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Father Bernard Hubbard and America’s Last Frontier
Josh McMullen
Summary
Discover the true story of the Jesuit priest, explorer, geologist, and photographer who brought the wilds of Alaska—and his Catholic faith—to the American public.
In The Glacier Priest, Josh McMullen reveals the captivating life and legacy of Father Bernard R. Hubbard, a devout priest and a national celebrity, a rugged outdoorsman and a passionate promoter. From the late 1920s through the 1950s, the famous Glacier Priest and his dogs connected millions of Americans with the pioneering spirit of Alaska and his vision of the wilderness as the salvation of the nation’s soul. From celebrating Mass in the shadow of mighty Mount Katmai to mushing a dog sled team 1600 miles to five missionary bases, Hubbard’s stories of frontier adventure captured the hearts of Americans and paved the way toward Alaskan statehood and a greater integration of Catholics into American society.
The Glacier Priest seamlessly blends Father Hubbard’s rollicking adventures, the tensions underlying his largerthan-life persona, and the fascinating context that cements his legacy within American history.
Contributor Bio
Josh McMullen is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Regent University. He is author of Under the Big Top: Big Tent Revivalism and American Culture, 1885–1925 and a contributor to The Oxford Handbook of Christian Fundamentalism.
Faith of the Fathers
The Comprehensive History of Catholic Chaplains in the Civil War Robert J. Miller
Summary
Faith of the Fathers provides a captivating collective biography of the Catholic priests who served in America’s most deadly war.
Faith of the Fathers brings to light the forgotten stories of courageous chaplains whose commitments to faith and to men at war during America’s most divisive conflict have long been overlooked. The Reverend Robert J. Miller provides a comprehensive and compelling portrait of the 126 priest-chaplains who served during the Civil War and reflects on the importance of religion and faith in nineteenth-century America. As a culture of death and horror raged around them, Catholic priest-chaplains met the needs of soldiers and officers alike, providing years of faithful and dedicated service in hospitals, prisons, battlefields, and camps.
Whether ministering to Union or Confederate soldiers (or both), in eastern or western theaters, in battle or camp, these priests risked their lives to bring faith and hope to one of the darkest and most devastating periods of American history.
Contributor
The Reverend Robert J. Miller is a retired Catholic priest, scholar, and former president of the Chicago Civil War Round Table. He is author of six books, including Both Prayed to the Same God: Religion and Faith in the American Civil War.
9780268209186
$65.00
480 Pages
34 color illustrations, 2 tables
The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art
Jonathan A. Anderson
Summary
The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art offers a critical guide for rereading and rethinking religion in the histories of modern and contemporary art.
Since the turn of the twenty-first century, there has been a marked increase in attention to religion and spirituality in contemporary art among artists and scholars alike, but the resulting scholarship tends to be dispersed, disjointed, and underdeveloped, lacking a sustained discourse that holds up as both scholarship of art and as scholarship of religion. The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art is both a critical study of this situation and an adjustment to it, offering a much-needed field guide to the current discourse of contemporary art and religion. By connecting the work of leading art historians, theologians, philosophers, and sociologists, Jonathan A. Anderson uncovers the gaps and reveals opportunities for scholars to engage more fully with the theological grammars, histories, and concepts at play in modern and contemporary art.
By addressing the religious blind spots in existing scholarship, Anderson opens new lines of inquiry and invites deeper dialogue among religious studies, theology, and art history and criticism.
Contributor Bio
Jonathan A. Anderson is the Eugene and Jan Peterson Associate Professor of Theology and the Arts at Regent College. He is the co-author of the book Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism.
Women in the Orthodox Tradition
Feminism, Theology, and Equality
Ashley Marie Purpura
Summary
Women in the Orthodox Tradition brings feminist insights into dialogue with Orthodox Christianity to theologically identify and respond to challenges of gender equality.
Orthodox Christianity places great importance upon tradition, from doctrinal formulas and sainted teachings to festal commemorations and a hymnic liturgy. But what does this mean for women who are often missing, misrepresented, or outnumbered in the androcentric historical tradition? Women in the Orthodox Tradition engages with feminist insights to argue that ignoring this bias in Christian tradition is theologically problematic for Orthodox faith. By critically examining the spiritual values that shape Orthodoxy, the commemorations of women saints within it, and liturgical and doctrinal expressions that shape it, author Ashley Marie Purpura makes the case that it is theologically necessary to unsay the patriarchal limits of tradition and seek a more inclusive approach instead.
In acknowledging the messy entanglement between tradition, theology, and historical patriarchal values, Women in the Orthodox Tradition advocates for women’s voices, contributions, and diverse humanity within the church.
Contributor Bio
Ashley Marie Purpura is an associate professor of religion in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University. She is the author of God, Hierarchy, and Power: Orthodox Theologies of Authority from Byzantium and co-editor of Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality and Rethinking Gender in Orthodox Christianity.
9780268209445
$42.00
294 Pages
9 in H | 6 in W
Challenging Modern Atheism and Indifference
Pascal’s Defense of the Christian Proposition
Pierre Manent, Paul Seaton
Summary
Challenging Modern Atheism and Indifference is the first English translation of Pierre Manent’s penetrating engagement with the seventeenth century polymath and apologist for the Christian faith, Blaise Pascal.
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was the first Christian apologist to address modern human beings on their own terms and present a defense of the Christian religion that still resonates today. A major publishing and intellectual event in France when it first appeared in 2022, Challenging Modern Atheism and Indifference is Pierre Manent’s investigation of Pascal’s exploration of Christianity in the wake of a sharp atheistic turn at the dawn of the modern state and modern science. Comprehensive in scope and profound in treatment, this engagement with all of Pascal’s writings, including his famous Pensées, appeals to the reader’s head and heart. Manent emphasizes the joy that comes from engaging the truth of faith, and he argues that we are diminished by forgetting the unique and distinctive contributions of Christianity.
More than brilliant exegesis, Manent enlists Pascal in a much greater endeavor: to make what he calls “the Christian proposition” concerning God and man intelligible to Europeans who have made it their business to ignore the religion that founded Europe and the larger Western world.
Contributor Bio
Pierre Manent is professor emeritus of political philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. He is the author of numerous books, including Montaigne: Life without Law
Paul Seaton is an independent scholar of political philosophy, with a special focus on French political thought. He has written extensively on modern and contemporary French thinkers, as well as translated works by Rémi Brague, Benjamin Constant, Chantal Delsol, and Pierre Manent.
The Controversial Thomas More Politics, Polemics, and Prison Writings
Travis Curtright
Summary
The Controversial Thomas More offers an original and critical intervention on the writings of Thomas More and his opposition to King Henry VIII.
Thomas More is known for refusing the oath of succession and remaining silent about his reasons for doing so. His prison literature, however, tells a different story. Under the threat of execution, More waged an astonishingly prolific and often coded writing campaign in rebuke of King Henry VIII’s claim to be supreme head of the Church in England. Travis Curtright’s groundbreaking book shows how William Rastell, More’s nephew and printer, fashioned a historically inaccurate depiction of More, one that persists to this day. Rastell’s edition of More’s works gave the false impression that More stopped writing polemical literature in 1533 and, instead, turned his mind exclusively toward heaven and away from politics. In contrast, Curtright proves that More’s prison writings are not just devotional literature but also a powerful defense of a united Church under the pope, reestablishing More as a key political and religious thinker, defiant of King Henry VIII.
Most scholars restrict More’s political thought to his Utopia, but The Controversial Thomas More shows how his prison writings best reveal his ideas of political unity and authority, and is a reconsideration of More’s legacy and place in the history of the Henrician Reformation.
Contributor
Bio
Travis Curtright is professor of humanities and literature at Ave Maria University. He is the author or editor of four previous books, including The One Thomas More, and is the editor-in-chief of Moreana: Thomas More and Renaissance Studies.
9780268209261
Pub Date: 3/1/25
$40.00 USD
232 Pages
1 table Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy
Series: Catholic Ideas for a Secular World
9 in H | 6 in W
Ethics, Politics, and Natural Law Principles for Human Flourishing
Melissa Moschella
Summary
A rigorous but accessible overview of the new natural law account of ethics and political philosophy.
The foundational principles of ethics and politics are principles that guide us to respect and promote human flourishing. In Ethics, Politics, and Natural Law Melissa Moschella provides an accessible explanation and development of the new natural law account of these principles while clarifying common misconceptions.
As a commonsense ethical theory, natural law grounds ethics in the fundamental dimensions of human flourishing. Moschella lays out the basic principles of natural law, their relationship to the virtues, and their social and political implications. Highlighting the importance of communities for flourishing, Moschella explains how this should shape our understanding of justice and the common good, and shows how natural law principles support limited government and civil liberties. She also considers the relationship between morality and God, and how natural law relates to Christian revelation. This fresh and compelling account of new natural law is the go-to resource to understand this important and influential theory.
Contributor Bio
Melissa Moschella is a professor of the practice in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life. She is the author of To Whom Do Children Belong? Parental Rights, Civic Education, and Children’s Autonomy.
An Analogy of Grace Henry Shea S.J.
Summary
An Analogy of Grace proposes a deeply grounded investigation of grace and a robustly balanced impetus for advancing the gospel in the twenty-first century.
Amid the present decline in religious affiliation, a pervasive question for many is “why bother” with faith and its practices. An Analogy of Grace engages this question in the context of grace, or our participation in the life and love of God, and investigates the difference made by the diverse ways in which the self-communication of God is received and participated. Shea begins with the contrasting models provided by twentieth-century theologians Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Rahner focused on how grace is universally accessible within the heart, while Balthasar envisioned grace as found principally through an encounter with the incarnate Word. Henry Shea charts a course within and beyond this difference, bolstered by fresh and insightful analysis of the work of Erich Przywara, Henri de Lubac, and other major theologians.
An Analogy of Grace posits that grace is best understood as a moving Trinitarian analogy that begins in the heart and advances through the incarnate Word in the Spirit toward the whole Christ. This new analogy of grace is radically universal and inclusive while also wholly informed by the distinct form of Jesus Christ.
Contributor Bio
Henry Shea, S.J., is assistant professor of theology at Boston College.
9780268209124
Pub Date: 2/15/25
$70.00 USD
390 Pages
Religion / Christianity
Series: Liu Institute Series in Chinese Christianities
9 in H | 6 in W
Translingual Catholics
Chinese Theologians before Vatican II
Jin Lu
Summary
Translingual Catholics explores the life experiences and theological writings of twentieth-century Chinese Catholic intellectuals and their impact on global Catholic theology.
Weaving together archival resources in Chinese, French, and English, Translingual Catholics examines the preconciliar theological contribution of Republican-Era Chinese Catholics to global Catholicism and to the dialogue between Christianity and Chinese spiritual traditions. Author Jin Lu sheds light on generations of multilingual Chinese Catholic intellectuals who participated in the elaboration of Catholic theology leading up to the Second Vatican Council. This book situates the lives and works of these theologians in the intersecting global Catholic networks of the time, especially the Jesuit enclave of Xujiahui in Shanghai, the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-André in Bruges, Belgium, the Jesuit Theologate in Lyon-Fourvière, and the ecumenical Cercle Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Paris. By studying the interconnectedness of Chinese Catholic theologians working in multiple languages, Lu demonstrates that inculturation is necessarily a translingual process.
Through its groundbreaking archival research, Translingual Catholics tells the story of these underappreciated intellectuals and uncovers significant contributions to Chinese and global Catholic theology.
Contributor Bio
Jin Lu is a professor of French at Purdue University Northwest. She is the author of Éléments d’une enquête sur l’usage d’un mot au siècle des Lumières.
Shari´a, Citizenship, and Identity in Aceh
Arskal Salim, Moch. Nur Ichwan, Eka Srimulyani, Marzi Afriko
Summary
Shari`a, Citizenship, and identity in Aceh presents both an ethnographic and a sociohistorical account of identity making among both the Muslim majority population and different minority groups in Aceh, Indonesia.
Diverging from previous studies on majority-minority group relations in a predominantly Muslim country that tend to engage solely with one group’s experiences, Shari`a, Citizenship, and Identity in Aceh argues that the majority and minority groups in Aceh, Indonesia, have interactively and mutually created conceptions of identity and recognition that have significant implications on the experience of citizenship in the region. The authors provide not only a narrative of majority-minority group encounters in a variety of issues, but also a wideranging account of struggles from both the Muslim majority and non-Muslim minority groups for recognition of their own identity in the public space. To what extent do minority groups feel that they belong to Aceh’s communal identity, which is mostly Islamic? And what kind of citizenship is in place when minorities feel marginalized living under Aceh’s Islamic rules?
Contributor Bio
Arskal Salim is professor of politics of Islamic law at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta, Indonesia.
Moch. Nur Ichwan is professor of Islamic social and political sciences at Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, Yogyakarta.
Eka Srimulyani is professor of sociology at Ar-Raniry State Islamic University in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
Marzi Afriko is a research assistant specializing in studies of the provincial and district governments of Aceh, Indonesia.
9780268204907 Pub Date: 3/1/25 $22.00
Touch the Wounds
On Suffering, Trust, and Transformation
Tomáš Halík, Gerald Turner
Summary
In this masterfully written book, Tomáš Halík calls upon Christians to touch the wounds of the world and to rediscover their own faith by loving and healing their neighbors.
One of the most important voices in contemporary Catholicism, Tomáš Halík argues that Christians can discover the clearest vision of God not by turning away from suffering but by confronting it. Halík calls upon us to follow the apostle Thomas’s example: to see the pain, suffering, and poverty of our world and to touch those wounds with faith and action. It is those expressions of love and service, Halík reveals, that restore our hope and the courage to live, allowing true holiness to manifest itself. Only face-to-face with a wounded Christ can we lay down our armor and masks, revealing our own wounds and allowing healing to begin.
Weaving together deep theological and philosophical reflections with surprising, trenchant, and even humorous commentary on the times in which we live, Halík offers a new prescription for those lost in moments of doubt, abandonment, or suffering. Rather than demanding impossible, flawless faith, we can look through our doubt to see, touch, and confront the wounds in the hearts of our neighbors and—through that wounded humanity, which the Son of God took upon himself—see God.
Contributor Bio
Tomáš Halík is a Czech Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, theologian, and scholar. He is a professor of sociology at Charles University in Prague, pastor of the Academic Parish of St. Salvator Church in Prague, president of the Czech Christian Academy, and a winner of the Templeton Prize. His previous books with University of Notre Dame Press, I Want You to Be and From the Underground Church to Freedom, won the Foreword Reviews’ INDIES Book of the Year Awards in Philosophy and in Religion, respectively.
Gerald Turner has translated numerous Czech authors, including Václav Havel, Ivan Klíma, and Ludvík Vaculík, among others. He received the US PEN Translation Award in 2004.
Pope Francis and Mercy A Dynamic Theological Hermeneutic
Gill K. Goulding CJ
Summary
This theological study examines how Pope Francis lives out mercy in his own Petrine ministry and calls for it to be lived out by the people of God.
The centerpiece of Pope Francis’s pontificate from the very first days has been his proclamation of the importance of the mercy of God. While facing global problems of climate change, terror, political destabilization, refugees, and dire poverty, the Holy Father has articulated the mission of the Church through mercy, love, and forgiveness to reveal the compassion of God for all and particularly for those most vulnerable existing on the margins of society. In this compelling study, Gill Goulding, CJ, examines for the first time the critical and determinative role of mercy in Francis’s papacy using his homilies, allocutions, encyclicals, and addresses as primary sources. Goulding traces the theme of mercy in Francis’s thought, attending to its Ignatian foundations and its Christological, Trinitarian, and ecclesiological significance for the Church today, particularly the impact of his reappropriation and elevation of the discourse of mercy on the work of the Curia in Rome.
Goulding enters into dialogue with other theologians, including Romano Guardini, Walter Kasper, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, to demonstrate a continuity between Francis and his predecessors, especially Benedict XVI, in this area of mercy. In addition, Goulding argues that the influence of St. Ignatius Loyola, in particular his Spiritual Exercises, needs to be taken into account, paying special attention to Francis’s call for the practice of discernment. Throughout Pope Francis and Mercy, Goulding lays the groundwork for future research and suggests a wider appreciation of the necessary tools to enable an engagement with mercy in our contemporary world.
Contributor Bio
Gill K. Goulding, CJ, is professor of systematic theology at Regis College, University of Toronto, and senior research associate at the Von Hügel Institute, University of Cambridge.
9780268102142
Pub Date: 1/15/25
$45.00
474 Pages
29 b&w illustrations Religion / Christianity
9 in H | 6 in W NEW IN PAPERBACK
Quill and Cross in the Borderlands
Sor María de Ágreda and the Lady in Blue, 1628
to the Present
Anna
M. Nogar
Summary
Quill and Cross in the Borderlands examines nearly four hundred years of history, folklore, literature, and art surrounding the legendary Lady in Blue and her historical counterpart, Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda.
This legendary figure, identified as seventeenth-century Spanish nun and writer Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, miraculously appeared to tribes in colonial-era New Mexico and taught them the rudiments of the Catholic faith. Sor María, an author of mystical Marian texts, became renowned not only for her alleged spiritual travel from her cloister in Spain to New Mexico but also for her writing, studied and implemented by Franciscans and others around the world. Working from original historical accounts, archival research, and a wealth of literature on the legend and the historical figure alike, Anna M. Nogar meticulously examines how and why the person and the legend became intertwined in Catholic consciousness and social praxis.
Nogar addresses the influence of Sor María’s spiritual texts on many spheres of New Spanish and Spanish society over several centuries. Eventually, the historical Sor María and her writings virtually disappeared from view, and the Lady in Blue became a prominent folk figure in the present-day U.S. Southwest and U.S.-Mexico borderlands, appearing in folk stories, artwork, literature, theater, and public ritual that survives today. Quill and Cross in the Borderlands documents the material legacy of a legend that has survived and thrived for hundreds of years, and at the same time rediscovers the extraordinary impact of a hidden writer.
Contributor Bio
Anna M. Nogar is professor of Hispanic Southwest studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Associate Dean for Humanities & Interdisciplinary Units at the University of New Mexico.
Renewing Theology
Ignatian Spirituality and Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Pope Francis J.Matthew Ashley
Summary
This comprehensive study investigates the role that Ignatian spirituality has played in the renewal of academic theology using three prominent Jesuits as case studies.
Over several centuries, spirituality has come to define a field of concerns and themes increasingly treated separately from those of academic theology, as if the latter had little relation to the former. This raises the question for us today: How is spirituality related to the practice of theology? In Renewing Theology, J. Matthew Ashley provides an answer by turning to Ignatian spirituality and three prominent twentieth-century theologians who embraced its spiritual resources: Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio—that is, Pope Francis.
Ashley begins his investigation by considering the historical origins of the widening separation between spirituality and academic theology in the Christian West. He provides an initial overview of Ignatian spirituality, focusing on the openness and multidimensionality of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, presented here as a text in which the conditions of modernity that defined its author’s world are present, at least incipiently. Ashley then offers three case studies in order to show how each Jesuit—Rahner, Ellacuría, and Pope Francis —responded to the challenges of modernity in a way that is uniquely nourished and illuminated by themes constitutive of Ignatian spirituality. Their theologies, Ashley suggests, evince a particular clarity and force when the Ignatian spirituality that animates them is foregrounded. Providing new and productive avenues into understanding the theologies of these three individuals, this sophisticated and enlightening book will interest scholars and students of systematic theology, as well as readers who are interested in the future of theology and spirituality in a fragmented age.
Contributor Bio
J. Matthew Ashley is professor of Christian spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University.
9780268200619
$35.00
240 Pages
1 Illustration(s)
9
Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy
David M. Elcott, C. Colt Anderson, Tobias Cremer, Volker Haarmann
Summary
Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy highlights the use of religious identity to fuel the rise of illiberal, nationalist, and populist democracy.
In Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy, David Elcott, C. Colt Anderson, Tobias Cremer, and Volker Haarmann present a pragmatic and modernist exploration of how religion engages in the public square. Elcott and his co-authors are concerned about the ways religious identity is being used to foster the exclusion of individuals and communities from citizenship, political representation, and a role in determining public policy They examine the ways religious identity is weaponized to fuel populist revolts against a political, social, and economic order that values democracy in a global and strikingly diverse world. Included is a history and political analysis of religion, politics, and policies in Europe and the United States that foster this illiberal rebellion.
The authors explore what constitutes a constructive religious voice in the political arena, even in nurturing patriotism and democracy, and what undermines and threatens liberal democracies. To lay the groundwork for a religious response, the book offers chapters showing how Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism can nourish liberal democracy. The authors encourage people of faith to promote foundational support for the institutions and values of the democratic enterprise from within their own religious traditions and to stand against the hostility and cruelty that historically have resulted when religious zealotry and state power combine.
Contributor Bio
David M. Elcott is a professor at SUNY and the Hudson Link and works with Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison to teach college level classes to incarcerated individuals at Green Haven Correctional Facility.
C. Colt Anderson is professor of Christian spirituality and the former dean of the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education at Fordham University.
Tobias Cremer is a member of the European Parliament.
Volker Haarmann is the chair of the Department of Theology of the Protestant Church in the Rhineland.
Aristotle's Discovery of the Human Piety and Politics in the "Nicomachean Ethics"
Mary P. Nichols
Summary
Aristotle’s Discovery of the Human offers a fresh, illuminating, and accessible analysis of one of the Western philosophical tradition’s most important texts.
In Aristotle’s Discovery of the Human, noted political theorist Mary P. Nichols explores the ways in which Aristotle brings the gods and the divine into his “philosophizing about human affairs” in his Nicomachean Ethics. Her analysis shows that, for Aristotle, both piety and politics are central to a flourishing human life. Aristotle argues that piety provides us not only an awareness of our kinship to the divine, and hence elevates human life, but also an awareness of a divinity that we cannot entirely assimilate or fathom. Piety therefore supports a politics that strives for excellence at the same time that it checks excess through a recognition of human limitation.
Proceeding through each of the ten books of the Ethics, Nichols shows that this prequel to Aristotle’s Politics is as theoretical as it is practical. Its goal of improving political life and educating citizens and statesmen is inseparable from its pursuit of the truth about human beings and their relation to the divine. In the final chapter, which turns to contemporary political debate, Nichols’s suggestion of the possibility of supplementing and deepening liberalism on Aristotelian grounds is supported by the account of human nature, virtue, friendship, and community developed throughout her study of the Ethics
Contributor Bio
Mary P. Nichols is professor emerita in the Department of Political Science at Baylor University. She is the author of seven books, including Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom
9780268106348
Pub Date: 1/15/25
$45.00
446
9
Aquinas's Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance
Matthew Levering
Summary
Matthew Levering offers a biblical and Thomistic portrait of the cardinal virtue of temperance and its allied virtues, in dialogue with an ecumenical range of theologians and scholars.
In Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance, Levering argues that Catholic ethics make sense only in light of the biblical worldview that Jesus has inaugurated the kingdom of God by pouring out his spirit. Jesus has made it possible for us to know and obey God’s law for human flourishing as individuals and communities. He has reoriented our lives toward the goal of beatific communion with him in charity, which affects the exercise of the moral virtues that pertain to human flourishing.
Without the context of the inaugurated kingdom, Catholic ethics as traditionally conceived will seem like an effort to find a middle ground between legalistic rigorism and relativistic laxism, which is especially the case with the virtue of temperance, the focus of Levering’s book. After an opening chapter on the eschatological/biblical character of Catholic ethics, the ensuing chapters engage Aquinas’s theology of temperance in the Summa theologiae, which identifies and examines a number of virtues associated with temperance. Levering demonstrates that the theology of temperance is profoundly biblical, and that Aquinas’s theology of temperance relies for its intelligibility upon Christ’s inauguration of the kingdom of God as the graced fulfillment of our created nature. The book develops new vistas for scholars and students interested in moral theology.
Contributor Bio
Matthew Levering is the James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary and co-director of the Chicago Theological Initiative. He is the author or editor of over fifty-five books, including Mary's Bodily Assumption
The Limits of Liberalism
Tradition,
Individualism, and the Crisis of Freedom
Mark T. Mitchell
Summary
In The Limits of Liberalism, Mark T. Mitchell argues that a rejection of tradition is both philosophically incoherent and politically harmful.
The Limits of Liberalism identifies why most modern thinkers have denied the essential role of tradition and explains how tradition can be restored to its proper place. Mitchell demonstrates that the rejection of tradition as an epistemic necessity has produced a false conception of the human person—the liberal self—which in turn has produced a false conception of freedom. Together, these false conceptions have facilitated both liberal cosmopolitanism and identity politics.
Mitchell uses the philosophies of Michael Oakeshott, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Michael Polanyi to construct a compelling argument for a reconstructed view of tradition and, as a result, a reconstructed view of freedom.
The Limits of Liberalism reveals that only by finding an alternative to the liberal self can we escape the incoherencies and pathologies inherent therein.
Contributor Bio
Mark T. Mitchell is the dean of academic affairs at Patrick Henry College and co-founder of Front Porch Republic. He is the author and co-editor of a number of books, including Plutocratic Socialism: The Future of Private Property and the Fate of the Middle Class
9780268203979
Pub Date: 2/15/25
$45.00 USD
394 Pages
/ Ethics & Moral
9 in H | 6 in W
The Collapse of Freedom of Expression
Reconstructing the Ancient Roots of Modern Liberty
Jordi Pujol
Summary
This book offers a holistic account of the problems posed by freedom of expression in our current times and offers corrective measures to allow for a more genuine exchange of ideas within the global society.
The topic of free speech is rarely addressed from a historical, philosophical, or theological perspective. In The Collapse of Freedom of Expression, Jordi Pujol explores both the modern concept of the freedom of expression based on the European Enlightenment and the deficiencies inherent in this framework. Modernity has disregarded the traditional roots of the freedom of expression drawn from Christianity, Greek philosophy, and Roman law, which has left the door open to the various forms of abuse, censorship, and restrictions seen in contemporary public discourse. Pujol proposes that we rebuild the foundations of the freedom of expression by returning to older traditions and incorporating both the field of pragmatics of language and theological and ethical concepts on human intentionality as new, complementary disciplines.
Pujol examines emblematic cases such as Charlie Hebdo, free speech on campus, and online content moderation to elaborate on the tensions that arise within the modern concept of freedom of expression. The book explores the main criticisms of the contemporary liberal tradition by communitarians, libertarians, feminists, and critical race theorists, and analyzes the gaps and contradictions within these traditions. Pujol ultimately offers a reconstruction project that involves bridging the chasm between the secular and the sacred and recognizing that religion is a font of meaning for millions of people, and as such has an inescapable place in the construction of a pluralist public sphere.
Contributor Bio
Jordi Pujol is an associate professor of media ethics and media law at the School of Church Communications in the Pontifical University of Santa Croce in Rome.
9780268210410
Pub Date: 9/1/25
$28.00
150
The Light of Tabor Toward a
Monistic Christology
David Bentley Hart
Summary
In The Light of Tabor, award-winning theologian David Bentley Hart proposes an approach to the nature of Christ that is profoundly radical yet deeply classical.
For centuries, Christian theology has rested on a paradox. Beginning with the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century, the major Christian traditions have held that Jesus Christ combines two distinct natures: he is fully God and, somehow, fully human. Yet this tenet has traditionally invited irresolvable metaphysical contradictions. David Bentley Hart delves deeply into the seemingly irresoluble tensions, providing the first theological attempt to show how the logic of the earliest churches’ angelomorphic Christology is continuous with later Chalcedonian orthodoxy. Hart draws on theologians from every epoch of Christian thought, from Origen to Sergei Bulgakov, while making free use of concepts from other spiritual traditions, such as Vedanta.
The Light of Tabor proposes an approach to Christology that is thoroughly monistic, both as regards Being and as regards nature. Hart argues that the only coherent reading of the figure of Christ is one that fully embraces the essential unity of all things divine and natural through him, proposing an approach to Christology that affirms classical doctrine without retaining the dualistic presuppositions that have haunted theology since the age of the great councils.
Contributor Bio
David Bentley Hart is a religious studies scholar, philosopher, cultural commentator, and writer of fiction. He is the author and translator of twenty-three books, including the award-winning You Are Gods
Black and Catholic Racism, Identity, and Religion
Tia Noelle
Pratt
Summary
Black and Catholic documents the exclusion, erasure, and systematic racism faced by Black Catholics, filling an essential gap in both Catholic and Black history.
In the storied history of the U.S. Catholic community, there is a long-standing myth held by Catholics and non-Catholics alike that there are no Black Catholics. In this deeply researched and compelling book, Tia Noelle Pratt debunks this myth and brings forward the religious experiences and culture of Black Catholics, filling a void in the literature of both U.S. Catholicism and African American religion. She identifies the nature and ramifications of systemic racism on American Catholicism and how that marginalization impacts Black Catholic identity. Building on her extensive research, Pratt amplifies the voices and experiences of Black Catholics through original interviews and by sharing the story of St. Peter Claver, Philadelphia’s first Black Catholic church. Black and Catholic also explores the ways that liturgy and music can build community, celebrate individuality, and resist racism.
Black and Catholic is an essential book that centralizes the Black Catholic community, revealing the heartache of racism and discrimination, the comfort drawn from the strength of generations of believers, and the celebration from combining the music and traditions of African American religious experiences with the belief and rituals of Roman Catholicism.
Contributor Bio
Tia Noelle Pratt is assistant vice president and director of mission engagement and strategic initiatives in the Office for Mission and Ministry and assistant professor of sociology at Villanova University.
9780268210458
Pub Date: 10/1/25
$35.00
384 Pages History / United States Series: Faith, Governance, and Civil Society in American History
9 in H | 6.3 in W
Abortion and America's Churches
A Religious History of "Roe v. Wade"
Daniel K. Williams
Summary
Abortion and America’s Churches explores the surprising history of how American Christians think about abortion.
Many people assume that Christians have steadfastly condemned abortion throughout the United States’s history. Daniel K. Williams overthrows all assumptions about the unity, consistency, or simplicity of American Christian thought and belief in this groundbreaking new book. He demonstrates that churches in the United States have fought among themselves and with the wider culture as they developed and enforced their stance on abortion, revealing major struggles to define their often-changing positions. Far from a cynical exercise of political interest, changes and disagreements arose from serious theological considerations informed by each tradition’s approach to the faith. These theological shifts—and corresponding shifts in interreligious political alliances—led to the changing fortunes of Roe v. Wade
By capturing the fascinating and complicated history informing each faith’s position, Abortion and America’s Churches restores much-needed context to the sharp polarization over abortion today.
Contributor Bio
Daniel K. Williams is a senior fellow at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, where he teaches American history. He is the author of several books on modern American religion and politics, including The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship and Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before "Roe v.Wade." His work has been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and Christianity Today.
The Dignity of Dependence
A Feminist Manifesto
Leah Libresco Sargeant
Summary
The Dignity of Dependence argues that women’s equal rights depend on advocating for women as women.
The world is not ready to welcome women as women; a culture that fears dependence and asks everyone to aim for autonomy and independence will always be a society hostile to women. Women are expected to care for those around them while living in a society that despises need and penalizes those who care for the weak.
The Dignity of Dependence aims to liberate women and men from this corrosive and false ideal of the human person as strongest alone. Leah Libresco Sargeant argues that to thrive, human beings need to exist in webs of mutual dependence, not in isolating, radical autonomy. Women’s equal dignity doesn’t require women to deny biological reality or attempt to be interchangeable with men. Sargeant advocates for building a culture that accepts and celebrates women as they are rather than demanding that women keep their relationships and their bodies in check. The fight for women’s dignity is a fight for a full, human dignity—a dignity that isn’t threatened by dependence. It is our need for each other that makes us human.
Contributor Bio
Leah Libresco Sargeant works on family policy in Washington, DC. She is the author of Building the Benedict Option and Arriving at Amen. She runs the Substack community Other Feminisms.
9780268209735
Pub Date: 8/1/25
$30.00
Prosperity and Torment in France
The Paradox of the Democratic Age
Chantal
Delsol, Andrew Kelley
Summary
A philosophical and historical analysis of the paradox of French democracy that illuminates the challenges of the current democratic age.
In Prosperity and Torment in France, philosopher Chantal Delsol provides an analysis of the current state of affairs in French politics, economics, and cultural life that reveals key lessons for modern democracies around the world. She examines the seeming paradox of France as a wealthy country that provides almost unrivaled social services to its citizens at no extra cost, but one whose citizens are unsatisfied with the current state of affairs. Delsol traces this current dilemma back several hundred years, and examines the principle of the common good and its inherent tension with concepts like democracy and egalitarianism that often emphasize individualism. Likewise, Delsol emphasizes this concept also stands in contrast to the centralization of power in Paris throughout its history. In the end, Delsol notes that these historical tensions set the stage for many of the current tensions in France: secularism versus religion, economic liberalism versus the welfare state, civil service versus the private sector, and material wealth versus status.
By examining the paradox of France, Delsol brings to the forefront the challenges democracies are facing around the globe and asks the broader question of how governments should best serve their people in our contemporary world.
Contributor Bio
Chantal Delsol is professor of philosophy at the University of Marne-la-Vallée and an elected member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (Institut de France). She is the author of numerous books, including La Fin de la Chrétienté (The End of Christianity).
Andrew Kelley is professor of philosophy and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Bradley University.
Body and Identity
A History of the Empty Self
Angela Franks
Summary
Angela Franks provides a sweeping intellectual history of identity, particularly in terms of how identity relates to the body, with an emphasis on the importance of Christianity to this understanding.
Modern questions about our bodies and how we see ourselves are often complex and problematic. To better answer these contemporary questions and navigate “identity politics,” Angela Franks seeks to provide a better understanding of identity. She begins by giving three basic meanings of the term: identity through time, the “true” or authentic self, and our awareness of ourselves. She engages with thinkers from antiquity to present day and investigates the decisive developments that Christianity provided. Within Christianity came a new awareness of the distinctive individuality of each person—the “true self”—called by God in a way that often breaks away from the “solid” or fixed structures of identity formation, such as family, class, and nation. This more “liquid” idea of identity continues to evolve in modern times, though without its theistic emphasis on God’s call. The result is a purely liquid self that consists of consciousness and activity, but without a grounded self that is either the object or the subject of consciousness. This is the empty self we have today, one that is given much more to do and less to be.
A comprehensive history of identity, Body and Identity brings the theological history of the self to the forefront in order to address the empty self and how identity is defined today.
Contributor Bio
Angela Franks is an assistant professor of theology at the Catholic University of America.
9780268210212
Pub Date: 10/15/25
$45.00
156 Pages
/ Christian
Intimacy and Intelligibility
Word and Life in Augustine's "De magistro"
Erika
Kidd
Summary
Intimacy and Intelligibility is a paradigm-shifting exploration of De magistro, Augustine’s overlooked and misunderstood dialogue about words and signs.
Erika Kidd's fresh approach to Augustine’s De magistro (On the Teacher) fills a gap in the emerging conversation about Augustine’s early dialogues, while avoiding the disincarnate bias of existing interpretations of this essential work. Kidd’s reading situates the dialogue within a broadly Augustinian tradition of reflection on language and intimacy. Drawing on the work of feminist philosopher and linguist Luce Irigaray, Intimacy and Intelligibility unpacks the literary form and the relational context of De magistro, including the women who lurk in the dialogue’s shadows. Kidd likewise reimagines the place of Christ, the inner teacher, in the dialogue. Though the inner teacher is often cast as a mere guarantor of meaning, she argues that the inner teacher summons Augustine and his son Adeodatus to an intimate space of meaning, rooted in the life they share.
Contributor Bio
Erika Kidd is an associate professor of Catholic studies at the University of St. Thomas.
Inherent Human Dignity
A Philosophical Meditation
Glenn Hughes
Summary
Inherent Human Dignity explores the philosophical and existential foundations of what it means to be human.
Inherent Human Dignity is a philosophical meditation and defense of the value of being human. Glenn Hughes explores the existential foundations of these concepts in this structured and accessible study about the experience of being human.
Kidd reveals that De magistro is not a text about informing but a text about intimacy. It is a rich meditation on the blessed life and a worthy memorial to Augustine’s beloved son. 9780268209957
Hughes locates human dignity within the philosophical, political, and historical horizons of human culture. Guided by Eric Voegelin and Bernard Lonergan, literary and artistic examples, key moments of our modern era, and his own scholarship on the religions of the world, Hughes unfolds and accounts for human dignity’s place in our world. He additionally utilizes key moments of our modern era to frame our understanding of human dignity, paying close attention to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was created by the United Nations following World War II. Ultimately, Hughes’s meditation is concerned both with exploring the maximally differentiated set of insights into the meaning of being human and with articulating why the discovery of the inherent equal dignity of every person—without exception—is a profound and unique achievement.
Glenn Hughes (1951–2024) was professor emeritus at St. Mary’s University. He was the inaugural holder of the St. Mary’s Chair in Catholic Philosophy. He was the author of several books including From Dickinson to Dylan: Visions of Transcendence in Modernist Literature and Transcendence and History: The Search for Ultimacy from Ancient Societies to Postmodernity
9780268209575
Pub Date: 7/15/25
$38.00 USD
Paperback
188 Pages
Philosophy / Ethics & Moral
Philosophy
Series: The Beginning and the Beyond of Politics
9 in H | 6 in W
The Invisible Source of Authority
God in a Secular Age
David Walsh
Summary
The Invisible Source of Authority is a philosophical meditation on the secular age and challenges the notion that the secular can be understood without reference to God.
How does one reject God while denying belief? This is the central paradox of our secular age, where efforts to erase God only affirm his presence. In The Invisible Source of Authority, David Walsh examines this paradox and argues that a secular world actually reveals God more clearly, rather than bringing about what has been called the death of God. Unlike many critics of modernity, Walsh argues that secularism is not inhospitable to authentic religious faith and cannot be understood without reference to God.
Drawing on the writings of early modern thinkers like Montaigne, Descartes, and Grotius, Walsh asserts that God’s absence from the secular world is testimony to God’s transcendence. Because the secular is always that which has withdrawn from serving God, Walsh suggests that this presupposition proves that God remains indispensable to the self-understanding of secular society. The Invisible Source of Authority seeks to remind us that, despite his seeming absence, the transcendent God remains an essential presence.
Contributor Bio
David Walsh is professor of politics at the Catholic University of America. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including The Priority of the Person and The Growth of the Liberal Soul.
9780268209612
The Growth of the Liberal Soul (with a new Introduction)
David Walsh
Summary
In The Growth of the Liberal Soul, David Walsh provides a dazzling defense of liberalism by confronting the core difficulty of the liberal democratic tradition in explaining and justifying itself.
David Walsh’s groundbreaking work addresses a pivotal crisis in liberal democratic self-understanding, as many leading thinkers abandoned the search for a foundation in human nature or moral truth. Without a firm footing, proponents of liberalism could not explain its initial extraordinary success or the recent seeming unraveling of its own moral code. Instead, Walsh argues that Christianity and philosophy formed the original foundation for liberalism, and that only the ideals of service, self-responsibility, and the sacredness of each person can provide the grounding that liberalism desperately needs.
As Walsh seamlessly weaves together the ideas of Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Tocqueville, Nietzsche, and other leading thinkers, The Growth of the Liberal Soul crafts a compelling defense of liberalism and issues an inspiring call to see liberty not as an invitation to universal egoism, but as the pursuit of the greatest justice, freedom, and fulfillment for all members of the community.
David Walsh is professor of politics at the Catholic University of America. He is the author of The Priority of the Person and Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being
9780268209827
Pub Date: 10/15/25
$49.00 USD
280 Pages Religion / Christianity
9 in H | 6 in W
Marie-Dominique Chenu
Catholic Theology for a
Changing World
Mary Kate Holman
Summary
Marie-Dominique Chenu demonstrates how this once condemned theologian influenced the major shifts of twentieth-century Catholicism and reveals the relevance of his thought for contemporary theology.
In 1942, historian Marie-Dominique Chenu was removed from his teaching position at Le Saulchoir, the French Dominican school of theology, and his groundbreaking new publication was placed on the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books. Yet only two decades later, the Catholic hierarchy embraced many of his ideas at the Second Vatican Council. Although Chenu’s pioneering work helped to usher in a new era, his influence on the Catholic Church remains overlooked and underexplored.
Drawing upon extensive new archival research, Mary Kate Holman provides a captivating account of Chenu’s life and how his theology contributed to the church’s opening to the modern world and shaped the next generation of theologians. Holman presents the distinctive elements of Chenu’s theology, identifies his major contributions to contemporary Catholic theology, and proposes a constructive retrieval of his thought for a renewed ecclesiology in the twenty-first century.
Contributor Bio
Mary Kate Holman is an assistant professor of religious studies at Fairfield University.
Being before God
Cornelio Fabro, Thomism, and Søren Kierkegaard's Theology
Joshua Furnal
Summary
Being before God offers a thorough account of Cornelio Fabro’s Thomistic reading of Søren Kierkegaard’s theology, speaking both to systematic theology and Kierkegaard studies.
Italian Stigmatine priest and Thomist philosopher Cornelio Fabro is well known for his work on the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. Yet despite also authoring many studies on Søren Kierkegaard, Fabro remains virtually unknown among Kierkegaard scholars outside of Italy. Being before God sheds light on the influence of Kierkegaard’s writings on Fabro’s Thomism and provides a detailed historical account of Fabro’s contributions to Kierkegaard studies and systematic theology. Drawing upon rare archival material, including materials that have never been translated into English, Joshua Furnal speaks to Kierkegaard’s relationship to Catholic theology, the Kierkegaardian aspects of Fabro’s Thomism, and Fabro’s Thomistic approach to Kierkegaard in turn. Being before God also highlights how Fabro’s work brings together ideas from both Aquinas and Kierkegaard to broaden the horizon of contemporary theology.
Through his meticulous research, Furnal contends that, despite his lack of modern recognition, Fabro remains one of the most important European interpreters of Kierkegaard in the twentieth century.
Contributor Bio
Joshua Furnal is a permanent lecturer in systematic theology at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University in Maynooth, Ireland. He is the author of Catholic Theology after Kierkegaard and an English translator of Cornelio Fabro’s writings.
9780268210366
Pub Date: 9/15/25
$50.00 USD Paperback
400 Pages
23 b&w illustrations Literary Criticism / European Series: William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature 9 in H | 6 in W
American Dantes Traditions, Translations, Transformations
Zygmunt G. Barański, Theodore J. Cachey, Jr.
Summary
American Dantes provides fresh perspectives on Dante’s reception and cultural impact in the United States over the past two hundred years.
American Dantes investigates the depth and breadth of Dante’s American legacy from the early nineteenth century to the present. Showcasing an impressive array of approaches from renowned literary and Dante scholars, this book explores how Dante has influenced American poetry, fiction, memoir, painting, film, television, and political and religious discourse. This collection offers an in-depth look at the vibrant and ongoing scholarly traditions of research, editing, translation, and creative adaptation that have established Dante’s Divine Comedy as a classic in American literary culture, influencing cultural movements from transcendentalism to jazz to the Black radical tradition and more.
Contributor Bio
Zygmunt G. Barański is Emeritus R. L. Canala Professor of Romance Languages & Literatures with the University of Notre Dame and the Serena Professor of Italian Emeritus with the University of Cambridge. His many publications include Dante’s “Vita Nova” (co-edited with Heather Webb).
Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., is the Pizzo Family Chair in Dante Studies and Ravarino Family Director of Italian and Dante Studies and the Center for Italian Studies/Devers Family Program in Dante Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His numerous publications include Dante’s “Other Works” (co-edited with Zygmunt G. Barański).
Contributors: David Wallace, Laura Dassow Walls, Joshua Matthews, Dennis Looney, Kathleen Boyle, Kathleen Verduin, Christian Y. Dupont, Kristina M. Olson, Henry Weinfield, Stephen Fredman, Joseph Elkanah Rosenberg, Arielle Saiber, and Peter S. Hawkins 9780268207489
The Afternoon of Christianity
The Courage to Change
Tomáš Halík, Gerald Turner
Summary
Tomáš Halík provides a poignant reflection on Christianity’s crisis of faith while offering a vision of the self-reflection, love, and growth necessary for the church to overcome and build a deeper and more mature faith.
In a world transformed by secularization and globalization, torn by stark political and social distrust, and ravaged by war and pandemic, Christians are facing a crisis of faith. In The Afternoon of Christianity, Tomáš Halík reflects on past and present challenges confronting Christian faith, drawing together strands from the Bible, historic Christian theology, philosophy, psychology, and classic literature. In the process, he reveals the current crisis as a crossroads: one road leads toward division and irrelevance, while the other provides the opportunity to develop a deeper, more credible, and mature form of church, theology, and spirituality—an afternoon epoch of Christianity.
The fruitfulness of the reform and the future vibrancy of the Church depends on a reconnection with the deep spiritual and existential dimension of faith. Halík argues that Christianity must transcend itself, giving up isolation and self-centeredness in favor of loving dialogue with people of different cultures, languages, and religions. The search for God in all things frees Christian life from self-absorption and leads toward universal fraternity, one of Pope Francis’s key themes. This renewal of faith can help the human family move beyond a clash of civilizations to a culture of communication, sharing, and respect for diversity.
Contributor Bio
Tomáš Halík is a Czech Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, theologian, and scholar. He is a professor of sociology at Charles University in Prague, pastor of the Academic Parish of St. Salvator Church in Prague, president of the Czech Christian Academy, and a winner of the Templeton Prize.
Gerald Turner has translated numerous Czech authors, including Václav Havel, Ivan Klíma, and Ludvík Vaculík, among others. He received the US PEN Translation Award in 2004.
9780268106782
Pub Date: 7/1/25
$28.00
From the Underground Church to Freedom
Tomáš Halík, Gerald Turner
Summary
International best-selling author and theologian Tomáš Halík shares for the first time the dramatic story of his life as a secretly ordained priest in Communist Czechoslovakia.
Born in Prague in 1948, Tomáš Halík spent his childhood under Stalinism. He describes his conversion to Christianity during the time of communist persecution of the church, his secret study of theology, and secret priesthood ordination in East Germany. Halík speaks candidly of his doubts and crises of faith as well as of his conflicts within the church. He worked as a psychotherapist for over a decade and, at the same time, was active in the underground church and in the dissident movement with the legendary Cardinal Tomášek and Václav Havel, who proposed Halík as his successor to the Czech presidency. Since the fall of the regime, Halík has served as general secretary to the Czech Conference of Bishops and was an advisor to John Paul II and Václav Havel.
Woven throughout Halík’s story is the turbulent history of the church and society in the heart of Europe: the 1968 Prague Spring, the occupation of Czechoslovakia, the self-immolation of his classmate Jan Palach, the “flying university,” the 1989 Velvet Revolution, and the difficult transition from totalitarian communist regime to democracy. Tomáš Halík was a direct witness to many of these events, and he provides valuable testimony about the backdrop of political events and personal memories of the key figures of that time.
Contributor Bio
Tomáš Halík is a Czech Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, theologian, and scholar. He is a professor of sociology at Charles University in Prague, pastor of the Academic Parish of St. Salvator Church in Prague, president of the Czech Christian Academy, and a winner of the Templeton Prize.
Gerald Turner has translated numerous Czech authors, including Václav Havel, Ivan Klíma, and Ludvík Vaculík, among others. He received the US PEN Translation Award in 2004.
Abducted in Iraq
A Priest in Baghdad
Saad Sirop Hanna
Summary
This riveting book documents Bishop Hanna's twenty-eight days in captivity in Iraq as he struggled through threats, torture, and doubt.
How do we respond in the face of evil, especially to those who inflict grave evil upon us? Abducted in Iraq is Bishop Saad Sirop Hanna’s firsthand account of his abduction in 2006 by a militant group associated with al-Qaeda. As a young parish priest and visiting lecturer, Fr. Hanna was kidnapped after celebrating Mass on August 15 at Babel College near Baghdad. His plight attracted international attention after Pope Benedict XVI requested prayers for the safe return of the young priest.
Through extreme hardship, the young priest gains a greater knowledge both of his faith and of remaining true to himself. This riveting narrative reflects the experience of persecuted Christians all over the world today, especially the plight of Iraqi Christians who continue to live and hold their faith against tremendous odds. The book sheds light on the complex political and spiritual situation that Catholics face in predominantly non-Christian nations. More than just a story of one man, it is also the story of religious persecution and intolerance.
Contributor
Saad Sirop Hanna is the Apostolic Visitor for Chaldeans Residing in Europe, the auxiliary bishop of the Chaldean Patriarchate of Baghdad, Iraq, and a recurring visitor at the Medieval Institute of the University of Notre Dame.
9780268205287
Pub Date: 7/15/25
$40.00 USD Paperback
244 Pages Religion / Christian Theology
Series: Notre Dame Studies in African Theology
9 in H | 6 in W NEW IN PAPERBACK
The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye Ecumenism,
Feminism, and Communal Practice
Oluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein
Summary
This illuminating study explores African theologian Mercy Amba Oduyoye’s constructive initiative to include African women’s experiences and voices within Christian theological discourse.
Mercy Amba Oduyoye, a renowned Ghanaian Methodist theologian, has worked for decades to address issues of poverty, women’s rights, and global unrest. She is one of the founders of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, a pan-African ecumenical organization that mentors the next generation of African women theologians to counter the dearth of academic theological literature written by African women. This book offers an in-depth analysis of Oduyoye’s life and work, providing a much-needed corrective to Eurocentric, colonial, and patriarchal theologies by centering the experiences of African women as a starting point from which theological reflection might begin.
Oluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein’s study begins by narrating the story of Mercy Oduyoye’s life, focusing on her early years, which led to her eventual interest in women’s equality and African women’s theology. At the heart of the book is a close analysis of Oduyoye’s theological thought, exploring her unique approach to four issues: the doctrine of God, Christology, theological anthropology, and ecclesiology. Through the course of these examinations, Oredein shows how Oduyoye’s life story and theological output are intimately intertwined. Stories of gender formation, racial ideas, and cultural foundations teem throughout Oduyoye’s construction of a Christian theological story. Oduyoye shows that one’s theology does not leave particularity behind but rather becomes the locus in which the fullness of divinity might be known.
Contributor Bio
Oluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein is an assistant professor in Black religious traditions, constructive theology, and ethics at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University.
Disability's Challenge to Theology
Genes, Eugenics, and the Metaphysics of Modern Medicine
Devan Stahl
Summary
Disability’s Challenge to Theology uses insights from disability studies to understand in a deeper way the ethical implications that genetic technologies pose for Christian thought.
Theologians have been debating genetic engineering for decades, but what has been missing from many theological debates is a deep concern for persons with genetic disabilities. In this ambitious and stimulating book, Devan Stahl argues that engagement with metaphysics and a theology of nature is crucial for Christians to evaluate both genetic science and the moral use of genetic technologies, such as human genetic engineering, gene therapy, genetic screenings, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and gene editing. Using theological notions of creation ex nihilo and natural law alongside insights from disability studies, Stahl seeks to recast the debate concerning genetic well-being. Following the work of Stanley Hauerwas, Stahl proposes the church as the locus for reimagining disability in a way that will significantly influence the debates concerning genetic therapies.
Christianity has all too frequently been complicit in excluding, degrading, and marginalizing people with disabilities, but the new Christian metaphysics developed here provides normative, theological guidance on the use of genetic technologies today. Only by heeding the voices of people with disabilities can Christians remain faithful to the call to find Christ in “the least of these” and from there draw closer to God.
Contributor Bio
Devan Stahl is an associate professor of religion at Baylor University and editor of Bioenhancement Technologies and the Vulnerable Body
9780268207991
PubDate:11/1/2024
$38.00USD 208pages Hardcover 9inH|6inW
9780268208677
PubDate:9/1/2024
$45.00USD
416pages
Hardcover 9inH|6inW
9780268208448
PubDate:7/1/2024
$25.00USD
208pages
Paperback
9inH|6inW
9780268208936
PubDate:10/1/2024
$38.00USD
254pages
Paperback
9inH|6inW
The New Nihilism
TheExistentialCrisisofOur Time
Costantino Esposito
Costantino Esposito argues that nihilism is not merely the loss of the classic values of the Western tradition—rather, it presents a critical opportunity to ask pertinent, timely questions about the meaning of self and the world.
9780268208554
Pub Date:10/15/2024
$45.00USD
344pages Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W
Ending Persecution
ChartingthePathtoGlobal Religious Freedom H. Knox Thames
Building on his extensive experience in the U.S. government and as an international human rights lawyer, H. Knox Thames provides fresh, decisive strategies to advance religious freedom for all.
9780268207892
PubDate:3/1/2024
$32.00USD
pages
in H | 6 in W
Prisms, Veils
ABookofFables
David Bentley Hart
From one of the most-read religious and philosophical scholars in the United States comes a collection of creative, thoughtprovoking fables.
9780268208837
PubDate:9/1/2024
$40.00USD
262pages
Hardcover
Christian Apologetics and Philosophy
An Introduction
Paul Herrick
A highly readable introduction to Christian apologetics that joins contemporary analytic philosophy with modern biblical scholarship.
9780268207953
PubDate:11/15/2024
$65.00USD
208pages
Hardcover 9inH|6inW
Theology of Horror
TheHiddenDepthsof PopularFilms
Ryan G. Duns SJ
Theology of Horror explores the dark reaches of popular horror films, bringing to light their implicit theological and philosophical themes.
The Catholic Case against War
ABriefGuide
David Carroll Cochran
The Catholic Case against War demonstrates how the Catholic mantra “Never again war!” reflects a set of powerfully realistic teachings on war and peace.
The Philosophy of Drama
Józef Tischner, Artur Rosman
The Philosophy of Drama provides an indepth and erudite exploration of human existence as a dramatic existence, interpreted in terms of encounter, dialogue, reciprocity, erring, temptation, condemnation, and justification.
Thinking the Unknowable
TheEssentialLouis Dupré Louis Dupré, Peter J. Casarella
Written throughout Louis Dupré’s life, Thinking the Unknowable explores the relationship between faith and metaphysics, charting the course for an innovative Christian philosophy of religion.
9780268208752
PubDate:10/15/2024
$65.00USD
402pages
Hardcover
9 in H | 6 in W
9780268208417
PubDate:8/15/2024
$50.00USD
228pages
Hardcover
9inH|6inW
9780268207595
PubDate:2/15/2024
$65.00USD
284pages Hardcover
9inH|6inW
9780268208219
PubDate:8/15/2024
$55.00USD
404pages
Hardcover
9inH|6inW
Óscar Romero and Catholic Social Teaching
Todd Walatka
This book explores the life, mission, and writings of martyred Salvadorian archbishop St. Óscar Romero in the light of contemporary work for justice and human development.
9780268209056
PubDate:10/1/2024
$40.00USD
210pages
Hardcover
9inH|6inW
Burdened Agency
ChristianTheologyand End-of-LifeEthics
Travis Pickell
Travis Pickell explores the paradoxes of choice in modern dying and the ways Christian theology can aid in navigating the relationship between moral agency and dignity at the end of life.
9780268208295
PubDate:8/15/2024
$55.00USD
344pages
Hardcover
9inH|6inW
Contemporary Aristotelian Ethics
Alasdair MacIntyre,MarthaNussbaum, RobertSpaemann
Arthur Madigan S.J.
This volume provides a thorough introduction to three of the twentieth century’s most influential proponents of Aristotle’s moral philosophy.
9780268207854
PubDate:5/15/2024
$35.00USD
160pages
Paperback
9inH|6inW
The Nature of Law
Authority,Obligation,and theCommon Good
Daniel Mark
Challenging the prevailing understanding of the authority of law, Daniel Mark offers a theory of moral obligation that is rooted both in command and in the law’s orientation to the common good.
9780268207809
PubDate:2/15/2024
$70.00USD
386pages
Hardcover 9inH|6inW
The Ethics of Precision Medicine
The ProblemsofPreventionin Healthcare
Paul Scherz
Paul Scherz explores the ethical challenges raised by precision medicine and its focus on medical risk as opposed to current disease.
Bioethics after God
Morality,Culture,and Medicine
Mark J. Cherry
Bioethics after God explores the relationship between morality and medicine in a society that has denied the existence of God.
Petrarch's Penitential Psalms and Prayers
Francesco Petrarca, Demetrio S. Yocum
The first English translation of Petrarch’s Psalms and Prayers provides an intimate look at the personal devotions of the “Father of Humanism.”
The Political Thought of David Hume
The OriginsofLiberalismandtheModern Political Imagination
Aaron Alexander Zubia
Aaron Alexander Zubia argues that the Epicurean roots of David Hume’s philosophy gave rise to liberalism’s unrelenting grip on the modern political imagination.
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