Christian Convictions Research Articles

Revolution and Nation: Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Late Philosophy of Religion

Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s philosophy of religion combines revolutionary pathos with Christian convictions and transcendental philosophical insights. The result is a bourgeois philosophy of religion that preaches freedom, equality and brotherhood, expects the national upswing of a still-longed-for Germany based on the example of revolutionary France, and praises all this as a continuation of Kant’s philosophy.

Tradition and Transformation: Spirituality in Church-Related Caring Communities in a Pluralistic Society

Demographic change in aging societies makes it urgent to ask how care can be understood as a social task. This is where the concept of caring communities comes in, which understands care as a task of many, indeed, of society as a whole, and aims to offer mutual care in communities. While the concept has been described in theory many times, empirical studies are rare. In pluralistic Western societies, the church as an institution is becoming less important while spirituality and spiritual needs are increasing in prominence. These processes of secularization run parallel to a growing interest in spirituality and an individualization of religion. Nonetheless, church congregations have always offered a place of mutual care and lived religion that functions as a network and social resource. So far, the role of spirituality in church-related caring communities has not been sufficiently addressed. In an exploratory qualitative study of three church-related caring communities in Germany, we focus on the target group of caring relatives, of whom we interviewed nine. The results show that church-related caring communities provide important spiritual resources and rely on the basis of shared values that are closely connected to Christian convictions. However, the different understandings of care and spirituality point to the relevance of discussing the often preliminary motives and values of care. Especially in plural societies, the discourse on plural values for mutual care is important and can form a basis for caring practices such as spiritual and pastoral care. Opportunities and places to discuss and debate different and shared values underlining care practices are necessary. The potential of spiritual and pastoral care in church-related caring communities is important and needs to be further strengthened.

Sharing the Gospel with [Non-Christian] Students and the Task of Academic Faith Integration

The gospel is central to life in the Christian community. It is formational to the church proper and to the pedagogical task of faith-based colleges and universities. The gospel is also significant for the education of non/nominal Christians who are present in our classrooms. This article describes the gospel as indispensable for faith-based teaching and learning, but perhaps in surprising ways. The focus of this article is “gospel teaching” in classes where the topic is not explicitly religious and when students are present who do not share our Christian convictions. Practical recommendations are made throughout the article and at its close.

The Popes as guardians of human dignity

The text emphasizes the significance of a Christian philosophy of life in guiding a society towards human rights and the dignity of individuals. It underscores the Church’s prophetic role, asserting that followers of Christ are called to uphold justice and oppose oppression. The text also highlights the interconnectedness of eternal salvation and temporal well-being, rooted in core Christian convictions. It explores the Church’s responsibility for the common good and the autonomy of earthly realities, advocating for the respectful stewardship of creation. The text addresses the contemporary challenge of protecting human life at all stages and emphasizes the Church’s historical commitment to the value of every individual. Drawing on Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclicals, it asserts that the Church is inherently charitable and actively engaged in promoting human development, education, and well-being. The text rejects the notion that the Church should merely react to global issues, arguing for a proactive role in shaping the future by emphasizing humanity’s vocation within God’s creation. It critiques ideological pluralism that rejects moral truths, highlighting the emptiness and lack of true hope in a worldview without God. The text asserts that the Church’s antidote to this vision is to focus on the beauty and dignity of the human person, emphasizing the individual’s dual nature of soul and matter. It acknowledges the challenges within a secularized society but stresses the need for human rights to be rooted in an authority beyond human consensus for lasting universality.

‘I was utterly at my husband’s mercy’: voices from the Women’s Co-operative Guild, 1910–1914

ABSTRACT This article uses the Women’s Co-operative Guild’s evidence to the 1912 Royal Commission on divorce to explore working-class women’s views about, and experiences of, marriage and divorce in the early twentieth century. Unlike any other evidence presented to the Commission the Guild’s was directly based on testimony from working-class women. These had been collected in letters from members to the Guild’s General Secretary, Margaret Llewelyn Davies, who testified on its behalf to the Commission. The bulk of the letters were from wives and mothers who generally came from better off sections of the working class. They confirm Guild members’ overwhelming support for some degree of reform to current laws, along with more limited backing for Davies’ radical proposals for divorce on grounds of mutual consent. The article demonstrates that these letters provide vivid detailed testimony of the impact of domestic abuse, of wives’ financial dependence on their husbands, and of the gender inequality enshrined in contemporary divorce laws. It argues that support for reform was often combined with a Christian conviction that marriage should be a ‘sacred bond’, and highlights a common vision of marriage as a relationship of equals.

Jakobińska wolność opresyjna

The advice of oppressive freedom in Western culture dates back to ancient times, including those principles of democracy that were implemented in Greek city-states. It changed forms of expression together with Christianity gaining the position of the dominant religion. However, this Christianization over the centuries encountered such unbelievers or infidels who were not willing to subscribe to the Christian conviction that surrendering to the slavery of God and the Church representing Him on earth is the best way to free oneself from various sins. In the 16th and 17th centuries, attempts were made to justify oppressive freedom with earthly needs. In the eighteenth century, however, such social forces came to the fore, which, regardless of the existing beliefs, implemented its form, which in the final phase was primarily terror. It was Jacobin oppressive freedom. Later, various political forces in Western Europe distanced themselves from it, but in Eastern Europe they added their card to it under the title – communist terror.

Gereformeerde pietisme, neoplatonisme en pre-Romantieke teodisee in die Voortrekkervrou Susanna Smit (1799-1863) se godsdienstige dagboeke

The first half of the eighteenth century witnessed a resurgence of Platonism in literature generally and in theology in Germany en Holland in particular, because of the appeal Plato’s ideas held for the distinction between immanent and transcendental reality, man’s quest for unity with the Good, and the human soul as the vehicle for uniting with God. Because most human beings are preoccupied with material things, Plato believed they need to have their thoughts turned to the immaterial reality behind the material world, and thus to be weaned away from the objects of their passions. To Plato the world is more than a world of appearances. Behind each particular thing is the idea or form of the thing. Moreover, the ideas or forms are all ultimately related to the Form of the Good. Plato believed that the soul is an immaterial entity, which in some ways is like the Forms. Particularly revealing to the emerging trend of Romanticism was Plato’s philosophical transcending of sceptical and materialistic views of reality, the notion that those who know what is good will love and desire it, and that moral virtue is of itself a prerequisite to knowing the good. The problem presented itself as to how sinful man and chaos in the world can be brought in accordance with God’s perfect and sinless nature. Because Plato’s view of human improvement by means of education and salvation through personal virtue is far removed from the Christian message of redemption by a loving, personal God, Pietists reverted to the neo-Platonism legacy of love mysticism to resolve the dualism inherent to the Romantic juxtaposition of the immanent and the transcendent. The Voortrekker woman Susanna Smit reflected these influences in her Reformed Pietistic spirituality and re-interpreted the Christian conviction of the love of God and man’s salvation by relying on neo-Platonism love spirituality in the works of James Hervey, Rutger Schutte, Hieronymus van Alphen, Rhijnvis Feith and other pietistically inclined authors. This research investigates the impact of the idea of experiential numinous love mediating between the Good and the human soul and neo-Platonism love sentimentality in Susanna Smit’s diaries and the effect of these influences in her Reformed Pietistic spirituality from 1843 to 1863.

On missional medicine: institution building, fragile places, and sheep among wolves

From the healing narratives of Jesus in the Gospels to the genesis of the first hospital to the practice of modern medicine, questions surrounding health and care for those who are sick and dying run through the heart of the Christian story. One way that individuals and communities have sought to live into their faith has been through missional medicine, that is, seeking to intentionally use the tools of medicine in step with and to bear witness to the life of Christ, particularly in cross-cultural and global contexts. In this commentary, we take up the incisive question of the late missionary physician Raymond Downing, “is there a distinctive Christian approach to global health?” Or, what sets (and should set) Christian approaches to global health apart from other interventions? Here, we argue that there are at least three distinctive Christian contributions to global health. First, missional medicine movements have been committed to the building of long-standing hospitals and academic medical institutions that have left indelible marks on long-term health outcomes for people and communities. Second, practitioners motivated by Christian convictions disproportionately serve and remain long-term in marginalized, rural, and underserved areas; many of which are connected to fragile or under-developed health systems. Thirdly, Christian medical missionaries and global health workers ought to be, in the words of Jacques Ellul: preserving salt, revealing light, and “sheep in the midst of wolves.” This is a theologically framed vocation that accepts suffering and sacrifice, embracing solidarity through accompaniment. This paper is not meant to be a comprehensive history of missional medicine nor a defence of its problematic manifestations over the centuries. Rather, we candidly explore examples of the distinctive contributions that have been made, and we hope will continue to be made, by medical missionaries and global health workers who are motivated by their faith.

The Mennonite case for counter-sovereignty through Indigenous assimilation: Settler colonialism, self-determination and relation to place in religious identity

This essay analyses settler colonialism’s impact on religious settler identity through one community’s perceptions and interactions with Indigenous peoples. It combines a normative commitment to Indigenous self-determination with an empirical study of Mennonite settlement narratives by drawing on Indigenous sources to interpret Mennonite descriptions of Indigenous communities between 1880 and 1939. Specifically, using two central characteristics of Indigenous religion and politics to frame the analysis – relationality and self-determination – reveals how Mennonites narrated Indigenous presence to establish their own self-determination. The study identifies the evaluative categories that Mennonites used to narrate Indigenous communities and then uses those categories with a focus on relationality and self-determination to assess North American Mennonite religious history in the same period. It demonstrates how Mennonites’ arguments for Indigenous peoples’ assimilation to settler society were motivated not just by Christian conviction but also by their desire to secure their own sovereignty. Mennonites’ interest in assimilation has at least as much to do with their relation to place as it does with their religious claims.

Exploring the Applied Heart of the Church: The Retributive vs. Restorative Justice Perspectives on Punishment and Incarceration

Mass incarceration is one of the key societal issues facing the US today. While numerous factors have contributed to this problem, a major one is the punitive approach of our criminal justice system. This paper examines the underlying justifications for our criminal justice system’s emphasis on punishment using Christian and dominant cultural frameworks. The primary objectives of this paper are: (1) to compare and contrast the core tenets and values of two distinct philosophical approaches to punishment - retribution and restoration - both of which are active within the US criminal justice system; (2) to explore how these two approaches align with biblical values of justice, grace, mercy, and atonement; and (3) to discuss practical implications for how Christian social work educators, scholars, and practitioners can advocate for criminal justice reform based on clear Christian convictions.

Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology ed. by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt

Reviewed by: Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology ed. by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt Robert P. Imbelli Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology. Edited by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt. Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2021. Pp. ix + 422 (paper). ISBN: 978-1-932589-85-6. The volume’s attractive cover painting, depicting Thomas Aquinas praying before the Crucified, encourages readers to assume a more meditative mindset as they approach the rich collection of essays within its covers. They originate from a conference held at Ave Maria University in 2020 and proceed from the conviction that “studying the mystery of Christ in dialogue with Aquinas can assist us in today’s crisis of Christology” (3). Thomas thus appears in the essays, not as a repository of answers, but as exemplary “Magister Sacrae Paginae” and speculative genius who probes the Tradition to elucidate something of the inexhaustible mystery of the Church’s Lord who is the Savior of the world. To “dialogue” with him, as several of the essays contend, is also to enter into prayerful dialogue with the Christ who summons not merely to intellectual integrity, but especially to affective charity. What, then, is the nature of the “crisis” that besets us? In many ways it is both ancient and new. The writers recognize a recrudescent Arianism in its protean shapes. There is the ongoing project of “liberal Christology” that celebrates the manifestation of God’s mercy in Jesus of Nazareth but strains to confess this Jesus to be “God Almighty in the Flesh” (the title of Bruce Marshall’s closely argued essay). There are feminist and liberationist variants that stress the moral imperatives arising from Christology but scant the crucial ontological implications. But, as Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., observes in his short, but incisive “Foreword”: “Striking at the very core of uniquely Christian convictions about faith, hope, and salvation, the crisis of Christology is in the end a crisis of faith” (viii). This “crisis of faith” receives further delineation in the book’s final two essays. Marshall marvels at “the remarkable disappearance, in Western Catholic religious life, of the fear of God,” and suggests that many consider Jesus’ mercy “virtually unstoppable,” but allow his justice “to disappear, more or less completely, from view” (350). Daria Spezzano echoes the theme in “Is Jesus Judgmental?” She finds that “one firm tenet of popular Christology is that Jesus does not judge” (368). In salutary contrast she draws on both the Summa and [End Page 339] Thomas’s scriptural commentaries to set forth his teaching on Christ as “eschatological Judge” to show “why we need Christ’s wise judgment, how it reveals the Father’s love, and therefore why it gives the most profound reasons—to those who really will in the end be the friends of Jesus—for gratitude and hope” (369). What unites the essays is their firm adherence to the fundamental “logic” of the New Testament: the confession of the uniqueness and universality of Jesus Christ and the transformative way of life to which he calls. They find in Thomas a prime proponent and exponent of that “logic” in his own historical context and a sure guide in our present Christological task. They recognize further that, though rooted in the New Testament witness (as his biblical commentaries amply demonstrate), Thomas realizes that the mystery at the heart of the New Testament Good News also promotes “a distinctively metaphysical mode of Christological reflection” (88). Particularly suggestive in that regard are the following essays. Anthony Giambrone’s rich discussion of “Primitive Christology and Ancient Philosophy” persuasively shows that Paul’s writings already open upon ontological claims that the conciliar tradition and Thomas will later pursue. He contends that “No amount of creative agency or even latreia accorded by Christians to Christ can successfully assert his divinity without some idea of divine homo-ousia. And that requires some proto-Dionysian grammar of transcendent being or Thomistic notion of ipsum esse subsistens. Otherwise, the Logos will remain an Arian Artisan and worshipful super-angel: above all things, but merely atop...

Mark O. Hatfield: Oregon Statesman by Richard W. Etulain

Reviewed by: Mark O. Hatfield: Oregon Statesman by Richard W. Etulain Laura Jane Gifford MARK O. HATFIELD: OREGON STATESMAN by Richard W. Etulain University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2021. Illustrations, bibliography, index. 232 pages. $24.95 paper. Historians are not, as a general rule, inclined toward the counterfactual. Exercises in what might have been stand at odds with historians’ commitment to facts, themes, and context. Nonetheless, a brief foray into the land of “what-if” illustrates in glowing relief the poignancy of a Mark Hatfield biography in this third decade of the twenty-first century. Speaking of Hatfield’s also-ran status among contenders for the Republican vice-presidential nomination in 1968, Richard W. Etulain observes that had Richard Nixon chosen the Oregon senator, he [End Page 103] “may well have become president in 1974” (p. 156). With apologies to Gerald Ford, an upstanding citizen in his own right, if only we had been so lucky. Love him or dismiss him — and Etulain clearly loves him — this newest biography of Hatfield illustrates well the longtime Oregon politician’s most compelling quality: in the words of then-president William Clinton at Hatfield’s 1996 retirement, he was a man “who has lived his convictions as well as any I have known in public life” (p. 177). Hatfield was not perfect, and to his credit, Etulain is willing to share both Hatfield’s strengths and his weaknesses. In today’s era of strife, polarization, and growing threats from White Christian nationalism, however, Hatfield’s life in public service reminds us that our political and cultural landscape need not look this way. Etulain’s concise prose chronicles both prosaic struggles over state budgets during Hatfield’s time as governor and the many courageous stands the World War II veteran took, sometimes alone, against military expansionism and the war in Vietnam. As a Republican state legislator, secretary of state, and governor, Hatfield was often viewed as more liberal than his Democratic opponents — a helpful reminder that our partisan categories have not been static over time. He was an early and committed advocate for civil rights in a state with a notoriously racist history. As a five-term senator during the years when the Religious Right gained an ever-stronger foothold in GOP politics, Hatfield’s evangelical Christian convictions led him to support social programs and oppose increases in defense funding. This brief volume favors accessibility over documentation; there are no footnotes, although Etulain includes a brief essay on sources and his bibliography is comprehensive. The book would have benefitted from more careful fact-checking; while the prose is sound, the reviewer noted a series of minor errors ranging from confusing I-84 with I-80 to situating Hatfield’s 1964 GOP convention keynote speech in 1965. More glaring is a recurrent infatuation with spouse Antoinette Kuzmanich Hatfield’s “sparkling prettiness,” “bright eyes,” and vivaciousness (pp. 59, 91). Perhaps the author intended this as counter-point to his frequent references to Hatfield’s youth and handsome visage. Both contribute to an overriding sensation that the book was written much earlier than 2021. Etulain focuses most of his time and attention on Hatfield’s years as a state official. He notes in the preface that while he initially planned a more comprehensive biography, continuing restrictions on the largest archive of Hatfield materials rendered a broader project infeasible. The recent opening of Hatfield’s primary manuscript collection at Willamette University, and newly accessible oral histories at the Oregon Historical Society, present important new opportunities to make deeper forays into Hatfield’s life and work. Now more than ever, we need to learn from the wisdom of statesmen like Mark Hatfield. Laura Jane Gifford Portland, Oregon Copyright © 2023 Oregon Historical Society

Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism

Recent histories of abolitionism have paid considerable attention to the religious origins of the movement, while a mountain of monographs have explored the role that Christianity played in defending slavery. In Bonds of Salvation Ben Wright aims to recover an ideological context that shaped not only abolitionists and their opponents but also every American in between. That ideological context was the overwhelming consensus that the nation and the world should be converted to Christianity. Wright aims to reveal “the role of Christian convictions in creating the ideological worlds of the early republic,” especially how this context shaped “conversionist” and “purificationist” responses to slavery (p. 4). Wright argues that conversionism, the belief that saving individual souls was the proper work of the church and also the surest path to societal transformation, provided a unifying ethos for American Christians in the years after the American Revolution as they embarked on the project of building denominational structures that spanned the nation. Conversionism and an enlightenment belief in progress allowed white evangelical Christians with sincere antislavery convictions to prioritize saving souls over freeing the enslaved in the belief that abolition would occur downstream from salvation. Meanwhile, a few purificationists, such as the Congregationalist Samuel Hopkins, argued that God would never lend his favor to a church that did not first reject slavery. Wright is clear that the conversionist compromise was functionally proslavery, and yet his reframing provides a more nuanced understanding of why many white American Christians who deplored slavery nevertheless did not feel morally compelled to adopt abolitionism. Most interestingly, Wright shows how both advocates and opponents of the American Colonization Society framed their arguments primarily in terms of whether colonization was an effective means of spreading the gospel to Africa, and only secondarily in terms of its effects on slavery.

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Священномученик Иоанн Кочуров: годы служения в Америке

The article explores the American period in life and service of Holy Martyr Ioann Kochurov (1895–1907). This formative period for Fa. Kochurov when he grew up as a priest, missionary and a church leader remains relatively unexplored due to a lack of sources originating from the man himself (except for a couple of his writings in “American Orthodox Messenger” and few letters written to relatives at home). The newly available documents from the Library of Congress Manuscript Division (Alaskan Russian Church Archive) fill this void. They consist mostly of Kochurov’s own regular reports to his superiors (bishops Nickolay and Tikhon, as well as a dean of New York deanary Nedzel’nitsky) and provide a vivid picture of his multiple activities: missionary, parish life, church building and diocese responsibilities. These documents shed a new light on Fa. Kochurov’s relationships with his superiors as well as his overall contribution to the development of Alaskan and Aleutian diocese which reached its peak under Bishop Tikhon’s guidance. The new documentary evidence also reveals Holy Martyr’s personal traits – his deep devotion to the Orthodox mission in America, his integrity and courage of Christian convictions which ultimately led to his martyrdom in 1917.

David, Uriah, Jesus, and Judas: An Intertestamental Pattern of Betrayal

Abstract This essay is a study in typological exegesis across the testaments of the Christian Bible. Specifically, in light of early Christian conviction that Jesus of Nazareth is the anointed son of David, we seek to understand how the story of David’s violent murder of Uriah the Hittite and rape of Bathsheba figure within a canonical framework in which Jesus is presented as David’s heir and yet also as the one in whom the Davidic legacy of violent betrayal reaches fulfillment. Beginning with a literary reading of David’s sins and their legacy in Samuel–Kings, the essay moves to consider the under-studied reference to Uriah and his wife in the Matthean genealogy and its import for Matthew’s presentation of Jesus as a “son of David.” We suggest that in the gospel tradition, David’s violence concentrates in the obscure figure of Judas Iscariot, who, like Uriah the Hittite, appears last in the roll of individuals faithful to their Israelite king (Matt 10:4; Mark 3:19; Luke 6:16; see 2 Sam 23:39). In contrast to Uriah’s fidelity to David—but in step with David’s betrayal of Uriah—Judas’s treachery demonstrates why typological readings of Jesus as the Davidic heir remain necessarily complex. The Gospels identify Jesus as a new son of David, and in so doing, they also present him as one who transforms that scriptural paradigm through his symbolic reversal of David’s sin.

Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse: A Persistent Problem

In recent years the doctrine of divine simplicity has become a topic of interest in the philosophical theological community. In particular, the modal collapse argument against divine simplicity has garnered various responses from proponents of divine simplicity. Some even claiming that the modal collapse argument is invalid. It is our contention that these responses have either misunderstood or misstated the argument, and have thus missed the force of the objection. Our main aim is to clarify what the modal collapse argument in fact says, and explain why the recent responses do not succeed. In order to argue our case, we will proceed in several steps. First, we aim to systematically articulate the doctrine of divine simplicity. Second, articulate the Christian conviction that God is free to create any feasible world or no world at all. Third, argue that divine simplicity suffers a modal collapse and thus undermines God's freedom. Fourth, respond to potential objections to modal collapse. Fifth, we offer some concluding remarks.

Christian values in portuguese children's and youth literature

The present article outlines a non-exhaustive overview of the presence of Christian values, and other aspects related to Christianism, in contemporary Portuguese writing for childhood and youth. Different modalities/genres (narrative, poetry, drama) are considered and some of the most relevant voices in this domain, such as Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Luísa Dacosta, Nuno Higino, Alice Vieira and others, are highlighted. The author acknowledges the strong presence, and recurrence, in this literature, of values and themes of Christian inspiration, regardless of the confession of faith and the Christian conviction of the authors in appreciation.

Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West

Over a millennium ago, images began to appear in Christian church settings—as decorations of holy book covers, within the pages of books, and on church walls—of Jesus exorcizing a multitude of demons, named Legion, from a man into a herd of pigs who then rush into the sea and drown. In using this biblical story to frame the narrative of Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West, Jamie Kreiner makes clear the ambiguities of the pig as “both unholy and redemptive, both historically situated and universally relevant” (195). The pigs as Legion and a legion of pigs on farm and field are intertwined.Rather than approaching the history of the pig as only an issue of agricultural production, Kreiner examines it as “a history of the counterintuitive connections that developed between the micro-universes of pig husbandry and early medieval institutions and ideas on a wider scale” (4). She uses the pig as an entry point for thinking through how early medieval people thought about their environment. Her approach is to place the pig within wider social, cultural, and economic contexts of the Late Antique and Early Medieval periods, roughly AD 400 to 1000. While the evidence is focused on Western Europe, particularly the kingdoms of the Carolingians and Ottonians, which occupied large parts of what are today France, Germany, the Low Countries, and northern Italy, and kingdoms on the British Isles, Kreiner deftly weaves in sources from across Europe, stretching to the Islamic lands that were in continuous contact with their Christian counterparts.In her introduction, Kreiner stresses that the flexibility of pigs resulted in dynamic ecological systems in early medieval Europe. Human communities adapted their systems to accommodate pigs, who while potentially highly productive could also be highly unruly. This plays out in chapter 1, which underscores the distinctions medieval people drew between wild boar and domestic pig, the variability of landscapes that swine could be raised on, and attempts to control unwanted pig behaviors.The micro-universe of pig husbandry is then set within the much larger context of medieval philosophy in chapter 2. In this chapter, pigs scarcely appear—and yet the chapter puts the pig and its Christianization (which is discussed later) into the intellectual context of the age through a highly accessible explanation of medieval notions of environmental connectivity and complexity.Chapter 3 gets back to the pigs and their landscapes. Kreiner approaches swine husbandry as extracting value out of the landscape or, as she calls it, “salvaging.” Through their ability to turn found foods in the environment into food on human tables, pigs made the landscape productive for people. How they did this—by forest foraging, pasture grazing, or stall feeding—varied according to ecological and economic conditions. Kreiner brings together an impressive collection of sources to explain that variability.In chapter 4, the focus is on the assemblage of humans and pigs and the social groups that were created and modified by those relations. The section on swineherds in particular gives a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the economic and social status of those closest to pigs. She also shows how pork consumption was a Roman tradition, which had both ideological and practical implications, for example in the provisioning of soldiers with pork through taxes. Chapter 5 starts with the pig as Roman animal and then discusses how the pig became associated with Christians, both in symbolic and dietary forms. Kreiner stresses the counterintuitive connections here, as the pig takes on both diabolical natures and Christian conviction. The legions of pigs and Legion in pigs are co-constituted.Kreiner's book is written with non-medievalists in mind—she elucidates time-specific social and legal terms so that they are understandable without a background in the period. She finds just the right balance of using source materials to support her arguments without getting bogged down in details. Her writing style is a delight to read. This book demonstrates how medieval environmental and agricultural history can be written as a history of ideas and culture with wide appeal.

Crossroads of Culture: Christianity, Ancestral Spiritualism, and the Search for Wellness in Northern Malawi, by Eric Lindland.

<i>Crossroads of Culture: Christianity, Ancestral Spiritualism, and the Search for Wellness in Northern Malawi</i>, by Eric Lindland.