Bücher veröffentlicht von Fortress Academic

This book explores the narrative networks that underlie the empirical dimensions of the worlds we imagine and inhabit. Scripturalizing the empire locates this exploration within an ascendant social formation in the nineteenth century-British India

J.W. Olson addresses the Christian doctrine of revelation by asking how theological truth claims can possibly be rooted in God's incarnational self-communication. Engaging with the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, Olson offers an interpretation of the Eucharist that grounds Christian knowledge in an embodied understanding of the sacrament.

In Silenced: The Forgotten Story of Progressive Era Free Methodist Women, Christy Mesaros-Winckles delves into the gender debates within the Free Methodist Church of North America during the Progressive Era (1890-1920). This interdisciplinary work draws on narrative research and gender studies to reconstruct the lives of forgotten women who served as Free Methodist evangelists and deacons, examining their writings and speeches to illustrate how they promoted and defended their ministries. Mesaros-Winckles argues that the history of Free Methodist women is a microcosm of the struggle for recognition and acceptance faced by women across numerous evangelical traditions, especially amidst rising fundamentalism at the turn of the twentieth century. This book provides an important contribution to the fields of American history, theology, media studies, and gender studies, and will also be of interest to rhetorical history and communication theory scholars.

Theology and the DC Universe contains fifteen scholarly explorations of the role of theology and religion in DC's comics, films, and television shows.

The Spirit and the Screen explores pertinent pneumatological issues that arise in film and asks how Christian convictions and experiences of the Spirit might shape the way one thinks about films and film-making.

In this carefully argued book, T. Luke Post shows that "good works" occupy a central, though often overlooked, place in Pauline ethics. Surveying a wide terrain of exegetical territory, Post makes a compelling case that believers "doing good" is a primary aim of Paul's theological, social, and ethical agenda.

Theologies, no matter their designations, are public measures-they disclose as well as gauge the publics (near and far) on which they stand, sit, lie, or fall. Because publics shift and mingle, theologies require reimagining, relocating, and embracing fresh insights and energies. The insights and energies embraced in this work are in three clusters: spaces, bodies, and technologies. The spotlighted spaces are in Africa, Asia, Black America, the Caribbean, and Pasifika-beyond the eyes of mainline theologies; the privileged bodies have survived, with scars from empire and missionary positionings; and the welcomed technologies include Dalit, indigenous, art, poetry, cyborg, and the novel. This collection is troubling in several ways: first, reimagining and relocating are troubling acts upon their subject matter-here, public theologies. On that note, what theology is not public? Second, this work takes theologies in general, and not just the theologies that carry the "public" designation, to be public theologies. Third, this work takes theologies in general to be inherently troubling. In other words, theologies that are not troubling are not public enough.

Aristide: A Theological and Political Introduction is a study of the political theory, democratic vision, and theological ethics and anthropology in the writings and ideas of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

This book explores the charismata Paul lists in Rom 12:6-8 within the ritual setting he establishes in Rom 12:1-2. Using analysis from ritual studies, religious studies, and classics, Teresa Lee McCaskill constructs a reception for gentile Christ-followers who were transitioning into a new belief system and in need of sanctioned practices.

This comprehensive sourcebook of Philo of Alexandria presents topics and themes drawn from commonly studied Philonic texts in seven chapters: theology, cosmology, anthropology, ethics, biblical characters, Jewish Law, and Jewish worship and observances.

By comparing the intersecting histories of interpretation of Mary Magdalene, a first-century disciple of Jesus, and La Malinche, a sixteenth-century Mesoamerican woman enslaved by the Spanish conquistadores, Jennifer Vija Pietz critically evaluates the use of past lives to address contemporaneous concerns. She demonstrates how the earliest sources portray each woman as an agent in the foundation of a new community: Magdalene's proclamation of Jesus's resurrection helped form the first Christian community, while La Malinche's role as interpreter between Spanish and native people during the Conquest helped establish modern Mexico. Pietz then argues that over time, various interpreters turn these real women into malleable icons that they use to negotiate changing conceptions of communal identity and norms. Strikingly, popular portraits develop of both women as archetypal whores who represent transgressionportraits that some women have experienced as harmful. Although other interpreters present contrary portraits of Magdalene and La Malinche as admirable emblems of female empowerment, Pietz argues that the tendency to turn real people into icons risks producing stereotypes that can obscure past lives and negatively affect people in the present. In response, she posits strategies for developing historically plausible and ethically responsible interpretations of people of the past.

This book examines the relationship between divine in/activity and human agency in the five books of the Megilloththe books of Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Esther. As works of literature dating to the early Second Temple period (ca. 6th3rd centuries BCE), these books and the implicit interpretation of these particular themes reflect the diverse cultural and theological dynamics of the time. Megan Fullerton Strollo contends that the themes themselves as well as the correlation between them should be interpreted as implicit theology insofar as they represent reflective interpretation of earlier theological traditions. With regard to divine in/activity, she argues that the Megilloth presents a certain level of skepticism or critical analysis of the Deity. From doubt to protest, the books of the Megilloth grapple with received traditions of divine providence and present experiences of absence, abandonment, and distance. As a correlative to divine in/activity, human agency is presented as consequential. In addition, the portrayal of human agency serves as a theological response insofar as the books advance the theme through specific references to and reevaluations of earlier theocentric traditions.

In Matthew, Disability, and Stress: Examining Impaired Characters in the Context of Empire, Jillian D. Engelhardt examines four Matthean healing narratives, focusing on the impaired characters in the scenes. Her reading is informed by both empire studies and social stress theory, a method that explores how the stress inherent in social location can affect psychosomatic health. By examining the Roman imperial context in which common folk lived and worked, she argues that attention to social and somatic circumstances, which may have accompanied or caused the described disabilities/impairments, destabilizes readings of these stories that suggest the encounter with Jesus was straightforwardly good and the healing was permanent. Instead, Engelhardt proposes various new contexts for and offers more nuanced characterizations of the disabled/impaired people in each discussed scene, resulting in ambiguous interpretations that de-center Jesus and challenge able-bodied assumptions about embodiment, disability, and healing.

Batman is one of the most recognized and popular pop culture icons. Appearing on the page of Detective Comics #27 in 1939, the character has inspired numerous characters, franchises, and spin-offs over his 80+ year history. The character has displayed versatility, appearing in stories from multiple genres, including science fiction, noir, and fantasy and mediums far beyond his comic book origins. While there are volumes analyzing Batman through literary, philosophical, and psychological lenses, this volume is one of the first academic monographs to examine Batman through a theological and religious lens. Theology and Batman analyzes Batman and his world, specifically exploring the themes of theodicy and evil, ethics and morality, justice and vengeance, and the Divine Nature. Scholars will appreciate the breadth of material covered while Batman fans will appreciate the love for the character expressed through each chapter.

This book explores the theology of the missio Dei by understanding mission as a revelatory concept of person. Mission as a concept of person recovers the original meaning of mission, which is a description of the trinitarian movement of God.

What thresholds of theology would we cross if we engage the aches and despairs, wisdoms, and hopes in and of Aotearoa New Zealand and the neighboring sea of islands? What thresholds need to be jarred or moved (threshold as opening), probed and raised (threshold as limit)? This book engages these questions in two parts: ';(re)Locating Theological Studies' contains essays that interrogate the purposes of theological studies (locally and globally), identify gaps due to the Western heritage and blind spots of ';traditional theology,' and provide examples of how those gaps may be bridged when local concerns are engaged; ';Nativizing Theological Studies' contains essays that present and engage the heritage and wisdom of tangata whenua (indigenous, native people) of Aotearoa and Pasifika. These essays reaffirm the ';native' rhetoric with pride. This collection of essays affirms that theological studies have a future, and that there is a role for theologians in and from Aotearoa New Zealand and Pasifika to play in navigating (into) that future.

Dystopia, from the Greek dus and topos ';bad place,' is a revelatory genre and concept that has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity at the start of the twenty-first century. This book addresses approaches to the study of dystopia from the academic fields of theology and religious studies. Following a co-written chapter where Scott Donahue-Martens and Brandon Simonson argue that dystopia can be understood as demythologized apocalyptic, ten unique contributions each engage a work of popular culture, such as a book, movie, or television show. Topics across chapters range from the critical function of dystopia, social location and identity, violence, apocalypse and the end of everything, sacrifice, catharsis, and dystopian existentialism. This volume responds to the need for theological and religious reflection on dystopia in a world increasingly threatened by climate change, pandemics, and global war.

In Daniel's Mysticism of Resistance in Its Seleucid Context, Timothy L. Seals proffers a postcolonial interpretation of the book of Daniel, investigating certain texts that constitute Daniel's mystical way or practice. Daniel uses mysticism to resist the repressive script of Antiochus IV outlawing the Jewish religion in 167 BCE. In his use of non-violence to resist the imperial power of the Seleucids, Daniel stands in the non-violent, passive-resistant tradition of both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Daniel uses mysticism both to resist imperial intrusions into his humanity and to decolonize his mind in the aftermath of colonization. In this endeavor, mysticism proves to be world-affirming.

While still relatively unknown to the general public, early twentieth century American horror author H.P. Lovecraft left an indelible stamp upon popular culture. Images of tentacled horrors, forbidden tomes, and protagonists struggling against the insanity that comes with the revelation of the terrible truth of realityLovecraft pioneered all of these. Best known for his short story ';The Call of Cthulhu,' Lovecraft instantiated his philosophy of cosmicism into every one of his tales. This collection of fourteen essays is the first sustained academic engagement with horror author H.P. Lovecraft from a theological perspective. Covering the major themes of Lovecrafts work such as nihilism, xenophobia, dark cults, and unimaginable horrors beyond the stars, the book is divided into five sections corresponding to each of the divisions of theology: biblical, historical, systematic, practical, and comparative. With responses ranging from admiration to critique, the contributors explore the dark uncharted regions of Lovecraft's dark mythology in the service of theological truth.