As we prepare for the launch of a new AAR website later this spring, we are announcing a new format for AAR Member Notes that will enable your news to be published on our channels in a more timely manner.
We will now be publishing member notes on a monthly basis. This means that if you submit your note in January, you can expect to see it published in the beginning of February. To ensure we can publish the large volume of member notes we receive on a timely basis, we will publish multiple member notes in the same post.
To launch this new format, we are publishing the member notes we have received since September 2024 below. Please join us in celebrating our members on their professional news and accomplishments!
As a reminder, AAR publishes member accomplishments including new publications, award announcements, and media mentions.
September
Books and Major Publications
Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2024)
From the publisher: “The Great Open Dance offers a progressive Christian theology that endorses contemporary ideals: environmental protection, economic justice, racial reconciliation, interreligious peace, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ celebration. Just as importantly, this book provides a theology of progress–an interpretation of Christian faith as ever-changing and ever-advancing into God’s imagination. Faith demands change because Jesus of Nazareth started a movement, not a tradition. He preached about a new world, the Kingdom of God, and invited his followers to work toward the divine vision of universal flourishing. This vision includes all and excludes none.”
October
Books and Major Publications
David Thang Moe, Beyond the Academy: Lived Asian Public Theology of Religions (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2024)
From the publisher: “The term “public theology” was introduced by Martin E. Marty in a 1974 article. Since then, scholarly discussions on public theology have become more popular in academic circles. This book, however, is about the invitation for moving beyond the academy. It provides two reasons for doing so. First, an overtly academic public theology is in crisis today. Although public theology may be flourishing in the academy, its relevance for real life is limited. Second, there is the “ecclesial flourishing” among grassroots Christian communities across Asia who witness to their lived faith in public and hidden life. Their voices are largely unheard due to the gaps between the academy and the church. This volume argues that we should consider their voices as key sources for developing a relevant lived Asian public theology.”
Carl Olsen, The Nostalgia for Origins: Religion, Evolution, Cognition and Memory (Anthem Press, 2024); The Stain of Errors on the Self (Brill, 2024); Playing in Emptiness: An Introduction to Zen Buddhist Discourse (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2024)
From Anthem Press: “This book examines a possible source for the origin of religion, using the theory of evolution and findings from cognitive science. It adds a theory of power to suggest the agency of early Homo sapiens.”
From Brill: “The book is divided into two parts: a review of selected theories of the self and a reconsideration of the self and errors producing being.”
From Wipf and Stock Publishers: “The purpose of Playing in Emptiness is to expose readers to the notion of play in Zen/Chan Buddhism and its manifestation in emptiness, language, strange teaching methods, the erotic, comic, the fine arts, and the martial arts with the goal of shedding new light on the religious tradition.”
C. Pierce Salguero, Kin Cheung; Buddhism and Healing in the Modern World (University of Hawai’i Press, 2024)
From the publisher: “This rich collection focuses on the nexus between Buddhism and healing in the modern and contemporary world, highlighting the many ways Buddhists have adapted in response to and in dialogue with modern science, biomedicine, and other facets of modernity from the nineteenth century to today.
In the News/Public Scholarship
Edward Curtis, “Award-Winning Book Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest Released on Audio”
Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest (NYU Press, 2022), which won the 2023 Evelyn Shakir Book Prize from the Arab American National Museum, was recently released as an audiobook on Apple Books, Audible, Amazon, and other places. The audio is produced by Kent Vernon, the same sound engineer that worked on Arab Indianapolis: A Hidden History.
November
Books and Major Publications
E. Trey Clark, Black Contemplative Preaching: A Hidden History of Prayer, Proclamation, and Prophetic Witness (Baylor University Press, 2024)
From the publisher: “Black Contemplative Preaching challenges monolithic portraits of Black spirituality and ministry through an evaluation of these influential figures. The uncovering of this rich, yet neglected, history of mystical activism among Christian preachers sheds light on the creative synthesis of spirituality, social justice, and proclamation in the Black church. Ultimately, the book presents Black contemplative preaching as a historic and enduring source of theological wisdom that speaks to the political, ecological, and spiritual challenges of our times.”
Elisabeth Kincaid, Law from Below: How the Thought of Francisco Suárez, SJ, Can Renew Contemporary Legal Engagement (Georgetown University Press, 2024)
From the publisher: “In Law from Below, Elisabeth Rain Kincaid argues that the theology of the early modern legal theorist and theologian, Francisco Suárez, SJ may be successfully retrieved to provide a constructive model of legal engagement for Christians today. Suárez’s theology was developed to combat an authoritarian view of law, suggesting that communities may work to change law from the ground up as they function within the legal system, not just outside it. Law from Below suggests that Suárez’s theory of law provides a theologically robust way to mount a counter-narrative to contemporary authoritarian theories of law, while still acknowledging the good in the rule of law and its imposition by a legislative authority. Suárez acknowledges the crucial contribution of citizens to improving law’s moral content, without removing the importance of law’s own authority or the role of the lawgiver.”
M.R. Osborne, The Alchemy of William Blake: The Three Principles of the Divine Essence and ‘An Allegory of the Spiritual Condition of Man’ (Rose Circle Publications, 2024)
From the publisher: “To better understand William Blake, it is necessary to understand his sources of inspiration. While much has been written about the influences of Paracelsus and Swedenborg on his work, a key influence on Blake was the self-taught sixteenth-century mystic Jacob Boehme. Blake and Boehme believed they had mystical experiences and visions that inspired their writing. This book embarks on a profound exploration of the connection between these two visionaries.”
Darryl W. Stephens, Diaconal Studies: Lived Theology for the Church in North America (Regnum Books, 2024)
From the publisher: “Diaconal Studies explores and creates new ways of incarnating the church’s ministry, seeking to enhance connections between doctrine and daily life, service and social critique, solidarity and transformation – for a wide array of helping professions. This book aims to accelerate learning between North American and global diaconal educators and reflective practitioners, with contributors from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Norway, South Africa, and the United States. Deeply rooted in the theological tradition, diaconal studies can ground, renew, and invigorate interdisciplinary academic discourse to address the most urgent challenges in the contemporary world.”
December
Books and Major Publications
Yuria Celidwen, Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Wisdom for Collective Well-Being (Sounds True, 2024)
From the publisher: “This poetic guide from Indigenous scholar Yuria Celidwen is a first-of-its-kind book, offering a beautiful gathering of the wisdom, traditions, and practices that bridge Indigenous and Western sciences, knowledges, and ways to address our collective aspiration for health, wellness, justice, and equity for collective, sustainable flourishing.”
Kirill Chepurin, Bliss Against the World: Schelling, Theodicy, and the Crisis of Modernity (OUP, 2024)
From the publisher: “Bliss Against the World reinterprets Schelling’s philosophical trajectory from the 1790s to the 1840s, showing his metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and natural philosophy to be underwritten by the apocalyptic tension between bliss and theodicy. It argues that this tension is located likewise at the heart of modernity and reconstructs the Schellingian genealogy of the modern age as intensifying what may be termed the general Christian contradiction. It also focuses on Schelling’s anxiety about the possibility of universal history in the dark and de-centered universe and critiques his Romantic construction of humanity and his geo-racial theodicy of history–a theodicy that refracts and legitimates the violent logics of post-1492 modernity, including European colonialism, racialization, and transatlantic slavery.”
Suzanna Krivulskaya, Disgraced: How Sex Scandals Transformed American Protestantism (OUP, 2025)
From the publisher: “Disgraced is a sweeping religious and cultural history of Protestant sex scandals in nineteenth and twentieth century America. Suzanna Krivulskaya investigates the cultural consequences of scandal, what demands the public made of religion in response to revelations of pastoral misdeeds, and how Protestantism itself changed in the process. From the birth of the modern press to the advent of the internet age, the book traces the public downfalls of religious leaders who purported to safeguard the morality of the nation. Along the way, Protestant ministers’ private transgressions journeyed from the privilege of silence to the spectacle of sensationalism.”
Matthew D. McMullen and Jolyon Baraka Thomas, The New Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions (University of Hawai’i Press, 2024)
From the publisher: “For nearly two decades, the Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions has served as a valuable resource for students and scholars of religion in Japan. This exciting update expands the audience to include non-specialists of Japan while also complicating the notions of “Japan” and “religion.” Asking the provocative question “why study Japanese religions?” the editors argue that studying Japan is vital for the academic study of religion writ large and make a case for the continued importance of religious topics in Japan studies, broadly conceived.”