Christian Bible Research Articles

Preaching Religion, Family and Memory in Nineteenth-Century England

This article explores the religious selfhood of an exemplary Bible Christian woman, Mary Thorne (1807–1883). Founded in 1815 as a splinter group of Wesleyan Methodism, the Bible Christian denomination invoked an epistemology which stressed the correlation between religious and familial obligations. A close study of Mary Thorne's private writings suggests the tensions which existed within this ideal at the level of everyday life. Her writings open a window on a religious woman's negotiation of her public identity alongside her experiences of marriage, sexuality and motherhood. They show the impact of age, life cycle and memory in the process of self-imagining and commemoration. Critically, they also show how dependent Thorne's self-realisation and presentation were on material signs of her identity. In understanding the varying constructions of Mary Thorne's religious selfhood, I argue we might more fully understand the material cultures that underpinned evangelical religion and domesticity in nineteenth-century Britain.

Spirituality as Mindfulness: Biblical and Buddhist Approaches

The author joins St Basil the Great in pleading that we abandon the "contemplation-action' paradigm in understanding and interpreting biblical Christianity which revolves around the notion and the practice of rememberance or mindfulness ( zkr ). Indulging in a comparative study of the biblical and the Buddhist versions of mindfulness spirituality, he maintains that even Buddhism resists the contemplation-action paradigm. This essay is the first written version of a message the author has been transmitting orally in various parts of the world for many years in the course of teaching the practice of mindfulness-spirituality.

A Time to Scatter, a Time to Gather

The beginning of the academic year (the occasion when this paper was delivered at the United Faculty of Theology) is not only a time to gather but also a time when people and ideas are scattered in various ways for the sake of theological education. Several biblical and early Christian texts deal with the themes of scattering and gathering, particularly in three interlocking contexts: the sowing of seed to produce a harvest that will be gathered in; the dispersal of a multitude and its subsequent restoration to its own land; and the assembly of a group followed by its sending forth to various places with the group's goals in mind. Scattering comes with high risk, and often grief and sorrow, but bears the potential for joy at the attainment of the harvest or other goals. The Gospel of John is notable for portraying the crucifixion as both a time of scattering and grief (followed by regathering and joy at the resurrection) and a time of gathering and triumph.

Subiaco – Innocent III’s Version of Elijah’s Cave

In Biblical history and Christian literature alike, caves or grottoes, those works of nature,’as if cut painstakingly but elegantly in the rocks or the cliff side without any tool’, have always played their significant part. Had not Benedict of Nursia, father of western monasticism, spent three years in eremitical solitude in just such a grotto beneath Monte Taleo in the Simbruini range of the Apennines? It was no surprise then that it was to this, the Sacro Speco or Holy Cave, that Innocent III (1198–1216) came in person during the summer of 1202. Drawn to Subiaco in no small part by his reading of Book II of Gregory the Great’sDialogues, in which his distinguished papal predecessor had described Benedict’sLife and Miracles, Innocent’s visit was notable on several counts.

A New Fragment of Athanasius's Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter: Heresy, Apocrypha, and the Canon

Athanasius of Alexandria's thirty-ninth Festal Letter remains one of the most significant documents in the history of the Christian Bible. Athanasius wrote the letter, which contains the first extant list of precisely the twenty-seven books of the current New Testament canon, in 367 c.e., during the final decade of his life. Like many of his annual Easter letters, the thirty-ninth was fairly long, but only a small portion of the text survives in Greek.1 The Greek excerpt contains Athanasius's lists of the books of the Old and New Testaments, which he calls “canonized,” and a list of a few additional books, like the Shepherd of Hermas, which he says are not canonized, but are useful in the instruction of catechumens. Most studies of the formation of the Christian canon, including very recent ones, examine only this Greek fragment and so discuss only the contents of the lists. But already in the late-nineteenth-century fragments of the much more extensive Coptic translation had been published, and a few scholars, such as Carl Schmidt and Theodor Zahn, used them to write penetrating studies of the letter.2 In 1955 Lefort published all the then-known Coptic fragments in his book of Coptic Athanasiana, and then in 1984 Coquin published another long fragment.3 These served as the basis for my 1995 translation and my 1994 article in this journal on the social context of canon formation in fourth-century Egypt.4

Everyday Apocalypse: J. G. Ballard and the Ethics and Aesthetics of the End of Time

Everyday Apocalypse: J. G. Ballard and the Ethics and Aesthetics of the End of Time Elana Gomel “Don’t wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.” Albert Camus Delirium and Destination What happens after the end of time? The question seems absurd: if time comes to an end, the idea of anything “happening” is meaningless. A narrative of events can only unfold in time, just as time is humanly apprehended only through narrative. In Paul Ricoeur’s classic formulation, temporality is the “structure of existence that reaches language in narrativity” (35). The end of time would annihilate the narrative imagination predicated on the flux of social and biological change. And yet, paradoxically, this imagination seems to flourish on the edge of its own destruction. The notions of the end of time, the apocalypse, the millennium, have been central to the Western historical imagination, infecting it by what Derrida called “the disorder or delirium of destination” (24) — a phrase that captures the combination of unshakeable determinism and giddy exaltation of apocalyptic beliefs. The end is nigh, but true believers have to work hard to make it happen. Their work is violence. Like any other conceptualization of temporality, apocalypse attempts to create a humanly meaningful narrative of historical change. But it is peculiarly self-destructive because it denies what it sets out to explain: time, history, and mortality. Apocalypse is time’s bomb; a conspiracy against history; an attempt to defeat death by violence. Perhaps the best representation of the apocalyptic mindset is the terrorist group in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent who plot to murder time by blowing up the Greenwich Observatory. The “delirium” of the approaching cataclysm has motivated some of the most destructive religious and political events in history, from the [End Page 185] Crusades and the expulsion of Jews from Spain to Nazism and Stalinism, not to mention innumerable schisms, sects, and cults. And apocalypse has remained a central (if not the central) temporal form of postmodernity, promising, just as it did in ancient times, “the key to human history” (Weber 5). Despite its many guises, the narrative of the end of time is surprisingly uniform across the immense range of apocalyptic literature, both religious and secular. No matter how the end is visualized, whether brought about by divine wrath, the inexorable law of history, the hidden workings of nature, or any combination thereof, it proceeds along the same well-trodden path. This path, the apocalyptic plot, has been summarized by cultural scholars, literary critics, and students of religion in very similar terms. It consists of two stages, destruction and renewal. In her analysis of the end-of-century millenarian fever, Lee Quinby describes it as the transition from “world destruction” to “a new, transformed earth” (4). Looking at nineteenth-century American literature, David Ketterer finds a tight “correlation between the destruction of the world and the establishment of the New Jerusalem” (7). And Robert Jay Lifton, who studied the political praxis of apocalypse in the Japanese sect Aum Shinrikyo that had released poison gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, uncovers “a loosely connected, still-developing subculture of apocalyptic violence — of violence conceived in sweeping terms as a purification and renewal of humankind through the total or near-total destruction of the planet” (4). Emotionally speaking, apocalypse links fear and hope, since “tribulation and horror will usher in public and private bliss, free of pain or evil” (Weber 31). The origin of the apocalyptic plot (at least in its Western incarnation) lies in the Book of Revelation of St. John the Divine, the last book of the Christian Bible. This esoteric text, a combination of the Jewish prophetic tradition with the nascent Christian eschatology, has had a cultural and political influence quite incommensurable with its shaky position within Catholic and mainstream Protestant theologies. The book barely achieved inclusion in the canon (due to the mistaken belief that its author was the apostle John). Its burning immediacy that appealed to many early Christians was defused by St. Augustine who insisted that it should be read allegorically, with the millennium referring to the reign of Christ within his Church, while the Tribulations represented the struggle...

Godmother of Alexander Askoldov

Klavdiya Vavilova from Alexander Askoldov's film Commissar is burnt by love, motherhood and revolution. As a mother she bears life, as a martyr of belief - death to the enemies. Still life takes over. The winner is a human being ready to sacrifice though building the Earthly Kingdom. That is the ugly paradox of Russian history of the beginning of the XXth century. It is not incidental that Alexander Blok's apostles are headed by Christ. Vavilova is one of the apostles. But the ilm Commissar would not be a masterpiece if the director had ignored the main testament of the Christian Bible - the testament of love.

God, the Christ and the Spirit in William P. Young’s bestseller <i>The shack</i> seen from a Pauline and Johannine perspective

Among its more than a million readers, The shack has empowered traditionalists and seekers among Christian spirituals but has also been condemned for patripassionism and modalism. This article consists mainly of two sections. The first section considers the issue of reviewers of The shack often assessing its religious legitimacy and the value of its message by means of critically questioning its adherence to texts in the Christian Bible. The second section focuses on the accusation that, dogmatically seen, The shack’s narrative point of view is heresy, especially because of its nonstandard view of Christian dogma with regard to God Triune. The aim of the article is to argue that a great deal of commonality exists between the author of The shack and both Pauline and Johannine mysticism. With regard to their God talk, the author and these biblical writers express more of a present immanent communion with the transcendental God than an expectancy of authenticity that still lies in the future and exists outside humankind’s immanent time and space. It is as if they draw the end time into the sphere of the here and now by passionately talking about communion with God as a process of the future, inhaled by the present. By doing so, the God-threesome meet wounded humankind in a ‘shack’, not in the ‘church’ as such or ‘Scripture’ as such as if God could be placed in a box.

Word of God or Witness? Issues in Christian Biblical Hermeneutics

This article gives a historical overview of the main issues and problems facing Christian interpreters of the Bible. The Christian understanding of the Bible is influenced by two main factors. On the one hand, Christians believe that God revealed himself and was present in the life, ministry, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, Jesus is the one Word of God. On the other hand, Christians believe that the Bible is inspired Holy Scripture, containing the revelation of God. There is a tension between these two approaches, as one locates the divine revelation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the other in the Holy Book. The article argues that this tension has been a major creative driving force in the history of Christian biblical interpretation. It traces the main strategies with which Christian interpreters have approached the Bible in order to reconcile these two elements, or in which they have allowed one to overrule the other. This will provide an introduction to the key approaches and methods in Christian biblical interpretation.

A Recepção da Noção de Pureza na Experiência Religiosa de “Obreiros” Evangélicos

This article has as objective to verify as notions of purity and impurity that appears in the religious experience and the discourse of the evangelical workers. For this, in the first part of the article we made a historical-literary rising of the senses attributed to the purity/impurity in texts that compose Old and New Testament of the Hebraic and Christian Bible. After that, we talked about the uses of those categories in agreement with the historical Protestantism and, finally, we confronted those data with interviews accomplished with workers of the Igreja Internacional da Graca (IIG) and Assembleia de Deus. Unlike what it proposes the historical (or classic) Protestantism, the interpretation experience, uses and habits of the group with which we accomplished that research, demonstrated fluidity and creativity in the appropriation and reverse-significance of those semantic fields.

Uproar and Disorder? The Impact of Bible Christianity on the Communities of Nineteenth Century North Devon

A considerable part of the rural depopulation of North Devon in the first half of the 19th century was attributable to emigration. Examination of individual emigrants shows that the majority were not stereotypical, impoverished agricultural labourers but more substantial tradesmen, many of whom adhered to the Bible Christian faith. Although followers were described as being 'almost without exception of the lowest classes of society' (Wickes 1987: 38) and were accused of behaviour that was 'uproarious and disorderly' (North Devon Journal(NDJ) 9 December 1858); both are statements that warrant scrutiny. This article considers the impact of Bible Christianity on the inhabitants of the hamlet of Bucks Mills and the parish of Buckland Brewer. Using case studies of individuals from these areas, it investigates the characteristics of early nineteenth century Bible Christian emigrants and examines the role of their faith as a motivating factor for migration.

James D. Ernest, The Bible in Athanasius of Alexandria (The Bible in Ancient Christianity; Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. xiv + 482. €133.00; $190.00.

James D. Ernest, The Bible in Athanasius of Alexandria (The Bible in Ancient Christianity; Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. xiv + 482. €133.00; $190.00.

Creation's Praise of God

The theme of creation's praise of God has occasionally appeared in ecological theological literature but its full potential has not yet been realized. An engagement between the biblical text and Christian tradition, exemplified by Psalm 148 and the work of Thomas Aquinas, may allow this theme to take on a greater importance. Understanding praise as essential to creation's being allows humanity and non-humanity to be identified much more closely while producing a theology which is firmly grounded in the richness of orthodox Christian tradition.

How life began: evolution's three geneses

The origin of life is a hotly debated topic. The Christian Bible states that God created the heavens and the Earth, all in about seven days roughly six thousand years ago. This episode of Genesis departs markedly from scientific theories developed over the last two centuries which hold that life appeared on Earth about 3 billion years ago in the form of bacteria, followed by unicellular organisms half a millennia later. It is this version of genesis the Alexandre Meinesz explores in this engaging tale of life's origins and evolution.How Life Began elucidates three origins, or geneses, of life - bacteria, cells, and multicellular organisms - and shows how evolution has sculpted life to its current biodiversity through four main events: mutation, recombination, natural selection, and geologic cataclysm. As an ecologist who specializes in algae, the first organisms to colonize Earth, Meinesz brings a refreshingly novel voice to the history of biodiversity and emphasizes here the role of unions in organizing life. For example, the ingestion of some bacteria by other bacteria led to the mitochondria that characterize animal and plant cells, and the chloroplasts of plant cells.As Meinesz charmingly recounts, life's grandeur is a result of an evolutionary tendency toward sociality and solidarity. He suggests that it is our cohesion and collaboration that will allow us to solve the environmental problems arising in the decades and centuries to come. Rooted in the science of evolution but enlivened with many illustrations from other disciplines and the arts, How Life Began intertwines the rise of bacteria and multicellular life with Vermeer's portrait of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the story of Genesis and Noah, Meinesz's son's early experiences with Legos, and his own encounters with other scientists. All of this brings a very human and humanistic tone to Meinesz's charismatic narrative of the three origins of life.

Africans, the Bible, and ChristianityKeith Augustus Burton, The Blessing of Africa: The Bible and African Christianity

Africans, the Bible, and ChristianityKeith Augustus Burton, <i>The Blessing of Africa: The Bible and African Christianity</i>

Faithful Vision: Treatments of the Sacred, Spiritual, and the Supernatural in Twentieth Century African American Fiction, and: Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America

Reviewed by: Faithful Vision: Treatments of the Sacred, Spiritual, and the Supernatural in Twentieth Century African American Fiction, and: Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America Josef Sorett (bio) Coleman, James W. Faithful Vision: Treatments of the Sacred, Spiritual, and the Supernatural in Twentieth Century African American Fiction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2006. Salvatore, Nick. Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2005. The intersections of African-American literary and religious traditions have proven to be an extraordinary site of creative and critical energies. A first in all too many instances, W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the earliest black intellectuals to analyze the artistic and social significance of African-American religion. In his landmark 1903 text, The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois offered the following observation: The Preacher is the most unique personality developed by the Negro on American Soil. A leader, a politician, and orator, a “boss,” and intriguer, an idealist, —all these he is, and ever, too, the centre of a group of men, now twenty, now a thousand in number. The combination of a certain adroitness with deep-seated earnestness, of tact with consummate ability, gave him his preeminence, and helps him maintain it. (191) In addition to his sociological analysis of the charisma of black clergy, Du Bois’s attention to black worship practices and the theological dimensions of the Spirituals mapped a fertile terrain for future examinations of black religious aesthetics. More of a collection of improvisations based on his experience of the black folk preaching tradition, James Weldon Johnson’s 1927 volume God’s Trombones focused more specifically upon the creative powers exercised by black sacred poets on North American shores. According to Johnson, “The old-time Negro preacher was above all an orator, and in good measure an actor” (5). Recognizing the cultural authority accorded to black clerics, ten years later Richard Wright in effect called upon writers to replace preachers as the primary mythmakers in black communities in his essay, “Blueprint for Negro Writing,” (1937). For Wright, in the face of what viewed to be morally compromised bourgeois preachers, it was the responsibility of the “Negro writer [ . . . ] to do no less than create values by which his race is to struggle, live and die” (1384). While writers like Du Bois, Johnson, and Wright focused their critical eyes upon black Christianity, others have attended to what the historian of religion Charles Long has referred to as “extra-church orientations” (7). For instance, Zora Neale Hurston’s novels and folklore writings, heavily informed by her ethnographic work with black communities in the rural South, illuminated the spiritual powers of Hoodoo, a tradition initially portrayed at the turn of the century in Charles Chesnutt’s collection of short stories The Conjure Woman (1899). Indeed, many black writers and critics have taken up the task of engaging the rich diversity of black religious life as a site worthy of both celebration and critical interrogation. Moreover, a tradition of scholarly engagements in this arena can be traced back to Benjamin Elijah Mays’s seminal work, The Negro’s God as Reflected in His Literature (1938). Quite comprehensive in its scope, The Negro’s God scanned sermons, prayers, Sunday School curricula, and church music, all of which he classified under the rubric of “mass literature.” But Mays’s analysis also spanned the novels, poetry, and essays [End Page 318] of African-American authors, most notably the luminaries associated with the Harlem Renaissance—including Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes—in whose shadows he wrote. All this towards the end of his aim of presenting a book that was “wholly representative of what the Negro thinks of God” (Preface). The influence of religion on African-American literary traditions has not been lost in more recent black literary criticism. For example, in 1992, Marcellus Blount built on the arguments of Henry Louis Gates’s “trope of the talking book”—which, of course, centered around a text that was very likely the Christian Bible—to situate a performative tradition of black poetics. For Blount...

A STUDY OF THE FUNDAMENTALIST TENDENCY IN KOREAN PROTESTANTISM: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE KOREAN PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

In this article we examine Korean Protestantism’s intrinsic fundamentalist bent, which has caused both numerous schisms within the Korean Protestant churches and exclusivist approaches toward other religions. First, we study how Korean fundament-alism has occurred in three characteristic theological controversies, and three tragic schisms in the Korean Presbyterian Church. It appears that Korean fundamentalism, as it has appeared in the history of Korean Presbyterian churches, is unique in that it has an intense Biblicism. Then, we scrutinize how Korean fundamentalism has taken on an intense Biblicism. The theology of the American Presbyterian missionaries in Korea, which determined the theological orientation of Korean Protestantism, was “notably conservative.” But unfortunately this conservatism was further strengthened by Korea’s lack of political freedom. Being unable to participate in socio-political matters, the missionaries and their Korean followers could not help but focus on Bible studies, prayer, and evangelism. Furthermore, Korean Presbyterians’ Biblicism was also heightened by revivalism and millennialism, which were especially rampant before and after the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910. So it was Korea’s revolutionary socio-political situation, which greatly facilitated revivalism, millennialism, and eventually fundamentalism in Korea. Thus, we find three different factors that have contributed to the development of Korean Protestantism’s Biblicist and fundamentalist leanings: 1) the Western missionaries’ strong conservatism, which emphasized the Bible, significantly due to Korea’s political instability, 2) revivalism, and millennialism, which were again stimulated by Korea’s revolutionary situation, and 3) Korea’s original religious teaching on millennialism. And it was Dr. Pak Hyŏng-yong, who was the most important Korean theologian in establishing Korean Protestant Christianity as a Biblical Christianity. Having gained an insight into the Biblicist nature of Korean Protestant Christianity, Dr. Pak seems to have succeeded in combining it with the pietistic and Protestant orthodox (old Princeton) theology of the American Presbyterian missionaries to Korea, eventually making a unique Korean theology that emphasized the authority of the Bible. His theology, however, has a fundamentalist bent in that it rejects other ways of interpreting the Bible.

Book Review: The Blessing of Africa: The Bible and African Christianity

Book Review: The Blessing of Africa: The Bible and African Christianity

Schizophrénies et réactivité à la douleur

Medical practitioners do not for a long time pay enough attention to patient's pain. This approach is in the line of society feelings. Pain was long consider to be a contingency to withstand as showed in Christian's bible or Stoicism's principle. Changes in mentality appear in present times. It Seems obvious that for sociological and scientific reasons pain's care in medical and psychiatric disorders is now an important subject. Recent research in autistic disorders suggest that insensitivity observed in autism is not and analgesic phenomenon but a different behavioural reactivity to pain. Prevalence of schizophrenic disorder is from 0.5 to 1%. It is also a complex disorder that has defied decades of concerted efforts to uncover its origins and attenuate its symptoms. The most promising hypotheses suggest that neurodevelopmental impairment increases the risk of later schizophrenia. Most of recent researches in this topic did focus to trait or state markers. According to the vulnerability models of schizophrenia, trait marker are clinical, psychological, physiological, anatomical or cognitive impairments found in patients with schizophrenia during all the course of the illness and even before the onset. Several lines of evidence (case report, epidemiological studies, experimental studies) suggest that patients with schizophrenia shows a relative insensitivity to physical pain. We will review and critic the scientific literature in this specific topic. We will see if datas are relevant with the neurodevelopmental hypothesis and vulnerability models. An OLDMEDLINE/MEDLINE query was performed to identify 50 articles relevant to our subject. 9 were case report or case series, 21 were clinical or epidemiological studies, 15 were experimental studies and we also found 5 previous review. Clinical and experimental data strongly suggest a decrease of Behavioural Reactivity to Pain (BRP) but there is a lack of argument to prove a real analgesia. Because schizophrenia is a severe disease with impairment in communication and social skills it may be very difficult to affirm that the insensitivity to pain does really exist for patients. It seems inappropriate at this point to speak about insensitivity or analgesia. We could hypothesis that the decrease of BRP is less a consequence of analgesia than a different way to express emotion in general and pain in particular. It is well known that patients with schizophrenia show communication and thinking impairment, not adapted social skills and also a lack of body representation. However, this decrease of behavioural response seems to be frequent and may be explore by objective research protocol to understand if patients don't feel pain or probably don't express pain by adapted social skills. Furthermore, decrease of BRP may take place in a comprehensive theory of schizophrenia. in the line of stress-vulnerability model. Impairment or lack of behavioural pain reactivity could induce an increasing anxiety level for patient with vulnerability to schizophrenia and a higher risk of onset of the pathology. We may argue that pain stimuli would conduct to a nociceptive stress witch couldn't discharge by usual ways of regulation and behavioural expression of pain. Exploration and interview about pain reactivity in vulnerable to schizophrenia subjects could be interesting to increase a the amount of information in a vulnerability check-up. Further studies in this axis may be useful to test this hypothesis.

Reading Religion in African American Narratives

Reading Religion in African American Narratives Ethel Young-Minor (bio) Hell Without Fires: Slavery, Christianity, and the Antebellum Slave Narrative. By Yolanda Pierce. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2005. 151 pp. $59.95 cloth. Faithful Vision: Treatments of the Sacred, Spiritual, and Supernatural in Twentieth-Century African American Fiction. By James W. Coleman. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2006. 252 pp. $42.95 cloth. The first decade of twenty-first century literary analysis introduces two arresting treatments of how religious discourse informs the African American narrative tradition: Hell Without Fires by Yolanda Pierce and Faithful Vision by James Coleman. Pierce’s work considers the spiritual narratives of five African Americans: George White (1810), John Jea (circa 1811), Solomon Bayley (1825), Zilpha Elaw (1845), and David Smith (1822). The book’s central premise is that antebellum African American writers understand hell as two distinct concepts; the spiritual hell of biblical narratives and the earthly hell blacks of this milieu experienced through “daily physical and psychological suffering.” Pierce argues that as antebellum writers became conscious of both realms of hell, and subsequently located ways to deflate the power of earthly hell, they became both God-possessed and self-possessed. They were then equipped to enact communal change. Each chapter provides interesting history and information about these often overlooked, yet important writers. Pierce’s chief contributions to [End Page 155] the scholarship of antebellum literature, however, are found in her novel critiques of George White and Solomon Bayley. While many critics have customarily dismissed White’s connection to the black community because of his membership in a majority-white denomination, Pierce dismantles this notion. She calls attention to autobiographical information and radical movements in White’s sermons that display a desire to speak back to white authority and to create a self-possessed “black” identity in a world that sought to deny him that right. The chapter centered on Solomon Bayley, like other portions of Pierce’s work, often becomes heavy-handed in its offering of summary; however, she eventually uses this summary to undergird her argument that Bayley offers a revolutionary and bold stance against American racism. She emboldens his stance by suggesting, “Bayley voices in his narrative what [Phillis] Wheatley is unwilling or unable to address in her poetry; the fact that the Negro in America could and would never be entirely free.” In précis, Pierce’s exploration of rarely treated narratives adds an integral layer to scholarly dialogues about intersections of race and religion in black narratives. The book’s proposition that the Christian concept of hell did more than terrorize enslaved blacks opens important new pathways for examining Christianity as a positive wellspring in the construction of early black American identity. James Coleman’s Faithful Vision is a masterful consideration of how African American faith systems influence the writings of African Americans. Coleman defines African American “Faithful Vision” as a complex network of supernatural beliefs that has real implications in the everyday lives of African Americans. In Coleman’s designations, Faithful Vision contains diverse spiritual and intellectual traditions. Even as the Judeo- Christian Bible rests in the center of the tradition, Coleman believes that interpretations of the Bible can be influenced by myriad traditions, among them naturalism, postmodernism, womanism, and hoodoo/voodoo (Coleman uses the terms with a slash so my usage here reflects his own). Coleman puts forward Faithful Vision as a critical component of black cultural efforts to place their daily struggles in historical context; as such, it informs a cultural ethos that suggests that no matter how arduous things appear in the immediate reality, black Americans should remember that God “didn’t bring us this far to leave us.” Coleman successfully intermingles brief personal narrations of Faithful Vision with intense critiques of how African American writers approach Faithful Vision through literary treatments in the latter half of the twentieth century. The first two chapters brilliantly construct [End Page 156] Coleman’s frame of Faithful Vision as a lens that grows out of the cultural tradition that writers themselves have established. He then expertly treats an imposing list of writers from the African American literary tradition, including Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Margaret Walker, Ellease Southerland...