A collection of Pollmann's previously-published essays on early Christian poetry, most newly-translated from German and all updated and corrected. It is a genre that has tended to be overlooked by both Classicists and Patristics scholars and this collection will rectify that.

Charles Reagan Wilson documents that for over half a century there existed not one, but two civil religions in the United States, the second not dedicated to honoring the American nation. Extensively researched in primary sources, Baptized in Blood is a significant and well-written study of the South’s civil religion, one of two public faiths in America. In his comparison, Wilson finds the Lost Cause offered defeated Southerners a sense of meaning and purpose and special identity as a precarious but distinct culture. Southerners may have abandoned their dream of a separate political nation after Appomattox, but they preserved their cultural identity by blending Christian rhetoric and symbols with the rhetoric and imagery of Confederate tradition. “Civil religion” has been defined as the religious dimension of a people that enables them to understand a historical experience in transcendent terms. In this light, Wilson explores the role of religion in postbellum southern culture and argues that the profound dislocations of Confederate defeat caused southerners to think in religious terms about the meaning of their unique and tragic experience. The defeat in a war deemed by some as religious in nature threw into question the South’s relationship to God; it was interpreted in part as a God-given trial, whereby suffering and pain would lead Southerners to greater virtue and strength and even prepare them for future crusades. From this reflection upon history emerged the civil religion of the Lost Cause. While recent work in southern religious history has focused on the Old South period, Wilson’s timely study adds to our developing understanding of the South after the Civil War. The Lost Cause movement was an organized effort to preserve the memory of the Confederacy. Historians have examined its political, literary, and social aspects, but Wilson uses the concepts of anthropology, sociology, and historiography to unveil the Lost Cause as an authentic expression of religion. The Lost Cause was celebrated and perpetuated with its own rituals, mythology, and theology; as key celebrants of the religion of the Lost Cause, Southern ministers forged it into a religious movement closely related to their own churches. In examining the role of civil religion in the cult of the military, in the New South ideology, and in the spirit of the Lost Cause colleges, as well as in other aspects, Wilson demonstrates effectively how the religion of the Lost Cause became the institutional embodiment of the South’s tragic experience.

In Pilgrim Letters, Curtis Freeman takes disciples on a contemporary journey into an ancient faith. The book is a series of letters written by "Interpreter" to "Pilgrim" that provide "instruction in the basic teaching of Christ" for candidates preparing to be baptized. The letters are framed by a short catechism based on the six principles enumerated in Hebrews 6:1-2--(1) repentance, (2) faith, (3) baptism, (4) laying on of hands, (5) resurrection, and (6) eternal judgment. The letters lead Pilgrim (the disciple/catechumen/baptismal candidate) step by step through the basics of Christian faith. Each letter explores one of the principles by providing a simple explanation and setting the practice within a broad biblical, historical, and theological context. The theological tenor of the letters is evangelical-catholic, free church-ecumenical, and ancient-future. A set of discussion questions follows each letter as does a short bibliography for further reading. Each letter begins with an image from William Blake's illustrations of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and exemplifying the subject of the letter, followed by an epigraph from the story that fits into the themes of the catechism.

This “excellent study” shows how a Spanish archbishop laid the groundwork for the seventeenth-century expulsion of the Moriscos (James B. Tueller, Renaissance Quarterly). In early modern Spain, the monarchy’s policy of converting all subjects to Christianity only created new forms of tension among ethnic religious groups. Those whose families had always been Christian defined themselves in opposition to forcibly baptized Muslims (moriscos) and Jews (conversos). Here historian Benjamin Ehlers studies the relations between Christians and moriscos in Valencia by analyzing the ideas and policies of archbishop Juan de Ribera. Appointed to the diocese of Valencia in 1568, Juan de Ribera encountered a congregation deeply divided between Christians and moriscos. He came to identify with his Christian flock, leading hagiographers to celebrate him as a Valencian saint. But Ribera had a very different relationship with the moriscos, eventually devising a covert campaign to have them banished. His portrayal of the moriscos as traitors and heretics ultimately justified the Expulsion of 1609–1614, which Ribera considered the triumphant culmination of the Reconquest. Ehler’s sophisticated yet accessible study of the pluralist diocese of Valencia is a valuable contribution to the study of Catholic reform, moriscos, Christian-Muslim relations in early modern Spain, and early modern Europe.

Loyal Dissent is the candid and inspiring story of a Catholic priest and theologian who, despite being stripped of his right to teach as a Catholic theologian by the Vatican, remains committed to the Catholic Church. Over a nearly fifty-year career, Charles E. Curran has distinguished himself as the most well-known and the most controversial Catholic moral theologian in the United States. On occasion, he has disagreed with official church teachings on subjects such as contraception, homosexuality, divorce, abortion, moral norms, and the role played by the hierarchical teaching office in moral matters. Throughout, however, Curran has remained a committed Catholic, a priest working for the reform of a pilgrim church. His positions, he insists, are always in accord with the best understanding of Catholic theology and always dedicated to the good of the church. In 1986, years of clashes with church authorities finally culminated in a decision by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, that Curran was neither suitable nor eligible to be a professor of Catholic theology. As a result of that Vatican condemnation, he was fired from his teaching position at Catholic University of America and, since then, no Catholic university has been willing to hire him. Yet Curran continues to defend the possibility of legitimate dissent from those teachings of the Catholic faith—not core or central to it—that are outside the realm of infallibility. In word and deed, he has worked in support of more academic freedom in Catholic higher education and for a structural change in the church that would increase the role of the Catholic community—from local churches and parishes to all the baptized people of God. In this poignant and passionate memoir, Curran recounts his remarkable story from his early years as a compliant, pre-Vatican II Catholic through decades of teaching and writing and a transformation that has brought him today to be recognized as a leader of progressive Catholicism throughout the world.

The charismatic renewal is a sign of the continuing relevance of the Holy Spirit for the baptized and gives life and direction to the Church in its mission in the world. "Call to Holiness" covers the vocation to holiness, the experience of the Spirit, the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, the charisms, forms of community life, and the call to evangelize.