New Books in Catholic Studies

The Catholic Epistles often get short shrift. Tucked into a few pages near the back of our Bibles, these books are sometimes referred to as the "non-Pauline epistles" or "concluding letters," maybe getting lumped together with Hebrews and Revelation. Yet these letters, Darian Lockett argues, are treasures hidden in plain sight, and it's time to give them the attention they deserve.In Letters for the Church: Reading James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, and Jude as Canon (InterVarsity Press, 2021), Lockett reveals how the Catholic Epistles provide a unique window into early Christian theology and practice. Based on evidence from the early church, he contends that the seven letters of James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, and Jude were accepted into the canon as a collection and should be read together. Here Lockett introduces the context and content of the Catholic Epistles while emphasizing how all seven letters are connected. Each chapter outlines the author, audience, and genre of one of the epistles, traces its flow of thought, and explores shared themes with the other Catholic Epistles.The early church valued the Catholic Epistles for multiple reasons: they defend orthodox faith and morals against the challenges of heretics, make clear that Christianity combines belief with action, and round out the New Testament witness to Christian faith and life. By introducing the coherent vision of these seven epistles, Letters for the Church helps us rediscover these riches.Darian R. Lockett is professor of New Testament at Biola University. His many publications include Letters from the Pillar Apostles, Understanding Biblical Theology, and An Introduction to the Catholic Epistles.Jackson Reinhardt is a graduate of University of Southern California and Vanderbilt University. He is currently an independent scholar, freelance writer, and research assistant. You can reach Jackson at jtreinhardt1997@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @JTRhardt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics (Harvard University Press, 2021), Sarah Shortall examines the twentieth-century transformation of Roman Catholicism by tracing the origins and evolution of the so-called nouvelle théologie. Developed in the interwar years by French Jesuits and Dominicans, “new theology” reimagined the Church’s relationship to public life, encouraging political activism, engaging with secular philosophy, and inspiring doctrinal changes adopted by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. By recoding political statements in the ostensibly apolitical language of doctrine, priests were able to enter into debates over fascism and communism, democracy and human rights, and colonialism and nuclear war.Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For people in medieval England, the parish church was an integral part of their community. In Going to Church in Medieval England (Yale University Press, 2021), Nicholas Orme describes how parish churches operated and details the roles they played in the lives of their parishioners. While there was a considerable variety of experience over the centuries and between the parishes throughout England, the basic practices in them largely remained the same. These were supervised by a range of people, both lay and clerical, who staged the Mass and managed the church’s everyday operations. Their activities touched on the lives of the members of the community in a variety of ways, from regular attendance at daily and weekly services to celebrations marking the seasons and the great events of life: birth, coming of age, marriage, and comfort in sickness and death. And while the English Reformation transformed the relationship between England and the Roman Catholic Church, Orme shows how some of the changes associated with it were already underway before it began, while much of what went on in parish churches remained as before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent years, the media has depicted Rwanda as a model of unity, development, and recovery. Dr. Cantrell II argues that not all is as it seems in Revival and Reconciliation: The Anglican Church and the Politics of Rwanda (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022). The book argues that, from the start, the founders of the church accepted erroneous myths about Rwanda and its people and, as a result, were too closely aligned with whomever was in power. As such, the church endorsed the ruling authorities’ misleading account of Rwanda’s history and failed to take account of its own history in exacerbating ethnic tensions prior to genocide.The book takes a critical look at the church's complicity with authoritarian rule—from the Tutsi monarchy to the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Drawing from new archival materials as well as on-the-ground field research, this research is a Rwanda-centered account of the country's ecclesiastical and national historiography. Most ominously, the book argues that the present Anglican authorities are also too closely allied with Paul Kagame and the ruling RPF, with perhaps dire consequences to come.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Until surprisingly recently, the history of the Irish Catholic Church during the Northern Irish Troubles was written by Irish priests and bishops and was commemorative rather than analytical. Margaret M. Scull's The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968-1998 (Oxford UP, 2019) uses the Troubles as a case study to evaluate the role of the Catholic Church in mediating conflict.During the Troubles, these priests and bishops often worked behind the scenes, acting as go-betweens for the British government and republican paramilitaries to bring about a peaceful solution. However, this study also looks more broadly at the actions of the American, Irish, and English Catholic Churches, as well as that of the Vatican, to uncover the full impact of the Church on the conflict. This critical analysis of the previously neglected state, Irish, and English Catholic Church archival material changes our perspective on the role of a religious institution in a modern conflict.Allison Isidore is an Instructor of Record for the Religious Studies department at the University of Alabama. Her research interest is focused on the twentieth-century American Civil Rights Movement and the Catholic Church’s response to racism and the participation of Catholic clergy, nuns, and laypeople in marches, sit-ins, and kneel-ins during the 1950s and 1960s. Allison is also a Video Editor for The Religious Studies Project, producing videos for the podcast and marketing team. She tweets from @AllisonIsidore1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Female Monasticism in Medieval Ireland: An Archaeology (Cork UP, 2021), Dr. Tracy Collins writes the first archaeological investigation into female monasticism in medieval Ireland, primarily from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. Weaving in early medieval evidence, textual sources, and examples from Britain and the continent, new considerations are given to the archaeology, architecture, and landscape through the lens of gender. Introducing her results from her recent surveys and excavation, she reveals the fluidity and diversity of female religious communities in Ireland. Debunking stereotypes such as strict enclosure and uniformity, Collins provides a glimpse into the lives of medieval female religious and their connections locally as well as within Ireland and Europe. Dr. Tracy Collins was a co-founder of Aegis Archaeology Limited and currently work as a state archaeologist with the National Monuments Service in Ireland. She is also co-editor of the upcoming Brides of Christ: Women and monasticism in medieval and early modern Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2022).Dr. Danica Ramsey-Brimberg is a multidisciplinary researcher, who recently graduated with her PhD in History from the University of Liverpool. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joseph W. Ho’s book Developing Mission: Photography, Filmmaking, and American Missionaries in Modern China (Cornell University Press, 2021) offers a transnational cultural history of US and Chinese communities framed by missionary lenses through time and space―tracing the lives and afterlives of images, cameras, and visual imaginations from before the Second Sino-Japanese War through the first years of the People's Republic of China.When American Protestant and Catholic missionaries entered interwar China, they did so with cameras in hand. Missions principally aimed at the conversion of souls and the modernization of East Asia, became, by virtue of the still and moving images recorded, quasi-anthropological ventures that shaped popular understandings of and formal foreign policy toward China. Portable photographic technologies changed the very nature of missionary experience, while images that missionaries circulated between China and the United States affected cross-cultural encounters in times of peace and war.Ho illuminates the centrality of visual practices in the American missionary enterprise in modern China, even as intersecting modernities and changing Sino-US relations radically transformed lives behind and in front of those lenses. In doing so, Developing Mission reconstructs the almost-lost histories of transnational image makers, subjects, and viewers across twentieth-century China and the United States.Dr. Joseph W. Ho is Assistant Professor of History at Albion College and Center Associate at the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan. In addition to his current book, Dr. Ho is the coeditor of War and Occupation in China: The Letters of an American Missionary from Hangzhou, 1937-1938.Linshan Jiang is Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests are modern and contemporary literature, film, and popular culture in mainland China, Taiwan and Japan; trauma and memory studies; gender and sexuality studies; queer studies; as well as comparative literature and translation studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In The Laywoman Project: Remaking Catholic Womanhood in the Vatican II Era (UNC Press, 2020), Mary J. Henold considers how these committed parishioners experienced their religion in the wake of Vatican II (1962-1965). This era saw major changes within the heavily patriarchal religious faith--at the same time as an American feminist revolution caught fire. Who was the Catholic woman for a new era? Henold uncovers a vast archive of writing, both intimate and public-facing, by hundreds of rank-and-file American laywomen active in national laywomen’s groups, including the National Council of Catholic Women, the Catholic Daughters of America, and the Daughters of Isabella. These records evoke a formative period when laywomen played publicly with a surprising variety of ideas about their own position in the Catholic Church.While marginalized near the bottom of the church hierarchy, laywomen quietly but purposefully engaged both their religious and gender roles as changing circumstances called them into question. Some eventually chose feminism while others rejected it, but most, Henold says, crafted a middle position: even conservative, nonfeminist laywomen came to reject the idea that the church could adapt to the modern world while keeping women’s status frozen in amber.Allison Isidore is an Instructor of Record for the Religious Studies department at the University of Alabama. Her research interest is focused on the twentieth-century American Civil Rights Movement and the Catholic Church’s response to racism and the participation of Catholic clergy, nuns, and laypeople in marches, sit-ins, and kneel-ins during the 1950s and 1960s. Allison is also a Video Editor for The Religious Studies Project, producing videos for the podcast and marketing team. She tweets from @AllisonIsidore1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Church of the Dead: The Epidemic of 1576 and the Birth of Christianity in the Americas (NYU Press, 2021) tells the story of the founding of American Christianity against the backdrop of devastating disease, and of the Indigenous survivors who kept the nascent faith aliveMany scholars have come to think of the European Christian mission to the Americas as an inevitable success. But in its early period it was very much on the brink of failure. In 1576, Indigenous Mexican communities suffered a catastrophic epidemic that took almost two million lives and simultaneously left the colonial church in ruins. In the crisis and its immediate aftermath, Spanish missionaries and surviving pueblos de indios held radically different visions for the future of Christianity in the Americas.The Church of the Dead offers a counter-history of American Christian origins. It centers the power of Indigenous Mexicans, showing how their Catholic faith remained intact even in the face of the faltering religious fervor of Spanish missionaries. While the Europeans grappled with their failure to stem the tide of death, succumbing to despair, Indigenous survivors worked to reconstruct the church. They reasserted ancestral territories as sovereign, with Indigenous Catholic states rivaling the jurisdiction of the diocese and the power of friars and bishops.Christianity in the Americas today is thus not the creation of missionaries, but rather of Indigenous Catholic survivors of the colonial mortandad, the founding condition of American Christianity. Weaving together archival study, visual culture, church history, theology, and the history of medicine, Jennifer Scheper Hughes provides us with a fascinating reexamination of North American religious history that is at once groundbreaking and lyrical.Brady McCartney is a Ph.D. student and scholar of religion, Indigenous studies, and environmental history at the University of Florida.Email: Brady.McCartney@UFL.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we are with Katherine Harvey, author of The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages (Reaktion Books, 2021). An illuminating exploration of the surprisingly familiar sex lives of ordinary medieval people. The medieval humoral system of medicine suggested that it was possible to die from having too much--or too little--sex, while the Roman Catholic Church taught that virginity was the ideal state. Holy men and women committed themselves to lifelong abstinence in the name of religion. Everyone was forced to conform to restrictive rules about who they could have sex with, in what way, how often, and even when, and could be harshly punished for getting it wrong. Other experiences are more familiar. Like us, medieval people faced challenges in finding a suitable partner or trying to get pregnant (or trying not to). They also struggled with many of the same social issues, such as whether prostitution should be legalized. Above all, they shared our fondness for dirty jokes and erotic images. By exploring their sex lives, the book brings ordinary medieval people to life, revealing details of their most personal thoughts and experiences. Ultimately, it provides us with an important and intimate connection to the past.Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices