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JOURNAL   Christianity & Literature is a scholarly journal devoted to the exploration of how literature engages Christian thought, experience, and practice. The journal presupposes no particular theological orientation but respects an orthodox understanding of Christianity as a historically defined religious faith. Contributions appropriate for submission should demonstrate a keen awareness of the author's own critical assumptions in addressing significant issues of literary history, interpretation, and theory.
 
SAMPLE ISSUE: AVAILABLE ON PROJECT MUSE

A sample special issue of Christianity & Literature is available without a subscription on Project MUSE for a limited time here.

 

MEMBERSHIP/SUBSCRIPTION RATE

To subscribe to Christianity & Literature please go to the journal's homepage at Johns Hopkins University Press Journals here.

Christianity & Literature is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December of each year. 

Subscribers receive print copies of four issues in each volume and online access through Project MUSE.

Individual subscriptions include membership in the Conference on Christianity and Literature (CCL).

Current rates for an individual membership/subscription in the Conference on Christianity and Literature:

 1 year at $48

 2 years at $86.40

 1 year student membership $25.00

To subscribe to Christianity & Literature, please visit the journal's homepage at Johns Hopkins University Press Journals here.

We contract with Johns Hopkins University Press (JHUP) for publishing and membership management services. Refer to the JHUP Privacy Policy for details on use and protection of your account data.

 

SEARCHABLE DATABASE

A searchable database of the journal from Volume 59 (2009) to the current issue is available on Project MUSE here.

A searchable database of the journal from Volume 1 to Volume 68 (January 1950 - September 2019) is available at SAGE Journals here.  

 

JOURNAL STAFF

Editor
Mark Eaton, Azusa Pacific University, USA

Associate Editors
Matthew J. Smith, Hildegard College, USA
Caleb D. Spencer, Azusa Pacific University, USA

Book Review Editor
Philip Mitchell, Dallas Baptist University, USA

Poetry Editor
Peter Cooley, Tulane University, USA

Managing Editor
Katy Wright-Bushman

Editorial Advisory Board

Ann W. Astell, University of Notre Dame, USA

Lori Branch, University of Iowa, USA

Paul Contino, Pepperdine University, USA

John D. Cox, Hope College, USA

Christopher Douglas, University of Victoria, Canada

Lori Ann Ferrell, Claremont Graduate University, USA

Kevin Hart, University of Virginia, USA

David D. Hall, Harvard Divinity School, USA

Peter S. Hawkins, Yale University, USA

Colin Jager, Rutgers University, USA

David Lyle Jeffery, Baylor University, USA

Janet Larson, Rutgers University, Newark, USA

Julia Reinhart Lupton, University of California, Irvine, USA

Susannah Monta, University of Notre Dame, USA

Maire Mullins, Pepperdine University, USA

 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Christianity & Literature is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. Published quarterly in March, June, September, and December, each issue contains articles, book reviews, and poems. Each submission is carefully evaluated by the editors. If the submission is deemed worthy of peer review, it is then sent to external reviewers in an anonymous, double-blind peer-review process. External reviewers are selected on the basis of their expertise in the fields or subject areas of each submission. The editors consider a submission only with the understanding that it has not been concurrently submitted elsewhere. Christianity & Literature is committed to a reasonable timeline for peer review. We expect to reach a decision on each submission within three to four months. In the case of unavoidable delays, the editors will attempt to communicate with authors.

Articles/Essay Submissions

Articles must be submitted electronically to ScholarOne Manuscripts, the online peer-review system used by Christianity & Literature.

Please submit your manuscript here or paste the following url address into your browser: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/christlit

All submissions must be formatted for blind peer review and should include:
• a title page with the author’s name, email, and mailing address.
• a 100-word abstract and a list of suggested keywords to accompany the essay: 3-5 is appropriate.
• a short biographical note with information about your position, research, and publications.
• the essay, with title on first page, and page numbers on all following pages. There should be no author identification in the body of the essay.

All articles submitted for publication should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, Notes only. By Notes only, we mean that you should include endnotes with full bibliographic information, but you do not also need to include a bibliography in addition to endnotes.

Articles of fewer than 4,000 or more than 9,000 words, including notes, are not ordinarily considered, unless they are commissioned for a special issue or of exceptional merit. Submissions should comply with accepted guidelines for nonsexist usage.

Information about the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, Notes only, is available here.

A Chicago Style Citation Quick Guide is also available here.

Inquiries can be made to meaton@apu.edu.

 
Poetry

The poetry editor looks for poems that are clear and surprising. They should have a compelling sense of voice, formal sophistication (though not necessarily rhyme and meter), and the ability to reveal the spiritual through concrete images.

Only hard copies of poetry submissions are accepted. Submissions should be sent to: 

Peter Cooley, Poetry Editor
Christianity & Literature
Tulane University
Department of English, Norman Mayer 122
New Orleans, LA 70118

Please be sure to include all relevant contact information along with the poem or poems: name, address, and especially your email. Because of the volume of poetry received, submissions will not be acknowledged or returned unless they are accompanied by an SASE with sufficient return postage.

 

Book Reviews

The editors assign book reviews by invitation only. If you would like to suggest a book for review or offer to write a book review, please write to Mark Eaton at meaton@apu.edu. If you are an author or publisher, please send books for review to:

Caleb Spencer, Associate Editor
Christianity & Literature
Department of English
Azusa Pacific University
901 E. Alosta Ave.
Azusa, CA 91702-7000

 

 

CURRENT ISSUE
Christianity & Literature Volume 73, Issue 3 (September 2024)

Special Issue: Christianity and African American Literature

Guest Editors: Jennifer McFarlane-Harris (Seattle Pacific University); Peter Kerry Powers (Messiah University) 

Introduction

Jennifer McFarlane-Harris and Peter Kerry Powers, “Introduction: Christianity and African American Literature

Articles

1.    Jorden E. Sanders, Rutgers University

“We Fervently Pray”: Reading Afro-Protestant Prayer as Genre Intervention in “The Petition of Absalom Jones and Others—People of Colour and Freemen of Philadelphia”

2.   Jennifer McFarlane-Harris, Seattle Pacific University

Autotheography “Now”: Theorizing Genre and Sanctification in Julia A. J. Foote’s A Brand Plucked from the Fire 

3.    Christopher Leise, Whitman College

Sacraments, Veils, and the Altar of Democracy:  Calvinist Rhetoric in W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” 

4.    Daniela B. Abraham, Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology

(Re)weaving the Black Heritage: Arturo Alfonso Schomburg’s Black Christian Ethics of Collaboration and Pioneering Social Service

5.    Mary-Antoinette Smith, Seattle University

Her Fierce Faith: Contextualizing Ellen Tarry as a Catholic Convert and Foremother of Black Lives Matter Activism

6.    Grace Perry McCright, Baylor University

“Rise up and tell it”: Go Tell It on the Mountain, #ChurchToo, and James Baldwin’s Christian Witnesses

7.    Bryan M. Santin, Concordia University, Irvine

The Self-Confrontation of Prayer: The Christian Right in James Baldwin’s Later Essays

Review Essay

Peter Kerry Powers, Messiah University

Telling the past, Naming the Present: Recent Work in Christianity and African American Literature

 

PREVIOUS ISSUES
Christianity & Literature Volume 73, Issue 2 (June 2024)

Articles

1.    Jeong Oh Kim, Vanderbilt University
Sir Thomas Browne’s Faith, Hope, and Love in Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and “A Letter to a Friend”

2.    A. Louise Cole, University of Arkansas
Barrenness, Monstrosity, and Redemption: Exploring Motherhood in John Milton’s Paradise Lost

3.    Benjamin D Crace, independent scholar
The Anglo-Catholic Apocalyptic Milieu and T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”

4.    Austin Busch, SUNY Brockport
Sacrifice and Atonement in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and William Faulkner’s Light in August

5.    Andrew P. Hicks, Baylor University 
The Zany Paraclete: Seeking the Pentecostal Community in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49

6.    Chase Alec Seely, Concordia University Irvine
The Resurrection of Chivalry in Tom Wolfe’s Back to Blood

Poetry

Sarah Gordon, “Volute”

Book Reviews

1.    Laura K. Bedwell, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

Fifteenth-Century Lives: Writing Sainthood in England. By Karen A. Winstead.  Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020.  Paperback: ISBN 978-0-268-10854-0.  Pp. xi + 197. $45. Ebook: 978-0-268-10855-7. $35.99.

2.    Maria O’Connell, Wayland Baptist University

The Economy of Religion in American Literature: Culture and the Politics of Redemption.  By Andrew Ball. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. ISBN 978-1350231672. Pp. vi+260.  $108.00.

3.    Mark Bennion, Brigham Young University—Idaho

Psalm to Whom(e). By Diane Glancy. Brooklyn, NY: Turtle Point Press, 2023. ISBN 978-1-885983-34-3. Pp. 127. $18.00.

 
Christianity & Literature Volume 73, Issue 1 (March 2024)

Articles

1. David Pedersen, College of the Ozarks
Happy Wife, Happy Life: Pauline Marriage in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath's Tale2. Don Adams, Florida Atlantic University
Becoming the Wounded Person: The Christian Vision of James Purdy’s Fiction

3. Will Brewbaker, Duke University
“This sea which utters me”: Reading W.S. Graham’s “The Nightfishing” in the Theological Wake of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Wreck of the Deutschland”


4. Alex Murray, Queens University Belfast
Havelock Ellis and Decadent Conversion


5. Jack Love, Texas A & M University
Hazel Motes and Midcult Religion in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood


6. Brent Little, Sacred Heart University
The Problem of Sacrifice in Mary Gordon’s Final Payments


7. Jeffrey Bilbro and Sarah Reardon, Spring Arbor University
Incarnation and Imagination in Jayber Crow: Wendell Berry’s Divine Comedy

 

Poetry

Octavio Quintinilla, “Summer Elegy”

Rodney Jones, “Hippie in Alabama” 

Rodney Jones, “Why am I Making this Noise?”

Harold Van Lonkhuyzen, “The Notch”

 

Book Reviews

1.    Samuel C. Still, University of Exeter

The Karamazov Case: Dostoevsky’s Argument for His Vision. By Terrence W. Tilley. T&T Clark Explorations at the Crossroads of Theology and Aesthetics. London: T&T Clark, 2023. Pp. viii + 172 . $115.00 (hardback). ISBN: 978-0-567-70437-5.

2.    Suzanne Stewart, St. Francis Xavier University

Uttering the Unutterable: Aristotle, Religion, and Literature.  By Louis Groarke.  Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2023. ISBN: 978-0-2280-1423-2.  Pp. 336.  $110.00 CAD.  

3.    Rachel B. Griffis, Spring Arbor University

Unguessed Kinships: Naturalism and the Geography of Hope in Cormac McCarthy. By Steven Frye. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2023. ISBN 978-0-8173-6109-9. Pp. 194. $29.95.

4.    Harrison Otis, Baylor University

The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis. By Karen Swallow Prior. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2023. ISBN 9781587435751. Pp. 289. $26.99.


5.    Yifan Zhang, Baylor University

Christian Poetry in America Since 1940: An Anthology. Edited by Micah Mattix and Sally Thomas. MA: Paraclete Press, 2022. ISBN 978-1-64060-812-2. Pp. 201. $25.