Maxwell Institute Podcast

What do you know about African American religious history? Julius H. Bailey joins us in this episode to talk about his new overview, Down in the Valley: An Introduction to African American History. Bailey’s book operates on a few different levels. The ground floor contains a general story beginning with African traditional religions. It moves through slavery and religion, the rise of Christian black churches and other religious movements like Islam, through the Civil Rights movement and up to the present time. Another level of the book focuses on how that historical story has been told in different ways. This episode is about the diverse history of African American religions and the diverse histories of that history. About the Guest Julius H. Bailey is professor of religious studies at the University of Redlands in California. His books include Around the Family Alter: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Down In the Valley: An Introduction to African American Religious History.The post

If you surveyed Americans, asking them to identify themselves as: A) Catholic B) Muslim C) Evangelical D) Mormon …and so on, an increasing number will select the very last option—none of the above. Study after study has shown a steady decline in religious affiliation, with one in five Americans identifying as “None.” Traditional religious believers watch these numbers with a bit of uneasiness, wondering why fewer people are connecting with institutional religions. But many Nones continue to value religion and spirituality even though they don’t want to belong to an organized church. In this episode, Elizabeth Drescher joins us to talk about her new book on this subject, Choosing Our Religion: The Spiritual Lives of America’s Nones (Oxford University Press, 2016). Drescher surveyed thousands of people and directly interviewed around a hundred Nones to learn about their backgrounds, hopes, morals, and spiritual sensibilities. Her work allows us to become more familiar with some Nones in this episode of the Max

The New York Times Review of Books says Marilynne Robinson “is not like any other writer. She has created a small, rich, and fearless body of work in which religion exists unashamedly, as does doubt, unashamedly.” Robinson is perhaps best known for her Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead (2004). This year she received the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. Her latest book is a non-fiction collection of essays on topics like science and religion, grace, and Christology. It’s called The Givenness of Things. In this episode we talk about writing, reading, faith, science, and theology. A complete transcript of this interview is available HERE. About Marilynne Robinson Marilynne Robinson is a critically acclaimed American novelist and essayist. She is currently completing her final year as Professor of English and Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her four novels are Housekeeping, Home, Lila, and Gilead, for which she received the Pulitzer Prize. She has published multiple collections

Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2016 many people find it more difficult to believe than not? This is the question that Charles Taylor tackles in his massive book A Secular Age. In this episode, James K. A. Smith joins us to talk about Taylor’s work. What was it like to believe in God in the past and what is it like for many believers today—and how did we get from there to here? Whether you find it easy or difficult to believe in God today, you’ll find much food for thought in Smith’s book How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. About James K. A. Smith James K. A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin College and author of How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. His latest book is called You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. He recently visited Brigham Young University to deliver a guest lecture sponsored by the Wheatley Institution. The post #45— How (Not) to Be Secular, with James K. A. Sm

Even if you’ve never heard of a Christian movement scholars call “the prosperity gospel,” chances are you know some of its most famous proponents, like Joel Osteen or Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. “The prosperity gospel” is not officially associated with any particular denomination. It’s more a style of Christianity, one that emphasizes God’s desire to bless people—particularly and literally when it comes to wealth and health. Through your faith, you can become healthy and rich. When historian Kate Bowler set out to write the book Blessed: A History of the Prosperity Gospel Movement she found herself being pulled into the book’s narrative in surprising ways. Bowler recently published a powerful follow-up column to Blessed in the New York Times called “Death, the Prosperity Gospel, and Me.” She’s here to help us understand the frequently lampooned and incredibly influential prosperity gospel movement. About Kate Bowler Kate Bowler is assistant professor of American Religion at Duke Divinity School. She is the au

C. S. Lewis died in 1963 on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Before the decade was over, few expected his works to last. “We think Lewis’s star has risen and is about to set,” said one Catholic publisher. “His day is over. No one will be reading C. S. Lewis twenty years from now.” Even Lewis believed his apologetic works would soon go out of style. He’d be surprised to learn that over 3.5 million copies of Mere Christianity have sold since 2001. It’s one of the most beloved Christian books of the twentieth century, and it wasn’t originally intended to be a book at all. In this episode, award-winning Christian historian George M. Marsden tells the story of Mere Christianity‘s birth and explains its tenacious popularity since its publication in 1952. Marsden recently wrote the biography of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity for Princeton University Press’s “Lives of Great Religious Books” series. Special Episodes—“Lives of Great Religious Books” This ongoing series of MIPodcast episodes features int

In the land of Israel, rain falls during a single, crucial, season of the year beginning in October or November and continuing through the spring. Lives depended on successful harvests which depended on healthy rainfall. According to the Hebrew scriptures, weather proved God’s blessing or cursing the people of Israel: From the rain of the heavens, you will drink water— a land that the Lord your God seeks out perpetually; the eyes of the Lord your God are upon it from the year’s beginning to the year’s end.  If you heed My commands with which I charge you today to love the Lord your God and to worship Him with all your heart and with all your being I will give the rain of your land in its season, early rains and late, and you shall gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And I will give grass in the field to your herds, and you shall eat and be satisfied. (Deuteronomy 11.11–15, trans. Robert Alter) In this episode, Julia Watts Belser talks about how rain permeates some of the earliest rabbinic texts.

In the last episode we heard from three editors of a new book of Relief Society documents published by the LDS Church. Jill Mulvay Derr, Kate Holbrook, and Matt Grow talked about the origins of the Relief Society and why its activities were suspended in 1844. Today is the Relief Society’s 174th anniversary. In this episode we pick up where we left off as the Latter-day Saints begin to reestablish relief society in the Utah territory. You’ll hear about issues like polygamy and women’s suffrage. We also discuss the kind of impact the editors hope the book can have on how Mormons understand their history. We’re talking about The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History. Introductory matter and other material from the book is currently available at churchhistorianspress.org. About the Guests Jill Mulvay Derr is a retired senior research historian for the Church History Department. Kate Holbrook is a specialist in women’s history at the Church History Department. M