Religious Mourning is about a common experience among those who study religion: religious loss. When people of faith study religion critically, or when life experiences such as death and divorce trigger personal reflection on faith, religious intellectuals often become estranged from their own tradition. Sometimes this estrangement causes them to leave religion altogether. But for those who study religion from a psychological perspective, a certain kind of introspective and iconoclastic religiosity can be revived by means of academic writing. Religious Mourning explores this phenomenon by focusing on psychobiographical writings about religious leaders–including Donald Capps’ portrait of Jesus of Nazareth, James Dittes’ portrait of Saint Augustine, and William Bouwsma’s portrait of John Calvin–to show how these authors’ personal lives, and especially their experiences of loss, influence their scholarship. As Capps, Dittes, and Bouwsma subversively scavenge the lives of Jesus, Augustine, and Calvin to reverse and restore a religion that is rich with experience, including (and especially) their own, they invite us to do the same.
关于作者
Nathan Carlin, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), is Associate Professor at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, TX, and Book Review Editor for Pastoral Psychology. His primary academic appointment is in the Mc Govern Center for Humanities and Ethics. He has coauthored two books: Living in Limbo: Life in the Midst of Uncertainty (2010) and 100 Years of Happiness: Insights and Findings from the Experts (2012).