Reviewed by James S. Bielo (Miami University). Come and listen in to the radio station, Where the mighty hosts of heaven sing, Turn your radio on, turn your radio on, Turn your radio on, turn your radio on…
So sings John Hartford on his 1971 cover of the 1938 southern Gospel standard.
Book reviews
Wariboko, Nimi. 2014. Nigerian Pentecostalism
Reviewed by Jörg Haustein (SOAS, University of London). Wariboko’s book is an important contribution to the by now substantial array of studies on Nigerian Pentecostalism, and yet it is one of a kind. Instead of providing another historical, political, or socio-economic analysis of the “Pentecostal explosion”
DeRogatis, Amy. 2014. Saving Sex: Sexuality and Salvation in American Evangelicalism
Review by Sophie Bjork-James (Vanderbilt University). In 2012, Pastor Ed Young and his wife moved a bed onto the roof of their Texas megachurch to lead a “bed-in” lauding the importance of marital sexual intimacy. Young was celebrating the recent publication of his book, Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse
Larsen, Timothy. 2014. The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith
Reviewed by T.M. Luhrmann (Stanford University). Do you need to be a person of faith to understand faith? This was the question at the center of the “rationality debate” that swirled around Cambridge when I arrived there as a student now alas some years ago
Scherz, China. 2014. Having People, Having Heart: Charity, Sustainable Development, and Problems of Dependence in Central Uganda
Reviewed by Andrea Grant (University of Cambridge). During my fieldwork in Rwanda, I was asked to write a “needs assessment” report for a centre for disabled youth outside of Kigali run by Catholic nuns. I was asked by a friend, a prosperous Rwandan woman in her 40s, who was a member of the centre’s volunteer board, made up of other Rwandan women who wanted to help the centre
Anidjar, Gil. 2014. Blood: A Critique of Christianity.
Reviewed by Sonja Luehrmann (Simon Fraser University).
I read most of this book in one of the contexts to which it speaks most deeply: during international air travel across North America, wondering how border guards and security officers might react…
Reid, Jennifer. 2013. Finding Kluskap: A Journey into Mi’kmaw Myth
Review by Kimberly Jenkins Marshall (University of Oklahoma). The premise that underlies Jennifer Reid’s book, Finding Kluskap: A Journey into Mi’kmaw Myth, is a familiar ethnographic one. What do we do when our drive to collect information leads us to places we did not expect?
Kaell, Hillary. 2014. Walking Where Jesus Walked: American Christians and Holy Land Pilgrimage
Reviewed by Jackie Feldman (Ben Gurion University). On each trip, certain interpenetrations are articulated and shaped by group leaders, Many, however, are not. At the back of the bus, pilgrims make the experience meaningful in ways that guides and tour operators may not expect and cannot predict
Asad, Talal, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, & Saba Mahmood. 2013. Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury & Free Speech.
Reviewed by Brian Howell (Wheaton College).
This past summer began with a United States news cycle dominated by a single story. The U.S. Supreme Court voted in a 5-4 decision in favor of Hobby Lobby and its evangelical owners, the Green Family, supporting their claim that to provide certain forms of contraception
Joshi, Vibha. 2012. A Matter of Belief: Christian Conversion and Healing in North-East India
Reviewed by Jessica Hardin (Pacific University). This is a book about how animism and Christianity are practiced together among Angami people in Nagaland in North-East India. Vibha Joshi provides a wide overview of indigenous religious practices, the contemporary Christian landscape