Good news! Annette Joseph-Gabriel's landmark book entitled Reimagining Liberation: how Black women transformed citizenship in the French Empire, (Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2019, 262 p) has now been translated in French. And will be available as soon as the beginning of May, 2023.
book - Page 2
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Imaginer la libération, des femmes noires face à l'Empire
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(Un)believing in modern society
Professor at Lausanne University (Switzerland), Jörg Stolz was invited today for the GSRL monthly seminar.He spoke about the secularization process from an international perspective.
An occasion to remind that he was among the editors of this important book:
Stolz, J., Könemann, J., Schneuwly Purdie, M., Englberger, T. and Krüggeler, M. (2016). (Un)Believing in modern society. Religion, spirituality, and religious-secular competition. London: Routledge.
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Charismatic Healers in Contemporary Africa
Congratulations to Sandra Fancello (Anthology Editor), Alessandro Gusman (Anthology Editor)for this remarkable book.Based on ethnographic studies conducted in several African countries, this volume analyses the phenomenon of deliverance – which is promoted both in charismatic churches and in Islam as a weapon against witchcraft – in order to clarify the political dimensions of spiritual warfare in contemporary African societies. Deliverance from evil is part and parcel of the contemporary discourse on the struggle against witchcraft in most African contexts. However, contributors show how its importance extends beyond this, highlighting a pluralism of approaches to deliverance in geographically distant religious movements, which coexist in Africa. Against this background, the book reflects on the responsibilities of Pentecostal deliverance politics within the condition of 'epistemic anxiety' of contemporary African societies – to shed light on complex relational dimensions in which individual deliverance is part of a wider social and spiritual struggle.
Spanning across the study of religion, healing and politics, this book contributes to ongoing debates about witchcraft and deliverance in Africa.
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Prosperity Gospel in Africa
Marius Nel holds the research chair regarding Pentecostalism and Neo-Pentecostalism at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa.In this scholarly book, written from a pentecostal perspective, the author provides useful insights about the African roots of Prosperity Gospel, which till recently has been far too much related only to US influence.
"Africans' prevailing interest in the prosperity gospel is not only connected to the influence of American prosperity teachers reaching a worldwide audience through their imaginative use of the media, but is also related to the African worldview and African traditional religion, and its lasting influence on contemporary Africans and the way they think about prosperity, as well as their interest in prosperity in post-colonial Africa".
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Secularism in Comparative Perspective
Edited by Jonathan Laurence, this new book on Secularism in Comparative perspective- Brings new texts on the critical issue of Secularism in comparative political contexts
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Includes many non-Western experiences and viewpoints on how secularism is theorized and lived
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Featuring the writing of preeminent scholars – such as Michael Walzer, Asma Afsaruddin, Sudipta Kaviraj AND Carol Ferrara, who wrote an essay on France, which provides a thorough history of the 1789 French Revolution, Church-state relations, colonialism, and education, and how the intersection of these elements with the evolution of French secularism led to modern-day laïcité
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'Fundamentalism and American Culture', third edition updated
'Fundamentalism and American Culture' (Marsden) has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most influential religious movements.
In the twenty-first century, militantly conservative white evangelicals have become more prominent than ever in American life. Marsden's volume, which now takes the history through the end of the Trump administration, remains the essential starting point for understanding the degree to which that militancy has been shaped by the fundamentalist heritage of the twentieth century.To read more about this third and updated edition, click here (link)
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Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa
How hard it is to grasp the whole picture of a continent !This scholarly book about Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa provides a good example of success.
Published in 2017, this comprehensive reference volume covers every country in Sub-Saharan Africa, offering reliable demographic information and original interpretative essays by indigenous scholars and practitioners.
It maps patterns of growth and decline, assesses major traditions and movements, analyses key themes and examines current trends.
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Women in Christianity in the Age of Empire (1800-1920)
Edited by Janet Wootton, "Women in Christianity in the Age of Empire (1800-1920)" offers a broad view of the nineteenth century as a time of dramatic change, particularly for women, critiqued in the light of postcolonial theory.This edited volume includes important contributions from academics in the field.
Overarching themes include the cult of domesticity, the changing impact of Christianity on views of women's nature in an age of scientific thinking, conflation of 'gospel' and 'civilization' in global mission, and the exclusion of women from public spheres of life."
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Harrist Church : still vibrant in Ivory Coast today
"Prophet Harris, The 'Black Elijah' of West Africa" (David Shank, Brill, 1994, 346p) offers the only comprehensive study of the thought of William Wade Harris, the Glebo (Liberia) loyalist whose prophetic mission from 1910-29 moved tens of thousands of West Africans out of traditional religion into the stream of Christianity and modernization, particularly in the Ivory Coast.
It reviews that unparalleled breakthrough, thoroughly examines traditional African, Western missionary and colonial influences which helped determine religious innovation and shape his vocation as prophet of Christ's reign of peace and prosperity." (link). -
A separate Canaan
Why so many postcolonial churches today? One reason may be that the "universalism of the Gospel" taught by Europeans did not always translate/lead into a redefinition of social, economic, status boundaries.Result: enslaved or colonized people remained both "connected and separated by the Christian faith".
A "separate Canaan"....
Without challenging systemic injustice and economic exploitation.
To bring light on this issue from a Colonial North-American perspective, let's remind this brilliant book published in 1998 by John Sensbach:
"Based on German church documents, including dozens of rare biographies of black Moravians, A Separate Canaan is the first full-length study of contact between people of German and African descent in early America. Exploring the fluidity of race in Revolutionary era America, it highlights the struggle of African Americans to secure their fragile place in a culture unwilling to give them full human rights. In the early nineteenth century, white Moravians forsook their spiritual inclusiveness, installing blacks in a separate church. Just as white Americans throughout the new republic rejected African American equality, the Moravian story illustrates the power of slavery and race to overwhelm other ideals".
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Asia and the secular
This afternoon, I was fortunate enough to attend the GSRL's monthly research seminar at Campus Condorcet.We enjoyed a remarkable presentation of this book :
Asia and the Secular, Francophone Perspectives in a Global Age
This volume looks at the secular state in the context of contemporary Asia and investigates whether there existed before modernity antecedents to the condition of secularity, understood as the differentiation of the sphere of the religious from other spheres of social life. The chapters presented in this book examine this issue in national contexts by looking at the historical formation of lexicons that defined the "secular", the "secular state," and "secularism". This approach requires paying attention to modern vernacular languages and their precedents in written traditions with often a very long tradition. This book presents three interpretive frameworks: multiple modernities, variety of secularisms, and typologies of post-colonial secular states.
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Protestantism in Spain: tribute to Frances Luttikhuizen
As Protestantism (mainly Evangelical/Pentecostal) is growing in Spain, let's not forget Frances Luttikhuizen, an English Philology lecturer, writer, and researcher of Protestantism, who passed away in Barcelona this last summer 2022.Her main fields of interest included the history of translation, linguistic awareness, Cervantes' works, and the Spanish Reformation.
Among Luttikhuizen’s most important works is the book España y la Reforma Protestante (Spain and the Protestant Reformation, 2018, 468p (link), of which Spanish theologian José Moreno Berrocal has said it is “a work that represents a before and after in the studies of the Reformation in Spain (...).
There is a wealth of data and ideas that will make this book a constant and obligatory reference work”.
Some reviews of this book are available, mostly in Spanish, including in this History of Philosophy publication (link)
Thank you Evangelical Focus for this obituary (link)
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The complexity of the French principle of Laïcité
Want to discover The groundbreaking volume published by Philippe Portier and Jean-Paul Willaime about religion and secularism in France ?Reminder, Philippe Portier is Professor of History and Sociology of Secularism at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France, and Jean-Paul Willaime is Emerite Professor of History and Sociology of Protestantism at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France. Both are outstanding scholars
Here are some points from the Chapter introduction (link)
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The New Apostolic Reformation (Weaver)
While doing research on the New Apostolic Reformation, a growing movement already studied, from a French-speaking perspective, by Prof. André Gagné and Prof. Philippe Gonzalez, I found this book.The author, John Weaver, is not the typical social science researcher.However, his synthesis is remarkable, and a must-read. The NAR is a movement dedicated to the restoration of the so-called fivefold gospel of Ephesians, in which the roles of apostles, and prophets in particular, are restored to the contemporary Evangelical church. -
Prayer and the Political Praxis of Spiritual Warfare in Nigeria
Combining religious studies with ethnography, Powerful Devices (forthcoming) explores Nigerian Pentecostals and US Evangelicals’ praxis of transnational spiritual warfare.By closely studying spiritual warfare prayers as a “device,” Powerful Devices shows how the rituals of prayer enable an apprehension of time, paradigms of self-enhancement, and the subversion of politics and authority.
Abimbola Adunni Adelakun explores charismatic Christianity’s relationship to science and secular authority, technology and temporality, neoliberalism, and reactionary ideology.
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Aimee Semple McPherson
Within my current researches on Prosperity Gospel, I am in the process of reading Matthew Avery Sutton's book: Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America, Harvard University Press (May 31, 2009)
"Her life marked the beginning of Pentecostalism's advance from the margins of Protestantism to the mainstream of American culture. Indeed, from her location in Hollywood, McPherson's integration of politics with faith set precedents for the religious right, while her celebrity status, use of spectacle, and mass media savvy came to define modern evangelicalism".
A remarkable book about one of the most influential women in contemporary Christian america.
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Faithful Deliberation: Rhetorical Invention, Evangelicalism, and #MeToo Reckonings
While often perceived as an insular enclave with a high level of in-group agreement about political and social issues, predominantly white evangelicalism includes prominent voices urging deliberation about appropriate responses to sexual abuse, domestic violence, and the discourses surrounding these traumas. In Faithful Deliberation: Rhetorical Invention, Evangelicalism, and #MeToo Reckonings (University of Alabama Press, 2022), T J Geiger II examines theologically reflective rhetorical invention that reconfigures trauma-minimizing commonplaces in order to facilitate community-internal deliberation. -
Religion and Secularism in France Today
Philippe Portier is Professor of History and Sociology of Secularism at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France.
Jean-Paul Willaime is Emerite Professor of History and Sociology of Protestantism at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France. Both are outstanding scholars.This groundbreaking volume explores the dynamic life of religion and politics in France and investigates the extent to which the French idea of secularisation has been pushed to be more thorough and radical in its interaction with its other European counterparts.
A must-read !
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Evangelical belonging and Migrant experience (USA)
In the Hands of God: How Evangelical Belonging Transforms Migrant Experience in the United StatesWhy do migrants become more deeply evangelical in the United States and how does this religious identity alter their self-understanding? In the Hands of God examines this question through a unique lens, foregrounding the ways that churches transform what migrants feel.
Drawing from her extensive fieldwork among Brazilian migrants in the Washington, DC, area, Johanna Bard Richlin shows that affective experience is key to comprehending migrants' turn toward intense religiosity, and their resulting evangelical commitment.
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African Pentecostalism in Britain
This fortcoming book is based on ethnographic research among African Pentecostal Christians living in the UK. Written by by Katharine Stockland, Senior Social Researcher at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), UK, the book title is : African Pentecostalism in Britain Migration, Inclusion, and the Prosperity Gospeladdresses themes of migration and community formation, religious identity and practice, and social and political exclusion. With attention to strained kinship relationships, precarious labour conditions, and struggles for legal and social legitimacy, it explores the ways in which intimacy with a Pentecostal God - and with fellow Christians - has been shaped by the challenges of everyday life for Africans in the UK.
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Essays on the new Green theology
The way churches consider ECOLOGY arises in an increased way in our current society. How can we think theologically about this awareness? How to integrate the ecological dimension without excessively sanctifying nature?How to act for the safeguard of Creation from a Christian perspective?
Thinkers from different Christian traditions (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox), from three generations of theologians (pioneers, consolidators and new thinkers) and from various sensibilities in green theology discuss in this volume the emergence of an essential Christian concern: the relationship between man and his environment.
Directed by Prof. Christophe Monnot and Frederic Rognon, written in French, this scholarly book (247p) is a must-have.
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Madeleine Albright (1937-2022)
Former secretary of State (USA), Madeleine Albright (1937- 2022)i s gone.She left a mixed legacy of strong committment to Democracy worldwide, but also of ambiguous global interventionism (including strong support for embargo on Irak, indirectly leading to DAESH's birth).
Smart and well-trained, interested by the role of Faith on Geopolitics, she published a significant book in 2006.
Its title : The Mighty and the Almighty. Introduced by President Bill Clinton.
In that book, she argued that politics and religious values can work together to promote peace. In her seventeenth chapter about Africa, she pleaded for a better training for diplomats, who should take faith seriously. A good lesson that applies to French diplomats too.
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Nigerian Pentecostalism and Development
Some scholars suggest that the combination of an enchanted worldview, an emphasis on miracles and prosperity teaching, and a preoccupation with evangelism discourages effective political engagement and militates against development. However, Nigerian Pentecostalism and Development argues that there is an emerging movement within contemporary Nigerian Pentecostalism which is becoming increasingly active in development practices.This book goes on to explore the increasingly transnational approach that churches take, often seeking to build multicultural congregations around the globe, for instance in Britain and the United States.
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The Quest for Russia's Soul, Evangelicals and Moral Education
What were American Evangelicals doing in Russian public schools after the collapse of the USSR? Actually, the Russian Ministry of Education had invited them. Faced with the need for new approaches to moral education after the demise of communism, the Russian Ministry of Education turned to a group of Western evangelical Christians called the CoMission for help. Oddly enough, a government that had promoted atheism, destroyed churches, and persecuted Christians for more than seventy years now found itself partnering with Christians to train their educators to teach ethics.
While a few books have described the changes in Russian public schools, this book, first published in 2002 and then in 2018 (new edition) provides the first in-depth case study of moral education in Russia after communism. Link
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Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism
As a terrible war has started in Ukraine, let's remind the wider public that the Ukrainian society has considerably evolved since the end of the Soviet Union.Increased religious pluralism is part of it. The rise of Ukrainian Evangelicalism is one of its main features.
It has been studied by Catherine Wanner, who released in 2007 a very good book (Cornell University Press).
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The forgotten history of Black Europeans
The presence of people of African descent in Europe is generally viewed through the prism of slavery and colonization, obscuring a much older shared history. In her new book African Europeans, An Untold Story, Professor Olivette Otele uncovers a forgotten past, from Emperor Septimius Severus, to enslaved Africans living in Europe during the Renaissance, and all the way to present-day migrants moving to Europe’s cities.
With a forthcoming translation in French. A must-read book !
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Pentecostalism in Africa: Pneumatic Christianity in Postcolonial Societies
During recent decades, Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity (pc/c) has moved from an initially peripheral position to become a force to be reckoned with within African Christianity and sub-Saharan African societies in general...Bringing together prominent Africanist scholars from a variety of disciplines (theology and church history, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, political science, developmental studies) this Brill volume published in 2014 offers an elaborate treatment of the social, cultural and political impact of pc/c in sub-Saharan Africa. A must-read book for whoever wants to study today's Postcolonial Christianity in Africa.
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Orthodoxy & Evangelicalism: Contemporary Issues in Global Perspective
Since the 1990s, the Eastern Orthodox and Protestant Evangelical communities have had more direct contact with each other than at any other time. A small but growing number of dialogues have occurred around the globe along with significant comparative studies in history, doctrine, worship, and spiritual life. Few regional studies, however, have examined areas outside the Anglophone world, or the political and legal aspects of relationships between these traditions. Therefore, this volume breaks fresh ground.This volume is a collection of scholarly essays on current issues and/or developments in Orthodox-Evangelical relations, at both global and national levels, which will inform the ongoing dialogue.
Available in open access here ! Link
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A book to read: Pentecostalism and Cultism in South Africa
Pentecostalism is a growing movement in world Christianity. However, the growth of Pentecostalism in South Africa has faced some challenges, including the abuse of religion by some prophets. This book first names these prophets and the churches they lead in South Africa, and then makes use of literary and media analysis to analyse the religious practices by the prophets in relation to cultism. Additionally, the book analyses the “celebrity cult” and how it helps promote the prophets in South Africa. The purpose of this book is threefold: First, to draw parallels between the abuse of religion and cultism. Second, to illustrate that it is cultic tendencies, including the celebrity cult, that has given rise to many prophets in South Africa. Last, to showcase that the challenge for many of these prophets is that the Pentecostal tradition is actually anti-cultism, and thus there is a need for them to rethink their cultic tendencies in order for them to be truly relevant in a South African context.
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See it to believe it - Photographing religion
See it to believe it - Photographing religion
The photography exhibition 'Pluralities of Belief', conceived by teacher-researchers from the CNRS and the EPHE, intends to show the activities of the GSRL laboratory, which studies religion in contemporary societies throughout the world. The distinctiveness of the selected photographs is to associate aesthetic qualities and scientific relevance. The resulting publication is an attempt to respond to the growing and unanimous interest in religious issues. It takes up the narrative unfolding of an exhibition conceived around several themes : gestures of belief, writings of belief rituals of belief, architectures of belief symbolisms of belief and secularism and convictions. The book focuses mainly on the plurality of beliefs and non-beliefs, considered in equal parts and forming the same common whole, which only find their real significance when they are themselves subjected to a plurality of views.
