I am greatly looking forward to reading this new study which will begin filling a very considerable gap in the literature on conversion: Proselytes of a New Nation: Muslim Conversions to Orthodox Christianity in Modern Greece by Stefanos Katsikas  (Oxford UP, 2022), 248pp. About this study the publisher tells us this: Proselytes of a New Nation analyzes questions such as: Why did many Muslims convert to Greek Orthodoxy? What did conversion mean to the converts? What were their economic, social, and professional profiles? And how did conversion affect the converts' relationships with Mus ..read more

I do apologize for the silence on here the last few weeks. I was busy running my annual iconography camp and that is an exhausting period in late June. As ever for those interested in such things, I always recommend Jeana Visel's book, copies of which I give to my students every year.  But if, in my absence, you were parched for news of forthcoming Eastern Christian publications, then you may more than slake your thirst now with the imminent advent of the first book by one of the most gifted, profound, and promising theological scholars of his generation: Jordan Daniel Wood, The Who ..read more

It always cheers the heart to see that increasingly scholars studying disciplines they label "politics" realize that things labelled "religion" (etc.) are by no means separable from the study of the former. In that light, the Routledge Handbook of the Horn of Africa, ed. Jean-Nicolas Bach (February 2022, 784pp.) has an entire section exploring Islam and Christianity in Africa, with a particular focus on Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, about which I wrote only this week.  About this collection the publisher further tells us this:  The Routledge Handbook of the Horn of Africa provid ..read more

When a young boy more than a decade ago my oldest son was fascinated with the concept that a man could live atop a pillar. So I have always kept an eye out for new studies on the paradigmatic example of such living, who is treated in a new book by Lucy Parker, Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch: From Hagiography to History (Oxford University Press, October 2022), 288pp. About this book the publisher tells us this: Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch: From Hagiography to History is a study of the authority of the holy man and its limits in times of crisis. L ..read more

The Christian East has abounded in images, and celebrates them annually on more than one occasion. But what is an icon exactly? What does it mean to see? How can we see some things and yet be blind to others? Can some see what others regard as beyond sight, beyond materiality itself? Can one see spiritual realities? Can God be seen? These and other questions are taken up in a thick new tome coming out next month: Thomas Pfau, Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image (University of Notre Dame Press, June 2022), 811pp.  About this book the publisher crows thus ..read more

If you don't know the works of Marcus Plested, you need to remedy that immediately. I've interviewed him on here and discussed some of his other landmark works.  Coming out the end of June is his latest book, Wisdom in Christian Tradition:The Patristic Roots of Modern Russian Sophiology (Oxford University Press, 2022), 288pp. About this book the publisher tells us this: Following a survey of the biblical and classical background, Wisdom in Christian Tradition offers a detailed exploration of the theme of wisdom in patristic, Byzantine, and medieval theology, up to and including Gre ..read more

I have watched, even in my own short lifetime, how Christian theology has recovered a sense of the ecological and its importance. In 1991 at the World Council of Churches assembly in Canberra, the theme of "justice, peace, and the integrity of creation" was already everywhere in discussion, and that has only continued over the last thirty years, with each of the last three popes contributing to a 'thicker' eco-theology if one may use that not entirely satisfactory phrase. Other thinkers have also played large parts here. On the Orthodox side, the Ecumenical Patriarch has long been dubbed the ..read more

Not a week ago were my students insistently asking me everything I knew about the role of the evil eye in Greek Orthodox culture. I am now in the happy position of being myself able to learn more about this, and refer them to learn more from a forthcoming book: Orthodox Christianity, New Age Spirituality and Vernacular Religion: The Evil Eye in Greece by Eugenia Roussou  (Bloomsbury, October 2022), 216pp. About this book the publisher tells us this:  This anthropological work thoroughly illustrates the novel synthesis of Christian religion and New Age spirituality in Gree ..read more

With so much attention justifiably focused on the complete surrender of Russian Orthodoxy to Russian nationalism and its wars of aggression, including against Ukraine, now is a good time to draw attention to a number of recent resources giving wider critical analysis, including Tobias Koellner's Orthodox Religion and Politics in Contemporary Eastern Europe: On Multiple Secularisms and Entanglements (Routledge, 2020), 274pp. This book explores the relationship between Orthodox religion and politics in Eastern Europe, Russia and Georgia. It demonstrates how as these societies undergo ..read more

Why is anyone a nationalist in any context, at any point, and in and for any nation-state ("that most dangerous and unmanageable of institutions" in MacIntyre's memorable words)? Is it a lack of education? An insularity that refuses to travel to, study, and engage other cultures which results in an othering and blindness so that I do not see how their struggles are like my nation's, and their supposed glories like unto mine as well? I am hard-pressed to think of anything stupider or more pointless--or more destructive insofar as nationalism is often a key motivator of war. Anyone with a passi ..read more