Abstract
Just Water: Theology, Ethics, and Fresh Water Crises. Revised Edition
by Christiana Zenner
Ecology and Justice. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2018. 288 pp. $30.00. ISBN 978-1-6269-8297-0.
This book is an interdisciplinary analysis of the significance of fresh water in an era of economic globalization that draws on multivalent resources within a range of disciplines, including theology, ecology, ethics, Catholic social thought, environmental humanities, religion and science, social theory, and human geography. Aimed at the educated nonspecialist as well as scholars who work across disciplinary boundaries, it seeks to inform readers of important aspects of global freshwater crises while also providing trenchant ethical analysis and principled recommendations about freshwater use and scarcity in the twenty-first century. This is a revised edition of a 2014 volume, that includes new data and updates on social developments related to water crises, as well as insights from Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ and a discussion of water justice from the perspective of the events at Standing Rock.
In Deep Waters: Spiritual Care for Young People in a Climate Crisis
by Talitha Amadea Aho
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2022. 259 pp. $21.00. ISBN 978-1-5064-6978-2.
The world as we know it is shifting. Several millennia of climate stability have come to an abrupt end. But the young people of today do not remember stability. They see the world through crisis-colored glasses. Climate change is creating a spiritual emergency that is hitting their generation harder than any other. Today’s climate crisis calls people of faith to a communal spiritual practice of care, especially for those who are more vulnerable because of their youth—the children, youth, and young adults of Generation Z. This book, authored by a Presbyterian pastor who speaks out of ministry experience with Generation Z Californians, aims to help readers keep young people at the center of their communities, listen to the troubles they have to share, and offer spiritual care informed by the ecological crisis of their generation.
A New Climate for Christology: Kenosis, Climate Change, and Befriending Nature
by Sallie McFague
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2021. 125 pp. $19.00. ISBN 978-1-5064-7873-9.
For decades, Sallie McFague lent her voice and her theological imagination to addressing and advocating for the most important issues of our time. In doing so, she influenced an entire generation and empowered countless people in their efforts to put religion in the service of meeting human needs in difficult times. In this final book, finished in the year before her death in 2019, McFague summarizes the work of a lifetime with a clear call to live in “such a way that all might flourish.” The way, she argues, is the “kenotic interpretation of Christianity: the odd arrangement whereby in order to gain your life, you must lose it. The way of the cross is total self-emptying so that one can receive life, real life, and then pass this life on.”
When Time is Short: Finding Our Way in the Anthropocene
by Timothy Beal
Boston: Beacon, 2022. 168 pp. $23.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-8070-9000-8.
What if it is too late to save ourselves from climate crisis? This volume is a meditation for what may be a finite human future. It asks how we got here to help us imagine a different relationship to the natural world. Modern capitalism, as it emerged, drew heavily upon a Christian belief in human exceptionalism and dominion over the planet, justifying the pillaging and eradication of indigenous communities and the plundering of the Earth’s resources in pursuit of capital and lands. But these are not the only biblical models available to us. Beal rereads key texts to anchor us in other ways of being—in humbler conceptions of humans as earth creatures, bound in ecological interdependence with the world. Acknowledging that any real hope must first face and grieve the realities of climate crisis, Beal makes space for us to imagine new possibilities and rediscover ancient ones.
Liturgies from Below: Praying with People at the Ends of the World
by Cláudio Carvalhaes
Nashville: Abingdon, 2020. 376 pp. $30.99. ISBN 978-1-7910-0735-5.
This book, a rich and varied collection of prayers, songs, rituals, rites of healing, eucharistic and baptismal prayers, meditations, and art from four continents (Asia-Pacific Islands, Africa, Americas, and Europe), offers a wealth of resources from forgotten places to help us create a new vocabulary for worship and prayer—one that is located amidst the major issues of poverty, violence, and destruction around the world today. It is the culmination of a project organized by the Council for World Mission during 2018–2019 in which approximately 100 people collaborated to create indigenous prayers and liturgies expressing their own contexts. They emerge from the experience of trying to live the Christian faith in utterly abandoned places and deal with issues of violence, immigration, refugees, drugs, land grabbing, war on the poor, attack on women, militarization, and climate change, among others.
Believing into Christ: Relational Faith and Human Flourishing
by Natalya A. Cherry
Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2021. 212 pp. $44.99. ISBN 978-1-4813-1543-2.
Many Christians express a purely propositional sense of belief, focused primarily on the existence of God and facts about Christ, contributing to a transactional approach to salvation. But belief is about more than the simple fact of God’s existence. Augustine provides a starting point for restoring the relational sense of belief encapsulated in the phrase “believing into Christ.” Natalya Cherry explores this unique, grammatically awkward phrase as describing Christianity’s distinct contribution to human flourishing, crafting a constructive theology that aims to restore the phrase and all it entails. Such a view of belief involves transforming catechesis and sacramental practices that can equip believers to overcome oppression and social barriers in contemporary ecclesial communities and the world they inhabit. Cherry challenges us to consider the relational sense of belief, clinging to Christ by means of the Holy Spirit in a way that directs every relationship toward human flourishing as the heart of Christian faith.
Augustine and Tradition: Influences, Contexts, Legacy
edited by David G. Hunter and Jonathan P. Yates
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021. 501 pp. $80.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-8028-7699-7.
Augustine towers over Western life, literature, and culture—both sacred and secular. His ideas permeate conceptions of the self from birth to death and have cast a long shadow over subsequent Christian thought. But as much as tradition has sprung from Augustinian roots, so was Augustine a product of and interlocutor with traditions that preceded and ran contemporary to his life. This extensive volume examines and evaluates Augustine as both a receiver and a source of tradition. The contributors—all distinguished Augustinian scholars influenced by J. Patout Burns—survey Augustine’s life and writings in the context of North African tradition, philosophical and literary traditions of antiquity, the Greek patristic tradition, and the tradition of Augustine’s Latin contemporaries. These various pieces, when assembled, tell a comprehensive story of Augustine’s significance, both then and now.
Eastern Christianity: A Reader
edited by J. Edward Walters
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021. 439 pp. $55.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-8028-7686-7.
In order to make the writings of Eastern Christianity more widely accessible, this volume offers a collection of significant texts from various Eastern Christian traditions, many of which are appearing in English translation for the first time. They include Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Arabic, Coptic, and Ethiopic Christian texts from late antiquity to the early modern period. The internationally renowned scholars behind these translations begin each section with an informative historical introduction, so that anyone interested in learning more about these understudied groups can more easily traverse their diverse linguistic, cultural, and literary traditions. A boon to scholars, students, and general readers, this ample resource expands the scope of Christian history so that communities beyond Western Christendom can no longer be ignored.
Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians. Updated and Expanded Edition with Study Guide
by Austen Hartke; foreword by Jamie Bruesehoff and Rebekah Bruesehoff
Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2018, 2023. 274 pp. $20.00. ISBN 978-0-664-2678-65.
In 2014, Time magazine announced that America had reached “the transgender tipping point,” suggesting that transgender issues would become the next civil rights frontier. Years later, many people―even many LGBTQIA+ allies―still lack understanding of gender identity and the transgender experience. Into this void, trans biblical scholar Austen Hartke brings a biblically based, educational, and affirming resource to shed light and wisdom on gender expansiveness and Christian theology. This new edition offers updated terminology and statistics plus new materials for congregational study, preaching, and pastoral care.
The Mind in Another Place: My Life as a Scholar
by Luke Timothy Johnson
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022. 278 pp. $27.99 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-8028-8011-6.
This memoir by a distinguished New Testament scholar invites readers into the scholar’s life—its aims, commitments, and habits. Johnson shares his own story and reflects on the nature of scholarship more generally, showing how this vocation has changed over the past half-century and where it might be going in the future. He is as candid and unsparing about negative trends in academia as he is hopeful about the possibilities of steadfast, disciplined scholarship. In two closing chapters, he discusses the essential intellectual and moral virtues of scholarly excellence, including curiosity, imagination, courage, discipline, persistence, detachment, and contentment. Johnson’s robust defense of the scholarly life as a generative process of discovery and disclosure will inspire both new and seasoned scholars and resonate beyond the walls of the academy as it speaks to matters more universally human: the love of knowledge and the lifelong pursuit of truth.