New Books in World Christianity

By: New Books Network
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  • Summary

  • Interviews with scholars of world Christianity
    New Books Network
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Art Literary History & Criticism Ministry & Evangelism Spirituality World
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Episodes
  • Paula Fredriksen, "Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years" (Princeton UP, 2024)

    Paula Fredriksen, "Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years" (Princeton UP, 2024)
    Dec 23 2024
    The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. For centuries, a practical religious pluralism prevailed. How, then, did one particular god come to dominate the politics and piety of the late Roman Empire? In Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years (Princeton University Press, 2024), Dr. Paula Fredriksen traces the evolution of early Christianity—or rather, of early Christianities—through five centuries of Empire, mapping its pathways from the hills of Judea to the halls of Rome and Constantinople. It is a story with a sprawling cast of characters: not only theologians, bishops, and emperors, but also gods and demons, angels and magicians, astrologers and ascetics, saints and heretics, aristocratic patrons and millenarian enthusiasts. All played their part in the development of what became and remains an energetically diverse biblical religion. The New Testament, as we know it, represents only a small selection of the many gospels, letters, acts of apostles, and revelations that circulated before the establishment of the imperial church. It tells how the gospel passed from Jesus, to the apostles, thence to Paul. But by using our peripheral vision, by looking to noncanonical and paracanonical texts, by availing ourselves of information derived from papyri, inscriptions, and archaeology, we can see a different, richer, much less linear story emerging. Dr. Fredriksen brings together these many sources to reconstruct the lively interactions of pagans, Jews, and Christians, tracing the conversions of Christianity from an energetic form of Jewish messianism to an arm of the late Roman state. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    55 mins
  • Justin Tse, "Sheets of Scattered Sand: Cantonese Protestants and the Secular Dream of the Pacific Rim" (U Notre Dame Press, 2024)

    Justin Tse, "Sheets of Scattered Sand: Cantonese Protestants and the Secular Dream of the Pacific Rim" (U Notre Dame Press, 2024)
    Dec 18 2024
    Justin K.H. Tse captures the voices of Cantonese Protestant Christians from the San Francisco, Vancouver, and Hong Kong metropolitan areas as they reflect on their efforts to adapt to secular communities while retaining their identity and beliefs. In the context of the transpacific region between Asia and the Americas, the “Pacific Rim” refers to a window of time in which predominant narratives emphasized skilled migration and the rise of multicultural societies—the era before the rise of Chinese nationalism in 2012 and the Hong Kong protests. Diasporic Cantonese Protestant Christians of this time were frequently portrayed as a homogenous people bringing their Chinese culture and Christian communities from Hong Kong to cities such as Vancouver and San Francisco—sometimes contesting liberal developments like same-sex marriage but also offering new democratic awareness. Sheets of Scattered Sand: Cantonese Protestants and the Secular Dream of the Pacific Rim (U Notre Dame Press, 2024) challenges that depiction of Cantonese Protestants with authentic voices from the community. Based on research done in the San Francisco Bay area, Vancouver, and Hong Kong, author Justin K.H. Tse finds that Cantonese Protestants consider themselves “sheets of scattered sand”—politically disparate and ideologically fragmented, but united in a sense of tension with the secular world. Tse’s work serves as an illuminating prequel to contemporary stories of the Hong Kong protests and a newly emergent Asian American politics, underscoring the importance of incorporating these voices in wider reflections on Christianity and secularity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 35 mins
  • Nathanael Homewood, "Seductive Spirits: Deliverance, Demons, and Sexual Worldmaking in Ghanaian Pentecostalism" (Stanford UP, 2024)

    Nathanael Homewood, "Seductive Spirits: Deliverance, Demons, and Sexual Worldmaking in Ghanaian Pentecostalism" (Stanford UP, 2024)
    Dec 15 2024
    In this fascinating interview, Nathanael J. Homewood discusses his new book,Seductive Spirits: Deliverance, Demons, and Sexual Worldmaking in Ghanaian Pentecostalism (Stanford University Press, 2024). Pentecostalism, Africa's fastest-growing form of Christianity, has long been preoccupied with the business of banishing demons from human bodies. Among Ghanaian Pentecostals, deliverance is primary among the embodied, experiential gifts—a loud, messy, and noisy experience that ends only when the possessed body falls to the ground silent and docile, the evil spirits rendered powerless in the face of the holy spirit-wielding-prophets. And nowhere is Ghanaian Pentecostal obsession with demons more pronounced than with sexual demons. Homewood examines the frequent and varied experiences of spirit possession and sex with demons that constitute a vital part of Pentecostal deliverance ministries, offering insight into these practices assembled from long-term ethnographic engagement with four churches in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Relying on the uniqueness of the Pentecostal sensorium, this book unravels how spirits and sexuality intimately combine to expand the definition of the body beyond its fleshy boundaries. Demons are a knowledge regime, one that shapes how Pentecostals think about, engage with, and construct the cosmos. Deliverance Pentecostals reiterate and tarry with the demonic, especially sexually, as a realm of invention whereby alternative ways of being, sensing, and having sex are dreamed, practiced, and performed. Ultimately, Homewood argues for a distinction between colonial demonization and decolonial demons, charting another path to understanding being, the body, and sexualities. Nathanael Homewood is the Associate Director of Religious Studies at the University of Minnesota. His areas of specialty are global Christianity, religion and sexuality, African religion, and Pentecostalism. He has earned a B.A. in Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, an M.Div in Global Christianity from Yale Divinity School, an M.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Rice University. Jessie Cohen holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University, and is an editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 5 mins

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