Christianity & Literature is a member of CELJ, the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. Published quarterly, each issue contains peer-reviewed scholarly articles, book reviews, poetry, and announcements. A searchable database of all articles, book reviews, and poetry published in Christianity & Literature is available on the journal's homepage at SAGE Journals here.  

JOURNAL STAFF

Editor
Mark Eaton
Azusa Pacific University

Associate Editors
Matthew J. Smith
Caleb D. Spencer
Azusa Pacific University

Book Review Editor
Philip Mitchell
Dallas Baptist University

Poetry Editor
Peter Cooley
Tulane University

Managing Editor
Katy Wright-Bushman

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Subscribers receive print copies of four issues in each volume as well as access to the full online archive.

To subscribe to Christianity & Literature go to

https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/journal/christianity-literature 

Or visit the journal's homepage at SAGE Journals:  

http://journals.sagepub.com/home/cal 

Please note that our publishing cycle for each volume runs from December to November of the following year. Subscriptions purchased before August 31 of each calendar year will be processed in the current publishing cycle and backdated if necessary, meaning you will receive the issues previously published in the current volume (issues in December, March, June, and September). Subscriptions purchased after September 1 of each calendar year will be for the upcoming volume (published in December, March, June, and September).

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Before submitting your work, please see our detailed Submission Guidelines.

ARTICLES/ESSAYS

Articles should be submitted electronically at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/christlit

The editors will make every effort to respond to all submissions within four months.

Any inquiries can be made to cal@apu.edu. 

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

POETRY

• Poetry submissions are accepted in hard copy form only. Please send all poetry submissions to:
• Peter Cooley, Poetry Editor

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

• Once accepted, you will be asked to submit your poem or poems to ScholarOne Manuscripts: 
• https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/christlit 

• Please be sure to include all relevant contact information along with poem or poems: name, address, and especially your email. Submissions will not be acknowledged or returned unless they are accompanied by a SASE (self addressed stamped envelope) with sufficient return postage.

• BOOK REVIEWS

  The editors assign book reviews by invitation. If you would like to suggest a book for review or offer to write a book review, please write to Philip Mitchell at philipm@dbu.edu. If you are an author or publisher, please send books for review to:

  Philip Mitchell, Book Review Editor
  Christianity & Literature
  Collins Learning Center 222
  Dallas Baptist University
  3000 Mountain Creek Parkway
  Dallas, TX 25211

For detailed instructions, see Submission Guidelines or consult our complete guidelines at SAGE Journals here.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue of Christianity & Literature

"Poetics/Praxis"

Guest Editor: Kimberly Johnson (BYU)

After a couple of decades in which the more content-based readings of cultural criticism privileged forms like the novel, drama, and the short story, literary scholarship is returning its attention to poetry and poetics, and scholars with increasing frequency are producing work that recognizes the interanimations of culture and aesthetic form. In some historical fields, this turn to the aesthetic has been especially pronounced; for example, early modern studies has experienced in recent years an efflorescence in scholarship on poetry, in part because of the ways in which poetics and materialist approaches have converged around the culturally provocative topic of religion. Still, critical examinations of poetry in periods beyond the Renaissance’s religious hotbed have been slower to consider how the structures and practices of the Christian tradition may affect the aesthetic strategies of poems.

This special issue of Christianity & Literature will explore the ways in which poetics historically has responded to Christian practice across periods and contexts. By poetics we mean those figures and structures of poetic texts distinct from (though functioning in mutual reinforcement or productive tension with) the denotative content of a poem’s words: tropes and wordplay, meter, rhyme and other sonic recurrences, graphic organization, and other formal strategies that emphasize the materiality of language. This issue seeks to examine how poetic practice has been variously informed by and resistant to the material valences of Christianity as expressed in its liturgies, its architecture, its art and music, its lexicons and textualities, its doctrines (to enumerate just a few potential sites of investigation). Bringing together essays that consider poetic texts from a range of historical periods, this issue seeks to expand the conversation about poetic responses to Christian worship.

Deadline: We will begin reviewing submissions on January 1, 2018 and will continue to review until the final deadline of March 1, 2018. 

Submissions: Please submit essays to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/christlit. Check “yes” under the field asking whether the submission is for a special issue, and specify “Poetics/Praxis.” Essays should be 6000-9000 words in length and should be formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. Direct inquiries about the issue to Guest Editor Kimberly Johnson (kimberly_johnson@byu.edu) and Matthew J. Smith (mjsmith@apu.edu), Associate Editor.

2016 LIONEL BASNEY AWARD

Joshua Mabie is the recipient of the 2016 Lionel Basney Award for his essay “The Field is Ripe: Christian Literary Scholarship, Postcolonial Ecocriticism, and Environmentalism,” published in Volume 65, Issue 3 of Christianity & Literature. This essay includes elements of a jeremiad, lamenting the dearth of Christian literary scholarship engaged with ecocriticism, but it also includes specific calls to action. Mabie argues that developments in postcolonial ecocriticism “undercut its former anti-anthropocentrism (some would say anti-humanism), and lower the most significant barrier that has separated Christian literary scholars from rigorous engagement with the environment.” While postcolonial ecocriticism’s alliance with poststructuralism could be off-putting for some Christian scholars, Mabie suggests that it presents “new opportunities for those Christian literary scholars who are not entirely convinced of language’s ability to communicate Truth outside of systems of power and history.” In light of our global ecological crisis, Mabie urges Christian literary scholars to unite “love for God and love for their neighbors” with “care for the earth” by “magnifying the work of marginalized writer-activists”; this work, he concludes, “has the potential to transform the earth and the world.” Future scholars are likely to frame their work in response to Mabie’s essay; it is thus the best kind of “special issue” essay, in that it is likely to extend its influence beyond the pages of Volume 65. For its timeliness, its attentiveness to its audience, and for its helpful framing of scholarly trends, Joshua Mabie’s “The Field is Ripe: Christian Literary Scholarship, Postcolonial Ecocriticism, and Environmentalism” has been given the 2016 Lionel Basney Award.