Required Reading

The New Heretics: Skepticism, Secularism, and Progressive Christianity

Rebekka King, Professor of Religious Studies

ETHNOGRAPHY

King’s new book, published by New York University Press, explores the development of progressive Christianity, a movement of Christians who do not reject their identity as Christians, but who believe Christianity must be updated for today’s times and take into consideration modern science, historical criticism, and liberal humanism.

She also introduces the concept of “lived secularity” as a category with which to examine the ways in which religiosity often is entangled with and subsumed by secular identities over and against religious ones. This theoretical framework provides insight into the study of religious and cultural hybridity, new emerging groups such as “the nones,” atheism, religious apostasy, and multi-religious identities.

A Leaf in the Stream

Stephan Foust, founding director of MTSU’s Center for Innovation in Media

FICTION

Foust’s book tells the story of a young history teacher and coach from Indiana who, on a student’s dare, quits his job and walks across the country during the economic turmoil of the Carter years. The protagonist, in the face of numerous natural phenomena and riddled with self-doubt, ultimately confronts his demons and finds a hidden inner strength thanks to the love and support of the people he meets along the way.

The Farm

Randy O’Brien, B.A. in English and adjunct writing instructor

FICTION

The newest book by O’Brien, former WMOT-FM news director, portrays a young woman from a rural middle Tennessee dairy farm who was raped by a Nazi prisoner of war who escaped from Camp Nathan Bedford Forrest. (The camp is based on a real camp for prisoners of war that was located outside Tullahoma.) The Farm explores the choices the young woman makes once she discovers she is pregnant—a poignant topic given the recent repeal of Roe v. Wade.

Princess of Horses

Warren Gill, retired chair of MTSU's School of Agriculture

HISTORICAL FICTION

Gill’s latest book takes place in an imagined agrarian society and serves to remind people of the delicate balance of nature and how important it is for humans to recognize and nurture their relationships with other living things. His previous book, Cane Creek Days, a memoir of a boy growing up on a farm near Petersburg, preserves for modern readers the way of life he and his agricultural-based community experienced and how they survived without technological farming tools.