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.

2020
Return to the City of Joseph: Modern Mormonism's Contest for the Soul of Nauvoo. Mormon Studies Review
7: 106-09 [book review]

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.