2017 Religious Studies Publications and Grants

Chung-Kim, Esther. "Advocating for Poor Relief in Zurich: Heinrich Bullinger's Contributions to Religious Ideals and Swiss Policy Reforms." Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, vol. 86, no. 2, 2017, pp. 311-338.

Abstract:Despite the demarcations of the political and religious spheres, Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575) considered the city's system of poor relief to be a pastoral concern. The chief minister of Zurich expected the wealth from confiscated church property to be used for communal needs and believed that the magistrates needed the ministers to guide them in poor relief reforms. This article demonstrates that Bullinger's biblical interpretation was not peripheral to his political activity, but rather central to his contributions to poor relief and to the justification of his political involvement in poor relief reform. More specifically, Bullinger's involvement in poor relief reform was a consistent development from his articulation of his theological views in the 1530s, applied to the Zurich context in the 1550s, and politically supported in the 1570s. An examination of Bullinger's biblical interpretation and scriptural references in his commentaries, sermons, and speeches reveals a consistent concern for the care of the poor from the early years of his career to the end of his ministry in Zurich.

Chung-Kim, Esther, and Todd Hains. Comentário Bíblico da Reforma: Atos, translated into Portuguese by Paulo José Benício. Cultura Cristã, 2016.

Published in 2016 but did not appear in print until calendar year 2017.

Espinosa, Gastón. “Let the Spirit Fly: Marilynn Kramar and the History of the Latino/a Catholic Charismatic Movement in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.” California Dreaming: Society and Culture in the Golden State, edited by Ronald A. Wells. Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2017, pp. 30-52.

Espinosa, Gastón, Harold Morales, and Juan Galvan. “Latino Muslims in the United States: Reversion, Politics, and Islamidad.” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion, vol. 8, issue 1, 2017, pp. 1-48.

External Grant: Espinosa, Gastón, 2016-2017 William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life, Department of Politics, Princeton University. In residence, Spring 2017.

Gilbert, Gary. "Acts of the Apostles." The Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 219-280.

Gilbert, Gary. Review of The Erotic Life of Manuscripts: New Testament Textual Criticism and the Biological Sciences, by Yii-Jan Lin. Journal of American Academy of Religion, vol. 85, issue 1, 2017, pp. 266-269.

Martinez, Chloe. "Jainism: History, Beliefs, and Practices." Gale Researcher: World History, 2017.

External Grant: Martinez, Chloe. Career Enhancement Adjunct Faculty Fellowship. Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, $10,000, January-June 2017.

Funds to support research in the place of teaching more than one course; Spring 2017.

External Grant: Martinez, Chloe. Course Development Grant. Global Institute for Sikh Studies, $2,000, Summer 2016.
Note: Awarded in 2016 but not included in 2016 Celebration

Grant to develop a new introductory course on Sikhism; Summer 2017.

External Grant: Martinez, Chloe. Fellowship in Sikh Studies. Global Institute for Sikh Studies, $35,000, 2016-2019.
Note: Awarded in 2016 but not included in 2016 Celebration

Funds to sponsor teaching a course in Sikhism for three years, and to organize and fund related visiting talks; course taught Spring 2017 (and to be taught again Spring 2018 and Spring 2019) and an Athenaeum talk (Gibb Schreffler) sponsored Nov. 2017.

External Grant: Michon, Daniel. American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Research Fellowship. Goa, India. January - March 2017.

My research explores the sixteenth-seventeenth century Eurasian world of Goa, India through the lives of Augustinian nuns who lived in the only early modern convent for women in Asia, the Real Convento de Santa Mónica. The Real Convento de Santa Mónica is well known in the literature of Goa Dourada ('Golden Goa') for its wealth--the local governing body in Goa (the camara) attempted to close the convent in the 1630s in order to obtain some of that wealth for its members--and a miracle in which a crucified Christ in the convent's main chapel bled, spoke, and moved in the presence of local priests and nuns. However, less well known are the lives of the Augustinian nuns who lived, worked, prayed, dreamed, and died there. In fact, only two of the nuns, Filipa da Trinidade and her daughter Maria do Espirito Santo, have been the subjects of sustained studies, and we have the narratives of thirty more nuns who lived in the convent in the seventeenth century that have not been studied.

Velji, Jamel. "Seeing Salvation: Authority and Apocalypse in Saint Paul and the Nizari Ismaili Qiyāma." Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, vol. 46, issue 3, 2017, pp. 1-18.

Abstract:This article develops Marshall Hodgson's initial observations concerning the affinities between the theologies of Paul of Tarsus and the Nizari Ismaili declaration of the qiyāma, or resurrection, of 1164. In both theologies we find potent expressions of apocalypticism. I examine various features of this apocalypticism, including how divine disclosures reorganized sacred history, temporality and soteriology. I also pay particular attention to the hermeneutical mechanisms involved in the reconstruction of religious authority. In both situations, we see how apocalypticism accorded a new and lasting genealogy to followers of these divine disclosures while locating the salvific figure as the epicenter of an existence that exclusively spans this world and the next.