Articles-Essays-Reviews

This page details the articles, chapters, essays, & reviews I have published. If you are unable to access a publication of interest, please email me. 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, Univision News, multiple stories in Christianity Today, Public Radio's The World, The Salt Lake Tribune, and The Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Secondhand Sacred

2024. Vintage Not Retro: The Secondhand Social Life of Christian Material Culture. In Selling the Sacred: Religion and Marketing from Crossfit to QAnon, edited by Mara Einstein and Sarah McFarland Taylor, 285-302. London: Routledge.
2021. Re-assembling Fairs: eBay, circulation, and value. Material Religion 17(5): 654-55.

Materializing the Bible

2023. Materiality and Attachment: Universality and Locality at Roman Catholic Pilgrimage Sites. In American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism, edited by Katherine Dugan and Karen E. Park, 244-60. New York: Fordham University Press.
2023. Materializing Jesus’ Nazareth: Translation as Imagineering. In Routledge Handbook on Translation and Religion, edited by Hephzibah Israel, 268-283. London: Routledge.
2022. The Magic of Science and the Science of Magic in Evangelical Publicity. Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 17(2): 173-82.
2022. Orlando's Holy Land Experience Closed in 2021 After 20 Years: Does It Matter? The Commons (online, August). (co-authored with Jana Mathews)
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 Study of Religion

2022. Racialization and Theology in the Anthropology of Religion. American Anthropologist 124(1): 221-22.
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

2022. Comment on "Belief-Inclusive Research: Does strategically 'bracketing out' a researcher's (religious) beliefs and doubts limit access to ethnographic data?" Current Anthropology (Online first, October)
2022. The Privilege of Being Banal: Art, Secularism, and Catholicism in Paris. Material Religion (Online first, February).
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)