Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha
Vodou en Vogue: Fashioning Black Divinities in Haiti and the United States. Published June 2023
This innovative book centers on fashion and other forms of self-presentation, yet it draws together many strands of thought and practice, showing how religion is a multisensorial experience of engagement with what the gods want and demand from worshippers. Nwokocha’s ethnographic work will challenge and enrich readers’ understandings not only of Vodou and its place in Black religious experience but also of religion’s entanglements with gender and sexuality, race, and the material and spiritual realms.
Jack Delehanty
Making Moral Citizens: How Faith-Based Organizers Use Vocation for Public Action. Published April 2023
This fascinating book takes readers inside the world of faith-based progressive community organizing, one of the largest and most effective social justice movements in the United States. Drawing on rich ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews, Jack Delehanty shows how organizers use religion to build power for change. As Delehanty convincingly demonstrates, religion is more than beliefs, doctrines, and rituals; within activist communities, it also fuels a process of personal reflection and relationship building that transforms people’s understandings of themselves, those around them, and the political system.
Brad Stoddard
Spiritual Entrepreneurs: Florida’s Faith-Based Prisons and the Carceral State. Published April 2021
It is surprising to learn that as many as half of U.S. correctional departments offer government-funded and supported faith-based correctional departments within the prison walls. Stoddard demonstrates that Florida is an essential place for understanding the history, development, impact, and implications of the larger trend to empower “faith-based” social service providers and their favored solutions in key areas of the public sphere.
Jodi Eichler-Levine
Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis: How Jews Craft Resilience and Create Community. Published October 2020.
Exploring a contemporary Judaism rich with the textures of family, memory, and fellowship, Jodi Eichler-Levine takes readers inside a flourishing American Jewish crafting movement. As she traveled across the country to homes, craft conventions, synagogue knitting circles, and craftivist actions, she joined in the making, asked questions, and contemplated her own family stories.
Tony Tian-Ren Lin
Prosperity Gospel Latinos and their American Dream. Published August 2020.
In this immersive ethnography, Tony Tian-Ren Lin explores the reasons that Latin American immigrants across the United States are increasingly drawn to Prosperity Gospel Pentecostalism, a strand of Protestantism gaining popularity around the world. Lin contends that Latinos embrace Prosperity Gospel, which teaches that believers may achieve both divine salvation and worldly success, because it helps them account for the contradictions of their lives as immigrants.
Lauren Kerby
Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation’s Capital and Redeem a Christian America. Published April 2020.
Millions of tourists visit Washington, D.C., every year, but for some the experience is about much more than sightseeing. Lauren R. Kerby’s lively book takes readers onto tour buses and explores the world of Christian heritage tourism.