Albert Camus

Renowned author Albert Camus’ thesis at the age of 23 in order to complete his studies at the University of Algiers. It is his first attempt to explore humanist ethics, and draws from ancient Greek and Roman sources.

Contemporary scholarship tends to view Albert Camus as a modern, but he himself was conscious of the past and called the transition from Hellenism to Christianity the true and only turning point in history. For Camus, modernity was not fully comprehensible without an examination of the aspirations that were first articulated in antiquity and that later received their clearest expression in Christianity. These aspirations amounted to a fundamental reorientation of human life in politics, religion, science, and philosophy. Understanding the nature and achievement of that reorientation became the central task of Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism. Primarily known through its inclusion in a French omnibus edition, it has remained one of Camus’ least-read works, yet it marks his first attempt to understand the relationship between Greek philosophy and Christianity as he charted the movement from the Gospels through Gnosticism and Plotinus to what he calls Augustine’s second revelation of the Christian faith.

Ronald Srigley translated this seminal document into English in 2015, which helps illuminate these aspects of Camus’ work. His freestanding English edition exposes readers to an important part of Camus’ thought that is often overlooked by those concerned primarily with the book’s literary value. Arguing that Camus was one of the great critics of modernity through his attempt to disentangle the Greeks from the Christians, Srigley clearly demonstrates the place of Christian Metaphysics in Camus’ oeuvre.

Albert Camus was a French philosopher and author who lived from 1913-1960 in France and Algeria. He is best known for his books The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus.

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Global Climate History Through a Religious Lens

Writing into our current age, which is marked by climate crisis and anxiety, Philip Jenkins reflects in Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith on the religiosity inherent to global warming and the historical markings on culture and religion as a result of major climate events. Examining Western religious incidents of the fourteenth through the eighteenth century, Jenkins draws connections to the coinciding climate changes of those periods; including the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, to name a few. Jenkins argues that the results of rapidly depleted resources and unforgiving natural environments lead in part to drastic changes in religious practice and doctrine, from apocalyptic declarations, to persecution and violence, to beliefs still maintained across traditions today. Jenkins concludes with his belief that rising global alarm and ensuing climate migration will ultimately result in more tumultuous changes in religiosity.

Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University within the Institute for Studies in Religion, and previously taught at Penn State University. He is the author of thirty books, including The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia–and How It Died, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, and most recently A Storm of Images: Iconoclasm and Religious Reformation in the Byzantine World.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“This masterpiece of historical scholarship should help policy makers and others transcend temporal myopia. Of special interest to students of climate, history, society, religion, and politics, this book can change the way one thinks about such matters.” 

-L. E. Sponsel, CHOICE

“Jenkins’s bold new argument may change the way we think about the history of religion, but more important, it could remind us that we can imagine a new and better way as we prepare for the consequences of this impending climate crisis.”

– Rt. Rev. Mark Van Koevering, author of The Living Church

“This timely and meticulously researched book makes an important contribution to the growing body of literature engaging religion and history with ecology and climate change.”

-Ruby Guyat, Times Higher Education

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Biblical Justice in the Global South

Nicholas Wolterstorff combines his extensive philosophical training with his vast experience of South Africa, the Middle East, and Honduras to present a theology of justice in Journey Toward Justice: Personal Encounters in the Global South. Wolterstorff seeks to elevate marginalized voices of the Global South, centering his ethical framework around the principle of shalom, or flourishing. Journey Toward Justice examines principles of human rights down to their most basic components, and at the same time tells the deeply important stories of people who have had their rights stripped away, ultimately making a case for biblical justice’s use in the world. Nuanced, hopeful, and thoughtfully-constructed, Wolterstorff uses his encounters with global persecution to imagine a liberative and salvific future for the all the world’s oppressed.

Nicholas Wolterstorff is a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, and is also a Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. He has authored several books, including Four (and a half) Dialogues on Homosexuality and the Bible (with Donald J. Zeyl) and Call for Justice: From Practice to Theory and Back (with Kurt Ver Beek), and Lament for a Son.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Drawing on his experience of being confronted by those who have suffered injustice, Wolterstorff helps us understand why and how such experiences should make a difference for how justice is understood. His reflections on the relations of beauty, hope, and justice are profound and moving.” 

-Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School, author of With the Grain of the Universe and Hannah’s Child

“I have been so deeply grateful, over many years, for the gift of rigorous scholarship Dr. Wolterstorff has brought to the body of Christ. Now my gratitude expands all the more with his newest gift: his work on biblical justice made accessible for even wider audiences and, most of all, the sharing of his personal journey. This is a book that I will use in many settings for years to come.”

– Bethany H. Hoang, Director of the IJM Institute for Biblical Justice

“Wolterstorff’s Journey toward Justice is far more than his personal story of how his encounters with suffering people shaped his thinking (and life) around an active concern for justice. The book combines this story with deep and clear thinking, centered in the biblical revelation, about how Christians should think about justice and about the implications of a biblical concern for justice in the contemporary world.”

– C. Stephen Evans, Baylor University

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Confronting Mortality in the Holocaust and Ourselves

What do we learn about death from the Holocaust and how does it impact our responses to mortality today?

This book brings together the work of eleven Holocaust and genocide scholars who address this difficult question, convinced of the urgency of further reflection on the Holocaust as the last survivors pass away. The volume is distinctive in its dialogical and introspective approach, where the contributors position themselves to confront their own impending death while listening to the voices of victims and learning from their life experiences. Broken into three parts, this collection engages with these voices in a way that is not only scholarly, but deeply personal.

The first part of the book engages with Holocaust testimony by drawing on the writings of survivors and witnesses such as Elie Wiesel, Jean Améry, and Charlotte Delbo, including rare accounts from members of the Sonderkommando. Reflections of post-Holocaust generations—the children and grandchildren of survivors—are housed in the second part, addressing questions of remembrance and memorialization. The concluding essays offer intimate self-reflection about how engagement with the Holocaust impacts the contributors’ lives, faiths, and ethics.

In an age of continuing atrocities, this book provides careful attention to the affective dimension of coping with death, in particular, how loss and grief are deferred or denied, narrated, and passed along.

Author Sarah K. Pinnock is a professor of contemporary religious thought at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. In Hamburg Germany (1997-98) she held a DAAD (German Academic Exchange) doctoral fellowship at the Faculty of Protestant Theology. She joined the Trinity faculty in fall 2000 after two years teaching at California State University Chico. She won a Fulbright award to hold a visiting professorship at the Faculty of Theology of Latvia University in Riga (2006-07). She served as the Religion Department Chair at Trinity from 2012-18.

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Practices for a world shaken by crisis

Dorothee Soelle is a pioneering figure: a leader among German Christians in grappling with Auschwitz; a poet expressing utopian longings; a political activist, socialist, and liberation theologian; a mystic offering a vision of faith for people disillusioned with bourgeois Christianity.

This is the first English language collection of original essays analyzing Soelle’s work. It explores her contributions to biblical hermeneutics, Christian feminism, social ethics, post-Holocaust thought, Mysticism, literature, and political and liberation theology. It includes three pieces by Soelle, recently translated into English, as well as essays from many contributors including the author.

Author Sarah K. Pinnock is a professor of contemporary religious thought at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. In Hamburg Germany (1997-98) she held a DAAD (German Academic Exchange) doctoral fellowship at the Faculty of Protestant Theology. She joined the Trinity faculty in fall 2000 after two years teaching at California State University Chico. She won a Fulbright award to hold a visiting professorship at the Faculty of Theology of Latvia University in Riga (2006-07). She served as the Religion Department Chair at Trinity from 2012-18.

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Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture

‘No true Christian could vote for Donald Trump.’ ‘Real Christians are pro-life.’ ‘You can’t be a Christian and support gay marriage.’ Assertive statements like these not only reflect growing religious polarization but also express the anxiety over religious identity that pervades modern American Christianity. To address this disquiet, conservative Christians have sought security and stability: whether by retrieving ‘historic Christian’ doctrines, reconceptualizing their faith as a distinct culture, or reinforcing a political vision of what it means to be a follower of God in a corrupt world. The book examines three versions of the conservative quest for the essence that have profoundly shaped contemporary American Christianity: the doctrinal quest for “historic Christianity,” the cultural quest for the Christian worldview, and the political quest for a global, persecuted, cisheteronormative identity. Having traced these developments historically, Congdon argues that the root of the problem is the concept of orthodoxy itself, and suggests the transgressive concept of polydoxy as a constructive way forward for Christianity in a pluralistic society.

David W. Congdon is a the senior editor at University Press of Kansas. He is an author and speaker focusing on the intersection of theology and culture, and publishes books related to political science, law, U.S. history, indigenous studies, and religion.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“In this ambitious intervention in the contemporary culture wars, David Congdon situates current debates in the context of a much longer contestation over the boundaries of orthodoxy. Disruptive and thought-provoking, Who Is a True Christian? offers an incisive critique of attempts to define what is true, “historical,” and “traditional” and calls instead for a transgressive Christianity—a dynamic conception of faith that is compatible with a commitment to pluralism.”
—Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of the New York Times-bestselling Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

“In this work of exceptional erudition, David W. Congdon shows that Christian apologists from ancient times to the present have failed to acknowledge the historicity of their own constructions of Christianity. … Written in the grand tradition of Harvey Cox, Peter Berger, and Charles Taylor, this capacious and contentious book promises to enliven and instruct a generation’s debates about the destiny of the Christian faith in the United States and beyond.:
—David A. Hollinger, University of California, Berkeley

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A Story of Growth and Breaking Down in an American Church

Active for forty years, Circle of Hope was a web of four interconnected churches in the Philadelphia area. Committed to the causes of justice and service, Circle of Hope became a haven for Christians who were seeking something different from what traditional evangelicalism had to offer, or more ‘countercultural’ modes to follow Christ. Informed by her years of experience in journalism, Eliza Griswold recounts the moment that Circle of Hope approached a pivotal point of breakdown in its history. Met with a pandemic, internal strife, political division, and changing tides of activism, Circle of Hope was forced to reckon with its vulnerabilities as questions about its inner structures of power arose. Tender, respectful, and honest, Griswold’s book acts as a microcosmic view of the things that we love and the things that hurt us in the American Church.

Eliza Griswold is the Ferris Professor and Director of Princeton University’s Journalism program. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her 2019 book Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America. Griswold is the author of six books and also writes for The New Yorker.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“A compassionate narrative . . . propulsive and immersive . . . An ardent, distinctive work, generous and character-driven, with concerns that speak directly to the current moment and beyond

-Ayana Mathis, The Washington Post

“Eliza Griswold is a dazzling reporter: ever observant, wise, sympathetic, and honest. And in this spellbinding book, she not only immerses herself in a radical religious community but also reveals its fracturing in real time, raising questions about the nature of faith and justice and what binds us as Americans.”

– David Grann, author of The Wager

“Set against the backdrop of race, sexuality, and belief, Circle of Hope is a deeply captivating and sometimes troubling dive into a world of faith and frustrations often hidden by the political, antagonistic, and triumphalist projections of American Evangelicalism.”

– Anthea Butler, author of White Evangelical Racism

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A Story of Growth and Breaking Down in an American Church

Known for her evocative poetry, prose, and music, Patti Smith first took to Instagram in 2018 to begin sharing her photography. A Book of Days chronicles a full 365 days in Smith’s life through images she’s taken. These are portraits of grief, celebration, the mundane, and the extraordinary. Smith calls her photos “a glimpse of how I navigate this culture in my own way. It was inspired by my Instagram but is uniquely its own. Much of it I created during the pandemic, in my room alone, projecting into the future and reflecting the past, family, and a consistent personal aesthetic.” Smith’s images are silhouettes of her incredible life, her poetry reverberating through everyday things: “anniversary pearls, a mother’s keychain, and a husband’s Mosrite guitar.” Personally vulnerable, yet never straying from her unique aesthetic, A Book of Days opens readers to Smith’s inner worlds.

Patti Smith is an author, poet, and songwriter. First arriving on the music scene with her acclaimed 1975 album Horses, Smith was eventually inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her book Just Kids, written about her relationship to Robert Mapplethorpe, won a National Book Award in 2010. She has released 11 albums and has authored 25 books.

– Anthea Butler, author of White Evangelical Racism

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