Articles-Essays-Reviews

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.

2019

Like-able Me, Like-able There. American Religion (December)
On Innovation. The Jugaad Project: Material Religion in Context (December)
"Particles-to-People...Molecules-to-Man": Creationist Poetics in Public Debates. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 29(1): 4-26.
"Where Prayers May Be Whispered": Promises of Presence in Protestant Place-Making. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology (Online first, April).
Quality: D.C.'s Museum of the Bible and Aesthetic Evaluation. Material Religion 15(1): 131-32.
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.
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.
Comment on "The Affective Therapeutics of Migrant Faith: Evangelical Christianity among Brazilians in Greater Washington, D.C." Current Anthropology 60(3): 382-83.

2018

Flower, Soil, Water, Stone: Biblical landscape items & Protestant materiality. Journal of Material Culture 23(3): 368-387.
Immersion as shared imperative: entertainment of/in digital scholarship. Religion 48(2): 291-301.
Anthropology, Theology, Critique. Critical Research on Religion 6(1): 28-34.
An Anthropologist is Listening: A Reply to Ethnographic Theology. In Theologically-Engaged Anthropology. J. Derrick Lemons, ed. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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.
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.
Sacred Scriptures. In The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
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.
Replication as Religious Practice, Temporality as Religious Problem. History & Anthropology 28(2): 131-148.
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
Performing the Bible. In The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America. Paul Gutjahr, ed. 484-503. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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.
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

Materializing the Bible: Ethnographic methods for the consumption process. Practical Matters 9: 1-17.
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)
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.
What Difference Can It Make? The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 34(2): 145-47.
A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion. Social Anthropology 24(1): 103-06. [book review]
Shades of White Flight: Evangelical Congregations and Urban Departure. Marginalia Review of Books January. [book review]

2015

Secular Studies Come of Age. Thesis 11 129(1): 119-130.
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.
Replicating the Holy Land in the U.S. (a 'materializing the Bible' road trip). Material Religions December.
The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith. Journal of Anthropological Research 71: 597-98. [book review]
Hittin' the Prayer Bones: Materiality of Spirit in the Pentecostal South. AnthroCyBib November. [book review]

2014

Act Like Men: Social Engagement and Evangelical Masculinity. Journal of Contemporary Religion 29(2): 233-248.
“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.
Making a Biblical Theme Park. The Immanent Frame August.
When Prayers Become Things. The Materiality of Prayer Blog May.
The Secular Spectacle: Performing Religion in a Southern Town. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 5 [book review]
Ecologies of Faith in New York City: The Evolution of Religious Institutions. Critical Research on Religion 2: 322-323. [book review]
God's Agents: Biblical Publicity in Contemporary England. American Ethnologist 41(3): 602-604. [book review]

2013

Urban Christianities: place-making in late modernity. Religion 43(3): 301-311.
Promises of Place: a future of comparative U.S. ethnography. North American Dialogue. 16(1): 1-11.
Doing Religious Studies Dialogically. Practical Matters Issue 6.
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.
Reflections on Summer Reading respondent. The Immanent Frame September.
Missionization. Oxford Bibliographies in “Anthropology”. Ed. John Jackson. New York: Oxford University Press, June.
Walking Prayer. The Materiality of Prayer Blog June.
Conference Dispatch: 2013 Society for the Anthropology of Religion. AnthroCyBib April.
Does Fragmentation = Change? The Immanent Frame exchange on “The new evangelicals,” January.
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 [book review]
Sacred Subdivisions: The Postsuburban Transformation of American Evangelicalism. Anthropological Quarterly 86(4): 1153-1158. [book review]
The Color of Sound: Race, Religion, and Music in Brazil. AnthroCyBib May. [book review]

2012

Belief, Deconversion, and Authenticity among U.S. Emerging Evangelicals. Ethos 40(3): 258-276.
Comment on “A Hyper-Real God and Modern Belief: toward an anthropological theory of mind.” Current Anthropology 53(4): 384-385.
Religion-Secular, Tangled Divisions. The Revealer (Online, September).
Religion Matters: reflections from an AAA teaching workshop. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 3: 203-208.
A Faith Between. Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in Evangelical Megachurches. Current Anthropology 53(3): 362-364. [book review]

2011

City of Man, City of God: the re-urbanization of American Evangelicals. City & Society 23(s1): 1-22.
“How much of this is promise?” God as Sincere Speaker in Evangelical Bible reading. Anthropological Quarterly 84(3): 611-634.
Purity, Danger, and Redemption: notes on urban “missional” Evangelicals. American Ethnologist 38(2): 267-280.
Why Some Theories Work and Others Do Not: Analyzing Discourse in the First Bush-Kerry Debate (or, Why George Bush Is Incredibly Articulate…For Real). In The Joy of Language: Proceedings of a symposium honoring the colleagues of David Dwyer on the occasion of his retirement. David Dwyer, ed. Pp. 7-1—7-10.
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. [book review]
City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala. Anthropology News December: 45. (co-author, Eric Hoenes del Pinal) [book review]

2009

The “Emerging Church” in America: notes on the interaction of Christianities. Religion 39: 219-232.
Encountering Biblicism. In The Social Life of Scriptures: cross-cultural perspectives on Biblicism. James S. Bielo, ed., 1-9. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
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.
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.
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.