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New Books in Catholic Studies

New Books in Catholic Studies

By: New Books Network
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 Interviews with scholars of Catholicism about their new booksNew Books Network Art Christianity Literary History & Criticism Spirituality
Episodes
  • Jonathan Teubner, "Charity After Augustine: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Practices of Charity in the Latin West" (Oxford UP, 2025)

    Jonathan Teubner, "Charity After Augustine: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Practices of Charity in the Latin West" (Oxford UP, 2025)
    Jun 23 2025
    Jonathan Teubner, Charity After Augustine: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Practices of Charity in the Latin West (Oxford UP, 2025) Through a unique blend of the personal and historiographical, Charity after Augustine is an exploration of why the Augustinian tradition’s attempts to build solidarity or social cohesion in the societies of the Latin West have ended in disaster just as often as they have brought about justice. The conceit at the heart of the book is that the concrete practices of love or charity—almsgiving, works of mercy, good works—can tell us much about how religious leaders attempted to bind and hold communities together while also, in fits and starts with some startling reversions, attempting to expand the community and incorporate others. The first part probes the ways Augustine’s understanding of love is put into practice and how this understanding informs a tradition of political action inspired by Christian concepts of love and enacted through practices of charity. In a second, more expansive part, the book turns to the ways in which the Benedictine tradition as illustrated by Gregory the Great and Bernard of Clairvaux receives this vision, invigorates it with new visions of care and leadership, and puts it into practice in radically different contexts from those of Augustine’s age. At the heart of Charity after Augustine is an attempt to find a non-idealized vision of love that can inform thick, meaningful relations within a community that are not diluted by the inclusion of others New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review Jonathan D. Teubner is a Research Associate at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard. This book is something of a sequel to his first, Prayer after Augustine: A Study in the Development of the Latin Tradition. Michael Motia teaches in the classics and religious studies department at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 31 mins
  • Stefanie Lenk, "Roman Identity and Lived Religion: Baptismal Art in Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

    Stefanie Lenk, "Roman Identity and Lived Religion: Baptismal Art in Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
    Jun 9 2025
    Christianity is often considered prevalent when it comes to defining the key values of late antique society, whereas 'feeling connected to the Roman past' is commonly regarded as an add-on for cultivated elites. Roman Identity and Lived Religion: Baptismal Art in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2025) demonstrates the significant impact of popular Roman culture on the religious identity of common Christians from the fifth to the seventh century in the Mediterranean world. Baptism is central to the formation of Christian identity. The decoration of baptisteries reveals that traditional Roman culture persisted as an integral component of Christian identity in various communities. In their baptisteries, Christians visually and spatially evoked their links to Roman and, at times, even pagan traditions. A close examination of visual and material sources in North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Italy shows that baptisteries served roles beyond mere conduits to Christian orthodoxy. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review. Stefanie Lenk is a postdoc the university of Göttingen, and she’s held other postdocs and fellowship at the Universities of Bern and Hamburg. And she, along with Jaś Elsner, was Curator at the Ashmolean’s of the international exhibition “Imagining the Divine: Art and the Rise of World Religions. Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    46 mins
  • Maya Mayblin "Vote of Faith: Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians" (Fordham UP, 2024)

    Maya Mayblin "Vote of Faith: Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians" (Fordham UP, 2024)
    May 30 2025
    A richly cinematic and compelling look at priest-politicians in Brazil and their religious and secular entanglements, Vote of Faith: Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians (Fordham UP, 2024) explores the complex intersection of democracy, patriarchy, and religiosity in Brazil. For over a hundred years, Catholic priests have been running for government office, challenging Brazil’s constitutional separation of church and state and its self-image as a modern, secular nation. Priests find themselves walking a tightrope between religious and secular demands in one of Brazil’s poorest regions. Vote of Faith is a beautifully crafted ethnography based upon decades of fieldwork that tells the story of the ambiguous and frequently transgressive relationship between Catholicism and state governance, a relationship ultimately mediated by kinship, gender, and sexuality. For the protagonists of Vote of Faith, democracy becomes a sphere in which divine will and human ambition compete with one another, a tension embedded in the vernacular concept of faith. In the Brazilian context, faith signifies a complex set of assumptions about the nature of the world, assumptions derived not just from Christianity, but also from Afro-Brazilian and secular ideas about power, causation, and human agency. In combining ethnographic, theological, and feminist perspectives, Vote of Faith places desiring bodies at the very heart of Catholicism’s complex con­nection to multiple forms of power and offers provocative new angles on the question of the secular. The first work by an anthropologist to explore the unique phenomenon of the mayor-priest, this book offers an essential new angle on emerging debates about secularity as the condition of separation of the religious from the political. Brimming with originality, Vote of Faith is required reading for those interested in the gendered and sexual dimensions of the secular, the plasticity of religion, and the fundamental nature of the world’s largest religious institution. Maya Mayblin is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Her work explores religion, theology, politics, and gender in Brazil and beyond. She is the author of Gender, Morality and Catholicism in Brazil and co-editor of The Anthropology of Catholicism: A Reader. Yadong Li is a socio-cultural anthropologist-in-training. He is registered as a PhD student at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of economic anthropology, development studies, hope studies, and the anthropology of borders and frontiers. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 24 mins

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