James S. Bielo
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This page details the articles, chapters, essays, & reviews I have published. If you are unable to access any publication via a link, please email me for a copy. I have enjoyed discussing my research with media outlets whenever asked, including interviews with: The Louisville Courier-Journal, The Toronto Star, Curbed, The Walrus, The Huffington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Texas Monthly, The Texas Observer, Al Jazeera America, and Univision News.

Material Christianity
  • 2020. Experiential Design and Religious Publicity at D.C.'s Museum of the Bible. The Senses and Society 15(1): 98-113.
  • 2019. "Where Prayers May Be Whispered": Promises of Presence in Protestant Place-Making. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology (Online first, April).
  • 2019. Quality: D.C.'s Museum of the Bible and Aesthetic Evaluation. Material Religion 15(1): 131-32.
  • 2018. Flower, Soil, Water, Stone: Biblical landscape items & Protestant materiality. Journal of Material Culture 23(3): 368-387.
  • 2018. Materializing the Bible in the Global South. In Encyclopedia of Christianity in the Global South. Mark A. Lamport, ed. 494-496. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • 2017. Biblical Gardens and the Sensuality of Religious Pedagogy. Material Religion 14(1): 30-54.
  • 2017. Performing the Bible. In The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America. Paul Gutjahr, ed. 484-503. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
  • 2016. Materializing the Bible: Ethnographic methods for the consumption process. Practical Matters 9: 1-17.
  • 2015. Replicating the Holy Land in the U.S. (a 'materializing the Bible' road trip). Material Religions December.
  • 2014. When Prayers Become Things. The Materiality of Prayer Blog May. ​
 
Creationism
  • 2020. Incorporating Space: Protestant Fundamentalism and Astronomical Authorization. Religions 11, 594: 1-11.
  • 2020. "Theme Parks," In The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture. Dan W. Clanton, Jr. and Terry R. Clark, eds. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
  • 2019. "Particles-to-People...Molecules-to-Man": Creationist Poetics in Public Debates. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 29(1): 4-26.
  • 2019. Of Arks and Dragons: The Power of Entertainment in Creationist Historicity. In The Varieties of Historical Experience. Stephan Palmie and Charles Stewart, eds. 140-166. London and New York: Routledge.
  • 2019. The Materiality of Myth: Authorizing Fundamentalism at Ark Encounter. In Christian Tourist Attractions, Mythmaking, and Identity Formation. Erin Roberts and Jennifer Eyl, eds. 43-57. London: Bloomsbury. 
  • 2018. Fun-Damentalism: "As-If" Experiences at a Creationist Theme Park. In Enjoying Religion: Pleasure and Fun in Established and New Religious Movements. Frans Jespers, Karin van Nieuwkerk, and Paul van der Velde, eds. 39-62. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
  • 2018. Providence and Publicity in Waiting for a Creationist Theme Park. In Ethnographies of Waiting: Doubt, Hope, and Uncertainty. Manpreet K. Janeja and Andreas Bandak, eds. 139-162. London: Bloomsbury.
  • 2017. The Plausibility of Immersion: Limits and Creativity in Materializing the Bible. In Christianity and the Limits of Materiality. Minna Oppas and Anna Haapalainen, eds. 122-140. London: Bloomsbury.
  • 2017. Literalism as Creativity: Making a Creationist Theme Park, Reassessing a Scriptural Ideology. In The Bible in American Life. Philip Goff, Arthur E. Farnsley II, and Peter J. Theusen, eds. 292-304. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
  • 2016. Creationist History-Making: Producing a Heterodox Past. In Lost City, Found Pyramid: Understanding Alternative      Archaeologies and Pseudoscientific Practices. Edited by Jeb J. Card and David S. Anderson, 81-101. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama press. 
  • 2015. Literally Creative: Intertextual Gaps and Artistic Agency. In Scripturalizing the Human: The Written as the Political. Edited by Vincent L. Wimbush, 20-34. New York: Routledge.
  • 2014. Making a Biblical Theme Park. The Immanent Frame August.

Method & Theory in the Anthropology of Religion
  • 2019. Like-able Me, Like-able There. American Religion (December) 
  • 2019. On Innovation. The Jugaad Project: Material Religion in Context (December)
  • 2019. Imagining Catholicism and Catholics. Exchange: Journal of Contemporary Christianities in Context 48(3): 195-203. (co-author: Kristy Nabhan-Warren)
  • 2018. Immersion as shared imperative: entertainment of/in digital scholarship. Religion 48(2): 291-301.
  • 2018. Anthropology, Theology, Critique. Critical Research on Religion 6(1): 28-34.
  • 2018. An Anthropologist is Listening: A Reply to Ethnographic Theology. In Theologically-Engaged Anthropology. J. Derrick Lemons, ed. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
  • 2018. Sacred Scriptures. In The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • 2017. Replication as Religious Practice, Temporality as Religious Problem. History & Anthropology 28(2): 131-148.
  • 2017. The Question of Cultural Change in the Social Scientific Study of Religion: Notes from the Emerging Church. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 56(1): 19-25
  • 2015. Secular Studies Come of Age. Thesis 11 129(1): 119-130.
  • 2013. Urban Christianities: place-making in late modernity. Religion 43(3): 301-311.
  • 2013. Doing Religious Studies Dialogically. Practical Matters Issue 6.
  • 2013. Writing Religion. In Missionary Impositions: conversion, resistance, and other challenges to objectivity in religious ethnography. Hillary K. Crane and Deana Weibel, eds. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1-10.
  • 2013. Missionization. Oxford Bibliographies in “Anthropology”. Ed. John Jackson. New York: Oxford University Press, June.
  • 2012. Religion-Secular, Tangled Divisions. The Revealer (Online, September).
  • 2012. Religion Matters: reflections from an AAA teaching workshop. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 3: 203-208.

Emerging Church Movement
  • 2016. The Ancient-Future Time-Crystal: On the Temporality of Emerging Christianity. In Crossing Boundaries, Redefining Faith: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Emerging Church Movement. Michael Clawson and April Stace, eds. 71-91. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers. (co-author: Jon Bialecki)
  • 2014. “FORMED”: Emerging evangelicals navigate two transformations. In The New Evangelical Social Engagement. Edited by Brian Steensland and Philip Goff, 31-49. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • 2014. Act Like Men: Social Engagement and Evangelical Masculinity. Journal of Contemporary Religion 29(2): 233-248.
  • 2013. Walking Prayer. The Materiality of Prayer Blog June.
  • 2013. Promises of Place: a future of comparative U.S. ethnography. North American Dialogue. 16(1): 1-11.
  • 2012. Belief, Deconversion, and Authenticity among U.S. Emerging Evangelicals. Ethos 40(3): 258-276.
  • 2011. City of Man, City of God: the re-urbanization of American Evangelicals. City & Society 23(s1): 1-22.
  • 2011. Purity, Danger, and Redemption: notes on urban “missional” Evangelicals. American Ethnologist 38(2): 267-280.
  • 2009. The “Emerging Church” in America: notes on the interaction of Christianities. Religion 39: 219-232.

Evangelical Bible Study
  • 2011. “How much of this is promise?” God as Sincere Speaker in Evangelical Bible reading. Anthropological Quarterly  84(3): 611-634.
  • 2009. Textual Ideology, Textual Practice: Evangelical Bible Reading in Group Study. In The Social Life of Scriptures: cross-cultural perspectives on Biblicism. James S. Bielo, ed., 157-175. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
  • 2008. Cultivating Intimacy: interactive frames for Evangelical Bible study. Fieldwork in Religion 3(1): 52-70.
  • 2008. On the Failure of “Meaning”: Bible reading in the anthropology of Christianity. Culture and Religion 9(1): 1-21.
  • 2007. “The Mind of Christ”: financial success, born-again personhood, and the anthropology of Christianity. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 72(3): 315-338.
  • 2007. Recontextualizing the Bible in Small Group Discourse. SALSA XIV: Texas Linguistic Forum Vol. 50. Austin: Texas Linguistics Forum.
  • 2004. “Walking in the Spirit of Blood”: moral identity among born-again Christians. Ethnology 43(3): 271-289.

Book Reviews & Comments
  • 2020. Comment on "Nazareth Village and the Creation of the Holy Land in Israel-Palestine: The Question of Evangelical Orthodoxy." Current Anthropology (Online first, May).
  • 2020. Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation's Capital and Redeem a Christian America. Material Religion (Online first, August)
  • 2020. Return to the City of Joseph: Modern Mormonism's Contest for the Soul of Nauvoo. Mormon Studies Review 7: 106-09.
  • 2019. Comment on "The Affective Therapeutics of Migrant Faith: Evangelical Christianity among Brazilians in Greater Washington, D.C." Current Anthropology 60(3): 382-83.
  • 2016. A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion. Social Anthropology 24(1): 103-06. [book review]
  • 2016. Shades of White Flight: Evangelical Congregations and Urban Departure. Marginalia Review of Books January.
  • 2016. What Difference Can It Make? The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 34(2): 145-47.
  • 2015. The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith. Journal of Anthropological Research 71: 597-98.
  • 2015. Hittin' the Prayer Bones: Materiality of Spirit in the Pentecostal South. AnthroCyBib November.
  • 2014. The Secular Spectacle: Performing Religion in a Southern Town. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 5
  • 2014. Ecologies of Faith in New York City: The Evolution of Religious Institutions. Critical Research on Religion 2: 322-323.
  • 2014. God's Agents: Biblical Publicity in Contemporary England. American Ethnologist 41(3): 602-604.
  • 2013. Churches and Charity in the Immigrant City: Religion, Immigration, and Civic Engagement in Miami. The Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology  18(3): 531-533
  • 2013. Sacred Subdivisions: The Postsuburban Transformation of American Evangelicalism. Anthropological Quarterly 86(4): 1153-1158.
  • 2013. The Color of Sound: Race, Religion, and Music in Brazil. AnthroCyBib May.
  • 2013. Does Fragmentation = Change? The Immanent Frame exchange on “The new evangelicals,” January.
  • 2012. Comment on “A Hyper-Real God and Modern Belief: toward an anthropological theory of mind.” Current Anthropology 53(4): 384-385.
  • 2012. A Faith Between. Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in Evangelical Megachurches. Current Anthropology 53(3): 362-364.
  • 2011. Global Christianities. Sociology of Religion 72(2): 246-249.
  • 2010. Native Christians: Modes and Effects of Christianity among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 1: 222-224.
  • 2010. City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala. Anthropology News December: 45. (co-author: Eric Hoenes del Pinal)
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