2024-2025 Catalog

Greetings from Baylor University Press!

We are thrilled to introduce to you our new releases for the 2024-2025 publishing year. Highlights include new books by renowned theologians Fleming Rutledge and Christopher R. Seitz. In his memoir, Over from Union Road, Gary Dorrien takes readers on a journey through the social, cultural, political, and intellectual upheavals shaping his distinguished theological career. Scholar John McCabe offers a detailed and intimate account of Bonhoeffer’s final week, refining our understanding of the events leading up to his execution at Flossenbürg. In Learning to Live,

Rachelle R. Green shows how programs of theological education can be a source of life-giving hope for the incarcerated. Jerusha M. Neal points to homiletical practices in the South Pacific to locate preaching as a nexus of prophetic witness and divine encounter in our ongoing climate crisis. We introduce two new anthologies—by U.A. Fanthorpe and Anthony Thwaite—to our growing library of poetry books. And we announce a third edition of our celebrated reader in the history of Christian thought, Exploring Christian Heritage.

As the academic press of Baylor University, an R1 institution known for its research activities and initiatives across schools and departments, Baylor University Press is committed to the public dissemination of advanced scholarship. Our team of publishing experts serves a diverse and international community of scholars in the vanguard of research in religious studies, scriptural studies, theology, philosophy, and history, as well as other cognate disciplines. With a peer-review process aligned with industry standards, a well-earned reputation for producing beautiful print books, and a commitment to innovation in marketing and publicity, our entire publishing enterprise is designed to build bridges between authors and readers.

Baylor University Press is a mission driven, not-for-profit organization. Our activities and operations are made possible by the sales of our books, the generous support of Baylor University, and gifts from donors like you.

By scanning the QR code below, you can partner with us in our mission by donating to the Press. All gifts go to the Baylor University Press Excellence Fund and are used to support the acquisition, publication, and promotion of cutting-edge works of scholarship like those you will find in this catalog. Your generosity also enables us to provide opportunities to students and young professionals pursuing careers in publishing.

With appreciation,

R. David Nelson, PhD

Director,

Baylor University Press

By the Word Worked

Encountering the Power of Biblical Preaching

GEORGE W. TRUETT PARCHMAN LECTURE SERIES

Fleming Rutledge

edited by Kimlyn J. Bender

In By the Word Worked, Fleming Rutledge exhibits a lifetime of wisdom gained from reflection upon the power of the Word of God to address, convict, comfort, and exhort the church. Rutledge contends that the Word of God is the very lifeblood of the church, with preaching, based upon Holy Scripture, calling the church into existence, determining its identity, providing its calling and commission, and enabling its faith in the ultimate triumph of its Lord. Despite Satan’s interference, the revelation of God in his Word continues to show itself triumphant, relevant, transformative, and powerful in the modern era. Rutledge asserts that the continued proclamation of the Word of God is for the church life itself, never to be neglected even in the face of intense and targeted adversity.

In this initial volume of the Parchman Lectures series, Rutledge provides an incisive presentation of the power of the Word of God in its verbal form of Christian proclamation. Her call is for the reader to rediscover preaching that is not centered on human potential and the authenticity of the self, but on a divine Word of God that comes to us from outside ourselves, the Word of the Gospel, a Gospel that is both powerful in its effect and urgent in its appeal. These lectures challenge prevailing practices and paradigms in preaching but also present a faithful vision of Christian proclamation that is effective “by means of the Word worked.”

“An action of Christ the Word, an event of human communication, an urgent summons to be the Church at the turning of the ages: appearances often notwithstanding, the sermon is all this, whether it be in a mainline or an evangelical congregation. Informed by Barth, wrestling with postmodern voices, Fleming Rutledge is, more importantly, turned unflinchingly and comprehensively toward the Scriptures, and Christ dramatically revealed there. This book matters to our confused ecclesial place and time more than we realize, for with its challenge comes the encouragement of grace.”

—THE RT. REV. DR. GEORGE SUMNER, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas

“In By the Word Worked, Fleming Rutledge sums up a lifetime of theological reflection on the practice of preaching with her characteristic eloquence and wit. Rutledge deftly situates the discussion in relation to deeply ingrained tendencies that have shaped preaching in many contemporary North American churches, from the way religion is taught to the legacy of modernism and postmodernism. These lectures are a gift to preachers who have lost their nerve, calling them to trust in the God who promises to speak a powerful Word through human witnesses today.”

—ANGELA DIENHART HANCOCK, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of Faculty, and Howard C. Scharfe Associate Professor of Homiletics, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

FLEMING RUTLEDGE has taught preaching at Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto. In 2017, her book The Crucifixion was named Christianity Today’s Book of the Year.

KIMLYN J. BENDER is Professor of Christian Theology and Holder of the Foy Valentine Chair in Christian Theology and Ethics, Truett Seminary, Baylor University.

ISBN 978-1-4813-2175-4

$19.99 | Hardback

94 pages

5 x 8

November 1, 2024

CONTENTS

Introduction by Kimlyn J. Bender

1 By the Word Worked

2 The Life of the Sermon

3 Endings: Apocalyptic Theology for Preachers

About the Author

The Heights of the Hills Are His Also Christopher R. Seitz

In the majority of canonical lists, the Psalms and the book of Job sit next to one another, perhaps due to their size. They share a theme, lament, or complaint, though in the case of Job the intensity of Job’s distress and the singularity of its causation—something we know but he does not—sets that book apart. Job’s laments are relentless and are made more severe in the face of the assault of those who would purport to comfort him. The Psalms and Job also both bear witness to the theme of the majesty of God in creation Psalms of creation appear across the five books of the Psalter and have been carefully distributed. The present study will examine the character of this psalm form and how the Psalter takes us on a journey in which God’s majestic control of creation forms a major compass heading.

ISBN 978-1-4813-2245-4

$22.99 | Hardback

116 pages

5 x 8

6 color plates

November 1, 2024

“This book is modest in size but profoundly penetrating in scope. . . . Bringing the Psalms and Job together in an original but completely satisfying fashion, Seitz reflects on the nature of God’s identity as the Maker of heaven and earth, including of our own astonished selves.”

—EPHRAIM RADNER, Professor of Historical Theology (Emeritus), Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto

The notion of a collection of “Wisdom Literature” created a different context for reading Job, one in which it occupied a medial position between Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and participated in a movement from traditional empirical wisdom to extreme skepticism about its utility and indeed about God himself. On this view, creation is out of sorts, and testifies to pointlessness and impenetrability. This book will plot a different course, seeking to hear afresh the response of God to Job by means of his created order. By situating the divine speeches in the context of what is said about God in creation in the Psalms, a new range of distinctive notes arises, making sense of Job’s own impassioned confession that his eye has seen God, with this in turn leading to his magnificent restoration.

“This book is one of the most theologically exciting works I have read in years. At a time when humanity is reawakening to the urgent task of renewing our relationship to creation, this book contributes an important theological perspective. It invites the reader to hear and experience God by means of the combined voices of the Psalter and the book of Job. Beautifully written, it is bound to become a classic.”

—CLAIRE

MATHEWS McGINNIS, Professor of Theology, Loyola University Maryland

“A fresh reading of the Psalms and Job as inhabiting the same theological landscape. Seitz shows how these complementary witnesses attest to the majesty of God in creation, the covenant of providence and blessing. He interprets the Psalter and Job as together testifying to the light of Christ in creation in their shared yet distinct voice of obedience in suffering and steadfastness in praise.”

—KATHRYN GREENE-McCREIGHT, PhD, author of Galatians: A Theological Commentary

“In this lively and disarmingly personal book, Seitz meditates on the majesty of God in creation as disclosed in scripture, especially the Psalter and the book of Job, and as recalled in poignant moments from his own life.”

—DANIEL R. DRIVER, Professor of Old Testament, Atlantic School of Theology, Halifax

CHRISTOPHER R. SEITZ is an American Old Testament scholar and theologian known for his work in biblical interpretation and theological hermeneutics. He is the senior research professor of biblical interpretation at Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto. He is also an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church, and served as canon theologian in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas (2008-2015). Seitz is the author of numerous books, including Isaiah 1-39 in the Interpretation series (WJK, 1993), The Elder Testament (Baylor University Press, 2018), and Convergences (Baylor University Press, 2020).

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

I The Psalms of Creation

The Psalms and the Majesty of God the Creator

Psalm 29

Psalms 46 and 69

Psalms 93 and 96

The Tides of the Psalter

Book Four of the Psalter

The Majesty of God in Creation

Ascent and Alleluia

II The Witness of Job

The Majesty of the Creator and His World

The Freedom of Job and of God

God Answers Job: Tone and Form

The Majesty of Creation in Job and in the Psalms

The Divine Response

Zoological Wonder

Job, Behemoth, and Leviathan: God’s Final Address Response and Restoration

Job Alive Again: The Book’s Finale

Conclusion

GARY DORRIEN is Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union

Theological

Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University.

CONTENTS

1 Over from Union Road

2 Alma College

3 Harvard–Union–Princeton–Brenda

4 Albany Activism

5 Kalamazoo Heartbreak

6 Over from Kalamazoo

7 Into the Obama Era

8 Twilight Surge

“Dorrien artfully weaves his life story together with an intellectual history of progressive political movements (secular and religious) and their interface with socially engaged theologies. He takes us on a dazzling tour! One encounters Dorrien’s intellectual and political trajectory unfolding from his earliest years and an honest account of his life’s pain, struggle, and joys. Like his previous works, this fascinating memoir manifests Dorrien’s soaring intellect and comprehensive grasp of modern theo-political history, and his fierce commitment to scholarship that advances progressive political movements aligned with democratic socialism.”

—CYNTHIA MOE-LOBEDA,

Professor

of Theological and Social Ethics, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and Graduate Theological Union Core Doctoral Faculty

Over from Union Road

My Christian-Left-Intellectual Life

Gary Dorrien

Gary Dorrien, the renowned social ethicist, theologian, and intellectual historian whose many books are routinely described as magisterial and definitive, in this book turns to interpret his own life as a participant in the religious, intellectual, and social justice currents of his generation. Dorrien tells his personal story of growing up in a working-class family in mid-Michigan, fixing on the crucifix in his Roman Catholic parish, being an inattentive student and a voracious reader, getting through high school mostly because he was a high-profile athlete, and being riveted by the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King Jr. At Alma College he began to develop his signature blend of post-Kantian philosophy and progressive Christian theology, mostly in autodidactic fashion, with no intention of becoming an academic.

His graduate education was searingly interrupted by the death of his younger brother. Dorrien emerged from seminary as a social justice organizer and independent scholar. As he later explained to an interviewer, “I am a jock who began as a solidarity activist, became an Episcopal cleric at thirty, became an academic at thirty-five, and never quite settled on a field, so now I explore the intersections of too many fields.” Over from Union Road is a rich memoir of this unusual journey and of Dorrien’s later career. For eighteen years he taught at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, suffering the tragic loss of his beloved spouse Brenda Biggs. There he wrote the books that established his early prominence in social ethics and threw himself headlong against the invasion of Iraq.

Dorrien tells his story with the same stylish prose and attention to personalities that mark his many acclaimed works in social ethics, theology, and intellectual history. Over from Union Road is a luminous interpretation of our time through the life experience of an eminent scholar-activist.

“Gary Dorrien is likely the master church historian of his generation. His large corpus of books attests to his capacity for prolific, incisive, generative thinking. Now he has written a new history book, this one a thoughtful account of his life, vocation, and moral passion. It is a probing commentary on the ongoing battles for social justice in our society, battles that Dorrien joined with relentless passion, courage, and wisdom.”

WALTER

BRUEGGEMANN, Columbia Theological Seminary

ISBN 978-1-4813-2241-6

$49.99 | Hardback

326 pages

6 x 9

22 b&w photos November 1, 2024

“Gary Dorrien is the greatest Christian ethicist since the legendary Reinhold Niebuhr. Yet his working class origins, deep philosophical probing, and especially his genuine roots in the Black prophetic tradition take him beyond Niebuhr in serious and substantive ways. This precious memoir lays bare his powerful and painful wrestling with forms of death, dogma, and domination. What a great intellectual and spiritual gift his life and book are to us in these grim times!”

—CORNEL WEST, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy and

Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary

Kingdoms of This World

How Empires Have Made and Remade Religions

Philip Jenkins

Throughout history, the world’s great religions have been profoundly shaped by their encounters with successive empires. Secular empires have provided the means by which religions achieve their global scale, and any worthwhile historical account of those religions must reckon with that imperial dimension. In some cases, empires have favored and supported particular faiths, while in other instances they have suppressed traditions they feared or distrusted. Empires build cities and communication systems, they mix population groups from previously unconnected parts of the world, and crucially, they spread common languages. Taken together, such actions allow faiths to develop and spread, and eventually to achieve worldwide diffusion.

PHILIP JENKINS is Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University.

CONTENTS

Introduction

I Empires and the Making of World Faiths

1 What Is an Empire?

2 The Kingdoms of God

3 Making Christianity

4 The Light of Asia

5 Persuading to Faith

II Worldwide Empires and Unintended Consequences

6 Empires and Christian Mission

ISBN 978-1-4813-1993-5

$42.99 | Hardback

350 pages

6 x 9

July 15, 2024

“Drawing on deep wells of learning, Philip Jenkins addresses a notable gap in the literature of the history of religions: a synoptic overview of the interrelations between religion and empire. Jenkins illuminates the changing fortunes of various religions by showing how they were shaped by their imperial matrices. In a book of great geographical and chronological span Jenkins draws telling comparisons and contrasts between the religions of the East and West. Kingdoms of this World: How Empires Have Made and Remade Religions provides a new vantage point for understanding religions as a global phenomenon.”

—JOHN GASCOIGNE, Professor Emeritus, University of New South Wales

Kingdoms of This World is the first full-length study of the imperial contexts of the world’s religions. Philip Jenkins offers extensive coverage of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism and other faiths, and ranges widely in tracing the imperial histories of many different parts of the world. This study also considers the religious consequences of the dissolution of empires in modern times. Drawing on the very extensive contemporary scholarship about empires, the book is an innovative and thoroughly researched survey of a critical topic in the history of religion.

In the modern era, we see that the main centers of the different faiths closely imitate the imperial maps of centuries past. Moreover, those religions inherit much from older empires in terms of their institutions, their art, and even their theologies. At so many points, we can see the ghosts of bygone empires in our own religious context. Kingdoms of This World gives voice to the interaction between religion and empire, providing a nuanced understanding of the past as well as its continual influence upon the present.

7 Worlds in Motion

8 Faith against Empire

9 How Empires Remake Religions

10 The Ends of Empire

“When in a previous generation the British historian Arnold Toynbee wrote A Study of History to review the rise and fall of empires, he became increasingly convinced that religion formed a key to understanding the process. Now he has a successor, Philip Jenkins, who in this book analyzes the ways in which world faiths have related to successive empires. Jenkins, however, is much more convincing than his predecessor because he builds on the extensive work of many recent scholars. The result is a magisterial overview of the interactions of empire and religion in recorded history.”

DAVID BEBBINGTON, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Stirling

Conclusion “With trademark magisterial mastery of world history, Philip Jenkins offers a sweeping view of the mutual impact between empire-building and the making of religions. While much has been written on the collusion between Christianity and empires, Kingdoms of This World expands scholarship by examining other religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, and shows not only how empires have made and remade religions but also how religions resisted empires. A significant addition to empire literature.”

PETER C. PHAN

, The Ignacio Ellacuria, SJ

Chair

of Catholic Social Thought, Georgetown University

“An ideal model of scholarship in the global history of religions.”

—THOMAS S. KIDD, Research Professor of Church History, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Kingdoms of This World ranges dazzlingly across the centuries, the continents, and the major religions.”

—TIMOTHY LARSEN, author of The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith

“This work demands the attention of scholars of both religion and imperialism, and of all those who wish to understand the religious and ideological contours of the modern world.”

—BRIAN STANLEY, Professor Emeritus of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh

“Kingdoms of This World is a wide-ranging but always lucid examination of a reality as vast as it is important.”

—MARK NOLL, author of America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911

Luther under Scrutiny

Knowledge, Will, and Metaphysics

Olli-Pekka Vainio

The reformer Martin Luther is one of the most influential and controversial theologians in the history of the church. While his ideas are rooted in the currents of medieval theology, he frequently seems to offer radical solutions to classical theological problems. Luther’s place in the history of the church is convoluted, yet the themes and issues addressed in his writings remain relevant for the church today, as evidenced by his continued influence on Protestant dialogue. This enduring relevance encourages and even demands fresh, critical interpretation of Luther with the benefit of modern perspectives.

OLLI-PEKKA VAINIO is Professor of Dogmatics at the University of Helsinki.

ISBN 978-1-4813-1911-9

$47.99 | Paperback

220 pages

6 x 9

November 1, 2024

Rather than offering an apology of Luther, Luther under Scrutiny advances such a fresh interpretation, a critical account of many of Luther’s central ideas that set the Reformation into motion. These include, among other things, his views on the possibility of knowledge and the fallenness of reason, his contentious account of bound choice, and his appropriation of the patristic doctrine of theosis. Olli-Pekka Vainio, a member of the Finnish School of Luther research, asks whether Luther’s radical views end up undermining his entire theological vision.

In order to save theology, Luther seems to be on the path of destroying the very foundations of theology as a public endeavor. Nonetheless, a charitable engagement with his ideas, many of which were ingenious and are still valuable, should not reject Luther altogether. Walking the line between wholesale rejection and blind acceptance, Luther under Scrutiny invites the reader to learn from both the reformer’s achievements and mistakes by engaging his thinking through critical lenses.

10 Relational Ontology

Epilogue: Lutheran Theology and Postmodernism

“Finnish scholars made major contributions to Luther research in recent decades. This book reads like a sum of the school’s results. It sets Martin Luther in the field of Late medieval philosophy and theology. After intriguing chapters on his theory of knowledge, we will reach the peak of the journey when the book elaborates on deification. Vainio excels in close reading as well as in systematic strength.”

—VOLKER

LEPPIN, Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology, Yale Divinity School

“Readers of this searching and learned book will be surprised by the Luther they see in its pages. He is one who has gotten both too much and too little credit in the history of theology. He is one who is open to projects of metaphysics, after all. He sounds sometimes like an Eastern Orthodox divine and at other times like a very German medieval fellow. It’s possible the many pictures of Luther add up to facets of a well-cut diamond, but also merely the random tiles of a shifting kaleidoscope. A welcome contribution to contested issues in Luther Studies.”

—DEREK NELSON, Professor of Religion and Stephen S. Bowen Professor of Liberal Arts, Wabash College

EUNTAEK DAVID SHIN is Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Baylor University.

CONTENTS

1 Divine Economy and Human Finitude

2 Our Created Home

3 Eat, Drink, Enjoy

4 Healing Memories

5 The Beatific Vision

“Navigating a wide range of literature, Euntaek David Shin offers a fresh take on how to think theologically about human finitude and what faithfulness might look like for us amid such complex and competing realities as distraction, inequality, sabbath, and memory. Readers will find much here that is both creative and original.”

KELLY M. KAPIC, author of You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“Augustine famously taught that we find rest in God alone. In this impressively systematic and well-researched book, firmly grounded in the original languages and yet conversant with a large cast of interlocutors past and present, Shin creatively unfurls Augustine’s compact insight on an ample canvas: more than a weekly obligation, rest is the joyful shape of the whole Christian life in all of its dimensions—space, time, relationships, and daily rhythms. This is a theology of rest for today, and for every day.”

—HAN-LUEN KANTZER KOMLINE, Marvin and Jerene DeWitt Professor of Theology and Church History, Western Theological Seminary

Rest

A Theological Account Euntaek David Shin

Why are we so restless? This perennial question ultimately arises as we navigate life as finite creatures. All of us have limits and bounds, and the universal responsibility of navigating them can produce restlessness. But what if finitude is a gift? What if God intended for his creation to be limited in order that they might live with him and within the created world more fully?

In Rest, Euntaek David Shin addresses the crisis and condition of restlessness by constructively engaging historical and contemporary philosophical and theological voices and ultimately some surprising places in Christian Scripture. Viewing finitude as a gift, Shin relates rest to key facets of human life—place, action, time, and ultimately the triune God—and examines how the divine economy sets limits in our relation to these facets of life. On this account, a restful life flows from living in sync with the divine economy through faith, love, and hope.

Shin’s exposition holds together manifold tensions—such as how our present rest cannot be completely free from restlessness; how the personal experience of rest always incorporates some communal fulfillment; how rest is not static but dynamically involves deliberation, action, and reflection; and how we find restfulness in both created goods and the ultimate Good. Connecting theoretical reflection with concrete illustrations, Rest contributes to an understanding of who we are and how we should live—inviting us to reflect on and recalibrate our approach to everyday living.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2179-2

$59.99 | Hardback

224 pages 5.5 x 8.5

October 1, 2024

“Shin’s meditation on the divine vocation and gift of ‘rest’ in our lives, bound up with our very created being, stands as an inspiring witness to the hope for a fulfilled existence that our culture and habits have squeezed out of so many hearts. Shin engages with sensitive depth fundamental aspects of human life like created limits, physical and relational space, daily activities, the givenness of our days and gifts, and the hope of God’s life. In doing so, he leads the reader through a rich field of scriptural, theological, and philosophical wisdom with the aim of providing a practical, but intellectually compelling, vision of the contented life that relies on God. Not so much a tonic as an elixir of grace in our brittle age, this book deserves a wide reading and even more so, a robust following.”

—EPHRAIM RADNER, Professor of Historical Theology Emeritus, Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto

“In a time when ‘being busy’ can be a badge of honor, we need to reclaim the goodness of rest. Euntaek David Shin achieves the beginnings of this reclamation—not by extolling the values of rest subjectively (as many as those are) but by grounding this rest in the creature’s dependence on the Triune God. Theologically rich and beautifully written, this book is like a slow breath out, reminding us of our gift of dependence.”

CHRISTA L. McKIRLAND, Lecturer in Systematic Theology, Carey Baptist College

Dietrich Bonhoeffer— The Last Eight Days

The Untold Story of the Journey to Flossenbürg

John McCabe

ISBN 978-1-4813-2167-9

$44.99 | Hardback

502 pages

6 x 9

7 b&w illus., 11 maps, 17 b&w photos

November 1, 2024

In the summer of 1945, Eberhard Bethge began the search for traces of his colleague and friend Dietrich Bonhoeffer. From as early as September 1945, Hermann Pünder provided Bethge a first-hand account of Bonhoeffer’s final days. Five years on, another resource arrived in the guise of the British agent Captain Payne Best, whose 1950 publication The Venlo Incident quickly became a bestseller. Bethge was much impressed with the Englishman’s account, so much so that he opted for a wholesale incorporation of the relevant section of Best’s work in his own narrative. The tale of the final week of Bonhoeffer’s life came to be told to an expanding international audience by a captured British spy. So things would remain for over seventy years. But now, Best’s account need no longer be the sole and defining narrative voice. Other first-hand accounts and sources have been unearthed.

By dint of revisiting original, newly published, and unpublished sources in six languages, much translation work, and input from Hermann’s son, Dr. Tilman Pünder, John McCabe tells the full story of Bonhoeffer’s final week. “Myths” that have grown up and been extensively reiterated can now be exposed, mistakes corrected, and perspectives broadened.

Adding more substance, color, and depth to a previously monochrome narrative, the book’s “layered approach,” which includes historical material from the time period in question, aims to provide a better framework from within which to understand more fully the witness and contribution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. McCabe proposes that a richer appreciation of the resisting spirit of Bonhoeffer (and others) may further study of, and engagement with, the Bonhoeffer corpus.

JOHN McCABE is Research Associate at the Von Hügel Institute and served as Rector of St Mary’s Church Byfleet from 2006 to 2024.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Sunday, April 1, 1945

2 One Week Earlier

3 Heinrich Himmler

4 The Speed of Events

5 Surviving Hitler’s Demands

6 Buchenwald, Bonhoeffer, and the Hostage Convoy

7 General von Rabenau

Monday, April 2, 1945

8 Double Summer Time: Russian Resolve

9 Germany’s Leadership: Out of Touch

10 Himmler’s Hostage Plans

11 Germany: Reaping the Whirlwind

12 Buchenwald: Rumbles of Departure Tuesday, April 3, 1945

13 Sigmund Rascher

14 Murderous Thoughts—and Many Reports

15 A Chance Find in Zossen

16 Departure from Buchenwald

17 Unbeknown Companions: US Soldiers Close By

“McCabe gives us a fascinating account, well-researched and with much material new to most readers, of Bonhoeffer’s final pilgrimage to his martyrdom at Flossenbürg. Also, many other figures, usually overlooked, involved in the drama of these doom-laden days in April 1945 get deserved attention. While typical versions of Bonhoeffer’s last days and hours have relied on the overly sanitized accounts of dubious witnesses, McCabe leaves us in no doubt of the brutality of what awaited him and the other conspirators executed on 9 April, making the significance of his faithfulness unto death all the more telling.”

—KEITH CLEMENTS , former General Secretary, Conference of European Churches

18 The Hostage Journey Continues Wednesday, April 4, 1945

19 Hermann Pünder and Vasily Kokorin

20 A Bankrupt Nation

21 Greatly Exaggerated Rumours

22 The Hostages: Gradual Progress

Thursday, April 5, 1945

23 Horst Hoepner, Payne Best, and Horst von Petersdorff

24 Far from Over

25 A New Low Point

26 Interpreting Hitler’s Commands

27 The Wheel of History Turns

28 The Hostages: A Better Day

29 An SOE Sabotage Operation

Friday, April 6, 1945

30 Hugh Falconer, Heidel Nowakowski, and Alexander von Falkenhausen

31 Events Cascade: Hitler Hibernates

32 Deceptions and Killings Abound

33 The Hostages: Arrival in Schönberg

Saturday, April 7, 1945

34 Erich and Margot Heberlein

35 World News: An Interim “Parallel Existence”

36 Ramming: At Sea and in the Air

37 Berlin’s Gestapo: Ruthless in Pursuit

38 Mounting Chaos

39 Schönberg: Smuggled Sausages

40 Bonhoeffer’s Reading: Plutarch

Sunday, April 8, 1945

41 Sunday in Schönberg (I)

42 Sunday’s Total War

43 Sunday in Flossenbürg

44 Sunday in Schönberg (II)

45 Transfer to Flossenbürg

Monday, April 9, 1945

46 The Administration of Death Epilogue Appendices

“In short and fast-paced chapters, this riveting new book brings us close to the characters that populated Bonhoeffer’s last week. John McCabe paints these figures in the round and with new and unprecedented historical accuracy, taking readers deep inside the swirling chaos that attended the war’s end. A range of oversimplifications and myths have grown up around the death of this modern saint, whose faith stands out even more clearly when his grueling and tragic reality is brought into such clear focus.”

—BRIAN BROCK, Professor of Moral and Practical Theology, University of Aberdeen

“A

pulsating chronicle of the tumultuous and fateful week during which Bonhoeffer’s journey, amidst his unlikely companions, took him from Buchenwald to Flossenbürg while the Third Reich imploded with brutal vengeance. There is nothing romantic about this tragic tale of martyrdom, but there is testimony to a courageous faith in the face of brutal evil.”

—JOHN W. DE GRUCHY, Extraordinary Professor, Stellenbosch University and Emeritus Professor, University of Cape Town

Entangled Being

Unoriginal Sin and Wicked Problems

Rebecca L. Copeland

Contemporary societies face many complex injustices, from environmental devastation that threatens our long-term prospects, to human trafficking that fuels our global economy, to health disparities that harm already marginalized communities. Although theologies of liberation have long identified these injustices as manifestations of systemic sin, many Christians recoil from using the language of sin to discuss our everyday involvement in such systems. This is partly because many Christians expect “sin-talk” to name particularly heinous actions—ones in which we certainly do not wish to engage—and partly because the language of sin has been used to shame others for so long that its theological value has been all but lost.

REBECCA L. COPELAND is Assistant Professor of Theology at Boston University School of Theology.

CONTENTS

Introduction

I Theological Foundations

1 Sin—Promise, Problems, Potential

2 Repentance and Responsibility

3 Repentance and Repair

II Case Studies

4 Environmental Justice and Toxic Trespass

5 Globalization and Exploitation

ISBN 978-1-4813-2142-6

$47.99 | Hardback

262 pages

5.5 x 8.5

October 1, 2024

In Entangled Being, Rebecca L. Copeland asserts that sin is the most appropriate theological language for naming what has gone wrong in the world and for beginning to repair those wrongs, despite modern resistance to the use of sin-talk. She argues that Christians need a reconstructed understanding of what naming something as sin should accomplish. Traditional treatments of sin as either original (universal and congenital) or actual (individual and intentional) are not capable of addressing the individual’s complicity in the unintentional, communal, and multigenerational harms caused by systemic injustices. Copeland offers the scripturally based idea of unoriginal sin to explore moral agency and responsibility in our complex, pluralistic, and interdependent world.

Expanding the doctrinal boundaries of sin-talk to encompass repentance, she argues that Christians need not only to name systemic injustices as sin but also to repent of them by taking responsibility for the harms they cause and working to repair such harms. Entangled Being addresses common concerns about sin-talk, deconstructs individualistic understandings of moral agency, and draws from the work of marginalized communities to reconstruct understandings of agency and responsibility competent to address the wicked problems we face today.

6 Health Disparities

The Next Faithful Step

“Copeland’s book is clean, clear, highly accessible writing on some of the most complex and fraught subjects of Christian faith—sin, repentance, and repair. This is a book for our moment in history, one I have long awaited. I don’t expect a finer account.”

LARRY RASMUSSEN, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary

“In Entangled Being, author Rebecca L. Copeland courageously addresses the significant ethical challenge facing ordinary Christians today: How can individuals take on responsibility for the overwhelming and catastrophic harms precipitated by systemic and transgenerational evil? Copeland responds to this question with a powerful revisionist theology of sin and repentance, thereby underscoring that theological reflection on classic doctrinal themes is necessary for ethics and that constructive thinking about the individual’s social entanglements is generative for framing justice-seeking. Justice requires a creative imaginary that can navigate the complexities of climate change and secure human responsibility for reparative programs that do justice to God’s vision for the world.”

—CHRISTINE

HELMER, Peter B. Ritzma

Professor

of Humanities at Northwestern University

RACHELLE R. GREEN is Assistant Professor of Practical Theology and Education at Fordham

University.

CONTENTS

Introduction: A Matter of Life and Death

1 Learning in a Place That Feels Like Dying

2 Imagining Your Good Life

3 Is Your Good Life Possible Here?

4 What Theology Makes Possible

5 Fostering Life-Affirming Praxis in Theology

6 Nurturing Life-Affirming Futures through Theological Education

“This is the book I’ve been waiting for! I love teaching methodology, and Rachelle R. Green has given me the essential textbook to assign to my MDiv and doctoral students who want and need an excellent model for doing practical theological ethnography with vulnerable populations. In fact, Learning to Live is more than a model for ethnographic research, it is a life-giving testament from women who are alive and living in partnership with God to create a meaning-filled life in a death-dealing prison. We witness God’s work in these women’s lives through their stories that Green masterfully tells. As she tells their stories, we learn how to teach from her pedagogical practices of using art and theater—acting out characters with simple props of toilet paper and headscarves. I anticipate the days when my students and I learn more from you about the liberating power of incarcerated women’s stories.”

—EVELYN L. PARKER, Professor Emerita of Practical Theology, Perkins School of Theology

Learning to Live

Prisons, Pedagogy, and Theological Education

Rachelle R. Green

What good is theological education for those in prison? For more than fifteen years, students in a Georgia prison for women have participated in a theological education program; most of these women have no desire to become professional religious leaders, and some are not religious at all. In a criminal punishment system governed by practices of social death, these students study theology in hopes of negotiating and constructing meaningful life anew. How can a better understanding of the lives desired by these students help shape a more life-affirming commitment to and practice of theological education in prison?

In Learning to Live, Rachelle R. Green combines ethnographic research with sociological, criminological, and theological scholarship to argue that prisons practice a form of death-dealing education that distorts human vocation and intentionally erodes students’ hopes for meaningful life. However, student narratives attest that incarcerated students may turn to theological learning programs to defy these life-negating pedagogies and piece together lives marked by belonging, dynamism, and freedom. Ultimately, the good of theological education in prison rests in its ability to participate in God’s work of redeeming life from death-dealing domination.

Learning to Live is written to encourage reflective practice for those doing theological education in death-dealing contexts—in prisons and elsewhere. It is an invitation to hear stories—stories about dying, domination, and constraint, and likewise stories about life, freedom, and possibility—and to allow these stories to form and reform our practice of theological education.

ISBN 978-1-4813-2071-9

$34.99 | Paperback

262 pages

6 x 9

8 b&w illus., 2 b&w photos October 15, 2024

“What a rare find—a scholarly text that reads like an inspiring page-turner! In Learning to Live, Rachelle R. Green illuminates the stories of a learning community in a women’s prison and invites readers on a journey of reimagining theological education everywhere. Leaning on students’ insights and her own teaching experiences, Green develops a helpful framework for creating life-affirming learning environments in the face of death-dealing institutions. It is an essential text for courses that intersect pedagogy and theological ethics.”

—MONTAGUE R. WILLIAMS, Professor of Church, Culture, and Society, Point Loma Nazarene University, and author of Church in Color: Youth Ministry, Race, and the Theology of Martin Luther King Jr.

Held in the Love of God

Discipleship and Disability

STUDIES IN RELIGION, THEOLOGY, AND DISABILITY SERIES

Phil Letizia

Throughout its history, evangelicalism has neglected to consider the spiritual lives of people with profound intellectual disabilities and how their experiences might contribute to a fuller understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. Both the historic and modern constructions of evangelical discipleship have led to particular ministry strategies and practices that rarely consider the presence of people with profound intellectual disabilities.

In

ISBN 978-1-4813-2116-7

$59.99 | Hardback

200 pages

6 x 9

November 1, 2024

“With an evangelical commitment to renewal, Phil Letizia convincingly argues for a theology of discipleship rooted in the trustful love of God and robustly inclusive of those with profound disabilities. Letizia’s work, creatively drawing on theological qualitative research with clergy and lay partners, expands a faithful vision of discipleship for all God’s people.”

—SARAH JEAN BARTON, Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy and Theological Ethics, Duke University

Held in the Love of God, Phil Letizia attends to this oversight in the discipleship of the evangelical church by investigating the historical development of evangelicalism and its particular characteristics that, as he argues, make it difficult for the intellectually disabled to be perceived as followers of Jesus. Letizia draws upon a rich cross section of research, stories and firsthand accounts from families of disability, and works from evangelicalism and disability theologians to raise questions requiring reflection on the part of evangelicals. The methods used strive to uncover stories of disability and discipleship while also examining the most common context for evangelical discipleship, the local church.

Employing thoughtful theological reflection, Letizia argues for a broader theology of discipleship within popular evangelicalism that includes the spiritual lives of people with profound intellectual disabilities. This can only be achieved through embracing renewed emphasis on a theology of the cross to address hardship and suffering and the conviction that we are held in the trustful love of God that seals our eternal purpose in the divine kingdom. Held in the Love of God explores the contours of evangelical discipleship in a way that provokes deep theological inquiry, while also leading local congregations, pastors, and lay leaders to consider the implications for ministry within the body of Christ.

PHIL LETIZIA is Associate Pastor of Spiritual Formation at Park Road Presbyterian Church in Hollywood, Florida and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen in Practical Theology.

CONTENTS

Introduction: The Driveway and a New World

1 Tracing an Evangelical Theology of Discipleship

2 The Recognition of a Disciple

3 The Recognition of the Body of Christ

4 Life as a Disciple of Jesus, Part 1: Journey, Suffering, and Lament

5 Life as a Disciple of Jesus, Part 2: Purpose and Glory

6 Held in the Adoptive Love of God

7 Finding Purpose in the Love of God Epilogue

“In Held in the Love of God, Phil Letizia joins a growing field of disability theologians integrating qualitative research methods into their theology to explore the spiritual lives of people with intellectual disabilities. In this important and novel study, Letizia helps to broaden the theology of discipleship by carefully interweaving pastoral and caretaker narratives as well as field observations into a practical theology for the evangelical church.”

DEVAN STAHL, Associate Professor of Bioethics and Religion, Baylor University

“Letizia’s practical theological method resounds the voices of parents, caregivers, siblings, other family members, and pastors of people with profound disabilities and their families, all of whose reflections illuminate the depth, richness, and expansiveness of divine love that holds individuals, their families, and their church communities together in lives of faithfulness to and enabled by God.”

—AMOS YONG, Professor of Theology & Mission, Fuller Seminary

MELODY V. ESCOBAR, PhD, is a research associate at Baylor University, Collaborative on Faith and Disability. Her research and publications in Christian spirituality and practical theology focus on families who experience disability, innovative models of ministry, and curricula advancing inclusion and belonging in academic and spiritual life. She lectures in religion and disability, eco-justice, and mysticism.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Devan Stahl

Introduction: Revelations of Care in the Horse Ring

1 “To Love Like God Loves”: Exploring the Lived Experiences of Caregivers

2 Revelations of Loving Care as Work

3 Widening the Circle of Loving Care

4 Julian’s Revelation of “Our Motherhood in Christ”

5 Nurturing Divine Care in the Church: Revelations Rebirthed

“Revelations of Divine Care . . . unites disability studies, ecotherapy, and historical theology to reconceive brilliantly the meanings of pastoral ministry, motherwork, and how an equine center might function as a sacred site of transformative encounter.

Melody Escobar’s generous attention to her research partners’ stories makes this book a superb example of pastoral ethnography for other scholars; further, her pointed questions transform the book from mere academic study to spiritual guidebook, helping the reader discover to what extent their own awareness around and care for disabled people’s lives and needs might grow.”

—RACHEL JOY WHEELER, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Theology, University of Portland

Revelations of Divine Care

Disability, Spirituality, and Mutual Flourishing

STUDIES IN RELIGION, THEOLOGY, AND DISABILITY SERIES

Melody V. Escobar

At a Texas Hill Country ranch, Melody Escobar and her young son meet Bo, the retired racehorse that becomes his “go-to” sage in a remarkable equine program for children with disabilities. The weekly ritual in the riding arena ignites an inner transformation for Escobar and an ethnographic study of everyday caregiving. In Revelations of Divine Care, Escobar explores Julian of Norwich’s vision of unconditional love and the innovative ways in which all people—with or without disability—can challenge dynamics of power and control to nurture communities in which love compels others to love.

Escobar presents a fresh reading of Julian’s revolutionary teachings and connects the fourteenth-century mystic with first-person narratives of mothers who are caregivers. She calls us to re-vision our understanding of kenosis and advocate for the mutual flourishing of every being, following the pattern of generative trinitarian relationship where each is in and for the other. Escobar invites us to bring our own stories into conversation with members of our communities, providing theological language for what it means to live a spirituality of solidarity guided by faith, one in which “active mercy,” i.e., committed works of charity, is considered a universal practice instead of the experience of a select few.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2055-9

$59.99 | Hardback

232 pages 5.5 x 8.5

November 1, 2024

“Melody Escobar, a practical theologian, is mother and caregiver of Raffy, a child with disabilities. Her study not only describes her experience of Equine Assisted Therapy (EAT) for her son at an equine center but also offers narratives by other mothers in similar situations. The book is an exploration of self-sacrifice and challenging caregiving by the mothers. While Melody’s book is deeply personal and moving, it also draws upon the powerful spiritual writings of the famous medieval woman mystic, Julian of Norwich, and her vision of God as loving Mother.”

—PHILIP SHELDRAKE,

FRSA, FRHistS, Professor of Christian Spirituality and Director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Spirituality, Oblate School of Theology

“Melody V. Escobar richly describes the lives of her research partners—mothers, like herself, of children with challenging developmental conditions—who manage their children’s care, from dawn to dusk, seeking out services and educational resources, including equine therapy, for the children they love. Escobar explores the mothers’ all-encompassing work of parental love in relation to Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of ‘Our Motherhood in Christ.’ Learned and thought-provoking, this book recognizes that ‘all is not well’ for mothers performing work of love in a society that fails to provide for the needs of disabled children and still expects mothers to do it all.”

MARY CLARK MOSCHELLA, Roger J. Squire Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling, Yale University

Transpacific Political Theology

Perspectives, Paradigms, Proposals

edited by Kwok Pui-lan

Since U.S. political and military strategies pivoted to Asia, tensions between the United States and Asian and Pacific countries have escalated. Geopolitical changes in the Asia Pacific have challenged the world order and will shape the destiny of the twenty-first century. These rapid changes test and challenge the concepts, theories, and frameworks developed in political theology arising from North Atlantic contexts. It is urgent to scrutinize the relationship between the theological and the political from a transpacific perspective.

KWOK PUI-LAN was Dean’s Professor of Systematic Theology at Candler School of Theology. She also co-edited Teaching Global Theologies: Power and Praxis

CONTENTS

Introduction: Transpacific Political Theology in the Making—Development and Themes, by Kwok Pui-lan

I Political Theology in a Transpacific Frame

II Geopolitics and Power

III Erotopolitics and Theology

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2026-9

$54.99 | Paperback

323 pages

6 x 9

September 1, 2024

“The essays presented in Transpacific Political Theology are an impressive and welcome contribution to the expanding field of political theology. They affirm the importance of the Transpacific as a site of geopolitical rivalries and of theological production. In this way, these essays develop a fresh form of postcolonial thinking and challenge European construal of political theology. Vital reading!”

—PETER SCOTT, Samuel Ferguson Professor of Applied Theology & Director of the Lincoln Theological Institute, University of Manchester

In Transpacific Political Theology, Kwok Pui-lan brings together sixteen scholars from across the theological disciplines and from various Asian countries and North America. The book provides a framework for transpacific political theology by discussing racism and casteism, racial capitalism, gender and sexuality, Asian and Pacific political visions, and the China-U.S. contest. It elucidates the intersection between sexual politics and theology by queering heteronormativity, Asian values, and binary national narratives. With the heightened military tensions in the region, the book offers insights into war and violence, invokes the power of mourning, explores the use of art in interreligious healing, describes the processes of peacebuilding, and provides theo-ethical principles for reparations.

The collective insights of these scholars produce a pioneering mosaic in the developing field of transpacific studies. In addition to moving the burgeoning field forward, the cutting-edge perspectives developed in Transpacific Political Theology provide a lens through which the reader can reevaluate the complex power structures, theological frameworks, and status quo of empire, coloniality, and marginalization that might exist in their context, opening doors into further conversations of liberation and just peace.

IV Theopolitics of Peace and Reparation

Epilogue: Conversations on Transpacific Political Theologies—Past, Present, Future, by Lester Edwin J. Ruiz

CONTRIBUTORS

Sunder John Boopalan

Jonathan Tran

Keun-joo Christine Pae

Jione Havea

Nami Kim

Ki Joo Choi

Peng Yin

Izak Y. M. Lattu

Justin K. H. Tse

Jude Lal Fernando

Sharon A. Bong

Michael Sepidoza Campos

“Transpacific Political Theology expands the horizons of current political theology in two welcome ways. First, it broadens geographic and geopolitical perspectives by adding not only range but depth and complexity. Second, it broadens the methodological toolbox of political theology by contributing reflections on capitalism, imperialism, and multiple as-yet unexamined layers of identity and power.”

—JOERG RIEGER, Distinguished Professor of Theology, Vanderbilt University

“The richness and complexity of these discussions challenge the oppressive systems, regional wars, and geopolitics that threaten an increasingly fragile, post-World War II global system based on collapsing definitions of race, gender, religion, and national sovereignty.”

—RITA NAKASHIMA BROCK, co-author of Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War

Kyeongil Jung

Septemmy E. Lakawa

Grace Y. Kao

Lester Edwin J. Ruiz

Figural Reading and the Fleshly God

The Theology of Ephraim Radner edited by Joseph L. Mangina and David Ney

Ephraim Radner is one of the most creative and imaginative (if at times deeply unsettling) Christian thinkers of our time. He has offered searching analysis of Christian divisions and advocated tirelessly for the theological interpretation of Scripture as an activity of the church. Figural Reading and the Fleshly God brings together eighteen scholars from across the Christian spectrum—Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, and Eastern Orthodox—to articulate and develop Radner’s greatest theological contributions. Among the issues touched on are Radner’s understanding of divine grace, his counterintuitive views on time, and his figural approach to preaching, as illustrated by extensive quotations from his sermons. By critically engaging Radner’s strong, prophetic voice, the book seeks to preserve and extend his rich theological imagination and vision beyond the scope of his published work. Figural Reading and the Fleshly God is an invitation to all—even those unfamiliar with Radner—to discover why his theology matters for the life of the church today.

“Ephraim Radner’s theological work is widely acknowledged as a uniquely generative, inspiring force in worldwide Anglican Christianity and beyond. However, it is just as widely recognized as difficult, even opaque at times. So we have long needed a volume like this: ‘Radner for the Rest of Us.’”

—WESLEY HILL, Associate Professor of New Testament, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan

JOSEPH L. MANGINA is Professor of Systematic Theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto. DAVID NEY is Associate Professor of Church History at Trinity School for Ministry and a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada.

William J. Abraham

A Theological Profile

edited by Michael J. Gehring and Andrew D. Kinsey

ISBN: 978-1-4813-1796-2 / $59.99 / Hardback / 456 pages / 6 x 9 / December 15, 2024

One of the most prominent theologians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries was William J. Abraham, affectionately known as “Billy” to many. William J. Abraham: A Theological Profile seeks to begin a critical assessment and appreciation of Abraham’s contributions over the years and explore these contributions in a wide range of fields—mission and evangelism, philosophy of religion, epistemology, and systematic theology, to name a few. The contributors to this volume include scholars and practitioners from different disciplines and ministries. They provide helpful insights into Abraham’s work as well as offer personal reflections on the relational sensibilities that marked Billy as a true friend of the gospel. Their collective insights honor Abraham’s memory, solidify his legacy, and preserve a piece of his rich theological imagination for future generations of the church.

“William J. Abraham, a prolific, pietistic, Irish-American Methodist theological philosopher, was a Christian polymath, a loving leprechaun of sorts with pots of gold gleaming in numerous places. He worked to awaken Methodism from doctrinal amnesia to a robust canonical theism, to assure its identity within the frame of Christianity’s classical core doctrines that witness to God’s ongoing presence in the world. He cherished the vibrancy of Orthodox iconography. Evangelism and Christian renewal twinkled generously in his kindly eyes. These authors catch the sparkle that was Billy.”

—ELLEN T. CHARRY, Emerita Professor of Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary

MICHAEL J. GEHRING is Visiting Professor of the History of Christianity at Hood Theological Seminary. ANDREW D. KINSEY is a Harry Denman/John Wesley Fellow and United Methodist pastor.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-1966-9 / $64.99 / Hardback / 304 Pages / 6 x 9 / 4 b&w photos / November 1, 2024

Flannery O’Connor and the Church Made Visible

A Revolutionary Witness for the Sake of the Gospel Ralph C. Wood

G. K. Chesterton famously claimed that America is “a nation with the soul of a church.” He was wrong. In Flannery O’Connor and the Church Made Visible, Ralph Wood argues that our churches have the soul of a nation because they have come to identify their mission with the American project. They have made the Church (understood as the visible form of Christ himself) virtually invisible.

RALPH C. WOOD is Baylor University Emeritus Professor of Theology and Literature, known especially for the books, articles, and essays that he has written on authors including J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, P. D. James, and G. K. Chesterton, including Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God.

CONTENTS

Introduction

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2187-7

$42.99 | Hardback

181 pages

6 x 9

2 b&w illus.

November 1, 2024

“Ralph Wood has kindled the enthusiasm of generations of students for unashamedly theological reading of fiction. Now Wood puts dear, clear-eyed Flannery O’Connor in conversation and argument with intellectuals and artists from Willa Cather to Cardinal Newman and Thomas Aquinas.”

WILL WILLIMON, Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry, Duke University

Wood seeks to restore the Church’s visibility by showing how its ever-old, ever-new Gospel is embodied in the life and work of Flannery O’Connor. He gives careful attention to her Bible-soaked Augustinian politics, her surprising kinship with Saint John Henry Newman, and her saving friendship with the lesbian intellectual Elizabeth Hester. Wood also focuses on O’Connor’s violent prophets. One of them wields a gun, another blinds himself, a third drowns a child. More often, they turn their wrathful judgment against themselves for their manifold sins and wickedness. Far from being grotesque freaks, O’Connor’s heroes are fiercely seizing or spurning the kingdom of God. O’Connor’s real freaks attempt to confine themselves within the hell of their own self-sufficiency.

Wood also reveals that O’Connor based her self-portrait, included on the cover of the volume, on the sixth-century icon of Christ Pantocrator from the monastery on Mt. Sinai. It is no pious self-salute. It reveals, instead, her profound concern with the largely undetected demonry at work in a post-Christian culture sliding rapidly into nihilism. Thus does Flannery O’Connor’s radically Christian fiction make her the most important Christian writer this nation has produced, chiefly because it serves to make the Church visible once again.

1 How the Church Became Invisible: A Christian Reading of the American Literary Tradition

2 The Surprising Witness of Willa Cather in Death Comes for the Archbishop and The Professor’s House

3 Flannery O’Connor’s Catholic Priests and Protestant Preachers

4 Flannery O’Connor’s Self-Portrait in the Light of Christ Pantocrator

5 Baptizing and Prophesying: Good and Evil in The Violent Bear It Away

6 Flannery O’Connor’s Politics

7 Flannery O’Connor and Elizabeth Hester: Friendship in Sacramental Suffering

8 Living and Dying Upon Dogma: The Dogmatic Witness of Flannery O’Connor and John Henry Newman to a PostChristian Culture

9 Flannery O’Connor’s Black Characters: Race Revisited

“In these essays, the culmination of a lifetime of thinking about Flannery O’Connor, Ralph Wood . . . lauds O’Connor for the cold eye that she casts on American exceptionalism and for her stubborn, hard-won testimony that the visible Church still endures. Heartfelt, erudite, often provocative, and unafraid to challenge the sentimental yet nihilistic pieties of our current moment, Flannery O’Connor and the Church Made Visible confirms just how formidable, timely, and indispensable Wood’s contributions to O’Connor scholarship remain.”

—THOMAS F. HADDOX, Lindsay Young Professor of English, University of Tennessee

Conclusion

“Flannery O’Connor made the Church visible to me. Wood places O’Connor in the choir with Bonhoeffer, John Henry Newman, Willa Cather, and others, to show that what America needs is not a Christian politics but a living, redeemed, and ready-to-pay-the-cost Church.”

—JESSICA HOOTEN WILSON, Fletcher Jones Chair of Great Books, Pepperdine University

RACHEL TOOMBS serves at Ascension Episcopal Church in Stillwater, Minnesota.

CONTENTS

Introduction Rachel Toombs

For Ralph Wood Malcolm Guite

1 Dante’s Holy Tears: Hope, Compassion, and Conformity to God in the Comedy’s School of Weeping

Matthew Rothaus Moser

2 The Biblical and Pastoral Imagination of George MacDonald: The Meaning of Death in Lilith

Gisela H. Kreglinger

3 The Long Defeat

Barry Harvey

4 “I am Christ’s back”: Alienation, Necessity, and Exchange in Charles Williams’ Drama

Rowan Williams

5 Freeing the Waters: Art and Sacrament in David Jones

Paul S. Fiddes

6 The High Cost of Good Readers: Possibility, Responsibility, and the Christian Moral Imagination in Flannery O’Connor’s Theory of Fiction

Jordan Rowan Fannin

7 Flannery O’Connor’s Prophets Are Not Fundamentalists

John Sykes

8 Under Every Green Tree? Flannery O’Connor, Caroline Gordon, and “Parker’s Back”

Rachel Toombs

9 The Power of the St. Thérèse’s “Little Way” in Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins Jessica Hooten Wilson

10 Knoxville, Summer 2022

Pete Candler

Good News Resounding

Essays on Literature and Theology in Honor of Ralph C. Wood edited by Rachel Toombs

Ralph C. Wood’s teaching and writing career over fifty years helped readers and students be attentive to the way literature renders the theologically abstract concretely. Wood has modeled serious theological engagement and robust literary reflection in his writing on G. K. Chesterton, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Flannery O’Connor, among others. His books have shaped current and future generations of literary critics and theologians alike.

Not as easily measured, Wood formed generations of undergraduate and graduate students in candid, sometimes brash, often comedic, and always critical engagements with theology and the arts. Avoiding what Flannery O’Connor deemed the two great follies of theologically oriented literature in the forms of pornography and sentimentality, Wood drew out theological themes without watering down the reality of suffering or the costly nature of the gospel. Good News Resounding honors Wood’s contribution by continuing to follow in his footsteps, reflecting theologically on literature to draw out the very Good News of the gospel amidst very real suffering, evil, and sin.

The collection assembles a diverse group of scholars—former students, colleagues, and friends of Wood—to demonstrate the multivalent approaches to and richness of reading literature theologically. Written for academically inclined readers of theology and the arts, Good News Resounding extends Wood’s legacy and testifies to the power of the classroom to shape future generations of readers, theologians, and Christians.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2253-9

$64.99 | Hardback

240 pages 6 x 9

April 15, 2025

“A book of essays of uncommon insight honoring a person of uncommon insight. The authors of these essays have learned much from Ralph Wood and thus defy disciplinary divisions that stifle thought. A book that rightfully celebrates Ralph Wood.”

—STANLEY HAUERWAS, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law, Duke Divinity School

“The subjects in this fine collection of essays range from Rowan Williams’ study of verse drama in Charles Williams to Michael Moser’s exploration of the role of weeping in Dante. The breadth is indicative of the richness of Ralph Wood’s interests and also the fruitfulness of his teaching, as a number of former students are included among the authors. What all the contributors share is a commitment to Malcolm Guite’s ‘holy practice’ of reading, in which literature becomes good news, as nourishing as bread. This volume demonstrates the vibrancy of literature and theology as it has flourished under Baylor’s auspices and is a welcome contribution to the field.”

—THE REV'D CANON PROFESSOR ALISON GRANT MILBANK, Professor of Theology and Literature, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2199-0

$64.99 | Hardback

ISBN: 978-1-4813-1935-5

$39.99 | Paperback

202 pages

5.5 x 8.5

July 1, 2024

“Clark’s book is a beautiful enrichment of our understanding of Black preaching and religious experience. He emphasizes the role of contemplation in a wide variety of Black orators. He highlights the importance of women preachers and poets and emphasizes the way contemplation and activism provide a unique synergism in Black churches. This beautiful volume will soon become a classic of wisdom and insight.”

—WENDY FARLEY, Rice Family Chair of Spirituality, San Francisco Theological Seminary Graduate School of Theology, University of Redlands

Black Contemplative Preaching

A Hidden History of Prayer, Proclamation, and Prophetic Witness

E. Trey Clark

Stereotypical images of African American Christian spirituality eclipse the profound diversity of Black preaching. As a result, contemplative preaching has become one of the most overlooked streams of gospel proclamation in Black Protestant contexts. Far from a new phenomenon, contemplative preaching consists of a robust tradition of orators, theologians, prophets, mystics, and pastors. In different ways, these proclaimers embody a life-giving, boundary-crossing, contemplative vision that fosters spiritual and social transformation

In Black Contemplative Preaching, E. Trey Clark expands our understanding of Black religiosity by drawing attention to the rich history of contemplative preaching in the Black church. Clark brings this hidden history to light by examining the life and preaching ministry of three twentieth-century African American religious leaders: Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King Jr., and the late Bishop Barbara Harris. In addition, the book discusses the contemplative proclamation of contemporary spiritual leaders such as Ineda Pearl Adesanya, Veronica R. Goines, Luke A. Powery, and Frank A. Thomas, as well as poet and activist Amanda Gorman.

Black Contemplative Preaching challenges monolithic portraits of Black spirituality and ministry through an evaluation of these influential figures. The uncovering of this rich, yet neglected, history of mystical activism among Christian preachers sheds light on the creative synthesis of spirituality, social justice, and proclamation in the Black church. Ultimately, the book presents Black contemplative preaching as a historic and enduring source of theological wisdom that speaks to the political, ecological, and spiritual challenges of our times.

E. TREY CLARK is Assistant Professor of Preaching and Spiritual Formation at Fuller Theological Seminary.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1 Preaching as Prayer: Toward a History of Contemplative Preaching

2 Creating a Friendly World: Howard Thurman as Contemplative Preacher

3 Redeeming the Soul and Society: Martin Luther King Jr. as Contemplative Preacher

4 Embodying Prophetic Contemplation: Barbara Harris as Contemplative Preacher

5 The Endurance of Black Contemplative Preaching Conclusion

“Clark has offered a cornerstone text in a lineage of those documenting African American preaching and religious traditions. Black Contemplative Preaching mines the postures and practices of an underrecognized history of preaching. We are offered a glimpse into preaching as practical wisdom informed by the interiority of the preacher’s life. The gift of this book is that it does not leave us inside ‘the preacher’s’ life, but opens up the potential for exploring greater possibilities at the intersection of contemporary lived experiences, plurality, and theological meaning-making.”

—LISA L. THOMPSON, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair and Associate Professor of Black Homiletics and Liturgics, Vanderbilt University Divinity School

“Trey Clark’s authorial launch into the discipline of homiletics channels the ancestral wisdom of sainted Black preaching elders and troubles disciplinary waters polluted by homiletical whiteness. Plumbing the depths of a preaching tradition generally described as soul-stirring, frenzied performance, Clark course-corrects and reveals a hidden stream of contemplative Black preaching—embodied, meditative, emancipatory proclamation—traceable from the earliest beginnings of Black preaching. Clark’s remarkable contribution is not only impressive scholarship, it is a defining homiletic for lifting all boats as it invites readers to explore the expanse of God’s mysteriousness to discover an inclusive vision for honoring the sacred in ourselves, our neighbor, and creation.”

—KENYATTA R. GILBERT, Dean and Professor of Homiletics, Howard University School of Divinity

JERUSHA MATSEN NEAL is Assistant Professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Charles L. Campbell Preface

Introduction: Where Are We Standing?

1 Whose Place and Experience? Sovereignty, Belonging, and Loss

2 Place in the Apocalypse of Empire: Sovereignty, Belonging, and Loss in Ezekiel

3 Place in the Apocalypse of Rising Tides: Sovereignty, Belonging, and Loss in Fijian Pulpits

4 Reframing Exodus: Decolonizing Place in the Fijian Methodist Church

5 Place and Covenant: Reframing Exodus in Ezekiel’s Temple Vision

6 Leaves of Healing: Preaching from a Place of Apocalypse Appendix: Sermons for Conversation

“Through compassionate listening and vulnerable conversation, Neal fashions a homiletic of place that calls for preaching God’s presence even in the most desolate realities. Masterfully integrating creation theology and Ezekiel’s exilic hope, Neal puts the truths of climate catastrophe in every pulpit as necessary proclamation. Preachers will be both challenged and empowered by Neal’s proposal to view preaching as a matter of life and death for the sake of ecological justice.”

—REV. KAROLINE M. LEWIS, Professor and the Marbury E. Anderson Chair of Biblical Preaching, Luther Seminary

Holy Ground

Climate Change, Preaching, and the Apocalypse of Place

Jerusha Matsen Neal

The climate crisis’ most difficult questions are not technological but relational. Environmental catastrophe reveals a world increasingly divided and inextricably linked, pressing questions of place. How do the places in which we stand relate to the places of others? What are the limits of our belonging and our power? To whom are we responsible, and what does that accountability require?

In Holy Ground, Jerusha Matsen Neal centers the sermons of displaced, Indigenous communities in the South Pacific and the proclamation of the displaced prophet Ezekiel to expose colonial specters in the contemporary environmental movement and the North American pulpit. Communities that have loved and lost land carry hard-fought wisdom about the renunciation of false hopes and false gods. Such wisdom crucially orients climate justice preaching in an unraveling world. Naming broken pasts and uncertain futures, the sermons this volume engages take seriously the question seared into the heart of the biblical text: can the creation and covenant of a good God come undone? The scriptural witness forecloses simple answers to that theological crisis, as do the contemporary witnesses of those who stand in rising tides. Instead, such witnesses call listeners to costly acts of repentance and covenantal solidarity, reclaiming preaching’s role in the climate fight.

Written for scholars and clergy alike, Holy Ground constructs a practical theology of place that equips preachers from various contexts to proclaim God’s Word in the face of climate catastrophe. Attuned to place’s revelatory testimony, preaching becomes more than a persuasive technology. It becomes a site of divine encounter, relinquished control, and reclaimed relationship, unveiling the place of apocalypse as holy ground.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-1907-2

$57.99 | Hardback

360 pages 6 x 9

November 1, 2024

“This courageous book explores homiletical truth-telling in solidarity with climate refugees and communities enduring the consequences of ecological catastrophe. Attending to the prophetic witness of Ezekiel and the preaching of Fijian Methodist leaders, Jerusha Neal weaves a riveting narrative of resistance to globalizing exploitation and naïve environmentalism, crafting her homiletical approach through a holistic theology of place and an astute ethnographic sensibility. Neal calls practical theologians to a posture of radical relationality that honors diverse Indigenous perspectives on place and dislocation, spiritual and geopolitical causes of climate change, and covenantal hope. Generative and beautifully written!”

—CAROLYN J. SHARP, Professor of Homiletics, Yale Divinity School

“Jerusha Neal’s . . . complexifying engagements with theological, postcolonial, and Indigenous topics on sovereignty, belonging, and loss powerfully resonate with global problems that all preachers, albeit from different locations, must face today. Readers will also be equally delighted to see sermon examples regarding how to tackle the climate crisis. Holy Ground is a much-needed, excellent addition to ecological homiletics.”

HYERAN KIM-CRAGG, Principal and Timothy Eaton Memorial Church Professor in Preaching, Emmanuel College, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto

“I Grew Up in the Church”

How American Evangelical Women Tell Their Stories

Bethany Ober Mannon

In “I Grew Up in the Church”: How American Evangelical Women Tell Their Stories, Bethany Ober Mannon studies the diverse and complex voices of women who have influenced the contemporary evangelical movement in North America. Women across the theological spectrum document fractures in evangelicalism and intervene in those debates using personal narratives that circulate in print and online. Drawing on feminist rhetorical theory and histories of evangelicalism in the United States, “I Grew Up in the Church” argues that these writers model alternatives to the conservative politics, rhetorics of certainty and combat, and rigid gender roles that have been hallmarks of the movement.

BETHANY OBER MANNON is Assistant Professor of English specializing in Rhetoric and Writing Studies at Appalachian State University.

CONTENTS

Introduction: The Scandalous Particularity of Women’s Stories

1 A Rhetorical History of the Evangelical Movement in the United States

2 A Generous Evangelical Orthodoxy

3 Storytelling as Verbal Hospitality

ISBN: 978-1-4813-1893-8

$32.99 | Paperback

284 pages

5.5 x 8.5 August 15, 2024

This book details the diversity of voices that comprise the evangelical movement today: orthodox evangelicals, ex-evangelicals, progressives, and leaders. By studying texts from 2008 to 2018, Mannon examines how women have responded to a decade when white evangelicalism waned in numbers and influence. She explores the rhetorical power that personal narratives hold for these various groups during that decade of decline. These voices show how, in a diversity of contexts within the evangelical movement, women speak against racism in their faith communities, navigate leadership positions, and pursue rhetorical activist opportunities in conservative settings.

“I Grew Up in the Church” will challenge and change readers’ perspectives on American evangelicalism. The perspectives and stories of women from varying backgrounds uncover a side of the movement that is pushing back against deep-rooted power structures and redefining modern evangelical rhetoric

4 The “Resisterhood” of Progressive Evangelical Women

5 The Rhetorical Leadership of Contemporary Evangélicas Conclusion: “No Power of Hell, No Scheme of Man”

“Bethany Ober Mannon brilliantly demonstrates the ways activist evangelical women confront their movement at the same time that they enrich the movement’s role in US politics writ large—in studied interpretations of church doctrines, in considered personal decision-making, in social-justice activism, in socio-cultural interactions across differences of every kind, and, ultimately, in informed citizenship. Mannon’s illuminating study of activist evangelical women, their generous orthodoxy, and their commitment to human dignity and civil discourse will long serve as a significant resource to rhetorical studies.”

—CHERYL GLENN, Distinguished Professor of English and Women’s Studies, Emerita, The Pennsylvania State University

“With the respect exhibited by Kate Bowler in her treatment of preachers’ wives, Mannon studies personal narratives of evangelical household names like Austin Channing Brown, Rachel Held Evans, and more. She convincingly shows the sophisticated moves made by these women to question the very tenets of the evangelical movement.”

Charlotte Hogg, Professor and Director of Composition, Texas Christian University

“Bethany Ober Mannon highlights the rhetorical efficacy of women’s personal storytelling within Christianity. As Mannon details, women’s storytelling in the church is often dismissed as emotional rather than rational and as experienced-based rather than scripturally-based. This book sets the story right, showcasing the holy authority and rhetorical strategies of women’s resistance to patriarchy, heterosexism, and white Christian nationalism—even when that means leaving the church.”

Sarah Kornfield, Associate Professor of Communication and Women’s & Gender Studies, Hope College

“Bethany Mannon’s ‘I Grew Up in the Church’ has much to say to scholars interested in feminist rhetoric, religious rhetoric, cultural rhetorics, whiteness studies, and genre studies. Mannon’s careful and convincing analysis of a wide range of Evangelical women’s personal narratives reveals the complex and cogent arguments evangelical women have made and the nuance and power this genre affords. Mannon deftly puts on display the wide rhetorical possibilities within personal narrative, as the women rhetors she studies use it to craft their ethos and cultivate rhetorical leadership, to witness and testify to experience, to critique and call for accountability, and to question and reflect. Readers will ultimately be persuaded by Mannon’s compelling overarching argument that these narratives are practices of hope.”

Jessica Enoch, Professor of English and Director of the Academic Writing Program, University of Maryland

Words for Conviviality

Media Technologies and Practices of Hope Jeffrey Bilbro

The industrialization of print technologies in early nineteenth-century America transformed print culture in ways that parallel the transformation wrought by the digital revolution. Understanding how a previous era was shaped by the assumptions print technology engendered may enable us to recognize more clearly how our verbal habits and practices are formed and deformed by our enmeshment in digital technologies.

JEFFREY BILBRO is editor-in-chief of Front Porch Republic and associate professor of English at Grove City College.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Trust, Watersheds, and America’s Industrial Print Culture

Twenty-Six Theses on Textual Technologies

ISBN: 978-1-4813-1982-9

$47.99 | Hardback

312 pages

6 x 9

9 b&w illus., 3 b&w photos September 15, 2024

“It is difficult to assess our media technologies—the dangers and delights of social media, technology, news outlets, and smartphones— while avoiding breathless alarmism on the one hand and starry-eyed techno-positivism on the other. It is yet harder to do this while offering a rich, hopeful way forward: one steeped in visions of attentive virtue and communal wholeness. Somehow, Jeffrey Bilbro achieves all this with his usual wit, wisdom, and grace. This is a beautiful and necessary book.”

—GRACE OLMSTEAD, author of Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We've Left Behind

When powerful new verbal media come along, our options are not limited to naive optimism or resigned pessimism. And some of the most helpful guides in charting a path toward genuinely convivial modes of reading are the literary authors who lived through the antebellum industrialization of print. Those authors sought to understand the effects of technologies such as the telegraph and the steam-powered rotary printing press through the most fundamental tool that language provides: metaphor Evocative metaphors are a potent way to raise cultural awareness regarding the hidden affordances and subtle nudges that are latent within dominant communications technologies.

The argument of Words for Conviviality follows a pilgrimage with three stages and considers a set of metaphors that such authors deployed to answer three underlying questions: What does industrial print tempt optimistic readers to imagine themselves as? What does it lead its victims to fear they will become? And what alternative metaphors might ground more convivial reading? The metaphors of hope that Jeffrey Bilbro discusses suggest that to wield textual technologies well, we need to develop cultural practices and institutions that strengthen our relationships with one another and our commitment to a common good. Instead of developing new technologies to solve the problems that technologies have caused, the authors considered here propose developing better readers—readers more attuned to the power of the textual technologies they use and better able to imagine and practice healthy, convivial forms of discourse. These authors obviously did not eschew industrialized print, and they did not simply give up on the technologies of their day. Rather, they developed metaphors that might inspire us to beat textual swords into plowshares.

“Words for Conviviality embodies a unique project: a cultural and technological history of a particular American era that is also a handbook to living more wisely in our digital age. Jeffrey Bilbro has written a wonderful, provocative, and illuminating book.”

ALAN JACOBS, The Jim and Sharon Harrod Endowed Chair of Christian Thought and Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Honors Program, Baylor University

I Utopia: Or, What does industrial print tempt optimistic readers to imagine themselves as?

1 Transparent Eyeballs

2 Men of Adamant

3 Encyclopedists and Map-Plotters

4 Celebrities

5 Benevolent Bosses

II Dystopia: Or, What does industrial print lead its victims to fear they will become?

6 Loose Fish

7 Macadamized Minds

8 Commodities

9 Slaves

III Hope: Or, What alternative metaphors might orient more convivial reading?

10 Walkers

11 Conversationalists

12 Friends

13 Cross-Bearers

Epilogue

JACOB D. MYERS is Associate Professor of Homiletics at Columbia

Theological Seminary.

SUNGGU A. YANG is Associate Professor of Theology and Christian Ministries and Director of the Margaret Fell Scholars Program at George Fox University School of Theology.

CONTENTS

Introduction: What Has Paris to Do with Jerusalem?

1 Disturbing Homiletical Subjectivity: Julia Kristeva on Jarena Lee

2 Disturbing Homiletical Authority: Michel Foucault on Fred Craddock

3 Disturbing Homiletical Truth: Pierre Bourdieu on Phillips Brooks

4 Disturbing Homiletical Discourse: Luce Irigaray on John Broadus

5 Disturbing Homiletical Experience: Jean-Luc Marion on Henry Mitchell Coda: Disturbing Homiletical Pedagogies with Gilles Deleuze

Preaching Philosophy

French Thought for Gospel Proclamation

Jacob D. Myers and Sunggu A. Yang

Philosophy preaches, and the pulpit preaches philosophy. As with all guilds, homiletics orients itself around a canon that constitutes its ways of being, behaving, and belonging. Part of the process of becoming a homiletician entails demonstrating one’s mastery of certain concepts and texts. Doctoral research in homiletics maintains its disciplinary boundaries by requiring students to demonstrate familiarity with and understanding of those authors who have established the “proper” methods and modalities of preaching.

In Preaching Philosophy, Jacob D. Myers and Sunggu A. Yang stage an intervention at this foundational pedagogical site by challenging the philosophical assumptions operative in the works of a selection of canonical characters and texts in the field of homiletics. The book arises from the conviction that critical homiletical scholarship must extend beyond those authors and texts that predominate preaching syllabi in North American seminaries and divinity schools. Furthermore, Myers and Yang argue that it is not enough to challenge another’s wisdom on how to preach faithful and effective sermons. Rather, one must also discern and question the a priori assumptions undergirding said wisdom. This is precisely what Preaching Philosophy seeks to do: to trouble the philosophical assumptions presupposed by foundational figures in homiletics.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-1651-4

$49.99 | Paperback

264 pages

6 x 9

March 15, 2025

“Jacob Myers and Sunggu Yang show us a mighty stream that flows through the heart of homiletics—French philosophy. Its reach proves vast, undergirding long-held assumptions about sermon conception, design, and effects. This astute and exciting volume offers vital insights for preachers and homileticians, and promising paths for the future of homiletics.”

DONYELLE McCRAY, Associate Professor of Homiletics, Yale Divinity School

Much homiletical theory prior to the 1960s arises from Kantian convictions about the limits of human rationality vis-à-vis the divine. As traditional, deductive preaching styles made way for the inductive logics constituting the New Homiletic, Heidegger and Kierkegaard came to supplant Kant’s long ascendancy by shifting attention to the role of discourse in sermonic reception. Building on this foundational shift, Preaching Philosophy looks to francophone theorists from the second half of the twentieth century to intervene in how we conceptualize homiletical theories and theologies. Each chapter stages a critical encounter between a foundational homiletician and a French philosopher in hope of introducing new concepts and angles of critique into homiletical scholarship.

“In this volume, two of homiletics’ most creative thinkers, Jacob D. Myers and Sunggu A. Yang, take us on an exciting journey into unexplored territory. They imaginatively place French philosophers into conversation with classic preachers and teachers of preaching, and the insights flash brilliantly page after page. Myers’ and Yang’s clear prose makes often complex topics accessible and fascinating.”

THOMAS G. LONG, Bandy Professor Emeritus of Preaching, Candler School of Theology

“In this immensely creative book, Jacob D. Myers and Sunggu A. Yang demonstrate the fresh insights that emerge when homiletics is brought into conversation with contemporary French philosophy. This dialogue sheds light on such crucial topics as subjectivity, language, revelation, and hermeneutics, opening possibilities for the transformation of homiletical theory, practice, and pedagogy. Anyone who wants to probe more deeply the inner workings of proclamation, or who longs for a revitalization of preaching, will be inspired by this provocative text.”

—RUTHANNA B. HOOKE, Professor of Homiletics, Virginia Theological Seminary

Living the Liturgy

Enlarging the Baptist Vision

Elizabeth Newman

Baptists have at times been tempted to dismiss liturgy as formulaic. Simply going through the motions or saying set phrases, they have rightly argued, does not necessarily lead to faithfulness. A disconnect between liturgical assemblies and lives of faithfulness, however, does not mean that all liturgy is merely rote. It means, rather, that false idolatrous liturgies have captured our imaginations. In fact, the very idea that liturgy pertains to a sphere separate from the rest of life is itself already a distorted liturgical conviction that is even now disfiguring the body of Christ.

ELIZABETH NEWMAN is Adjunct Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School and Union Presbyterian Seminary.

CONTENTS

Introduction

I Healing Liturgical Amnesia: Gathering as Christ’s Body

1 Baptism: The Substance and the Sign

2 Healing Eucharistic Amnesia

3 Practicing the Nicene Faith

ISBN: 978-1-4813-1978-2

$49.99 | Hardback

216 pages

6 x 9 September 1, 2024

“A wonderful gift, not only to Baptists, but to the church catholic and ecumenical. Newman links the historic liturgical practices of the church with both her own tradition and the many challenges that believers face in the contemporary world. At the same time profound and accessible, this book will be an invaluable teaching tool for congregations, colleges and universities, and seminaries.”

—BARRY HARVEY, Professor of Theology, Baylor University

Living the Liturgy argues that there is no sphere of life—political, economic, or otherwise—that is not already liturgical. So understood, liturgies inevitably form our understandings of nature, freedom, time, and much else. The key question is, “Which liturgy is in fact shaping our lives?” Elizabeth Newman argues that Baptists can expand their liturgical and theological vision by locating themselves more fully within the whole church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

Far from entailing a loss of Baptist identity, genuine ecumenism enhances Christian self-understanding, whatever one’s tradition. Ecumenism is an exchange of gifts. A faithful gift exchange—whether giving or receiving—builds communion, illuminating rather than obfuscating Baptist and other Christian identities, enabling us to live and witness more fully for the life of the world. Living the Liturgy displays in particular ways and through specific examples how an ecumenically informed understanding of liturgy can cultivate an enriched Baptist self-understanding and witness in a late modern context.

4 The Liturgy Is Political Action

II Cultivating Life Together: A Communion that Radiates

5 The Priesthood of All Believers: On Sharing What We Have Received

6 The Communion of Saints: Lottie Moon and Teresa of Ávila

7 Living the Liturgy: Dwelling with Mary in Real Time

III Bearing Witness: The Church for the World

8 “Let All Things Their Creator Bless”

9 Samuel Sharpe: On Finding a Freedom Not Our Own

10 Baptist Catholicity: Being Christ’s Broken Body for the World

“Stanley Hauerwas has consistently reminded us that we can only act in the world we can see, and we can only come to see what we can say. In this wonderful book, Elizabeth Newman helps us to understand that we cannot see and act in the world as Christians because many of our baptistic free churches have subjected us to liturgical amnesia so that we have forgotten the world as it really is—God’s good creation, redeemed and reconciled in Jesus Christ. Newman shows us how Baptists, by the nourishing and flourishing of a liturgical practice that draws from the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, can be a visible expression of the body of Christ in the world today.”

CURTIS W. FREEMAN, Research Professor of Theology and Ruth D. Duncan Director of the Baptist House of Studies, Duke Divinity School

“The trajectory in Baptist theological scholarship sometimes described as ‘Baptist catholicity’ has not previously produced a book-length exploration of the potential of liturgy to form Baptist communities for practices of life together and witness to the world. Living the Liturgy fills that gap by proposing more intentional practices of liturgical formation by local Baptist congregations and envisioning how they might help Baptists participate more fully in the divine work of healing all creation.”

—STEVEN R. HARMON, Professor of Historical Theology, Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity

John Clifford and Radical Nonconformity 1836 – 1923

Michael R. Watts

edited by Joel C. Gregory and David W. Bebbington

John Clifford forged his way as a pastor, national leader, evangelist, and social activist. His adoption of Christian socialism and his involvement in the Downgrade controversy became landmarks during his career. Watts advances an account of Clifford’s public life from 1858 to 1923, analyzes key works from 1870 to 1883, and surveys the history of Watts’ church from 1886 until his death. The resulting work is a comprehensive and fresh recounting of the life of one of the most influential Baptist preachers in the denomination’s history.

“With careful analysis of Clifford’s liberal spirit, socialist sympathies, and confidence in the establishing of the Kingdom of God, the author enables the reader to appreciate what ‘radical’ nonconformity meant at a time when it had political force in the life of the British nation.”

—PAUL S. FIDDES, FBA, Professor of Systematic Theology, and Principal Emeritus & Senior Research Fellow, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford

MICHAEL R. WATTS (1936–2011) was Reader in Modern History at Nottingham University until he retired in 1998. He was most well known for his work studying Christian dissenting movements, particularly from the Reformation to the present era.

JOEL C. GREGORY is Emeritus Professor of Preaching and held the George W. Truett Endowed Chair in Preaching and Evangelism at George W. Truett Theological Seminary.

DAVID BEBBINGTON is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Stirling in Scotland.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2197-6 / $69.99 / Paperback / 365 pages / 6 x 9 / November 15, 2024

Good News for the World

Baptist World Alliance Resolutions and Statements, 1905–2023

edited

by

Lee B. Spitzer

preface by Elijah M. Brown

Since 1905, the Baptist World Alliance has served as a prophetic witness for Jesus Christ on behalf of the global Baptist family. At its World Congress, General Council, and Executive Committee meetings, over four hundred resolutions and statements have been adopted, expressing God’s love, compassion, and justice. The BWA has the support of 241 member bodies located in 126 countries and territories, representing 47 million people. Good News for the World is an encyclopedic reference work presenting the BWA’s resolutions in one volume for the first time. The range of critical issues covered by this collection is comprehensive, and many of the resolutions speak to contemporary concerns with multicultural wisdom, spiritual integrity, and intellectual depth. Readers seeking to discover how Baptists on a global scale and across time have addressed the human condition in its various dimensions (moral, social, economic, political, and religious), will be inspired by these declarations. This volume is an indispensable resource for the global Baptist movement and its scholars, historians, leaders, and clergy.

“Lee Spitzer has done the world a service by compiling this encyclopedia of BWA resolutions and statements. Though not binding, these statements demonstrate the spirit of global Baptists on a number of social and religious topics in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Thoroughly indexed and comprehensive, this resource is a must-have for any scholar of Baptist history.”

—MELODY MAXWELL, Associate Professor of Christian History and Director, Acadia Centre for Baptist and Anabaptist Studies, Acadia Divinity College

LEE B. SPITZER is Historian for the Baptist World Alliance. He is also Program Director for the Baptist Leadership Certificate Program and an Affiliate Professor of Church History at Northern Seminary.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-1834-1 / $49.99 / Paperback / 796 pages / 6 x 9 / December 15, 2024

DAVID W. BEBBINGTON is

Emeritus

Professor of History at the University of Stirling in Scotland.

CONTENTS

Foreword by David W. Bebbington

Introduction: Writing Evangelical History, by John Maiden

I Themes and Topics

1 Remembering Revival: Evangelical Historians and the Great Awakening

Ian Hugh Clary

2 Eschatology in Evangelical Historiography: Or, Whatever Happened to J. N. Darby?

Crawford Gribben

3 Historians on Gospel Women: The Female Part in Anglo-American Evangelical Foreign Missions

Anneke H. Stasson

4 The Redemptive Power of the Word: The Study of African American Uses of the Bible Mark A. Noll

5 One Pilgrim’s Regress: British and American Evangelicals’ Disparate Responses to C. S. Lewis

Stephanie L. Derrick

II Countries and Denominations

6 Memoirs, Manuscripts, and Manipulations: Anglican Evangelicals from Charles Simeon to the Global South Andrew Atherstone

7 Our Heritage: Plymouth Brethren Historiography Neil Dickson

8 Welsh Evangelical Historiography

David Ceri Jones

9 Purpose and Definition in British Evangelical Historiography

Mark Smith

10 No Time Like the Present: Writing the Past in Australian Evangelical Dissent

Kerrie Handasyde

Afterword by John Maiden

The Gospel in the Past

Essays on the Historiography of the Evangelical Movement

edited by David W. Bebbington

From the dawn of their movement in the eighteenth century, evangelicals composed narratives of the revivals that were drawing in large numbers of new converts. As evangelicals continued to write about the achievements of their heroes at home and abroad, tensions between their theological purposes and the historical nature of their writings began to emerge, particularly as history developed into a professional academic discipline. Words praising the Lord’s doings in the past might seem out of place in scholarly discourse. Non-evangelicals, recognizing the importance of the movement, added to the problem by discussing it without reference to divine involvement. Theology and history found themselves opposed to one another in accounts of the evangelical past. Was the evangelical movement to be seen as an expression of divine activity or of human culture? If it was to be seen as both, how was its Christian content related to its contexts?

The Gospel in the Past brings together eleven scholars of evangelical theology and history seeking to answer questions such as these within evangelical historiography. Part 1 focuses on the historiography of selected evangelical themes and topics, such as eschatology, evangelical women, and responses to C. S. Lewis. Part 2 focuses on evangelical historiography within particular countries, such as Wales and Australia, and within particular denominations, such as Anglicanism.

Each of the essays touches to a greater or lesser extent on the contrast between traditional evangelical approaches to history and more recent ones shaped by the expectations of the academy. Engaging both sides of this lively divide, The Gospel in the Past is an accessible guide to the historiography of the evangelical movement with a focus on analyzing and beginning to resolve some of the tensions within the discipline.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2139-6

$54.99 | Paperback

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2262-1

$64.99 | Hardback

310 pages 6 x 9

April 15, 2025

“This first-rate collection of up-to-date essays on the historiography of Anglophone evangelicals deserves close attention. It offers careful analysis of the ways in which historians have researched and written about modern evangelicals of several different sorts (male and female, black and white, from several parts of the world). This is not your father’s volume of historiographical essays. It blazes new trails and points a way to the future of such scholarship.”

—DOUGLAS A. SWEENEY, Dean and Professor of Divinity, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University

Daniel Reconstructed

Reading, Teaching, and Preaching with Fresh Eyes

Jonathan D. Redding

Thanks to an excessive reliance on long-standing Western interpretations, American Christians rarely preach and teach Daniel. When they do, the book is reduced to trite moral proverbs or gloom-and-doom, end-of-the-world scenarios. Dominant approaches make Daniel an eschatological and apocalyptic proof-text, designed to foreshadow Christ’s prophetic fulfillment. Such readings are dangerous, as they veer too close to supersessionist replacement theology than most Christians admit.

JONATHAN D. REDDING is Associate Professor of Religion at Nebraska Wesleyan University.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Reading Daniel Anew

1 Daniel 1 Reconsidered

2 Daniel 2 Reconsidered

3 Daniel 3 Reconsidered

4 Daniel 4 Reconsidered

5 Daniel 5 Reconsidered

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2015-3

$42.99 | Paperback

272 pages

6 x 9

3 b&w photos

August 1, 2024

“Daniel Reconstructed offers an accessible guide to one of the most obscure books in the Hebrew Bible. With a drive to deconstruct dominant Christian-centered readings, Redding offers insightful theological comments on prayer, human autonomy, or divine sovereignty. The end result is a rich exegesis of the biblical text with thoughtful critiques of the history of its reception.”

For this reason, Daniel Reconstructed reads Daniel from a Christian perspective beyond the sole purpose of perpetuating previous Christian interpretations. It takes a deconstructive approach and offers new pathways for interpretation through a new translation and chapter-by-chapter reading. Jonathan Redding reads Daniel anew to help Christian audiences reconsider how Daniel functions, prompting them to grapple with the question of what Scripture is and can be for modern Christ followers. Christians too often make themselves the victors in Daniel’s stories and visions. Such an approach begs the question, What if Daniel does the opposite and presents a mirror before the reader, entreating us to ask if we see the truth about who we are instead of how we imagine ourselves to be?

Daniel Reconstructed invites us into the conversation as it engages mainstream interpretations of Daniel to read against that grain, specifically as it pertains to Christian understandings of divine sovereignty. Many readings of Daniel operate under an unquestioning certainty around God’s actions and choices. Seeing Daniel anew with reconsiderations toward accepted notions of divine sovereignty has far-reaching significance for biblical studies, theology, and how Christians perceive God’s working in the world.

6 Daniel 6 Reconsidered

7 Daniel 7 Reconsidered

8 Daniel 8 Reconsidered

9 Daniel 9 Reconsidered

10 Daniel 10 Reconsidered

11 Daniel 11 Reconsidered

12 Daniel 12 Reconsidered

Conclusion: What’s Next?

“You will never read Daniel the same again after reading Daniel Reconstructed. This book will challenge your preconceptions of what Daniel is about and take you on a journey of exploring new possibilities. Redding’s close attention not only to the text of Daniel and the history behind it, but also to its messy reception in Christian history, makes Daniel Reconstructed an insightful, provocative, and incisive book.”

—EKAPUTRA TUPAMAHU, Associate Professor of New Testament, Portland Seminary

—LUIS MENÉNDEZ-ANTUÑA, Assistant Professor of New Testament, Boston

University School of Theology

“This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to push beyond simplistic readings of the book of Daniel. Jonathan D. Redding offers an analysis informed by Daniel’s cultural context and modern theories of deconstruction, class, and empire, ultimately complicating claims that Daniel is about the end times, God’s greater plan, resistance against oppression, the virtue of faith, or any other single and overly pat theme. Dr. Redding’s book also offers a cogent and passionate critique of the Christianization of Daniel by scholars, reminding readers not to unmoor the book from its Second Temple period Jewish roots by reading Jesus into it.”

—CARYN TAMBER-ROSENAU, Director, Jewish Studies Program, University of Houston

R. J. BALFOUR is Lecturer in Old Testament at London School of Theology.

Divine Rejection

Explorations in the Biblical Portrayals of Esau and King Saul EXPLORATIONS IN THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION SERIES

CONTENTS

Introduction

I The Rejection of Esau

1 Esau and John Calvin

2 Esau and Jon D. Levenson

3 Esau in Genesis

4 Esau in Retrospect

II The Rejection of Saul

5 Saul and Karl Barth

6 Saul and Tragedy

7 Saul in 1 Samuel

8 Saul in Retrospect

Conclusion

R.J. Balfour

Among the most enigmatic passages in the Bible are those featuring God’s election of some and rejection of others. While many interpreters appeal to mystery or divine sovereignty as solutions to these difficult passages, intensive evaluation and sustained reflection on these passages and their implications can benefit both the church and the academy. In Divine Rejection, R. J. Balfour provides such evaluation and reflection on the notion of divine rejection in Christian theology through close readings of two paradigmatic biblical accounts of divine rejection, namely, the narratives of Esau and Saul.

“The best interpretations depend on fine distinctions. In this carefully argued volume, Balfour shows himself capable of the finest of distinctions on the way to offering a profound, even moving interpretation of ‘the central mystery of divine rejection’ as presented in the rejection—if that is, at the end of the day, an apt descriptor—of Esau and Saul. Balfour brilliantly describes a ‘surplus of intricacy’ in these accounts and, in dialogue with interlocutors like Calvin, Barth, and Levenson (among others), investigates the ambiguity and responsivity that press against ‘arbitrary divine decision making and bare determinism’ in these deeply important and yet deeply vexing stories. A most helpful treatment.”

—BRENT A. STRAWN, D. Moody Smith

Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and Professor of Law, Duke University

Balfour contributes to the scholarly understanding of these narratives in their received form while providing extensive Christian theological reflection on the notion of divine rejection. Balfour’s reading is carried out in conversation with significant historic and contemporary interpreters in order to exemplify what sustained theological interpretation might look like. By adopting this structure, Balfour seeks to model a retrieval of historic theological interpretations that is sensitive to the concerns and interests of the contemporary academy.

Balfour ultimately argues that these two narratives display differing accounts of divine decision-making. In the narrative of Saul’s rejection, YHWH rejects Saul in an explicit fashion in response to his actions. By contrast, the grammatical ambiguity of the oracle at the outset of the Esau narrative (Gen 25:23), combined with the inversion of roles in the narrative’s climax (Gen 32–33), prevents the reader from drawing strong conclusions as to the terms and nature of Esau’s rejection. The book concludes with a series of reflections on how both aspects of divine decision-making have been incorporated into a Christian doctrine of election and how they might stimulate fresh Christian theological reflection on this important doctrine.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2051-1

$69.99 | Hardback

288 pages

6 x 9

August 15, 2024

“One of the most hopeful developments in Christian reading of Scripture in recent decades has been the steady stream of scholars mentored by Walter Moberly—among whom R. J. Balfour now must receive an eminent place. With profundity and serenity, Balfour dives into one of the most vexed domains of Christian theology: the issue of reprobation, and thus predestination as well. Alert to Calvin’s and Barth’s exegesis as well as to recent Old Testament scholarship and contemporary theology, he demonstrates that careful reading of the stories of Esau and Saul can provide crucial guiderails and cautions for all who wish to speak rightly about this issue. A brilliant book, shimmering with exegetical and theological insight.”

—MATTHEW LEVERING, James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary

“Balfour offers an impressive example of theologically focused exegesis and a sustained meditation on the mystery of divine favor. He stresses how the biblical narratives of Esau and Saul testify to this mystery even as they steadily insist on human responsibility and divine responsiveness. His readings of the biblical narratives provide rich insights and his engagements with key interpreters (e.g., Barth, Calvin, Levenson) yield methodological and conceptual refinements. This is thoughtful, stimulating work at the intersection of biblical interpretation and Christian doctrine.”

STEPHEN B. CHAPMAN, Associate Professor of Old Testament, Duke University

The Prophet’s Anthem

The Song of Deborah and Barak in the Narrative of Judges

Michelle

Knight

Within the chaotic world narrated in the book of Judges, the prophet Deborah spoke under the authority of Israel’s God, interpreting an important battle and calling fellow Israelites to faithfulness. The Song of Deborah is a remarkable and challenging text, given its rare vocabulary, unique poetic structure, and opaque compositional history.

Even more noteworthy is its placement within the narrative of the book of Judges. In light of studies that demonstrate the interpretive significance of songs embedded in narratives, the inclusion of Deborah’s song within Judges suggests it serves a strategic function within that larger literary complex.

MICHELLE KNIGHT is Associate Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1 Judges 5 in Form and Content

2 Judges 5 in Its Narrative Cycle

3 Characterization in the Song and the Savior Stories

4 Plot and Themes in the Song and the Savior Stories

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2159-4

$64.99 | Hardback

206 pages

6 x 9

November 1, 2024

In The Prophet’s Anthem, Michelle Knight explores the effect of Deborah’s song being included at this juncture of one of the most fascinating and troubling narratives in the canon. While many previous analyses of Deborah’s song focus primarily on its immediate context—Judges 4—Knight uses a literary approach that attends to the song’s effect on the entire narrative. The song’s prophetic association underscores the importance of knowledge and revelation in the book of Judges, especially for a generation who “knew neither YHWH nor the deeds he had done for Israel” (2:10).

Drawing on over a century’s worth of concentrated critical research on the song, The Prophet’s Anthem combines poetic analysis and narrative criticism to yield fresh thematic and structural insights for reading the entire Judges narrative. With their attention keenly trained on Deborah’s words, readers will be better equipped to hear the book of Judges in a new register

“The Prophet’s Anthem represents careful exegesis, thorough research, and theological insight at its best. Exploring one of the most exciting songs in Scripture and how it functions within the larger narrative of the book, Michelle Knight navigates the wealth of scholarship on Judges and also pushes it forward. Scholars and serious students alike will be ‘most blessed’ by this masterful contribution to scholarship on Judges.”

—ELIZABETH BACKFISH, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible, Jessup University

5 The Narrative Function of the Song of Deborah and Barak in the Book of Judges

Appendix: Lexical and Text Critical Analysis

“The Prophet’s Anthem is a judicious close reading of Judges that emphasizes the rhetorical and theological role of Judges 5 as an inset song. Michelle Knight successfully and winsomely argues that Judges 5 closes the second phase of YHWH’s salvific work in Judges. This bold assertion challenges the scholarly consensus that each judge’s cycle shows Israel’s progressive decline and makes The Prophet’s Anthem a must read for scholars and students of the book of Judges.”

JILLIAN L. ROSS, Associate Professor of Biblical Studies, Liberty University

PHILIP S. THOMAS is Theology Training Coordinator at the George Müller Charitable Trust. He is also the author of In a Vision of the Night: Job, Cormac McCarthy, and the Challenge of Chaos

CONTENTS

Introduction: Received Wisdom—Artistic Echoes and Afterlives

1 The Tree of Life: Terrence Malick’s Journey into Job

2 A Serious Man: The Coens’ Invitation to Interpretation

3 Joni Mitchell’s “The Sire of Sorrow” (“Job’s Sad Song”): Wielding the Words of Woe

4 Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Job: A Masque for Dancing: Following in the Footsteps of Elihu

5 Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: Apprehension of God’s Presence in Absent Creation

6 Imre Kertész’ Fateless: Form, Freedom, Fate, and Finishing Afterword: The Reception of Hope

“Hope for a Tree explores six specific examples of the ‘shoots’ or ‘afterlives’ of the book of Job in cinema, music, and literature. In this exploration, Philip S. Thomas demonstrates a faithful and sophisticated reading of the book of Job as he puts it in conversation with these particular artistic interpretations. This study of Job will be an invaluable resource to all who are interested in this endlessly fascinating biblical book, the questions it raises, and the echoes it has inspired in countless works through the centuries. This is a fine contribution to the growing scholarly field of reception history of the Bible.”

—KATHRYN SCHIFFERDECKER, Professor and Elva B. Lovell Chair of Old Testament, Luther Seminary

Hope for a Tree

Artistic Afterlives of Job

Philip S. Thomas

There is a complex relationship between the meaning of Scripture and the ways it is used. Sometimes the meaning constrains Scripture’s use, and sometimes Scripture’s use casts new and fresh light onto its meaning. Theologians and biblical scholars offer helpful lenses through which to view its wonder, but so too do artists.

For centuries, the book of Job has been used to explore and interrogate the mystery of human life by artists both inside and outside of the faith. The book conveys a world that has been entered into by artists of all kinds—painters and poets, filmmakers and dancers, singers and composers, playwrights, sculptors, and authors—and their explorations of both the person and the text of Job have yielded artistic works that, in their turn, have shaped the expectations of subsequent readers. This is the afterlife of Job in human culture. Rather than seeking to excise this afterlife or shear away its various accumulations, Hope for a Tree seeks to reflect on and engage with them in order to embellish and illuminate the text’s meaning in new and fruitful ways as much as any learned commentary.

Philip S. Thomas brings six of these afterlives—two films, two pieces of music, and two works of literature—into dialogue with the book of Job to draw out some of their insights and the challenges they offer contemporary interpreters. These works of art are used to show how the book of Job continues to be found both useful and meaningful in the modern age. In Hope for a Tree, Thomas offers a theological rationale for the inclusion of such works into the interpretative remit and opens up the possibility of an ongoing conversation with other works that might continue to ornament and elucidate this ancient text as the Living God continues to speak through it.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2108-2

$52.99 | Hardback

200 pages

5.5 x 8.5

July 15, 2024

“In this profound book on six ‘afterlives’ of Job, Philip S. Thomas introduces us to works that are ‘tonally Joban,’ inspired by characters or themes in the biblical book of Job. From films, to music, to novels, we read Job afresh through the lens of new and invigorating interpretations that highlight the complexity of Job. This is both Job the sufferer, wrestling with the pain of his physical and mental despair and lack of understanding, and the book that defies structural logic and yet offers us a tantalizing glimpse into possible answers to insoluble questions as raised by every generation of suffering humanity.”

—KATHARINE J. DELL, Professor

of Old Testament Literature and Theology in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge

“Commentators and preachers may tend to look to the arts merely for inspiration and illustration, but Philip S. Thomas’ Hope for a Tree shows that music, fiction, and film can also serve the Spirit’s work of illumination. Readers will thus find Job lit up for them in new ways, and in the process also find themselves equipped to engage music, cinema, and literature more redemptively and responsibly. What’s more, this is a thoroughly enjoyable reflection on profound works of art. It helped me better appreciate the pieces that were familiar, and it moved me to discover others. It is wonderful to think of biblical texts having afterlives in art, and Thomas shows this to be an especially poignant way of ‘keeping company with Job.’”

JON COUTTS, Associate Professor of Christian Theology, Ambrose University

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2104-4

$69.99 | Hardback

278 pages

6 x 9

August 1, 2024

“Though tightly focused on the issue of Paul’s pneumatological discourse and ecclesial unity, there is much in this volume to rethink wider and central debates relating to Pauline theology. This is an important contribution to recent discussions concerning Pauline pneumatology, ecclesiology, and more besides.”

—CHRIS TILLING, Head of Research and Senior Lecturer in New Testament, St Mellitus College

One Spirit

Pneumatology and Unity in the Corinthian Letters

Kris Song

Many of the prevailing scholarly positions in Pauline studies have focused on the ethnicity of Jews and Gentiles as the dividing obstacle towards unity. Proposed solutions to this dichotomy seem to raise more questions than answers. Does the Holy Spirit transform new communities in Christ into a transcendent “third race” (as has been argued from some new perspective scholarship)? Does Paul regard the Spirit as providing a distinct genealogical basis for Gentiles to become recognized as children of Abraham (as argued by some Paul-within-Judaism-scholars)?

One Spirit examines the ways in which Paul understands how the Holy Spirit establishes unity among the various groups of believers he sought to bring together. Kris Song recasts Paul’s unitive dimensions of the Spirit in terms that join Jewish and Gentile differences around the valence of cultic expression and temple worship. Ultimately, Paul regards the Spirit as establishing a new cultic space around the person of Christ such that Jewish and Gentile believers are permitted to retain important differences yet join together in common worship of the same Lord.

Rooted in an extensive background study clarifying the uses of pneuma and its function in Pauline thought, and elaborating Pauline pneumatology in the context of the Corinthian correspondence (away from the dominance of recent discussion around Romans and Galatians), One Spirit occupies a unique space from which to re-enter and improve some of the more dominant paradigms in Pauline theology. In rendering a community of Pauline churches that struggled to accommodate both Jewish and Gentile customs of worship, this study further critiques comparatively simplistic supersessionist readings concerning Paul’s view of Israel. In an age where the Spirit is ironically the subject of significant disunity among churches, One Spirit provides fresh insight into the shape and manner of the unity of the Spirit that Paul intended to promote.

KRIS SONG is an adjunct professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary and previously at Talbot School of Theology.

CONTENTS

1 Introduction

2 Jewish Background Material for One Spirit

3 Stoic and Greco-Roman Background Material for One Spirit

4 Christ, the Spirit, and God’s Temple

5 One Spirit among Israel and God’s Churches

6 One Spirit in Pauline Studies

7 Conclusions

“‘For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,’ Paul says to the church at Corinth. But how does he understand the Spirit establishing unity amid the diversity composed of Jew and Gentile? In One Spirit, Kris Song suggests that this unity occurs within a ‘cultic space around the person of Christ’ which allows Jew and Gentile to flourish together—as Jew and Gentile. Drawing on insights from spatial theory, Song’s articulation of the pneuma discourse is both an incisive contribution to Pauline pneumatology as well as a refreshing picture of unity that our world—and the church—so desperately needs.”

“This superb book is a sophisticated, impressively wide ranging, and original contribution to New Testament studies, and Pauline studies in particular. This is no minor accomplishment in such a congested domain of research. But this book is more. Besides exhibiting extraordinary command of the total scope of relevant ancient data, it also provides imaginative analytic resources for theologians working in more systematic modes. In disciplines so often bifurcated, this book is a model of intellectual creativity—and an enticement for theologians to engage New Testament scholarship (and the ancient world more broadly) with much greater seriousness.”

T.J. LANG, Senior Lecturer in New Testament, University of St Andrews

—JEANNINE

HANGER, Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University

THOMAS P. DIXON is Associate Professor of New Testament at Campbell University.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Perfections of Judgment?

1 God’s Wrath and Mercy in the History of Interpretation: A Taxonomy

2 Provisional Wrath: An Overlooked Feature in Israel’s Scriptures

3 Wrath and Mercy for Israel: Romans 9-11

4 Wrath Elsewhere in Paul: Widening the Scope

Conclusion: Judgment, Mercy, and Pauline Theology

“How to understand wrath in Paul? And how does wrath relate to divine mercy? These are important questions, and Dixon makes some valuable contributions to this emerging discussion. Thomas P. Dixon provides a taxonomy of perspectives, a history of reception, and an analysis of the relationship between wrath and mercy in Paul’s Greco-Roman and Jewish ‘cultural encyclopedia.’ This provides him with a plausibility framework for his exegetical observations of Pauline instances of wrath language, with a special focus on Romans 9-11. He argues that God’s wrath, in Paul, is temporary and consonant with divine mercy and benevolence.”

—CHRIS TILLING, Head of Research and Senior Lecturer in New Testament, St Mellitus College

Paul and the Wrath

Divine Judgment and Mercy for Israel in Romans 9–11

Thomas P. Dixon

Romans 9-11 is one of the most controversial passages in Paul’s corpus. Efforts to reconcile chapter 9 with chapter 11 are disparate, and the dearth of scholarly interest in the subject of wrath often perpetuates the Marcionite premise that wrath precludes mercy, a false antithesis that was foreign to Paul and especially skews interpretation of Romans. This presumed opposition leads scholars to find dithering dialectic, incompatible covenants, two Israels, or contradictory fantasy in Romans 9-11. How can a passage at the heart of the apostle’s greatest letter have become so muddled?

To help clear the fog, Paul and the Wrath replaces the simplistic wrath-mercy binary with a thicker, overlooked, and distinctly Jewish lens of remedial wrath, clarifying Paul’s argument that God judges Israel in order to save Israel. To configure this lens properly, Thomas Dixon outlines a taxonomy of views on divine wrath and mercy around four ancient, representative interpreters, then surveys philosophies of wrath in Greco-Roman literature before examining a swathe of images in biblical and extrabiblical Jewish texts in which judgment advances mercy. The frequency of such imagery in these Jewish sources establishes a plausibility structure for finding similar theology in Paul, which leads Dixon to a new evaluation of Paul’s argumentative logic in Romans 9-11 and elsewhere.

This Jewish theology of judgment provides a wider window that can shed light on— and help resolve—a persistent division in Pauline scholarship over the apostle’s understanding of mercy, works, and atonement. Paul and the Wrath offers clarity in a clouded arena of Pauline theology in order to foster more faithful reading of both Paul and Scripture as a whole.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2135-8

$64.99 | Hardback

288 pages 6 x 9

September 1, 2024

“In this well-researched study, Thomas P. Dixon takes up a crucial but long-neglected question in New Testament Studies: the character and scope of God’s wrath in Pauline theology. Situating his project in dialogue with ancient as well as contemporary interpreters of Paul, Dixon succeeds in showing that for Paul and his scriptural predecessors, wrath and judgment are often not the antithesis of mercy but rather the very means by which God graciously redeems his people.”

—J. ROSS WAGNER

, Associate Professor of New Testament, Duke Divinity School

“I do not enjoy thinking about wrath, least of all God’s wrath. But someone has to do it—if only because the biblical authors wrote so much about it—and Thomas P. Dixon has done it in this profound and readable book. In dialogue with theological minds from Origen to Abraham Joshua Heschel, Dixon reads Paul’s Letter to the Romans as a story of God’s temporary wrath leading ultimately to mercy.”

MATTHEW V. NOVENSON, Helen H.P. Manson Professor of New Testament, Princeton Theological Seminary

The Last Will Be First

Divine Judgment in the Gospel of Mark M. John-Patrick O’Connor

To contemporary sensibilities, the idea of divine judgment can seem at best off-putting, at worst a reason to jettison the biblical text altogether. Long gone are the days of Puritan preachers and their fiery, turn-or-burn tirades—but should preachers and teachers wholly avoid the topic of divine judgment? In the words of Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov, “What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured?” Or, as Mary Ann Tolbert asks, “What happens when the text is read, not by the marginalized but by the oppressor, not by the colonized, but by the colonizer?”

M. JOHN-PATRICK O’CONNOR is Associate Professor of New Testament at Northwest University.

CONTENTS

Introduction: The Use and Abuse of Divine Judgment

1 Divine Judgment in the Hebrew Bible

2 Divine Judgment in Early Apocalyptic Literature

3 Divine Judgment in the Early Roman Empire

ISBN: 978-1-4813-1999-7

$64.99 | Hardback

256 pages

5.5 x 8.5

July 15, 2024

“Whatever happened to divine judgment? Either absent from Christian theology and proclamation, or weaponized to condemn those not like ‘us,’ divine judgment as it appears in church and society today bears little resemblance to its contours in the Bible. It is more often invoked to harm the vulnerable than to protect them. O’Connor is a learned and passionate guide, drawing us back into the gospel of Mark, where divine judgment is deployed to defend the most vulnerable, ‘the least of these.’ O’Connor’s argument is convincing and convicting.”

—JACQUELINE E. LAPSLEY, President and Professor of Old Testament, Union Presbyterian Seminary

Rather than continue to neglect the theme of God’s judgment for a modern world, M. John-Patrick O’Connor suggests that Christian communities ought to improve upon their “grammar of judgment” by judiciously evaluating the “who,” the “what,” and the “why” of God’s judgment and by considering the historic use and abuse of such language. O’Connor’s journey toward better theologies of judgment begins with the Gospel of Mark. While readers of Scripture most frequently associate divine judgment in the New Testament with Matthew, Luke, or Paul, The Last Will Be First claims that Mark’s Gospel offers an equally robust vision of God’s judgment upon evil and, crucially, God’s justice for the “least of these.”

After cataloging the range of divine judgment language in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism, O’Connor turns to the second Gospel, proposing that God’s judgment as portrayed in Mark is for the purpose of defending God’s children. O’Connor demonstrates that Mark participates in a well-established “grammar of judgment” that can be dispensed in a variety of contexts while retaining God’s role as the primary agent of judgment. To that end, this book also hopes to build a constructive theology of judgment for readers of Mark, with a hopeful vision for the gospel’s ongoing relevance in a world still marked by oppression.

4 The Nature of Judgment in Mark

5 The Rhetoric of Divine Judgment in Mark

Conclusion: The Mikra of Mark

“Thinking about questions of divine judgment may not lead one immediately to the Gospel of Mark for help, but John-Patrick O’Connor shows why it should. Situating Mark in its social, historical, and theological contexts, O’Connor illustrates that God’s judgment on behalf of the vulnerable is an essential and pervasive claim to be reckoned with by all who are interested in whom, and for whom, God judges.”

—LAURA SWEAT HOLMES, Professor of New Testament, Wesley Theological Seminary

“The Bible’s language of judgment is uncomfortable for many readers, and many who do not find it uncomfortable abuse it relentlessly. O’Connor exposes both temptations as he explores notions of judgment in the Gospel of Mark on behalf of the world’s ‘least.’ An impassioned contribution to the field.”

—BEVERLY ROBERTS GAVENTA, Helen H.P. Manson Professor of New Testament Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary

AYMAN S. IBRAHIM is the Bill and Connie Jenkins Professor of Islamic Studies and director of the Jenkins Center for the Christian Understanding of Islam at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

CLINT HACKENBURG (PhD, Ohio State) is an independent scholar of medieval Arabic literature, Islamic studies, Christian-Muslim relations, and Arabic-to-English translation.

CONTENTS

Editors’ Introduction

The Letter of Ibn al-Layth to the King of the Romans Foreword

Introduction

I Praise of Islam

II Refutation of Christianity

III An Invitation to Embrace Islam

“An excellent annotated translation with commentary of the oldest surviving Islamic apologetic text and polemic against Christianity. A superb research tool that will take the reader back to the medieval days.”

—JUAN PEDRO MONFERRER-SALA, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Córdoba

“A learned and valuable edition and translation that makes an important text in the history of the Christian-Muslim encounter easily accessible to a broad audience. Scholars and students will be grateful for this important contribution. Ibrahim and Hackenburg have done it again!”

—JACK TANNOUS, Associate Professor of History and Hellenic Studies and Chair of the Center for the Study of Late Antiquity, Princeton University

A Medieval Case for Islam’s Superiority

The Letter of Ibn al-Layth to the King of the Romans edited and translated by Ayman S. Ibrahim and Clint Hackenburg

In the last decade of the eighth century, the longtime caliphal secretary, Ibn al-Layth (d. ca. 819), composed a letter on behalf of the caliph Ha¯ru¯n al-Rash¯d (r. 786-809) to the Byzantine emperor Constantine VI (r. 780-797). This letter is now widely considered to be the oldest surviving apologetic defense of Islam and polemic against Christianity. Ibn al-Layth’s apology for Islam is representative of other early apologies and includes a sustained effort to defend Muhammad’s character and prophetic office, the oneness of God, and the inimitability of the Qur’a¯n. Ibn al-Layth uses natural phenomena, reason, miracles, and a variety of biblical proof texts to justify his positions.

Unsurprisingly, in his polemical attacks on Christianity Ibn al-Layth challenges the Trinity as well as the divinity of Jesus. What makes Ibn al-Layth’s work unique, however, is his use of the Old and New Testaments, which he utilizes in order to undermine Christian beliefs, defend God’s absolute oneness, and claim that the Bible predicts the coming of Muhammad. For these reasons, Ibn al-Layth’s letter is of inestimable importance to the study of early Islamic history and theology and Christian-Muslim relations.

A Medieval Case for Islam’s Superiority makes Ibn al-Layth’s letter accessible to a broader audience for the first time. Ayman S. Ibrahim and Clint Hackenburg provide an improved critical edition of the Arabic text that consults all six known manuscripts, its first complete English translation, and a comprehensive introduction to Ibn al-Layth’s life and work. The book also demonstrates how Ibn al-Layth’s letter has been used by later Muslim thinkers in their arguments for the superiority of Islam over Christianity, marking the significance of the letter in the study of the historical relationship between Islam and Christianity.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2200-3

$69.99 | Hardback

384 pages 6 x 9

January 15, 2025

“Ibn al-Layth’s letter is an important text for the study of Muslim-Christian relations. Ibrahim and Hackenburg, in their characteristic style, not only provide an authoritative Arabic edition and readable English translation but also offer a thorough introduction to the text that is meticulously resourced. Their work makes a significant contribution to the field.”

—CHARLES TIESZEN, FRHistS, Section Editor, Christian-Muslim Relations: 1500–1900 Project at the University of Birmingham

“This first critical edition of the letter of Ibn al-Layth to the king of the Romans is a welcome addition to the library of texts on Muslim responses to Christianity in the early Islamic Era, and provides English readers with access to the way Muslims began to critique Christian beliefs in the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity at the end of the eighth century. This letter also provides some of the earliest testimony to the Muslim argument that the scriptures of the Jews and Christians contain predictions of the coming of the Prophet Muhammad, and that, in particular, Jesus named him as the Paraclete in his farewell address to his disciples in the Gospel of John.”

—MARK BEAUMONT, Research Associate, London School of Theology

History of Early Christianity

Religion, Culture, Identity

Markus Öhler

translated by Jason Valdez

In this introductory textbook, leading New Testament scholar Markus Öhler offers a reconstruction of the beginnings of early Christianity from the events surrounding Jesus of Nazareth to the Bar-Kokhba uprising in the year 135, advancing a comprehensive picture of early Christianity that takes seriously the movement’s dynamics, developments, and contexts.

“Öhler has outstandingly succeeded in composing an account that will have an effect on New Testament studies far beyond the classroom.”

—EVE-MARIE BECKER, Professor of New Testament, University of Münster

“The work is historically grounded and rightfully cautious, integrating the best of recent scholarship with academic rigor and care, yet it reads smoothy in a way that will appeal to students and professors alike.”

—RICHARD ASCOUGH, Professor of Religion, Queen’s University

“A comprehensive and accessible guide to the fascinating beginning of one of the world’s most influential religions.”

CLARE K. ROTHSCHILD, Professor of Scripture Studies, Lewis University

MARKUS ÖHLER is Professor for New Testament Studies at the Faculty for Protestant Theology, University of Vienna, Austria.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-1395-7 / $49.99 / Paperback / 370 pages / 6 x 9 / April 1, 2025

Exploring Christian Heritage

A Reader in History and Theology Third Edition

edited by C. Douglas Weaver and Rady Roldán-Figueroa

Exploring Christian Heritage provides students and teachers with a rich and substantial introduction to the texts that have shaped the Christian faith. Including works by Augustine, Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Wesley, John Calvin, and Karl Barth, among others, this collection also highlights essential movements—from the second to the twenty-first centuries—often glossed over in primary source readers. From Pentecostalism and Baptists to feminism and religious liberty movements, Exploring Christian Heritage succinctly joins together the most influential voices of Christian history and theology with those that have been forgotten and sometimes ignored. Now in its third edition, voices ancient and modern, such as Timothy I of Baghdad, Margery Kempe, and Fannie Lou Hamer, have been added to deepen and widen the story of Christianity in varied forms.

PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS EDITIONS

“A remarkably interesting and engaging collection that demonstrates the height, width, and depth of the great Christian tradition. No doubt many young readers will find fresh conversation partners for their own journeys from among this amazing set of fellow sojourners.”

—THEOLOGICAL BOOK REVIEW

C. DOUGLAS WEAVER is Chair of the Department of Religion and Barbara Jo Beard Driskell Professor of Historical Studies at Baylor University.

RADY ROLDÁN-FIGUEROA is Professor of the History of Christianity in the School of Theology at Boston University.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2194-5 / $49.99 / Paperback / 343 pages / 6 x 9 / August 1, 2024

TYLER B. DAVIS is a Research Administrator, Adjunct Professor in the Mexican American Studies Program and Department of Theology, and Affiliate Faculty in the Center for Catholic Studies at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Stevie Walker-Webb Introduction by Tyler B. Davis

I Storm

1 LaRue Dorsey

2 Linda Jann Lewis

II Story

3 Michael D. Babers

4 Bettie V. Beard

5 Nona Kirkpatrick and Anthony Fulbright

III Spirit

6 Ramad D. Carter

7 George Oliver

8 Stevie Walker-Webb

Epilogue: The Spirit of the Whirlwind

“Tyler Davis’ God of the Whirlwind is an important book that recovers a nearly lost history of central Texas through the collecting and analysis of truly remarkable oral histories. Davis helps us understand how the Black community found a way to turn multiple forms of suffering into stories of survival and justice.”

WILLIAM D. CARRIGAN, Professor of History, Rowan University

God of the Whirlwind

Horror, Memory, and Story in Black Waco

edited by Tyler B. Davis

foreword by Stevie Walker-Webb photographs by Mark Menjívar

God of the Whirlwind is a book about the power of storytelling traditions to carry memories and shape ways of living. It assembles stories from members of the Black Waco community—stories that have been passed on and that have sustained life in Central Texas. In a region deeply shaped by racial injustice and the horrors of lynching, one such story tells of a destructive tornado as the justice of God. This story of the God of the whirlwind has served as one way of communicating the belief that justice is on the way. Based on oral history interviews collected and edited by Tyler B. Davis, God of the Whirlwind invites readers to listen deeply to community stories as they are shared and reflected upon across generations of Black Wacoans. The book asks readers to consider the resources for imagination and action these stories make available. In gathering the voices of Black Wacoans, God of the Whirlwind attends to the community that kept the whirlwind story, and many other stories, as part of the long struggle to imagine and build just ways of living in the region.

ISBN 978-1-4813-2256-0

$22.99 | Paperback 200 pages 5.5 x 8.5

February 15, 2025

“Tyler Davis offers a powerful collection of community stories that surface painful histories and highlight the work of memory in how Black Wacoans have made meaning of the racial violence of lynching and nature’s tornado wrath. The experiences, spiritual wisdom, and narratives of Black history and life in Waco recounted by the storytellers in God of the Whirlwind are unforgettable.”

—JUDITH WEISENFELD, Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion, Princeton University

Not My Best Side

Selected Poems

U. A. Fanthorpe

edited by John Greening preface by A. E. Stallings

The English poet U. A. Fanthorpe (1929–2009) liked to call herself “a middle-aged drop-out,” having abandoned a successful teaching career to focus on her poetry. This gave her a chance to study people, which is what her wonderful poems do best. Fanthorpe’s verse is instinctively English, often very moving, frequently funny, invariably rooted in her faith. Fanthorpe and her partner, Rosie Bailey, became Quakers in the 1980s. These poems touch on spiritual matters, dramatize Bible stories, and are underpinned by a profound moral sense. Despite Fanthorpe’s domestic success, her work is still largely unfamiliar beyond the UK. In this volume, Not My Best Side: Selected Poems, distinguished poet John Greening selects poems from across her books, adding an introduction and notes.

“U. A. Fanthorpe’s poems occupy a distinguished place in the pantheon of British poets whose work reconciles lucidity with mystery.”

—ANDREW MOTION, Homewood Professor of the Arts, Johns Hopkins University

“What joy to have Ursula Fanthorpe’s poetry available in the United States—finally!”

—DANA GIOIA

U. A. FANTHORPE (1929–2009) was a prolific English poet who produced nine fulllength collections of poetry. She was awarded a CBE in 2001 and the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in 2003. JOHN GREENING is a versatile scholar, critic, editor, playwright, and teacher. He has authored a half-dozen studies in British and Irish poetry and has also written, produced, and published a number of libretti and plays.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2146-4 / $18.99 / Paperback / 258 pages / 5.5 x 8.5 / 1 color illus. / October 1, 2024

At the Garden’s Dark Edge

Selected Poems Anthony Thwaite edited by Kevin J. Gardner preface by Michael Frayn

Anthony Thwaite (1930–2021) was one of the most formidable voices in postwar English letters. His voice was highly personal, cautiously intimate, and often witty, and he wrote with a gratifying clarity and freedom from abstraction, making him among the most accessible of modern poets. At the Garden’s Dark Edge is a collection of a hundred of Thwaite’s poems, exploring his major themes and recurring topics—among them, the consolations of domestic life, the pleasures of language and creativity, and the many humans and other animals in his life. This volume contains several poems that have never been reprinted or collected, and one that has never before been published. By making his work more accessible than ever before, At the Garden’s Dark Edge aims to introduce Anthony Thwaite to a new generation of readers and preserve his legacy for future generations.

“This rich collection of poems should delight anyone who appreciates language crafted to its best advantage.”

—JAMEELA LARES, Professor Emeritus of English, The University of Southern Mississippi

“This exemplary selection shows Thwaite at his artful best, as he travels widely in time and place while teasing out the continuities of human experience, ‘water under the bridge, still flowing on.’”

—BLAKE MORRISON, poet, novelist, and Emeritus Professor of Creative and Life Writing, Goldsmiths University, London

ANTHONY THWAITE (1930–2021) was a prolific postwar English poet and critic, widely known for his editing and commentary on the collected poems and letters of his friend Philip Larkin. KEVIN J. GARDNER is Professor of English at Baylor University, whose work focuses on eighteenth- and twentieth-century British literature.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2183-9 / $18.99 / Paperback / 180 pages / 5.5 x 8.5 / October 15, 2024

TERRY W. YORK retired as Professor of Christian Ministry and Church Music after twenty-five years on the faculty of Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. For eight of those years, he was dually appointed in the seminary and in Baylor’s School of Music. He earned the Bachelor of Arts degree from California Baptist College and the Master of Church Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

CONTENTS

Preface: On Biographies, and This One Introduction

1 Owning the Gift

2 WORD Music and Kurt Kaiser Music

3 Icon and Conscience of Contemporary Christian Music

4 Adopted Son of Waco and Baylor University

5 A Church Musician

Conclusion

Appendix: Kurt Kaiser Memorial Service Afterword

Kurt Kaiser

Icon and Conscience of Contemporary Christian Music

Terry W. York

At the age of four or five, a young boy made his way to the piano in his Chicago home and picked out a recognizable tune. His German-American parents sensed they had witnessed something special. They would embrace their son’s gift for music as God-given, and as a responsibility both for them and for him to steward.

Little did his parents know that Kurt Kaiser (1934–2018) would go on to become one of the most influential church musicians of the modern era. His musicianship, especially as a pianist, and his Christian commitment took him around the world, but never far from the church. When his talent took Kurt and his young family to Waco, Texas, he stepped onto his largest stage—WORD Music and the emerging Christian recording industry. A commanding presence in this arena, Kurt contributed to the shape and direction of what would become Contemporary Christian Music with songs such as “Pass It On” and “Oh, How He Loves You and Me,” which remain icons of a contemporary sound faithful to foundational biblical, ecclesial, and musical standards.

Faithfully recounting Kaiser’s story using recordings, documents from the musician’s personal office, interviews, letters, and unpublished sources, Terry W. York’s Kurt Kaiser: Icon and Conscience of Contemporary Christian Music traces how Kaiser’s name and music became markers in the history of church music.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-1672-9

$27.99 | Paperback

212 pages

6 x 9

20 b&w photos

July 1, 2024

“Kurt Kaiser: Icon and Conscience of Contemporary Christian Music is a welcome—and long overdue—addition to the scholarship of sacred music in the twentieth century. Kaiser’s towering influence on the music of the Church, not just CCM, is gracefully acknowledged and chronicled in his friend Terry W. York’s biography. Future music historians will note that this was only the first book to attempt to understand Kaiser’s genius.”

—ROBERT F. DARDEN, Emeritus Professor,

Baylor University

“For all who cherish sacred music in its various expressions, Terry W. York’s new book on the life and work of Kurt Kaiser is a gift and inspiration. Best known for his groundbreaking worship songs, ‘Oh, How He Loves You and Me’ and ‘Pass It On,’ and youth musicals ‘Tell It Like It Is’ and ‘Good News,’ Kaiser’s influence and contribution to the worship life of the Christian church are legendary. What I find most inspiring is York’s thoughtful exposition of Kurt Kaiser as the man behind the music. In Kaiser’s own words, ‘Look what God can do if we simply turn our gifts over to him.’”

ALLEN HIGHTOWER, D.M.A.

, Director of Choral Studies, University of North Texas

“Terry York, in his book, Kurt Kaiser: Icon and Conscience of Contemporary Christian Music, pulls back the veil to reveal an intimate and profound look at this musical giant. York’s exhaustive research and personal friendship with Kaiser, combined with his masterful storytelling skills provide a portrait of man who is humble, faithful to God’s call on his life and blessed with genius. York’s brilliant text is an important history of a man who changed the course of contemporary Christian music.”

—MARK HAYES, Composer, Arranger, Concert Pianist

Tales From Limerick Forest

David Lyle Jeffrey

Illustrated by Megan Major

At the meadowed edge of a marvelous forest from which, through a placid pond, flows a stream, curious animals and birds discover together some of the delights of creation. These animals, all distinct in personality, enjoy a lively community, and in their conversations they reflect on the mysteries and meaning of the wonderful environment in which they live. Young readers (and their parents and grandparents too) will meet, among others, a brave and handsome white-tailed buck and his family, a law society of owls who reflect on nature’s harmonious order, a philosophical bachelor raven with a sense of humor, some frolicsome otters learning to sing, and a poetic porcupine who composes limericks to commemorate everyone’s adventures. This beautifully illustrated collection of stories celebrates the joy of shared life in a still green and lovely land which, though challenges arise and the cycles of life are realistically represented, encourages a happy appreciation of the natural world.

“Reminiscent of Aesop’s Fables and Thornton W. Burgess’ Bedtime Stories, these stories offer wisdom and whimsy in their own unique way—a tribute to David Lyle Jeffrey’s large and warm imagination.”

MICHAEL D. O’BRIEN, author of Father Elijah and A Landscape with Dragons

DAVID LYLE JEFFREY is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities at Baylor University. Jeffrey earned his PhD from Princeton University and is also the author or editor of many books, including We Were a Peculiar People Once MEGAN MAJOR is a versatile artist whose work has garnered increasing attention and admiration both in Texas and beyond. She is also the director of the 219 Artisan Market and gallery in Clifton, Texas.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2152-5 / $22.99 / Paperback / 108 pages / 8.5 x 11 / full color interior / July 1, 2024

New Testament Letters for Living

Daily Prayers, Wisdom, and Guidance

Mark Lanier

A trial lawyer by trade, a Christian by heart—author Mark Lanier has trained in biblical languages and devoted his life to studying and living the Bible. Living daily with the tension between the demands of his career and the desire for a godly life, Lanier recognizes the importance and challenge of finding daily time to spend in God’s Word. He has discovered in the letters of the New Testament a storehouse of wisdom and inspiration essential for his continued growth in faith, obedience, and understanding. In New Testament Letters for Living, Lanier guides us through a portion of the Bible marked by weighty theology, ethical instruction, and practical wisdom. For each day of the year, Lanier reflects on the words of these early Christian writers, relates their messages to the struggles facing the church today, and concludes with a prayer connected to the day’s insights. His engagement with the letters of the New Testament offers fellow Christians the opportunity to receive the gifts of grace and guidance that come from daily immersion in Scripture.

“Lanier’s jaunty prose and engaging stories combine with rich, bite-sized biblical insights for a daily diet of life-giving nourishment for the soul.”

—LYNN H. COHICK, Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Director of Houston Theological Seminary, Houston Christian University

MARK LANIER is a nationally renowned trial lawyer; founder of the Lanier Theological Library and the Christian Trial Lawyers Association; and author of Minor Prophets for Living: Daily Prayers, Wisdom, and Guidance, Psalms for Living: Daily Prayers, Wisdom, and Guidance, Torah for Living: Daily Prayers, Wisdom, and Guidance, Jesus for Living: Daily Prayers, Wisdom, and Guidance, and Christianity on Trial: A Lawyer Examines the Christian Faith. He and his wife, Becky, have five children and live near Houston, Texas.

ISBN: 978-1-4813-2249-2 / $39.99 / Hardback / 377 pages / 5.5 x 8.5 / December 15, 2024

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Image credits: (front cover) Pexels/Engin Akyurt | (p. 5) J. C. R. (John Charles Ready) Colomb, “Imperial Federation, map of the world showing the extent of the British Empire in 1886” (London: MacClure & Co., 1886), Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, Boston Public Library | (p. 9) courtesy of M. Weber, www.polizei.autos.de | (p. 21) Unsplash/Rachel Coyne | (p. 25) Mosaics of the apse of the Basilica di San Clemente (Church of St. Clement), Rome, Italy. Photo © Imagebroker / Bridgeman Images.

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