In Review | Harvard Divinity Bulletin

Selected Works of Twentieth-Century Jewish Theology

A reading list from Jon D. Levenson’s course.

Without Why: Religion without Purpose in Pixar’s Soul

Pixar’s Soul asks fundamental questions about existence and challenges the idea that life is reducible to purpose, religious or otherwise. By Matthew C. Kruger

Calvin, Capitalism, and Predestination

Benjamin Friedman’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism prompts us to consider the conditions under which the idea of divine chosenness might appear in our social landscapes. By Michelle Sanchez

Religion, Economics, and the Stories We Tell

Benjamin Friedman’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism challenges scholarly truisms by showing how a set of Protestant theological claims influenced economic thought and practice. By Devin Singh

Encounters with the Possible

A Q&A with Charles Hallisey on his new book, Poems of the First Buddhist Women: A Translation of the Therigatha. By Sarah Fleming

The Deliciousness of Truth

Black and Buddhist: In the face of white supremacy, Buddhism reteaches us how to relate to truth and to one another. By Pamela Ayo Yetunde

A Full-Bodied Dharma

Black and Buddhist: Contributors to this volume take refuge in embodied practice and in vibrant community. By Judith Simmer-Brown

Freedom Doesn’t Happen in a Day

Four voices celebrate the publication of Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us about Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom. Buddhism offers practical tools to work through intergenerational trauma. By Cheryl A. Giles

Black Women, Black Church, and Self-Narratives

A selected reading list of classic and contemporary memoir and autobiography from Nyasha Junior’s course.

‘Literature is Common Ground’: On Reading Virginia Woolf

A Q&A with Stephanie Paulsell on her latest book, Religion Around Virginia Woolf. By Sarah Fleming

Housekeeping’s Contemplative Approach to Longing

Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping explores the human response to the transient. By C. E. Morgan

Sacred, Ancestral Cries for Freedom

Black and Buddhist: The Eightfold Path finds resonance in the Black church. By Melissa Wood Bartholomew

A Story of Sarahs: Atwood’s Critique of Second-Wave Feminism

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments resonates with the energy of dread saturating life under COVID-19 in the Trump administration. By Mara Willard

Bedeviling Spirit Possession in Ancient Christian Texts

A Q&A with Giovanni B. Bazzana on his newest book, Having the Spirit of Christ: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in the Early Christ Groups. By Joseph Kimmel

Waiting for Queer Theology

Queer Theology: Beyond Apologetics, by Linn Marie Tonstad, awaits a theology that moves beyond the narrow genres allotted to it. By Mark D. Jordan

Practical and Spiritual Resources for Chaplaincy and Pastoral Care

A selected reading list from HDS faculty and chaplains offers resources for chaplaincy and pastoral care.

Making Spirituality Safe for Evangelicals

D. Bruce Hindmarsh’s The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism: True Religion in a Modern World. By Brett Malcolm Grainger

Giorgio Agamben, the Church, and Me

Italian philosopher and political theorist Giorgio Agamben’s The Kingdom and the Glory, The Church and the Kingdom, and The Omnibus Homo Sacer, and Simon Critchley’s The Faith of the Faithless offer resources for exploring the connections between temporality, political community, and ordained ministry. By Charles M. Stang