Thirty books. 6,873 pages. More footnotes than anyone has time to count. While numbers can’t measure the value of the work YDS alumni have published from 2013-2014, they do suggest our alumni have been busy. Spanning everything from architecture to dystopian fiction, the titles below include a gripping portrait of the Nuremberg chaplains, a wacky retelling of Star Wars in iambic pentameter, spiritual memoirs, novels, and plenty of new titles in theology, ministry, and historical scholarship.
Congratulations to all our alumni on their hard work!
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Later this year David Auten ‘02 M.A.R. will publish his latest book: Eccentricity: A Spirituality of Difference (Cascade, forthcoming).
William R. Baird ’50 B.D. ’52 M.A. ’55 Ph.D. has completed a 30 year project with Vol. 3, History of New Testament Research (Fortress, 2013).
In her spiritual memoir, Bubble Girl: An Irreverent Journey of Faith (Chalice Press, 2013) Kathryn Banakis ‘03 B.A., ‘09, M.Div. writes “Jesus endears himself to me in these authentic, awkward moments, because maybe Jesus knows what it’s like to be me. Maybe I’m not so alone in this experience of life. Maybe for Jesus, part of being human was having the same sense I do—that my true identity and belonging are stuck in another zip code that I can never quite seem to find.”
Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy (Palgrace Macmillian, 2013) by Asoka Bandarage ’75 M.A.R. offers “an integrated analysis of the twin challenges of environmental sustainability and human well-being by investigating them as interconnected phenomena requiring a paradigmatic psychosocial transformation.”
Robert Boutler ’06 M.Div. is co-author of Preparing an Episcopal Funeral (Morehouse, 2014). “Funeral planning is one of the most challenging things a family or priest may ever do,” explains the book, “This simple guide explains the Episcopal theology of celebrating a life alongside grief, while offering practical guidelines and forms for planning and arranging funerals.”
Stricken by Sin, Cured by Christ (Oxford, 2013) is a discussion of Augustine’s doctrines of original sin and operative grace, and the questions about agency they raise by Jesse Couenhoven ’97 M.A.R.
Judith Dupre ‘11 M.Div. will publish her ninth book, One World Trade Center, A Biography of a Building (Little, Brown & Company, forthcoming). “Art will always be imperfect,” said Dupre in an interview about One World Trade Center with Michelle Aldrege, “that is the nature of making thought physical, and the nature too of human beings—stupid mistakes are made, geo-political turf is defended, money talks.”
Paul R. Eberts ’56 B.D. and Harry W. Eberts ’51 B.D. have co-authored the third book in their “Early Jesus” series: The Early Jesus Movement and Its Gospels: Four Major Parties, Four Major Gospels (YBK Publishers, 2013).
Arthur Gafke ‘67 B.D. has published two books in the past year: Strong Ministry: Strengthening Pastoral Ministry (AFG Weavings, 2013) and Beside Cool Waters: A Pastor’s Confessional Prayers for the Christian Life (AFG Weavings, 2013) which one reviewer calls “a feast of life, a companion for the journey. Enjoy.”
Todd Hartch ’95 M.A.R. has recently published The Rebirth of Latin American Christianity (Oxford, 2014), a history of Catholicism and Protestantism in Latin America over the past 60 years.
Vidyasagar: The Life and After-life of an Eminent Indian (Routledge, 2014) by Brian A. Hatcher ‘84 M.Div. is described by publishers as “a new interpretation of the life and legacy of the Indian reformer and intellectual, Ishvarchandra Vidyasagar (1820–91)” that “calls attention to the colonial transformation of intellectual and social life.”
Len Liptack ‘01 M.Div. has written The Bible Reading Survival Guide (Lulu, 2013). “We can easily be overwhelmed by the Bible,” writes Liptack, “We may try to read it, only to find ourselves stuck in a confusing book or chapter. Included in this guide are brief explanations of how the Bible came to be written and how the books were collected together and later declared to be Holy Scripture by the church.”
Candida Moss ‘02, M.A.R. ‘06, M.A., M.Phil, ‘08, Ph.D. has written The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (Harper One, 2013) which Desmond Tutu called “Compellingly argued and artfully written, Moss reveals how the popular misconception about martyrdom in the early church still creates real barriers to compassion and dialogue today.”
Otis Moss III ‘95 M.Div. has written The Gospel According to The Wiz: And Other Sermons from Cinema (Pilgrim Press, 2014). Some of the films featured in Moss’ sermons include: 12 Years a Slave, The Butler, The Book of Eli, The Color Purple, Avatar, Flight, and For Colored Girls.
Christiana Peppard ‘05 M.A.R., ‘09, M.A., ‘09 M.Phil., ‘11, Ph.D. has recently published Just Water: Theology, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis (Orbis, 2014). Her book was praised by America Magazine for encouraging “readers to go beyond a view that water is ‘just’ or ‘only’ water to the justice questions surrounding access, distribution and use of water. Dr. Peppard has initiated a key discussion for the 21st century.”
“Supporting grieving children requires intentionality, open-communication, and patience,” explains What Do We Tell the Children?: Talking to Kids About Death and Dying (Abingdon, 2013) by Joe Primo ’06 M.Div. “Rather than avoid all conversations on death or pretend like it never happened, normalizing grief and offering support requires us to be in-tune with kids through dialogue as they grapple with questions of ‘how’ and ‘why.’”
Robert C. Roberts ’74 M.Div. has published Emotions in the Moral Life (Cambridge UP, 2013) in which he “explains how emotions can be a basis for moral judgments, how they account for the deeper moral identity of actions we perform, how they are constitutive of morally valenced personal relationships like friendship, enmity, collegiality and parenthood, and how both pleasant and unpleasant emotions interact with our personal wellbeing (eudaimonia).”
Mindy McGarrah Sharp ’01 M.A.R. writes in Misunderstanding Stories: Toward a Postcolonial Pastoral Theology (Wipf & Stock, 2013) that “postcolonial narratives are important resources for constructive pastoral theology because the explore the depth of complicity that challenges the empowerment, liberation, and resistance that the field of pastoral theology has claimed as the guiding paradigms of care.”
Piety and Responsibility (Ashgate, 2013) by John Sheveland ‘99 M.A.R. “analyzes the writings of Karl Rahner, Karl Barth, and Vedanta Desika to disclose how each construes ‘piety’ and ‘responsibility’ as integral to each other.” The Journal of Religion calls it “a concise and eloquent theological statement on the unity of piety and responsibility, one that is informed by a serious and theologically sensitive reading of both Christian and Hindu sources.”
In God Revealed: Revisit Your Past to Enrich Your Future (Morgan James, 2014) Fred Sievert ‘11 M.A.R. writes “I remember thinking that if I chose to study a single faith or denomination, I’d only get one perspective and miss all the others. How would I know which was right? On the other hand, if I pursued answers from every possible source, I would continue to be confused and would wonder if any of it made sense.”
Sandra Smyth ‘10 M.A.R. has published her seventh book, Sermons Never Preached on the Spirit-Led Life (Xulon Press, 2013), which she describes as an examination of “the ego and the Spirit-led Life as co-existing, often dueling, partners within the human soul.”
In Mission at Nuremberg: An American Army Chaplain and the Trial of the Nazis (William Morrow, 2014) Tim Townsend ‘05 M.A.R. chronicles the work of Lutheran minister Henry Gerecke, the chaplain assigned to the twenty-one imprisoned Nazi leaders awaiting trial for crimes against humanity.
“When most people hear the words religion and Alabama, they rarely think first of the Book of Common Prayer and mitred bishops,” writes J. Barry Vaughn ‘82 M.Div. in Bishops, Bourbons, and Big Mules: A History of the Episcopal Church in Alabama (University of Alabama, 2013), “Despite their small numbers, Episcopalians have always been overrepresented at the upper levels of social, cultural, economic, and political leadership in Alabama. Although it does not dominate popular culture, the Episcopal Church wields an extraordinary amount of influence in the Heart of Dixie.”
The World is Not Ours to Save: Finding the Freedom to Do Good (IVP Books, 2013) by Tyler Wigg-Stevenson ‘04 M.Div. “identifies the practical and spiritual pitfalls that threaten much of today’s cause-driven Christianity.” It was recognized by Christianity Today as one of the Best Books of 2014.
Jesse Zink ‘12, M.Div. has recently published his second book, Backpacking through the Anglican Communion: A Search for Unity (Morehouse, 2014). Zink explains on his website that the book “draws on the tens of thousands of miles I’ve traveled in recent years to show what Anglican life is like at the grassroots level around the world—in places as diverse as Nigeria, Ecuador, England, and China” to show “how the loudest voices in the Anglican Communion are rarely as representative as they think.”
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In William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope (Quirk Books, 2013) Ian Doescher ‘98 B.A., ‘05 M.Div. has re-written the story of Star Wars—in iambic pentameter. As the prologue says: “In time so long ago begins our play/ in a star-crossed galaxy far, far away.”
“The author was a third of the way into this novel when it took on a life of its own,” wrote Bob O’Connor ‘87 M.Div. of his book Unholy Ground: A Max Steele Thriller (ICR Publishing, 2013). “From that point on, the novel wrote itself with the author acting as a mere scribe.”
“It’s a dystopian novel that looks at an environmentally ravaged and financially bankrupted America,” said Mark Powell ‘08 M.A.R. to The Stetson Reporter about his forthcoming fourth novel, The Sheltering (Story River Books, 2014) “a country eternally at war, which has descended into a low-grade police state full of surveillance cameras. One of the main characters is an Edward Snowden-like figure who has leaked government secrets.”
Alan Sorem ‘66, M.Div. is the author of Time: Jesus in Relationships: A Novel (Wipf and Stock, 2013) which the publisher describes as a “novel that explores the time that Mary and Jesus had together before the beginning of his ministry. It explores Jesus’ relationships with brothers and sisters, with neighbors, and, most important, his relationship with God.”
Brotherhood (Viking Juvenile, 2013) is a debut novel by Anne Westrick ‘83 M.A.R. that follows a family in Reconstruction-era Virginia. It was recognized by the Young Adult Library Services Association in their list of 2014 Best Fiction for Young Adults.
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