Drawing on new archival resources, and opening up an entirely new research agenda in the field, David Woodbridge has written an outstanding new book. Missionary Primitivism and Chinese Modernity: The Brethren in Twentieth-Century China (Brill, 2019) focuses on a small but very significant evangelical community, the so-called Plymouth Brethren, and documents ... Show More
Today
Katie Barclay, "The Kiss: A History of Passion and Power" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
The Kiss: A History of Passion and Power (Reaktion, 2026) by Professor Katie Barclay tells the surprising history of our most intimate gesture: the kiss. Richly illustrated, it explores a millennium of kisses, asking how and why the kiss has retained its power over the centuries, ... Show More
31m 30s
Jul 30
Marios Koutsoukos, "Restoring the Ancient Religion: The Theurgic Orthopraxy of Iamblichus" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026)
Restoring the Ancient Religion: The Theurgic Orthopraxy of Iamblichus (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026) reconsiders Iamblichus’ Response to Porphyry, Late Antiquity’s seminal work on theurgy, which is often referred to as De Mysteriis. Was this text intended to be more than just a defen ... Show More
1h 32m
Jul 29
George Savran, "Jacob: Conflicted Twin, Aggrieved Patriarch" (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2025)
In Jacob: Conflicted Twin, Aggrieved Patriarch (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2025), George Savran brings his narrative interpretive approach to look closely at Jacob's shifting identity. Jacob is indelibly linked to his brother Esau in the Genesis narrative, and their complex relat ... Show More
1h 8m
Nov 2023
#27 Brooks Buser: Thirteen Years Transcribing an Unreached Language Group in Papua New Guinea, The Forgotten Great Commission, Training the Next Generation of Linguistics Missionaries
Brooks Buser is the president of Radius International and helps lead their campuses in Mexico and Taiwan. Brooks worked for 13 years among the YembiYembi people in Papua New Guinea. After developing an alphabet in the YembiYembi language, completing a translation of the New Testa ... Show More
2h 19m
Jan 2025
Stephen T. Pardue, "Why Evangelical Theology Needs the Global Church" (Baker Group, 2024)
Christian theologians and students are aware that evangelicals in the Majority World now outnumber those in North America and Europe, and many want to know more about emerging voices in the global church. At the same time, these voices are largely absent from Western evangelical ... Show More
59m 33s
Jan 2018
Tam T. T. Ngo, “The New Way: Protestantism and the Hmong in Vietnam” (U. Washington Press, 2016)
Think of Christianity in Southeast Asia today and what might come to mind is the predominantly Catholic Philippines, or the work of the Baptist church among linguistic and cultural minorities in Myanmar, or any one of the thousands of Christian communities scattered throughout In ... Show More
46m 43s
Aug 2025
Lambeth, Birth Control, and Eugenics
On today's show the pugs engage an article by Oxford historian Andrew Moeller on the complicated aims and compromises of the 1930 Lambeth Conference, a watershed moment in Christianity in the West. The pugs discuss the 'gamble with the devil' that the Church of England made, with ... Show More
1h 2m
Mar 2023
Kyama M. Mugambi, "A Spirit of Revitalization: Urban Pentecostalism in Kenya" (Baylor UP, 2020)
Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, Africa has generated unique expressions of Christianity that have, in their rapid development, overtaken older forms of Christianity represented by historic missionary efforts. Similarly, African Christianity has largely displayed its ... Show More
1h 38m