, writ large."

Continue Reading...