2021 FALL ACADEMIC CATALOG New and Notable Titles for Fall 2021
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2021 FALL ACADEMIC CATALOG New and Notable Titles for Fall 2021 p. 49 p. 5 p. 7 p. 51 p. 33 New and Notable Titles Contents for Fall 2021 Scholarship that matters Theology & Ethics 2 In the academy. Biblical Studies 32 In the classroom. In the church. History 42 World Religions 66 From its origins in the early 1960s, Fortress Press has established an enviable position as a premier publisher of compelling theological, biblical, and ethical engagements for the church and the world in which it lives. Our books lead global conversations among scholars, teachers, leaders, and learners. Meet the Team Will Bergkamp, Editor-in-Chief – Christian history, especially Luther and Reformation studies Carey Newman, Executive Editor – Old Testament, ancient Near East studies, Second Temple Judaism, New Testament, early Christianity, and Christology Beth Gaede, Senior Acquisitions Editor – ministry, especially leadership, pastoral care, and parish life Scott Tunseth, Senior Acquisitions Editor – ministry, especially preaching, Bible, and educational resources all titles Jesudas Athyal, Acquisitions Editor – world Christianity, Get 40% off world religions, South Asian and Indian scholarship in this catalog! Ryan Hemmer, Acquisitions Editor – theology, culture, (Expires 09/12/2021) biblical studies, ethics, and philosophy *no promotional code needed Emily King, Acquisitions Editor – religion, culture, theology, history, and literature Bethany Dickerson, Editorial Assistant Heather Hart, Marketing Manager Emma Schlabach, Marketing Coordinator There Is No God and Mary Is His Mother Rediscovering Religionless Christianity Thomas Cathcart Is the Western world really post-Christian, or does Christianity simply need a reinterpretation? What did Dietrich Bonhoeffer mean by “religionless Christianity”? Is it passé? Or was it perhaps ahead of its time? In an era of dramatically increased religious pluralism and the emergence of large numbers of people identifying as “spiritual but not religious,” so-called “religionless Christianity” can speak to those who find both biblicism and “belief-based” religion irrelevant. In this personal, witty, and timely book, New York Times bestselling author Thomas Cathcart takes readers on a journey into belief and unbelief and leads them through to the other side. Drawing from deep philosophical and theological wells, There Is No God and Mary Is His Mother demonstrates the meaningfulness of being a Christian in a secular age. Cathcart shows that, even absent traditional theological formulas and doctrines, Christianity can be a credible, meaningful, and practical means of negotiating worldly existence and experience. For Christians, There Is No God and Mary Is His Mother offers encouragement. For ex-Christians, it presents a different way of being a Christian than the one they've $19.00 rejected. For atheists, it shows how Christianity can be an ally in affirming the here and now. Religionless Christianity 978-1-5064-7416-8 is possible and desirable wherever and whenever it awakens Paperback personal and social transformation. 160 pages 09/07/2021 Thomas Cathcart is the author or coauthor of six books, including the New York Times bestseller Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar (2007), Heidegger and a Hippo Walk through Those Pearly Gates (2009), A lyrical meditation and The Trolley Problem, or Would You Throw the Fat Guy Off the Bridge? (2013). He has been a professor, a hospital on living, believing, administrator, a social worker with inner-city gangs, a hospice director for patients with HIV/AIDS, and a lay leader in many and transforming congregations. He lives in upstate New York. Cathcart has written just the kind of book I have been trying to write for many years, but have only rarely succeeded. I know that I will recommend it. HARVEY COX, author of The Secular City Q&A with Thomas Cathcart with Ryan Hemmer, Acquisitions Editor Most of your previous work has focused on philosophy and humor. How do those themes animate this new, more theological book? When Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar came out, we discovered that many readers were as interested in the philosophy as they were in the jokes. That said to me that if you could translate the impenetrable prose of philosophy into more ordinary language and even add a bit of wit, there was a ready audience. Much professional theology is every bit as convoluted as philosophy, and even though this book is more serious, I’ve tried to make it as accessible and engaging as possible. For those who are unfamiliar with the phrase, “religionless Christianity” might sound odd. Could you comment on what it means to you? The phrase was coined by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1945 to express his astonishment that most Christian religious institutions in Germany offered little or no resistance to the Nazis. In response to that failure, he was searching for a way to make the gospel come alive and make a difference in the world. Unfortunately, he was executed before he was able to fully come to terms with the problem. Many now feel, as I do, that the “religious” expressions of Christianity—doctrine, individual piety, church life—have lost much of their power and we need to find a new way to integrate the secular and the spiritual. This book is a call for a more “existential” Christianity, for Christianity as a means of interior transformation to navigate exterior anxieties. How is this vision (or version) different from what we might call “traditional” or “doctrinal” Christianity? Beliefs, doctrines, and traditions are probably necessary as a way for the church to differentiate itself from “the world.” But it is vital to the life of the church that she be always fully grounded in the Spirit “that blows where it chooses” and always be responsive to the real anxieties that have drawn people to her. A purely “religious” Christianity is a dying Christianity, as the decline of the contemporary church demonstrates. What kind of reader did you have in mind as you wrote this book? It’s my sense that there are many people both inside and outside the church who yearn for some sort of spiritual renewal but are not finding it in the church—not finding it in the beliefs and piety and abstract moralism or even in the community of fellow churchgoers. I am one of those people, and I think there are a lot more like me. I hope that some will find this book to be a thought-provoking first step in a long conversation about that renewal. Questions for our adoption consultant? [email protected] | 3 N My Encounter with Racism and the Forbidden Word in an American Classic James Henry Harris This book is about a Black man's experience of reading Mark Twain's classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for the first time while in graduate school. The story captures the author's emotional struggle with Twain's use of the racial epithet more than two hundred times in the text. Author James Henry Harris reports being relieved to come to the end of the semester of “encountering Twain's use of [the forbidden word] every week. I was teetering on the brink of falling apart. For the first time the class seemed to understand my painful struggle, and my plight as a Black man in class was a metaphor, a symbol of the past, present, and postmodern condition of American society.” This is a courageous memoir that wrestles with the historic stain of racism and the ongoing impact of racist language in postmodern society. The book is about Harris's flashbacks, conversations, and dilemmas spawned by use of the epithet in a classroom setting where the author was the only Black person. His diary-like reflections reveal his skill as a keen reader of culture and literature. In these pages, Harris challenges his instructor and classmates and inspires readers to redress the long history of American racism and white supremacy bound up with the N-word. He reflects on how current Black artists and others use the word in a different way with the intention of empowering or claiming $18.99 the term. But Harris is not convinced that even this usage 978-1-5064-7916-3 does not further feed the word's racist roots. Paperback 144 pages James Henry Harris 10/26/2021 is Distinguished Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology and a research scholar in religion and humanities at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, Virginia Union University. He is the author of numerous books, including Beyond the Tyranny of the Text and Black Suffering: Silent Pain, Reading and Hidden Hope (Fortress Press, 2020). experiencing racism Harris has written a courageous memoir that confronts the in a word long debate over Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the use of the N-word. Marshaling critics from Hegel to bell hooks, and calling on a family history of resistance, Harris challenges his instructor and classmates, and in turn inspires his readers, to redress the long history of American racism and white supremacy bound up with the epithet. MARK A. SANDERS, University of Notre Dame Q&A with James Henry Harris with Scott Tunseth, Senior Acquisitions Editor James, what prompted you to write this book? I wrote this book as a counterargument to Mark Twain’s use of the word “nigger” throughout his classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The endemic use of this racial epithet still conjures hatred, racism, and white supremacy. The recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and hundreds of other Blacks in America is an indirect result of violence against and disrespect of Blacks perpetuated by the language of “nigger,” a word used on every other page of the book by Twain. Racism is insidious and embedded in certain words. The language of Twain was and is the spirit of America.