On the Lived Theology Reading List: Free All Along

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Free All Along: The Robert Penn Warren Civil Rights Interviews, edited by Stephen Drury Smith and Catherine EllisThe Robert Penn Warren Civil Rights Interviews

In 1965, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and poet Robert Penn Warren published Who Speaks for the Negro?, a personal narrative that blended his own experiences and reflections with quotes from interviews he had done with prominent Civil Rights leaders a year earlier. The full interviews, however, were never released, and the audiotapes stayed largely unknown until recent years. In Free All Along, editors Stephen Drury Smith and Catherine Ellis have compiled and transcribed the never before seen interviews into one book.

In 1964, in the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Robert Penn Warren set out with a tape recorder to interview leaders of the black freedom struggle. He spoke at length with luminaries such as James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Ralph Ellison, and Roy Wilkins. In Harlem, a fifteen-minute appointment with Malcolm X unwound into several hours of vivid conversation. The interviews were long and detailed, eliciting reflections and frank assessments of race in America and the possibilities for meaningful change. A major contribution to our understanding of the struggle for justice and equality, these remarkable long-form interviews are presented here as original documents that have pressing relevance today.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“The conversations feel immediate and are thoroughly engaging, and it seems as though this was organically the case; when Warren interviewed Malcolm X, he was in such high demand that he committed to only 15 minutes for the interview, but ended up staying for over an hour. Free All Along is the book Warren should have published: It’s a product of careful listening to people more than qualified to speak for themselves.”―The Progressive Populist

“There are times when voices from the past speak directly to our present. Free All Along is a rare and electrifying document, one that reveals the enduring connections between the long struggle for civil rights in the last century to the fight for justice in our own.” ―Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times bestselling author of What Truth Sounds Like

“An anthology that arguably holds more contemporary importance as an historical document than the original release.”―Kirkus Reviews

For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: Rapture Culture

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Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America, by Amy Johnson FrykholmLeft Behind in Evangelical America

In Rapture Culture, Amy Johnson Frykholm explores the remarkable phenomenon of “rapture fiction,” a genre popularized by the Left Behind series. Depicting the rapture and subsequent apocalypse, the main characters of the series suffer through a world ruled by the antichrist, one that is wracked with plagues, famine, and suffering. The series culminates with Christ’s return and the defeat of the antichrist, showcasing a scenario that is anticipated by millions of American evangelicals. The genre is wildly popular, with Left Behind having over 40 million copies now in print, and in Rapture Culture Frykholm explores why the idea of the rapture itself is so compelling.

Tracing the evolution of the genre of rapture fiction, Frykholm notes that at one time such narratives expressed a sense of alienation from modern life and protest against the loss of tradition and the marginalization of conservative religious views. Yet even as evangelism has gained popularity and the themes become obsolete, the genre has yet to see a correlated decline. In order to explain this, Frykholm argues that the books provide a sense of identification and communal belonging that counters the “social atomization” that characterizes modern life. This also helps explain why they appeal to female readers, despite the deeply patriarchal worldview they promote. Drawing on extensive interviews with readers of the novels, Rapture Culture sheds light on a mindset that is little understood and far more common than many of us suppose.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“An informative, brightly written analysis of apocalyptic sentiment on the popular level. This is a most interesting book and an important contribution to the growing literature on evangelicalism.” —Randall Balmer, author of Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America

“Rapture Culture offers fresh and illuminating insights into one of the most significant cultural phenomena of our era, the explosion of interest in biblical prophecies of the end times. Drawing on in-depth interviews, Amy Johnson Frykholm shrewdly explores the popular reception of the bestselling Left Behind prophecy novels as readers share their responses in the context of family, church, and other social networks. This eminently readable book explores the interaction of contemporary American religion, cultural politics, gender issues, and the mass media. Highly recommended.” —Paul S. Boyer, author of When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture

“This fascinating book is a one-of-a-kind look at how people read religious literature. Thoroughly engaging, it asks us to consider the importance of imagination in the construction of a spiritual life. The author gives us an inside view of often conflicting interpretations that Christians give of the drama of the End Times.” —Colleen McDannell, author of Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America

For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: European Mennonites and the Holocaust

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European Mennonites and the Holocaust, by Mark Jantzen and John D. ThiesenTransnational Mennonite Studies

After the Second World War, much of the Mennonites’ history was forgotten as they sought to rebuild or find new homes as refugees. This created a myth of Mennonite innocence and ignorance, one that European Mennonites and the Holocaust sets out to dissipate. This book identifies a significant number of Mennonite perpetrators, along with a smaller number of Mennonites who helped Jews survive, and examines the context in which they acted.

During the war, Mennonites in the Netherlands, Germany, occupied Poland, and Ukraine lived in communities with Jews and close to various Nazi camps and killing sites. In some cases, theology led them to accept or reject Nazi ideals. In others, Mennonites chose a closer embrace of German identity as a strategy to improve their standing with Germans or for material benefit. By examining this difficult and oft-forgotten history, European Mennonites and the Holocaust uncovers a more complete picture of Mennonite life in these years, underscoring actions that were not always innocent.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Grounded in literature on the Holocaust, German, Dutch, Ukrainian, and Mennonite history, editors Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen, along with the authors in this volume, demonstrate how collective memory can be made oblivious to collaboration with evil, and the responsibility of scholars to ruthlessly and compassionately alter past narratives. The research represented here is crucial to better understand the multilayered Mennonite past, and offers broader implications for how small and seemingly benign groups become complicit in mass violence.”—Marlene Epp, Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo

“What makes European Mennonites and the Holocaust important is the bringing together of the most active scholars in this emerging field. It serves as a case study for the ways in which cultural and ethnic minorities reacted to and engaged in the Holocaust, as well as an exploration of the transnational reality of the Holocaust. A fine work of scholarship edited by experienced scholars, this book will be of great interest to those interested in Holocaust and memory, and to members of the Mennonite community – a subculture deeply interested in and committed to its own history.”—Kyle Jantzen, Department of History, Ambrose University

“A particularly interesting case study, European Mennonites and the Holocaust is a valuable collection representing topics, such as ecclesiology and other branches of theology, often neglected by historians. Situating itself into the wider historical literature, especially the literature on the Holocaust, there is a lot in this book to chew on.”—John-Paul Himka, Professor Emeritus, Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta

For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: The Movement

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The Movement: The African American Struggle for Civil Rights, by Thomas C. HoltThe African American Struggle for Civil Rights

Although the civil rights movement was one of the most important mass movements of the twentieth century, and an incredibly pivotal moment in American history, it is often misrepresented and misunderstood by the general American public. In The Movement, Thomas Holt revisits the freedom struggle to provide an informed and nuanced understanding of its origins, character, and objectives, privileging the aspirations and initiatives of the grassroots people who made it possible.

The civil rights movement decisively changed the legal and political status of African Americans, and prefigured the moral premises and methods of struggle for other historically oppressed groups seeking equal standing in American society. Despite that, much of its context and impact has been stripped away, leaving a singular moment, frozen in time at the Lincoln Memorial, to sum up much of what Americans know about an entire decade of struggle. In this book, Holt emphasizes the conditions of possibility that enabled the heroic initiatives of the common folk over those of their more celebrated leaders, and conveys a sense of these developments as a social movement, one that shaped its participants even as they shaped it.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Thomas C. Holt’s The Movement is a succinct and powerful book… A skilled historian whose powers are on full display in The Movement, he knows the moments when it is best to let the participants themselves summarize the extraordinary power of their struggle.”—The American Scholar

“Covering less discussed moments from America’s struggle for equality, The Movement is a nuanced history that takes layered ideologies and obscured figures into account.”—Foreword Reviews

“Rooted in the author’s personal experience of the movement, this book is a marvelous balance between economy of expression and complexity of thought. Even those well-versed in recent movement scholarship will learn something from this engaging and challenging work. Some parts of the history are more telling than others and Holt has an unerring eye for just those parts.”—Charles M. Payne, author of I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle

For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.