Religion Commons^™

Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, The Resurrection, And The Mission Of The Church, N. T. Wright, Noel B. Reynolds

BYU Studies

Many Latter-day Saints are showing an increased sympathy for the writings of Anglican bishop N. T. Wright of Durham, England, and others in the Emerging Church tradition. Such LDS interest derives from the movement's emphasis on returning to basic Christian living modeled in the New Testament and adherents' willingness to back away from those churches that have systematic theologies and a seeming addiction to the discourse of power while pursuing their agendas. The Emerging Church is more of a conversation than an organization, and it crosses denominational boundaries around the world. It is characterized by a deep interest in interpreting …

Enhancing Evolution: Posthumanous Dreams And The Moral Complexity Of Biomedical Aspirations, David L. Paulsen, Clark H. Pinnock

BYU Studies

A noted academic bioethicist and British media pundit with a named chair at the University of Manchester, John Harris has recently given birth to an odd literary child. His latest book, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People, hails from an esteemed university press, but it is informal and tendentious, often jeering at opponents, both popular and academic. Despite his credentials (an Oxford PhD in philosophy, co-editorship of the British Journal of Medical Ethics, a lengthy curriculum vitae), Harris has created a popular polemic better fitted for the entertaining and energetic repartee of the Daily Show with Jon …

Mormon Scientist: The Life And Faith Of Henry Eyring, Ned C. Hill, Henry B. Eyring

BYU Studies

Henry Eyring (1901-1981) is undoubtedly the most celebrated scientist produced within the Mormon faith to date. He published over six hundred scientific papers and about a dozen books, and he received almost every prize science has to offer. His theories form the core of modern chemistry. One of his colleagues said, "The contributions of Dr. Henry Eyring touch practically every field of chemical science and technology in a very fundamental manner." Not only was he a brilliant scientist, he was also a man with deep faith in God and in the restoration of the gospel in modern times. This biography …

Doing The Works Of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy, Its Origin, Practice, And Demise. Kingdom In The West: The Mormons And The American Frontier, Volume 9, B. Carmon Hardy, Kathryn M. Daynes

BYU Studies

Joining a significant topic with one of its preeminent scholars is a certain formula for an important book. Such is Doing the Works of Abraham by B. Carmon Hardy. Polygamy shaped nineteenth-century Mormonism's relationship with the remainder of the world, and Hardy has written numerous articles and books on the topic, including Solemn Covenant, named Best Book of the Year for 1992 by the Mormon History Association. The publication of this documentary history of nineteenth-century plural marriage is thus a major event in the ongoing scholarship on the topic.

The subtitle of the book accurately reflects the scope of the …

Romancing The Difference: Kenneth Burke, Bob Jones University, And The Rhetoric Of Religious Fundamentalism, Camille K. Lewis, Brian Jackson

BYU Studies

In February 2000 George W. Bush made an early campaign stop at Bob Jones University, an institution that until that very year had prohibited its students from interracial dating. The school's community had no idea his visit would thrust BJU into the national gaze, making it a scapegoat for public political anxieties. Republicans (like Bush's opponent John McCain), Democrats, and journalists alike jumped into the mix to assault BJU publicly and thereby make Bush guilty by association. Though revisions of the interracial policy had already been in the works, Bob Jones III, president of BJU at the time, went on …

Dynasty Of The Holy Grail: Mormonism's Sacred Bloodline, Jesse D. Hurlbut, Vern G. Swanson

BYU Studies

What do the Virgin Mary, King Arthur, and Joseph Smith have in common? This is one of the questions that Vern Swanson attempts to answer in Dynasty of the Holy Grail: Mormonism's Sacred Bloodline. Swanson, who has been director of the Springville Art Museum in Utah since 1980 and who has published extensively in art historical topics, applies his skills to a different body of material in this impressive, large-format volume of over five hundred pages.

The author refers to his own work as a "scattershot miscellany of random thoughts" (411). While some may find in this statement a self-effacing …

Jesus And The Eyewitnesses: The Gospels As Eyewitness Testimony, Richard Bauckham, Thomas A. Wayment

BYU Studies

Undoubtedly, Professor Richard Bauckham's most recent contribution will add life to an already thriving scholarly discussion on the historical foundations of the New Testament Gospels, particularly the Synoptic Gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Like others who have contributed to this field of study, Bauckham (professor of New Testament studies at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland) sets out to describe the sources used by the authors of the canonical Gospels, and, in doing so, provides a viable theory that has been met by exuberant praise and will certainly encounter significant rebuttals. In his own words, he states:

It is the contention …

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Theology And Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability In Late Modernity, Amos Yong, Rosalynde F. Welch

BYU Studies

Amos Yong's Theology and Down Syndrome represents an ambitious attempt by an Evangelical theologian to come to grips with the conditions and conundrums of disability in a contemporary Christian context. The book's nine chapters and formidable bibliography inquire into cognitive disability of all kinds, not, despite its title, narrowly into Down syndrome alone. Yong writes in the dense idiom of critical academic theology and disability studies that may put off some readers, but the text is leavened with epigraphs, personal asides, and case studies that will appeal to most readers.

Yong sets himself three aims in this volume: to edify …

Review: Bourgeois Hinduism, Or The Faith Of The Modern Vedantists: Rare Discourses From Early Colonial Bengal, Chad Bauman

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The article reviews the book "Bourgeois Hinduism, or The Faith of the Modern Vedantists: Rare Discourses from Early Colonial Bengal," by Brian Hatcher.

The Thirteenth Apostle: What The Gospel Of Judas Really Says, April D. Deconick, Grant Adamson

BYU Studies

Among the various apocryphal titles mentioned by the early Church fathers is the Gospel of Judas, a Coptic version of which was recently found in Egypt, purportedly taken from a limestone box together with several other texts during an illegal raid of a burial cave in 1978. Before its first publication by the National Geographic Society in 2006, it was apparently sold, stolen, recovered, sold again, then again, frozen, thawed, and repossessed, such that by the time the work of conservation finally began in 2001, the pages of the Gospel of Judas had been broken into numerous pieces, some of …

Voting About God In Early Church Councils, Gaye Strathearn, Ramsay Macmullen

BYU Studies

In his latest monograph, Ramsay MacMullen, emeritus professor of history at Yale University, takes a wonderfully fresh look at the early Christian councils. At the beginning of his study, MacMullen recognizes the primacy of the Council of Nicaea (AD 325) whose definition of the Supreme Being forms the basis of the majority Christian view on the nature of God. The Nicene Creed was "made formal and given weight by majority vote and supported after much struggle by later assemblies, notably at Chalcedon (451)--likewise by majority vote. Such was the determining process. Thus agreement was arrived at, and became dogma widely …

American Religions And The Family: How Faith Traditions Cope With Modernization And Democracy, Don S. Browning, David A. Clairmont, Loren Marks

BYU Studies

This fifteen-chapter volume addresses two key questions: (a) How do various American religions negotiate the pressures of modernization, such as technology, the speed of life, and consumerism? and (b) How do various American religions wrestle with challenging aspects of democracy, such as heightened individualism, the social reconstruction of morality, and the waning acceptance of traditional authority? Chapter-length responses to these questions are offered by a carefully selected array of social scientists, historians, theologians, and legal scholars.

The volume is stimulating, readable, and relevant. The lead editor, Don S. Browning, summarily states, "Studies about the effect of religious thought and behavior …

Review Of Adele Reinhartz, Jesus Of Hollywood [Review Of The Book Jesus Of Hollywood, By A. Reinhartz], Rubén R. Dupertuis

Religion Faculty Research

Since the advent of the modern film in the late nineteenth century over one hundred films on Jesus have been made. They tend to come in spurts. About a half-dozen major silent films were produced in the 1920s and 1930s, the most famous of which is Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927). After over three decades in which no Jesus film appeared—thanks in part to the Production Code adopted by Hollywood and promoted by the Catholic Legion of Decency—several rmajor films on Jesus were released in the 1960s, and several more in the 1970s, including two musicals. The …

Brokers Of Culture: Italian Jesuits In The American West, 1848-1919 (Book Review), R. Bryan Bademan

History Faculty Publications

Book review by R. Bryan Bademan.

McKevitt, Gerald. Brokers of Culture: Italian Jesuits in the American West, 1848-1919. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007. ISBN 9780804753579

One Mathematician's Journey Through Mathematics And The Faith Equation: One Mathematician's Journey In Christianity (Book Reviews), Calvin Jongsma

Pro Rege

Reviewed Titles: Bittinger, Marvin. One Mathematician’s Journey through Mathematics. Addison-Wesley, 2004. ix + 212 pages. ISBN: 0321241509. Bittinger, Marvin. The Faith Equation: One Mathematician’s Journey in Christianity. Literary Architects, 2007. xxv + 290 pages. ISBN: 1933669071.

The article incorrectly cites "One Man's Journey through Mathematics" as "One Mathematician's Journey through Mathematics."

Massacre At Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy. By Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., And Glen M. Leonard, Jared Farmer

BYU Studies

Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard. Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Massacre At Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy. By Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., And Glen M. Leonard, Brian Q. Cannon

BYU Studies

Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

House Of Mourning: A Biocultural History Of The Mountain Meadows Massacre. By Shannon A. Novak, Joel C. Janetski

BYU Studies

Shannon A. Novak. House of Mourning: A Biocultural History of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008.

Review Of Jonathan L. Reed, The Harpercollins Visual Guide To The New Testament [Review Of The Book The Harpercollins Visual Guide To The New Testament: What Archaeology Reveals About The First Christians, By J. L. Reed], Rubén R. Dupertuis

Religion Faculty Research

Jonathan Reed begins the first chapter of The HarperCollins Visual Guide to the New Testament with the assertion that "archaeology is imperative for the study of the New Testament." This much most students of the New Testament and early Christian literature would grant. But how and to what degree is archaeology important to biblical studies is less clear and can be at times a contentious issue. The expectation that archaeology should provide proof of the historical reliability of the New Testament has for decades sent many a would-be Indiana Jones off in search of this or that biblical site with …

Equations From God: Pure Mathematics And Victorian Faith (Book Review), Calvin Jongsma

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Reviewed Title: Equations from God: Pure Mathematics and Victorian Faith by Daniel J. Cohen. Baltiimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. 242 pages, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN: 0801885531.

Tree Of Souls: The Mythology Of Judaism. By Howard Schwartz, Roger G. Baker

BYU Studies

Howard Schwartz. Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Before The Manifesto: The Life Writings Of Mary Lois Walker Morris. By Melissa Lambert Milewski, Editor, Cherry B. Silver

BYU Studies

Melissa Lambert Milewski, editor. Before the Manifesto: The Life Writings of Mary Lois Walker Morris. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2007.

The Civil War As A Theological Crisis. Mark A. Noll, Mary Stovall Richards

BYU Studies

Mark A. Noll. The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006

The Great Transformation: The Beginning Of Our Religious Traditions. By Karen Armstrong, Eric D. Huntsman

BYU Studies

Karen Armstrong. The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. New York: Anchor Books, 2007.

From Persecutor To Apostle: A Biography Of Paul. By Thomas A. Wayment, Kathryn H. Shirts

BYU Studies

Thomas A. Wayment. From Persecutor to Apostle: A Biography of Paul. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2006.

History May Be Searched In Vain: A Military History Of The Mormon Battalion. By Sherman L. Fleek, Stephen B. Sorensen

BYU Studies

Sherman L. Fleek. History May Be Searched in Vain: A Military History of the Mormon Battalion. Spokane, Wash.: Arthur H. Clark, 2006

The J. Golden Kimball Stories. By Eric A. Eliason, Elliott Oring

BYU Studies

Eric A. Eliason. The J. Golden Kimball Stories. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007.

Hooligan, A Mormon Boyhood. By Douglas Thayer, Richard H. Cracroft

BYU Studies

Douglas Thayer. Hooligan, a Mormon Boyhood. Provo, Utah: Zarahemla Books, 2007.

Wounds Not Healed By Time. By Solomon Schimmel, Ronald E. Bartholomew

BYU Studies

Solomon Schimmel. Wounds Not Healed by Time. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002

Why Study The Past? The Quest For The Historical Church (Book Review), Jonathan Warner

Pro Rege

Reviewed Title: Williams, Rowan. Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishers, 2005. 129 pp. ISBN 0-8028-2990-2.