Abstract
Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives, and the Struggle for Justice
by Rima L. Vesely-Flad
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017. 272 pp. $34.00. ISBN 978-1-5064-2049-3.
At the center of contemporary struggles over aggressive policing practices is an assumed association in U.S. culture of blackness with criminality. Vesely-Flad considers the religious and philosophical constructs of the black body, examining racialized ideas about purity and pollution as they have developed historically and as they are institutionalized today in racially disproportionate policing and mass incarceration. These systems work, she argues, to keep threatening elements of society in a constant state of harassment and tension so that they are unable to pollute the morals of mainstream society. She shows how the anti-Stop and Frisk and the Black Lives Matter movements have confronted these systems by exposing unquestioned assumptions about blackness and criminality. They hold the potential to reverse the construal of “pollution” and invasion in America’s urban cores if they extend their challenge to mass imprisonment and the barriers to reentry of convicted felons.
Thinking Theologically about Mass Incarceration: Biblical Foundations and Justice Imperatives
edited by Antonios Kireopoulos, Mitzi J. Budde, and Matthew D. Lundberg
Faith & Order Commission Theological Series, National Council of Churches. New York: Paulist, 2017. 359 pp. 39.95. ISBN 978-0-8091-5372-5.
This book is the fruit of a multi-year dialogue among Christian churches in the United States, addressing mass incarceration from theological perspectives as an issue in need of radical reform. Among the essays are “Christian Unity for a Fractured Society: The Problem of Mass Incarceration for the Churches,” “On Incarceration: For the Sake of Our Shared Future,” “White Supremacy and the Church: How White Christians Created and Perpetuate the Ideology of White Supremacy,” “On the Other Side of the Divide,” Seventy Times Seven: Offenders, Victims, and Jesus’ Extravagant Call to Forgive,” and “Considering Issues of Mass Incarceration through the Lens of the Beatitudes.”
Redeeming a Prison Society: A Liturgical and Sacramental Response to Mass Incarceration
by Amy Levad
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014. 192 pp. $39.00. ISBN 978-0-8006-9991-8.
The American criminal justice system is in a state of crisis, from unprecedented rates of imprisonment and recidivism to the privatization of the prison system and the disproportionate representation of particular racial, ethnic, social, and economic groups, all of which is within a larger social justice context. Amy Levad offers a Catholic perspective that directly addresses the concrete issues from a strongly interdisciplinary approach and utilizes the rich liturgical and sacramental resources of penance and Eucharist to offer a theological vision of reform. (Reviewed in the October 2017 issue of Interpretation).
If I Give My Soul: Faith Behind Bars in Rio de Janeiro
by Andrew Johnson
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 224 pp. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-1902-3899-5.
Pentecostal Christianity is flourishing inside the prisons of Rio de Janeiro. To find out why, Andrew Johnson spent two weeks living in a Brazilian prison as an inmate; he returned many times afterward to observe prison worship services, led by inmates voted into positions of leadership by fellow prisoners. He accompanied Pentecostal volunteers when they visited cells controlled by Rio’s dominant criminal gang to lead worship services, provide health care, and deliver other social services to inmates. Why does this faith resonate so profoundly with the incarcerated? Johnson argues that Pentecostalism is the “faith of the killable people” and offers ex-criminals and gang members the opportunity to positively reinvent their public personas. He makes a case that Pentecostal practice behind bars is an act of political radicalism as much as a spiritual experience.
God in Captivity: The Rise of Faith-Based Prison Ministries in the Age of Mass Incarceration
by Tanya Erzen
Boston: Beacon, 2017. 234 pp. $26.95. ISBN 978-0-8070-8998-9.
Cash-strapped and overcrowded state and federal prisons are increasingly relying on religious organizations to provide educational and mental health services and to help maintain order—organizations overwhelmingly run by nondenominational Protestant Christians. Some 20,000 Evangelical volunteers now run educational programs in over 300 U.S. prisons, jails, and detention centers. Prison seminary programs are flourishing, and almost half of the federal prisons operate or are developing faith-based residential programs. Tanya Erzen gained inside access to many of these programs to better understand the nature of these ministries and their effects. With both empathy and a critical eye, she grapples with the questions of how faith-based programs serve the punitive regime of the prison, becoming a method of control behind bars even as prisoners use them as a lifeline for self-transformation and dignity.
The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America
by Mark Lewis Taylor
Second Edition. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. 320 pp. $44.00. ISBN 978-1-4514-9267-5.
This revised and expanded edition of Taylor’s 2001 volume is both a searing indictment of the structures of “Lockdown America” and a visionary statement of hope. It is also a call for action to Jesus followers to resist U.S. imperial projects and power. Outlining a “theatrics of state terror,” Taylor identifies and analyzes its instruments (mass incarceration, militarized police tactics, surveillance, torture, immigrant repression, and capital punishment). The Executed God proposes a “counter-theatrics to state terror,” a declamation of the way of the cross that unmasks the powers of U.S. state domination and enacts an adversarial politics of resistance, artful dramatic actions, and the building of peoples’ movements. These are all intrinsic to a Christian politics of remembrance of the Jesus executed by empire.
My So-Called Biblical Life: Imagined Stories from the World’s Best-Selling Book
edited by Julie Faith Parker; foreword by Mark Allan Powell
Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017. 160 pp. $21.00. ISBN 978-1-4982-3844-1.
This collection of essays gives fresh perspectives to stories from the Bible, imbuing them with powerful, honest emotion. Imagine sending away your precious daughter to be a concubine. Suppose your family’s survival depended on the sacrifice of your brother’s life. Picture Jesus looking you in the eye and telling you to sell everything you own. The essays explore these scenarios and more. Questions follow each essay tostimulate individual reflection and group discussion. The essays transform one-dimensional portrayals of Bible characters into vibrant portraits of men, women, and children from antiquity whose struggles and hopes still speak to us today.Three of the contributors are incarcerated; a portion of the royalties from this book are donated to the Exodus Transitional Community (www.etcny.org), which helps people re-enter into society after spending time in prison.
How John Works: Storytelling in the Fourth Gospel
edited by Douglas Estes and Ruth Sheridan
Resources for Biblical Study. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2016. 347 pp. $46.95. ISBN 978-1-62837-131-4.
A group of international scholars explains in detail how the author of the Gospel of John uses a variety of narrative strategies to tell his story in a compelling manner. More than a commentary, this book offers a glimpse at the way an ancient author created and used narrative features such as genre, character, style, persuasion, and even time and space to shape a dramatic story of the life of Jesus. The essays in the volume explore fifteen features of story design found in the Gospel of John; they also can be used as starting points for the study of other Gospels and texts.
An Anomalous Jew: Paul Among Jews, Greeks, and Romans
by Michael F. Bird
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016. 322 pp. $28.00. ISBN 978-0-8028-6769-8.
Though Paul is often lauded as the first great Christian theologian and a champion for Gentile inclusion in the church, in his own time he was universally regarded as a strange and controversial person. Michael Bird explains why, presenting the figure of Paul in all his complexity with his blend of common and controversial Jewish beliefs and a faith in Christ that brought him into conflict with the socio-religious scene around him. Bird elucidates how the apostle Paul was variously perceived—as a religious deviant by Jews, as a divisive figure by Jewish Christians, as a purveyor of dubious philosophy by Greeks, and as a dangerous troublemaker by the Romans. Readers of this volume will better understand the truly anomalous shape of Paul’s thinking and worldview.
Into All the World: Emergent Christianity in its Jewish and Greco-Roman Context
edited by Mark Harding and Alanna Nobbs
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017. 425 pp. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-8028-7515-0.
In this analysis of the spread of Christianity throughout the Jewish and Greco-Roman world, eminent Australian scholars discuss all the post-Pauline New Testament writings, devoting attention to both their content and context. They examine the impact of the growth of the church on both Jews and Gentiles, exploring the diaspora, the place of minorities, the Book of Acts, the Fourth Gospel, and more. The book also discusses Christianity’s impact on the Roman state, including consideration of the book of Revelation and the imperial cult. A final chapter investigates Clement of Rome’s perception of the church at the end of the first century.
So Great a Salvation: Soteriology in the Majority World
edited by Gene L. Green, Stephen T. Pardue, and K. K. Yeo
Majority World Theology Series. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017. 199 pp. $22.00. ISBN 978-0-8028-7274-6.
Nine scholars from the global church reflect deeply on soteriology in the Majority World. For many Christians outside Europe and North America, the doctrine of salvation is not a mere theological construct but, rather, a matter of life and death. Taking African, Asian, Latin American, and First Nations cultural contexts into account, this book allows readers to see God’s creative deliverance in a fresh light.
Close Encounters between Bible and Film: An Interdisciplinary Engagement
edited by Laura Copier and Caroline Vander Stichele
Semeia Studies, 87. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2016. 333 pp. $48.95. ISBN 978-1-62837-158-1.
This volume showcases how a variety of approaches from film studies and cultural studies can be used in the visual analysis of biblical and religious themes, narratives, and characters in cinema. It is the first volume specifically to address issues of methodology, theory and analysis in the study of Bible and film. As such, this collection will be of interest to scholars in film studies but also to those in theology, religion, and biblical studies who seek to conduct interdisciplinary research in the expanding field of religion and film.