New Books in World Christianity
Episodes
Gina Zurlo, "Global Christianity: A Guide to the World's Largest Religion from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe" (Zondervan Academic, 2022)
14 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Christianity is now a majority-global South religion, with more believers living in Africa, Asia, and Latin America than in Europe and North America. ...
Vibha Joshi, "A Matter of Belief: Christian Conversion and Healing in North-East India" (Berghahn Books, 2012)
12 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
‘Nagaland for Christ’ and ‘Jesus Saves’ are familiar slogans prominently displayed on public transport and celebratory banners in Nagaland, no...
Jesse A. Zink, "Christianity and Catastrophe in South Sudan: Civil War, Migration, and the Rise of Dinka Anglicanism" (Baylor UP, 2018)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The most recent addition to Baylor University Press’s Studies in World Christianity is Christianity and Catastrophe in South Sudan: Civil War, Migra...
Andrey V. Ivanov, "A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia, 1700–1825" (U Wisconsin Press, 2020)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The ideas of the Protestant Reformation, followed by the European Enlightenment, had a profound and long-lasting impact on Russia’s church and socie...
Felicia Wu Song, "Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age" (InterVarsity Press, 2021)
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We're being formed by our devices. Unpacking the soft tyranny of the digital age, Felicia Wu Song combines insights from psychology, neuroscience, soc...
Jeroen Dewulf, "Afro-Atlantic Catholics: America's First Black Christians" (U Notre Dame Press, 2022)
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Black Christianity in America has long been studied as a blend of indigenous African and Protestant elements. Jeroen Dewulf redirects the conversation...
Jonathon L. Earle and J. J. Carney, "Contesting Catholics: Benedicto Kiwanuka and the Birth of Postcolonial Uganda" (Boydell & Brewer, 2021)
19 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Assassinated by Idi Amin and a democratic ally of J.F. Kennedy during the Cold War, Benedicto Kiwanuka was Uganda's most controversial and disruptive ...
Sarosh Koshy, "Beyond Missio Dei: Contesting Mission, Rethinking Witness" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021)
12 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Beyond Missio Dei: Contesting Mission, Rethinking Witness (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021), Sarosh Koshy strives to go beyond the mission model of Chri...
Jordan Denari Duffner, "Islamophobia: What Christians Should Know (and Do) about Anti-Muslim Discrimination" (Orbis, 2021)
11 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jordan Denari Duffner is an author and scholar of Muslim-Christian relations, interreligious dialogue, and Islamophobia. Jordan is currently pursuing ...
Philippe Denis, "The Genocide Against the Tutsi, and the Rwandan Churches: Between Grief and Denial" (James Currey, 2022)
17 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why did some sectors of the Rwandan churches adopt an ambiguous attitude towards the genocide against the Tutsi which claimed the lives of around 800,...
Helen Jin Kim, "Race for Revival: How Cold War South Korea Shaped the American Evangelical Empire" (Oxford UP, 2022)
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1973, Billy Graham, "America's Pastor," held his largest ever "crusade." But he was not, as one might expect, in the American heartland, but in Sou...
James Elisha Taneti, "Telugu Christians: A History" (Fortress Press, 2022)
20 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Telugu Christians: A History (Fortress Press, 2022) narrates the history of Telugu Christians, a faith community located in the states of Telangana, ...
João B. Chaves, "The Global Mission of the Jim Crow South: Southern Baptist Missionaries and the Shaping of Latin American Evangelicalism" (Mercer UP, 2022)
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
João B. Chaves analyzes the first hundred years of Southern Baptist missionary activity in Brazil to reveal how the racialized practices of Southern ...
Christopher Tounsel, "Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan" (Duke UP, 2021)
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On July 9, 2011, South Sudan celebrated its independence as the world's newest nation, an occasion that the country's Christian leaders claimed had be...
Deepra Dandekar, "Baba Padmanji: Vernacular Christianity in Colonial India" (Routledge, 2020)
24 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Baba Padmanji: Vernacular Christianity in Colonial India (Routledge, 2020)is a critical biography of Baba Padmanji (1831-1906), a firebrand native Ch...
Aminta Arrington, "Songs of the Lisu Hills: Practicing Christianity in Southwest China" (PSU Press, 2020)
28 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The story of how the Lisu of southwest China were evangelized one hundred years ago by the China Inland Mission is a familiar one in mission circles. ...
Manoela Carpenedo, "Becoming Jewish, Believing in Jesus: Judaizing Evangelicals in Brazil" (Oxford UP, 2021)
15 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
An unexpected fusion of two major western religious traditions, Judaism and Christianity, has been developing in many parts of the world. Contemporary...
Phillip A. Cantrell, "Revival and Reconciliation: The Anglican Church and the Politics of Rwanda" (U Wisconsin Press, 2022)
10 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, the media has depicted Rwanda as a model of unity, development, and recovery. Dr. Cantrell II argues that not all is as it seems in ...
Joseph W. Ho, "Developing Mission: Photography, Filmmaking, and American Missionaries in Modern China" (Cornell UP, 2022)
02 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Joseph W. Ho’s book Developing Mission: Photography, Filmmaking, and American Missionaries in Modern China (Cornell University Press, 2021) offers...
James Heisig, "Of Gods and Minds: In Search of a Theological Commons" (Chisokudō Publications, 2019)
27 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
One of the trailblazers in the field of Japanese philosophy, James W. Heisig, delivered his five lectures in 2019 at Boston College as the Duffy L...
Yonatan Gez et al., "Butinage: The Art of Religious Mobility" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
11 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Based on comparative ethnographic research in four countries and three continents, Butinage: The Art of Religious Mobility (U Toronto Press, 2021) e...
Benjamin A. Cowan, "Moral Majorities Across the Americas: Brazil, the United States, and the Creation of the Religious Right" (UNC Press, 2021)
15 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This new history of the Christian right does not stop at national or religious boundaries. In Moral Majorities Across the Americas, Brazil, the Unite...
Retief Muller, "The Scots Afrikaners: Identity Politics and Intertwined Religious Cultures in Southern and Central Africa" (Edinburgh UP, 2021)
10 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing primarily on Dutch and Afrikaans archival sources including the Dutch Reformed Church Archive and private collections, Retief Muller's The S...
Tim Hartman, "Kwame Bediako: African Theology for a World Christianity" (Langham Publishing, 2022)
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Kwame Bediako was one of the great African theologians of his generation. Challenging the assumption that Christianity is a Western religion, he prese...
Ross Kane, "Syncretism and Christian Tradition" (Oxford UP, 2020)
19 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Syncretism, even though, is an unavoidable phenomenon of religion, has a range of connotations. In Christian theology, the use of syncretism shifted f...
Clara A. B. Joseph, "Christianity in India: The Anti-Colonial Turn" (Routledge, 2020)
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
By studying the history and sources of the Thomas Christians of India, a community of pre-colonial Christian heritage, this book revisits the assumpti...
Alexander Chow and Emma Wild-Wood, "Ecumenism and Independency in World Christianity: Historical Studies in Honour of Brian Stanley" (Brill, 2020)
15 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
‘Ecumenism’ and ‘independency’ suggest two distinct impulses in the history of Christianity: the desire for unity, co-operation, connectivity,...
Maria Jose de Abreu, "The Charismatic Gymnasium: Breath, Media, and Religious Revivalism in Contemporary Brazil" (Duke UP, 2021)
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In The Charismatic Gymnasium: Breath, Media, and Religious Revivalism in Contemporary Brazil (Duke University Press, 2021), Maria José de Abreu e...
Dyron B. Daughrity, "Worldly Christian: The Life and Times of Stephen Neill" ( Lutterworth Press, 2022)
29 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bishop Stephen Neill was one of the most prolific, accomplished, and fascinating Christian leaders of the global church in the twentieth century. Priv...
Max Siollun, "What Britain Did to Nigeria: A Short History of Conquest and Rule" (Hurst, 2021)
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this ambitious book, Max Siollun provides an overview of Nigerian history from 1472 to the 1950s. As such, What Britain Did to Nigeria: A Short Hi...
David C. Kirkpatrick, "A Gospel for the Poor: Global Social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical Left" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
08 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1974, the International Congress on World Evangelization met in Lausanne, Switzerland. Gathering together nearly 2,500 Protestant evangelical leade...
Hillary Kaell, "Christian Globalism at Home: Child Sponsorship in the United States" (Princeton UP, 2020)
06 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Child sponsorship, originally a project of nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries, has become one of today’s most profitable private fund-raisin...
Nile Green, “Religious Entrepreneurs?” (Open Agenda, 2021)
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Religious Entrepreneurs? is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Nile Green who holds the Ibn Khaldn Endowed Chair in Wo...
Devaka Premawardhana, "Faith in Flux: Pentecostalism and Mobility in Rural Mozambique" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
30 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Anthropologist Devaka Premawardhana arrived in Africa to study the so-called explosion of Pentecostalism, the spread of which has indeed been massive....
A. S. Agadjanian and S. M. Kenworthy, "Understanding World Christianity: Russia" (Fortress Press, 2021)
25 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Christianity is a global religion. It's a fact that is too often missed or ignored in many books and conversations. In a world where Christianity is g...
Bonar L. Hernández Sandoval, "Guatemala's Catholic Revolution: A History of Religious and Social Reform, 1920-1968" (U Notre Dame Press, 2018)
25 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bonar L. Hernández Sandoval's Guatemala's Catholic Revolution: A History of Religious and Social Reform, 1920-1968 (U Notre Dame Press, 2018) is an...
Paul Michael Hedges, "Understanding Religion: Theories and Methods for Studying Religiously Diverse Societies" (U California Press, 2021)
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This innovative coursebook introduces students to interdisciplinary theoretical tools for understanding contemporary religiously diverse societies--bo...
Daryl R. Ireland, "John Song: Modern Chinese Christianity and the Making of a New Man" (Baylor UP, 2020)
02 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dubbed the "Billy Sunday of China" for the staggering number of people he led to Christ, John Song has captured the imagination of generations of read...
Deanna Ferree Womack, "Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria" (Edinburgh UP, 2020)
29 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Ottoman Syrians - residents of modern Syria and Lebanon - formed the first Arabic-speaking Evangelical Church in the region. Deanna Ferree Womack'...
Jason Bruner, "Imagining Persecution: Why American Christians Believe There Is a Global War Against Their Faith" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
28 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Many American Christians have come to understand their relationship to other Christian denominations and traditions through the lens of religious pers...
Martha Theodora Frederiks and Dorottya Nagy, "World Christianity: Methodological Considerations" (Brill, 2020)
12 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
World Christianity publications proliferate but the issue of methodology has received little attention. World Christianity: Methodological Considerat...
Joy Schulz, "Hawaiian by Birth: Missionary Children, Bicultural Identity, and U. S. Colonialism in the Pacific" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
11 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Twelve companies of American missionaries were sent to the Hawaiian Islands between 1819 and 1848 with the goal of spreading American Christianity and...
Cécile Fromont, "Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition" (Penn State, 2019)
09 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Edited by Dr. Cécile Fromont, Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition (Pe...
Geoff Lindsay and Wayne Hudson, "Australian Jurists and Christianity" (Federation Press, 2020)
01 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Wayne Hudson knows a lot - a whole lot - about religion and society. In Australian Jurists and Christianity (The Federation Press, 2021) ...
K. Kale Yu, "Understanding Korean Christianity: Grassroot Perspectives on Causes, Culture, and Responses" (Pickwick, 2019)
30 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The cultural landscape plays a momentous role in the transmission of Christianity. Consequently, the global expansion of the church has led to the inc...
Jeremy Best, "Heavenly Fatherland: German Missionary Culture and Globalization in the Age of Empire" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Motivated by a theology that declared missionary work was independent of secular colonial pursuits, Protestant missionaries from Germany operated in w...
Jean Debernardi, "Christian Circulations: Global Christianity and the Local Church in Penang and Singapore, 1819-2000" (NUS Press, 2020)
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jean DeBernardi, professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, has written an outstanding account of the evolution of evangelical protestant...
Khatchig Mouradian, "The Resistance Network: The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1918" (MSU Press, 2020)
09 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Resistance Network: The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1918 (Michigan State University Press, 2020) is the history...
Gwyn McClelland, "Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki: Prayers, Protests and Catholic Survivor Narratives" (Routledge, 2019)
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On 9th August 1945, the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Of the dead, approximately 8500 were Catholic Christians, representing over six...
C. M. Bauman and M. Voss Roberts, "The Routledge Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations" (Routledge, 2020)
03 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The tension between the two historical realities, Hinduism as an ancient Indian religion and Christianity as a religion associated with foreign power ...
Meredith Lake, "The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History" (NewSouth, 2020)
27 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The bible and Australian society! Meredith Lake's published a new 2020 edition of The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History (NewSouth Books, 2...
Chad M. Bauman, "Anti-Christian Violence in India" (Cornell UP, 2020)
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Does religion cause violent conflict, asks Chad M. Bauman, and if so, does it cause conflict any more than other social identities? Through an extende...
Katharine Massam, "A Bridge Between: Spanish Benedictine Missionary Women in Australia" (ANU Press, 2020)
11 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Katharine Massam's A Bridge Between: Spanish Benedictine Missionary Women in Australia (ANU Press, 2020) is the first book detailing the Benedictin...
Timothy Larsen, "The Oxford Handbook of Christmas" (Oxford UP, 2020)
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Edited by Dr. Timothy Larsen, The Oxford Handbook of Christmas (Oxford University Press, 2020) provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account ...
Lamont Lindstrom, "Tanna Times: Islanders in the World" (U Hawaii Press, 2021)
24 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For four decades, Lamont "Monty" Lindstrom has conducted research on the island of Tanna in the Pacific nation of Vanuatu. Considered by outsiders to ...
Walker Robins, "Between Dixie and Zion: Southern Baptists and Palestine before Israel" (U Alabama Press, 2020)
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Between Dixie and Zion: Southern Baptists and Palestine before Israel (University of Alabama Press, 2020), Walker Robins explores how Southern Bapt...
Takeshi Morisato, "Faith and Reason in Continental and Japanese Philosophy" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
30 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Faith and Reason in Continental and Japanese Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2019) by Takeshi Morisato is a book that brings together the work of two signifi...
Ananya Chakravarti, "The Empire of Apostles" (Oxford UP, 2018)
07 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ananya Chakravarti’s The Empire of Apostles: Religion, Accommodatio and The Imagination of Empire in Modern Brazil and India (Oxford University Pres...
David Tavárez, "Words and Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Colonial Latin America" (U Colorado Press, 2017)
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Professor David Tavárez’s edited volume, Words & Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Colonial Latin America (Boulder: University of ...
Matt Tomlinson, "God is Samoan: Dialogues Between Culture and Theology in the Pacific" (U Hawai‘i Press, 2020)
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Christian theologians in the Pacific Islands see culture as the grounds on which one understands God. In God is Samoan: Dialogues Between Culture and...
Elisheva A. Perelman, "American Evangelists and Tuberculosis in Modern Japan" (Hong Kong UP, 2020)
12 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Elisheva A. Perelman's new book American Evangelists and Tuberculosis in Modern Japan (Hong Kong University Press, 2020) examines the consequences of...
G. Clinton Godart, "Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine: Evolutionary Theory and Religion in Modern Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2017)
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine. Evolutionary Theory and Religion in Modern Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), G. Clinton Godart (Associate P...
Christopher J. Shepherd, "Haunted Houses and Ghostly Encounters: Ethnography and Animism in East Timor, 1860-1975" (NIAS Press, 2019)
18 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Anyone who tries to understand the history, religion, and especially the “culture” of Southeast Asia, will soon encounter the phenomenon of animis...
Lian Xi, "Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao's China" (Basic Books, 2018)
21 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1960, a poet and journalist named Lin Zhao was arrested by the Communist Party of China and sent to prison for re-education. Years before, she had ...
Matthew A. Sutton, "Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War" (Basic Books, 2019)
17 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What makes a good missionary makes a good spy. Or so thought "Wild" Bill Donovan when he secretly recruited a team of religious activists for the Offi...
Charlie Laderman, "Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order" (Oxford UP, 2019)
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2019), C...
Emrah Şahin, "Faithful Encounters: Authorities and American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire" (McGill-Queens UP, 2018)
25 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The past decade has seen a tremendous production of scholarship on American missionary endeavors in the Middle East. In Faithful Encounters: Authoriti...
Cindy Yik-Yi Chu, "The Chinese Sisters of the Precious Blood and the Evolution of the Catholic Church" (Palgrave, 2016)
03 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The history of Christianity in China has been dominated by accounts of men and of male institutions. In this important new work, Cindy Yik-Yi Chu, who...
Ian Johnson, "The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao" (Pantheon, 2017)
13 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ian Johnson’s new book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (Pantheon, 2017), was called "a masterpiece of observation and empathy...
Pamela E. Klassen, "The Story of Radio Mind: A Missionary's Journey on Indigenous Land" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
24 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At the dawn of the radio age in the 1920s, Frederick Du Vernet—Anglican archbishop and self-declared scientist—announced a psychic channel by whic...
Melani McAlister, “The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals” (Oxford UP, 2018)
24 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Melani McAlister’s The Kingdom of God Has No Borders (Oxford University Press, 2018) is a global history of evangelicals since 1945 and focuses on ...
Heather Curtis, “Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid” (Harvard UP, 2018)
24 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The study of Christianity, international relations, and the United States is going through something of a boom period at the moment. Scholars are work...
David A. Hollinger, “Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World and Changed America” (Princeton UP, 2017).
06 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
David A. Hollinger‘s Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World and Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2017) offers a ...
Tam T. T. Ngo, “The New Way: Protestantism and the Hmong in Vietnam” (U. Washington Press, 2016)
09 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Think of Christianity in Southeast Asia today and what might come to mind is the predominantly Catholic Philippines, or the work of the Baptist church...
Marie Alohalani Brown, “Facing the Spears of Change: The Life and Legacy of John Papa Ii” (U. Hawaii Press, 2016)
27 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It’s not often that a single person’s life can reveal the dramatic social and political shifts of a community. From his youth, John Papa I’i, an...
Albert Wu, “From Christ to Confucius: German Missionaries, Chinese Christians, and the Globalization of Christianity, 1860-1950” (Yale UP, 2016)
19 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Where Europeans have gone, so, too, have their ideas about religion. We know that this was no one-way street, that Christian missionaries have both ch...
Rupa Viswanath, “The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India” (Columbia UP, 2014)
02 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The so called “Pariah Problem” emerged in public consciousness in the 1890s in India as state officials, missionaries and “upper”caste landlor...
Charles Keith, “Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation” (U of California Press, 2012)
06 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The relationship between religion, imperialism, and national identity can be quite complex. At the same time, nationalist readings of history, particu...
Christine Hong, “Identity, Youth, and Gender in the Korean American Church” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
12 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Identity, Youth, and Gender in the Korean American Church (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Dr. Christine Hong explores the lives of female...
Peter van der Veer, “The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India” Princeton University Press, 2013
07 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What are the differences between religion, magic, and spirituality? Over time, these categories have been articulated in a variety of ways across diff...
Claire McLisky, et al., “Emotions and Christian Missions: Historical Perspectives” (Palgrave McMillan, 2015)
28 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Published by Palgrave in 2015, Emotions and Christian Missions: Historical Perspectives brings together scholars from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, ...
Kirsteen Kim and Sebastian C. H. Kim, “A History of Korean Christianity” (Cambridge UP, 2014)
26 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Korea presents a fascinating chapter in the history of Christianity. For instance, the first continuous Christian community in the peninsula was found...
Simon C. Kim, “Memory and Honor” (Liturgical Press, 2013)
05 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The intersection between ethnic and religious identities can be both complex and rich, particularly when dealing with a community that still has deep ...
Albert L. Park, “Building a Heaven on Earth: Religion, Activism, and Protest in Japanese Occupied Korea” (U of Hawaii Press, )
24 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Christians, like other religious people, have to manage the relationship between their belief in supernatural forces and an afterlife on one side, and...
Emily Anderson, “Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan: Empire for God” (Bloomsbury, 2014)
27 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
When one thinks of the connection of religion and imperialism in Japan, one automatically thinks first of Shintoism and second of Buddhism. Christiani...
Mark Dennis and Darren Middleton, eds., “Approaching Silence: New Perspectives on Shusaku Endo’s Classic Novel” (Bloomsbury, 2015)
15 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be a martyr? What does it mean to be an apostate? How should we understand people who choose one or the other? These are the ques...
Erskine Clarke, “By the Rivers of Water: A Nineteenth Century Atlantic Odyssey” (Basic Books, 2013)
09 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Jane Bayard Wilson and John Leighton Wilson were unlikely African missionaries, coming as they did from privileged slaveholding families in Georgia an...
Gene Luen Yang, “Boxers & Saints” (First Second, 2013)
08 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
I love picking up a historical monograph in which the footnotes count for a quarter or more of the total pages. Most students don’t share this stran...
Ernest P. Young, “Ecclesiastical Colony: China’s Catholic Church and the French Religious Protectorate” (Oxford UP, 2013)
08 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In theory, Christian missionaries plan only on working in a country until an indigenous leadership can take over management of the church. Theory is o...
Albert Park and David Yoo, eds., “Encountering Modernity: Christianity in East Asia and Asian America” (University of Hawaii Press, 2014)
10 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Modernity and religion have often been seen as fundamentally at odds. However, the articles in Encountering Modernity: Christianity in East Asia and ...
Nicholas Harkness, “Songs of Seoul” (University of California Press, 2013)
06 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In Songs of Seoul: An Ethnography of Voice and Voicing in Christian South Korea (University of California Press, 2013), Nicholas Harkness explores t...
Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, “The Religious Question in Modern China” University of Chicago Press, 2011
28 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Social phenomena that some people like to call ‘religion’ has long shaped Chinese culture. In the twentieth century, defining the boundaries of wh...
Robert Yelle, “The Language of Disenchantment: Protestant Literalism and Colonial Discourse in British India” (Oxford UP, 2012)
19 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
What is the nature of secularization? How distant are we from the magical world of the past? Perhaps, we are not as far as many people think. In the f...
Henrietta Harrison, “The Missionary’s Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village” (University of California Press, 2013)
10 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Henrietta Harrison‘s new book is the work of a gifted storyteller. In its pages, the reader will find Boxers getting drunk on communion wine, wolf a...
Elizabeth Foster, “Faith in Empire: Religion, Politics, and Colonial Rule in French Senegal, 1880-1940” (Stanford University Press, 2013)
26 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
How did French colonial administrators, missionaries, and different groups of Africans interact with one another in colonial Senegal? In her new book,...
Thomas David DuBois, “Religion and the Making of Modern East Asia” (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
13 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Do historians of East Asia sufficiently account for the role of religious communities in the construction of history? Of course, there are histories o...
Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb, “Religion and AIDS in Africa” (Oxford UP, 2012)
16 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
The liberal media in the Western World takes a firm line on how two of the big issues facing Africa intersect – bluntly speaking Africa’s high lev...
Jason Josephson, “The Invention of Religion in Japan” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
13 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
In 1853, the Japanese were required to consider what the word religion meant when western powers compelled the Tokugawa government to ensure freedom o...
Susan Harris, “God’s Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898-1902” (Oxford UP, 2011)
22 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Twain called it “pious hypocrisies.” President McKinley called it “civilizing and Christianizing.” Both were referring to the U.S. annexa...
Parna Sengupta, “Pedagogy for Religion: Missionary Education and the Fashioning of Hindus and Muslims in Bengal” (University of California Press, 2011)
24 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
What is the relationship between religion, secularization, and education? Parna Sengupta, Associate Director of Introductory Studies at Stanford Unive...