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.  

ANNOUNCEMENTS 

The latest poem by Peter Cooley, Poetry Editor for Christianity & Literature, appears in The New Yorker May 21, 2018. You can hear Peter read his poem here. His new book of poems, World Without Finishing, has just been published in the Carnegie Mellon Poetry series and is available here.

CALL FOR PAPERS 

Special Issue of Christianity & Literature 

“Literature of / about the Christian Right” 

Guest Editor: Christopher Douglas (University of Victoria) 

The Times ‘best-seller’ list was misleading. Evangelical books were often outselling the Times’ best-sellers. But the paper did not bother to count sales in religious bookstores. The people hurt most weren’t evangelical authors (our books sold anyway); rather, the losers were Democratic Party leaders and other liberal readers of the ‘paper of record’ who were blindsided by subsequent events. The Times’ readers were not given a heads-up about what was going on ‘out there.’  

– Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God

This call for papers seeks essays on literature which is either produced by or engages with the Religious Right, especially as Christian evangelicalism and fundamentalism. As apostate Christian Right leader Frank Schaeffer’s words above suggest, there was something unexpected and unrecognizable about the surprising return of politically muscular conservative Christianity in the last half century – especially given secularization theory’s assurances about waning religious energy in modernity. This special issue seeks to explore the intersection of literature and the Christian Right in two directions: first, through what we might call serious or mainstream literature’s engagement with this strong public religious formation, and second, through literary texts from within this tradition, texts that in some sense speak for and to this movement.

This special issue is animated by the ongoing debates about secularism and postsecularism in literary criticism – including the bracketing of “strong religion” in John McClure’s Partial Faiths and Amy Hungerford’s emphasis upon “belief in belief” in Postmodern Belief, the recent special issue in Christianity & Literature engaging the secular and the literary (and other such special issues), and by Christopher Douglas’s recent book If God Meant to Interfere: American Literature and the Rise of the Christian Right (2016). We seek essays that interrogate the forms, aesthetics, politics, theologies, and ethical commitments of literature that is in some sense about the Christian Right. How does this literature articulate or confront its object? What are its modes of intersection with other popular or serious literary genres, and what are its literary antecedents? What are the relevant contexts and social movements – feminism, Civil Rights, the Cold War, the sexual revolution, postmodernism, multiculturalism, LGBTQ rights, neoliberalism, identity politics, the end of history, the clash of civilizations – necessary for understanding literature by and about the Christian Right? What kinds of faithfulness, constancy, heresy or apostasy do we find therein? What does its near-absence in literary studies today mean for our profession and discipline, for the field of religion and literature and the postsecular turn itself? Essays on Christian Right literature that move beyond the Left Behind series especially welcome.

Deadline: January 15, 2019

Full-length essays (6,000-9,000 words) and shorter (4,000 words) “think” pieces are both welcome. Essays should be formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. 

Contact: Christopher Douglas, Professor of English, University of Victoria cdouglas@uvic.ca. Submit at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/christlit (please indicate in the field on the 4th page of the submission process that asks “Is this manuscript a candidate for a special issue?” that it is for the Literature of / about the Christian Right issue). Inquiries about this special issue can be made to cal@apu.edu.

2017 LIONEL BASNEY AWARD

The Conference on Christianity and Literature is pleased to name Brigitte N. McCray as the recipient of the 2017 Lionel Basney Award for her essay “‘Good landscapes be but lies’: W. H. Auden, the Second World War, and Haunted Places,” published in Volume 66, Number 2 of Christianity & Literature. McCray’s essay responds to the claim that Auden’s poetry is silent or even “trivial” with regard to the horrors of World War II; according to McCray, Auden’s elegies written during the war and his later place-based poems are significant because they attempt “to leave a trace of the dead. If the war’s aim, especially the Nazis’ genocide, is an attempt to leave an absence, then the poet’s duty is at least to make possible the presence.” The essay expands the possibilities of poetry’s Christian witness, using the unfamiliar framework of “hauntology” in combination with a theology of Holy Saturday, both of which call for a witness “situated between life and death.” While witness testifying to the crucifixion and resurrection is necessary, we often neglect the importance of the in-between state, which McCray connects to post-war trauma. As Auden’s later poetry suggests, “one must walk the geography and live with the ghosts in order to witness ethically.” McCray’s essay deftly interweaves theory, theology, history, and close reading to make an argument that achieves global significance in its implications for Christian art’s responses to suffering. For these qualities, “‘Good landscapes be but lies’: W. H. Auden, the Second World War, and Haunted Places” wins the 2017 Basney Award.

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.