What are you Reading? Part 4

In anticipation of summertime reading, we recently asked our faculty to tell us what they have been reading and the answers may surprise you! Throughout March and April we will be sharing their book recommendations on the seminary's blog.

This week's entry comes from Barry Bryant, Associate Professor of United Methodist and Wesleyan Studies, and Jim Papandrea, Assistant Professor of Church History.

Dr. Barry Bryant
Associate Professor of United Methodist and Wesleyan Studies

I have been reading books on "jihad" lately in preparation for my sabbatical lecture, "Renounce, Reject, Repent, Confess, and Resist: United Methodist Baptismal Vows as Jihad." There are two books of note from that list. The first is Reuven Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam.

Firestone's argument is that jihad has not developed in a linear unanimous fashion but in complex and nuanced ways based on what he calls "non-parallel trajectories of influence." He treats jihad as a phenomenon and asks how and why the idea of jihad evolved in Islam. He suggests that jihad has been developed as the result of Islam's friction with its context. The ideology of jihad eventually became determinant to Muslim identity and this has been expressed in violent and non-violent ways. 

The second book is Jacqueline O'Rourke, Representing Jihad: The Appearing and Disappearing Radical. While Firestone looks at the development historically, O'Rourke looks at the more recent debates and critiques them, primarily with the aid of post-colonial theory and concludes that most of the descriptions of jihad have been tailored to suit the needs of Western ideology and its "war on terror." What results is a depiction of jihadist as terrorist without grounding the jihadist's stance within the particularities of his own oppression. O'Rourke refuses to use the simplistic categories of "good" and "bad" Muslim to discuss jihad. Instead, she discusses the idea of jihad as a way of envisioning future democratic projects and what justice might look like in a post-colonial world. What I have realized is that when jihad is understood in this way, it approximates what United Methodists vow in baptism to become a part of not just a post-colonial world, but to participate in the "kindom" of God and the renouncement and rejection of evil, and the resistance to oppression and injustice. 

Dr. Jim Papandrea
Assistant Professor of Church History

I just finished a novel called The Living Wills by Brendan Sullivan and Rick Kaemper. It's one of those books that starts out with what appears to be several separate stories of unconnected people, but by the end you find out how they are all connected, and it all comes together in a very satisfying ending.

But this book is also interesting because of the way it was written. One of the authors, Brendan Sullivan, is a motivational speaker and collaboration coach, and so they actually used corporate collaboration techniques to write the story. It was a real "practice what you preach" project.

I also just finished Defending Constantine by Peter Leithart. While some of his conclusions are not quite convincing, it's a book everyone should read because it does debunk a lot of the myths surrounding the person of the Emperor Constantine. The fourth century is a very complicated time in the early Church, and anyone who wants to understand it cannot simply accept the standard assessment of Constantine that makes him out to be the villain of the story who ruined the Church. Leithart doesn't say much that's new or shocking, but this book is arguably more accessible than some of the other treatments that cover the same ground. I recommend that people read it, and decide for themselves.

I'm just starting Christian Hymns of the First Three Centuries, by Ruth Ellis Messenger. It's an old (and probably outdated) treatment, but I'm prepping myself to read Charlie Cosgrove's book on the Oxyrhynchus hymn.