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When the American Library Association recently presented its Youth Media Awards, an exciting announcement was the winner of the new William C. Morris Young Adult Debut Award.

The award’s namesake is William C. Morris, an influential innovator in the publishing world and an advocate for marketing books for children and young adults. Bill Morris left an impressive mark on the field of children’s and young adult literature. He was beloved in the publishing field and the library profession for his generosity and marvelous enthusiasm for promoting literature for children and teens.

The William C. Morris YA Debut Award celebrates the achievement of a previously unpublished author, or authors, who have made a strong literary debut in writing for young adult readers. The work cited will illuminate the teen experience and enrich the lives of its readers through its excellence, demonstrated by:

* Compelling, high quality writing and/or illustration
* The integrity of the work as a whole
* Its proven or potential appeal to a wide range of teen readers

PaperTigers is pleased to congratulate the first-ever winner of the William C. Morris Award:

A Curse Dark As Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce

At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, Charlotte Miller strikes a bargain with the malevolent Jack Spinner, who can transform straw into gold, to save her family’s mill. With masterly writing and vivid characterization and setting, Bunce weaves a powerfully seductive tale of triumph over evil.

“Bunce has crafted a story that superbly embodies the criteria for this award. Her work is compelling and has broad teen appeal,” said Chair Bonnie Kunzel. “Thoughtful reflection and spirited discussion characterized this outstanding committee’s work as its members selected a shortlist that honors the influence of William C. Morris on the field of young adult publishing.”

Bart Ehrman chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend, which we have excerpted below, in addition to The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot, Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code and most recently, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer.  Ehrman spoke on NPR yesterday about why we suffer.

In one of our early accounts of Peter’s missionary activities after the death of Jesus, we find him in the Forum in Rome, trying to persuade the pagan (i.e., polytheistic) crowds to abandon their false gods and to believe in the power of Jesus, the only son of God. A woman appears on the scene completely distressed: her only son, her love and joy, has just died. Out of desperation, she appeals to Peter to raise him from the dead. Peter replies to her: “In the presence of these witnesses go and bring your son, that they may be able to see and believe that he was raised up by the power of God.” (more…)

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David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here, to read more posts by them click here. In the post below they look at Obama’s success in South Carolina.

In winning the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary, Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama carried virtually every demographic group. (more…)

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David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here, to read more posts by them click here. Below Domke and Coe look at the effects of MLK’s legacy on the Democratic primaries.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day has now come and gone, but King’s presence is still being felt in the Democratic primary. (more…)

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By Kirsty OUP-UK

A very Happy New Year to you all from OUP-UK. My maiden post for 2008 is the latest in the Very Short Introductions column. This month Joseph Dan, author of Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction, has kindly answered some questions for me. Joseph Dan is a renowned expert on Kabbalah, and is the Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His many books include The Heart and the Fountain: Jewish Mystical Experiences, The Early Kabbalah, and The Teachings of Hasidism. He resides in Jerusalem and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is a visiting professor at the Harvard Divinity School.

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David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here. In the article below Domke and Coe reflect on the Iowa Caucuses.

The victories by Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in the Iowa caucuses on Thursday make one thing clear: in America’s heartland, the God strategy works. Recent history suggests it won’t stop there. (more…)

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David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here. In the article below Domke and Coe reflect on presidential religious politics.

Mike Huckabee feels our pain.

In his new campaign ad, Huckabee assures us that he too is tired of all the no-holds-barred politicking. He’d rather relax, don his red sweater, carefully position himself in front of a bookshelf that bears an uncanny resemblance to a glowing white cross, and focus on the real meaning of the holiday season: “the celebration of the birth of Christ.” No politics here, just old time religion. (more…)

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David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here. In the article below Domke and Coe reflect on Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech.

Mitt Romney’s much-discussed speech about “Faith in America” made one thing crystal clear: he believes liberty is a gift from God. (more…)

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David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here. In the article below Domke and Coe commemorate the bombing of Pearl Harbor (12-7-1941) by comparing it to our modern tragedy, 9/11.

Sixty-six years ago today America was attacked at Pearl Harbor. In responding, President Franklin Roosevelt did the expected: he addressed the nation to explain what had happened, to describe plans for retaliation and, of course, to comfort the American people.

But Roosevelt did one thing that, by today’s standards, was entirely unexpected: he didn’t say much about God. In fact, Roosevelt addressed the nation only once in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor—a fireside chat on the evening of December 9—and mentioned God only one time. That reference was the concluding word of the speech:

We are going to win the war and we are going to win the peace that follows. And in the difficult hours of this day—through dark days that be yet to come—we will know that the vast majority of the members of the human race are on our side. Many of them are fighting with us. All of them are praying for us. For in representing our cause, we represent theirs as well—our hope and their hope for liberty under God.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was the worst by a foreign entity in America’s history, and in comforting and rallying the nation Roosevelt overtly invoked God one time. FDR did not formally address the nation again until his annual State of the Union in early January 1942.

Today we face an entirely different era of religious politics. Politicians look for any opportunity to talk about God and faith, and crises present just such an opportunity.

Consider that in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 2001, George W. Bush formally addressed the nation via live television three times in the space of nine days: from the Oval Office on the evening of September 11, at the National Cathedral as part of a memorial service on September 14, and before a joint session of Congress on September 20. In these three addresses Bush invoked God more than 20 times.

Bush concluded the September 20 address—which was watched by 82 million Americans, the largest audience for a political event in U.S. history—with these words: “The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.” He then added, “Fellow citizens, we’ll meet violence with patient justice, assured of the rightness of our cause and confident of the victories to come. In all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom, and may He watch over the United States of America.”

The striking contrast between Bush’s and Roosevelt’s approaches provides two useful reminders.

The first is that the extent to which religion infuses American politics today is historically uncommon. Those who say there is nothing new under the sun with respect to religion and politics are flat wrong.

The second reminder is that presidents can do the job of comforting the nation in times of crisis without saturating their language with religious references. No one would argue that FDR failed in this important task where Bush succeeded. Roosevelt simply took a different approach. And, given the serious dangers that arise when politics and religion become too intertwined, Roosevelt’s approach might be just what we need today.

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David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here. In the article below Domke and Coe look at Romney’s upcoming address to the nation.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will address the nation Thursday night about his Mormon faith and how it relates to his candidacy and policy goals. Many are calling it his “JFK moment” because the context recalls John F. Kennedy’s storied 1960 address to a group of conservative Protestant clergy in Houston. (more…)

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Gillian Riley, the author of The Oxford Companion to Italian Food(TOCTIF) is a food historian and former typographer. In TOCTIF Riley has created an A-Z guide to one of the world’s best-loved cuisines (and this blogger’s personal favorite!) Her book covers all aspects of history and culture of Italian gastronomy, from dishes, ingredients, and delicacies to cooking methods and implements, and regional specialties. In the post below Riley writes about the joys of embracing an Italian Christmas, even if you add only one dish to your family traditions.

Carol Field, in her entry in the Oxford Companion to Italian Food describes how a reverence for tradition and robust enjoyment of copious feasting make for two days of celebratory Christmas meals in a month rich in festive occasions. There are so many regional Italian customs and recipes that it would be rash to attempt a typical Italian Christmas menu, but we can plunder Carol’s contribution for ideas to mitigate or enhance the sometimes tyrannical conventions of a British or North American Christmas. (more…)

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Last week, after Terryl Given’s piece about Mormonism and politics, I started to wonder about one of my favorite Mormons, Orson Scott Card. I’m not a huge Science Fiction fan, but the Ender’s Game series captivated me as a young teen and I still list the series among my favorite books. Below, in an excerpt from Given’s book People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture is a look at Card in light of his religion.

Orson Scott Card has been called the Mormon “who to this point best — and most radically fulfills the great prophetic hopes for a world-class as well as genuinely Mormon literature.” One of the most prolific and arguably the best science fiction writer alive, Card is best known for his Enders saga, the first volume of which won an unprecedented doubleheader, scoring both the Nebula and the Hugo awards, as did its sequel, in a feat still unequaled (Ender’s Game, 1986; Speaker for the Dead, 1987). Some of his corpus is recognizably Mormon in fairly conspicuous ways. Saints and Folk of the Fringe, for instance, represent direct engagement, the former historical and the latter futuristic, with Mormonism itself. His Tales of Alvin Maker series (six volumes and counting) is a thinly veiled version of Joseph Smith’s life, cast as fantasy that reconceptualizes American history. Earlier, he published a five volume science fiction series clearly based on the Book of Mormon (Homecoming, 1992–1996).

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After Terryl Given’s post earlier today about Mitt Romney, I thought that it would be a good time to post this podcast with D. Michael Lindsay (author of Faith In The Halls of Power) about the role evangelicals will play in the upcoming election. The transcript of the podcast is after the break.

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Terryl L. Givens is Professor of Literature and Religion and James A. Bostwick Chair of English at the University of Richmond. His newest book, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture not only traces the development of Mormon culture from Joseph Smith through today, but also looks at Mormon culture in the context of society at large. In the article below Givens uses Mormon history to elucidate why discussion of Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s religion is irrelevant.

On the 10th of September, 1846, the bombardment began and continued sporadically for three days. As many as 800 (some Mormons said 1800) U.S militiamen and area citizens with six pieces of canon had surrounded the virtually deserted city of Nauvoo, Illinois. The two to three hundred remaining Mormons converted some steamboat shafts to canon and threw up barricades in a feeble attempt to survive. (more…)

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D. Michael Lindsay, author of Faith in The Halls of Power, spent long hours trying to get to the bottom of the Evangelical mind-frame. In the podcast below Lindsay explains how he got the interviews that shaped his book. Additionally, on Beliefnet, they are holding a Blogalogue (such a cool word right?) about Lindsay’s research with journalists Hanna Rosin and Jeff Sharlet, evangelical author Jerry Jenkins, and former Bush aide David Kuo. Read Lindsay’s first piece here.

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The Surgeon General, Fortune 500 CEO’s, Politicians and Bono - powerful people that seem to exist in a different world with different rules. So how do they include their faith in their sometimes cut-throat professional worlds? In the second podcast from our interview with Michael Lindsay, he shares his interviewee’s takes on subjects ranging from medical ethics to making underwear ads less promiscuous - and finally lets us in on the strategy that is making the Evangelicals so successful in their rise to positions of power. The transcript of the audio is after the jump.

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Last spring, just as OUP was beginning to buzz with excitement for our fall books, D. Michael Lindsay, the author of Faith In The Halls of Power, came and talked to us. For the next couple of weeks I am going to share some of what he said. It the podcast below Lindsay tells the story of what happened when Bud McFarlane woke up from his attempted suicide attempt. The transcript of the audio is after the jump.

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D. Michael Lindsay is the author of Faith in The Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite and is a member of the sociology faculty at Rice University. Lindsay conducted interviews with a variety of prominent Evangelical Americans — including two former presidents, dozens of political and government leaders, more than 100 top business executives, plus Hollywood moguls, intellectuals, athletes and other powerful figures. His book shows who the real evangelical power brokers are, how they rose to prominence, and what they’re doing with their clout. In the post below he ruminates on the role Evangelicals play in popular culture. Read Lindsay’s other blog posts here.

Evangelicals have been making strides in all kinds of places over the last thirty years. We know about their gains in Washington, but they’ve also been quite active in Hollywood. As I conducted interviews with media moguls and artists—all of whom are evangelical—I was struck by the number of times they compared themselves to another group that has also been on the move, the gay and lesbian movement. (more…)

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The post below is by Theo Calderara, editor at OUP.

Evangelicals in politics get a lot of attention these days, much of it focusing on issues like abortion. But while everyone’s watching what James Dobson is doing in America, they’re missing what Rick Warren is doing in Africa.

Last night, Michael Lindsay spoke about his new book, Faith in the Halls of Power, at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. One of the many fascinating things the crowd heard is that while everyone thinks evangelicals have a lot of influence on domestic issues, they’re really making an impact abroad. (more…)

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Erev Yom Kippur is upon and to lead your towards an easy fast we thought we would share some of our past posts about this holiday.
Hank Greenberg. 

The Cottage of Candles.

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By Kirsty OUP-UK

Now perhaps more than ever our society is conscious about offending religious viewpoints. In Blasphemy in the Christian World: A History, a new and timely book, David Nash traces the history of blasphemy from the Middle Ages up to the present day. Today I am thrilled to be able to bring you a piece written by Dr Nash especially for the OUP blog, focussing on Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’, which was accused of blasphemy and caused a huge outcry upon its release almost 30 years ago.

One of the most frequently asked questions about blasphemy is why do people do it, since it sometimes seems such a victimless crime. The Roman Emperor Tiberius suggested that if God was offended by an individual’s behaviour he was capable of exacting his own retribution, so why should man concern himself with such issues. Since medieval times, however, we have tended to automatically think that states and individuals have been progressing away from policing the opinions of others substituting religious tolerance for persecution.

The motives of blasphemers became the subject of some debate in the medieval world. Whether people were misled by the actions of devils or demons, or had spoken blasphemy when scared, or whilst drunk, it was deemed clear that an incidence of blasphemous speech had occurred as some form of accident. In the modern world things have become more complex and the motives of those who blaspheme become linked to issues of personal rights. Our modern western world has empowered freedom of expression but has equally begun in recent years to consider the rights and feelings of those who might be offended by the ideas and words of others. Thus in our modern world artists and writers have been those who have caused most lasting and high profile offence. If these people can cause offence we perhaps should ask why they are prepared to do so.

Perhaps it is most pertinent to ask this question of the film ‘Monty Python’s ‘ Life of Brian.’ This film is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary, was recently voted Britain’s best comedy film of all time by a BBC Radio Times poll, and remains the best known attempt to lampoon the history of religion in Britain and America. More importantly it could never claim that its motives were ‘serious’ in the manner that Mel Gibson could with ‘Passion of the Christ’ or Martin Scorsese could with ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’. So what did the Python team think they were doing? Did they set out to undermine and topple the leading religious ideology of the Western World?

Certainly it looked like it; the nativity scene was reworked with fiercely comic content, the Sermon on the Mount focussed upon the stupidity of those at the back who couldn’t hear properly, the crucifixion, moreover was turned into a sing-along comment on the potential miseries afflicting this life rather than paradise in the next. Taken as a whole the film seems unashamedly intent upon offending people – so were these the motives that persuaded the Monty Python team to make ‘Life of Brian’ and stir up the biggest controversy around blasphemy in the Christian World during the twentieth century? We know much about its development through television documentaries, newspaper clippings, and not least through Michael Palin’s recently published diaries. These suggest that ‘Brian’ emerged in the same way that other Python material did. Members of the team wrote separately and sometimes in teams in pursuit of situations that they primarily found funny. The initial idea was to show the life of an individual, ‘St Brian’, who was too late on the scene for all of Christ’s miracles, a situation that was clearly funny without being blasphemous. When the material was eventually put together its sum was greater than the parts and resembled the life story of an inadequate prophet, made inadequate through the shortcomings of the religion and religious people of his day. Thus the Python team began to focus upon the fact that they had produced a send–up of organised religion.

Once again their judgement of what was funny, worked well on celluloid, or adequately expressed their intentions made them cut material from the film. For example, the character of Otto, a Jewish fascist, never made the final version of the film because his presence diluted the power of other scenes. The Pythons could also censor themselves when it was required and this character would have made distribution in America potentially more difficult than it need have been.

So Monty Python wanted to make money, be funny and please its audience, and it succeeded in all of these. It was Python’s opponents who turned ‘Life of Brian’ into a threat to Christianity. It was these attitudes that made the Monty Python team, if only for a moment, become serious about what their film had done and made them strident proponents of freedom of expression. The Bishop of Southwark may have said to them that ‘Life of Brian’ would not have been made if the character of Christ had not existed. John Cleese and Michael Palin might equally have replied that ‘Brian’ would not have been made if the pretensions of people like the Bishop of Southwark had not existed.

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Students everywhere are heading back to school. But is school the way you remember it? In the post below D. Michael Lindsay, author of Faith In The Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined The American Elite, blogs about how faith has changed on campus, specifically evangelical faith. Read Lindsay’s other posts here.

Today, thousands of students will begin another year at Harvard, which begins its 369th year of classes. Since its founding, Harvard has been home to all kinds of religious believers, people of various faiths and of no faith at all. In recent decades, though, the nation’s leading university has diversified its student body geographically, ethnically, and racially. What’s surprising is how that diversity has changed Harvard’s religious makeup. (more…)

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Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Each year, on Rosh Hashanah mankind is judged and entered into the “book of life,” but the judgment is not final. We have ten days of atonement before Yom Kippur when the judgment is sealed. Below is a myth about atonement from The Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism by Howard Schwartz. Perhaps the example of Rabbi Abraham will inspire you. To read last year’s excerpt from The Tree of Souls click here.

A Vision at the Wailing Wall

In those days Rabbi Abraham Berukhim was known for performing the Midnight Vigil. He rose every night at midnight and walked through the streets of Safed, crying out, “Arise, for the Shekhinah is in exile, and our holy house is devoured by fire, and Israel faces great danger.” He longed, more than anything else, to bring the Shekhinah out of exile.

Now Rabbi Abraham was a follower of Rabbi Isaac Luria, known as the Ari. The Ari had great mystical powers. By looking at a man’s forehead he could read the history of his soul. He could overhear the angels and he knew the language of the birds. He could point out a stone in a wall and reveal whose soul was trapped in it. So too was he able to divine the future, and he always knew from the first day of Rosh ha-Shanah who among his disciples was destined to live or die. This knowledge he rarely disclosed, but once, when he learned there was a way to avert the decree, he made an exception. Summoning Rabbi Abraham Berukhim, he said: “Know, Rabbi Abraham, that a heavenly voice has gone forth to announce that this will be your last year among us—unless you do what is necessary to change the decree.” (more…)

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D. Michael Lindsay is the author of Faith in The Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite and is a member of the sociology faculty at Rice University. In the post below he examines the influence of religion on the military based on his experience interviewing prominent evangelical Americans. Read more by Lindsay here.

In the buildup to the General Petraeus’s appearance before Congress, we’ve been hearing a lot about partnerships between the American military and Sunni tribal leaders, like the so-called “Anbar Awakening.” These military leaders are often the only Americans Iraqis ever meet. And these leaders are more and more likely—especially at the elite level—to be evangelicals. (more…)

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This post is about introductions in more ways than one. First, let me introduce you to the author D. Michael Lindsay who will be blogging here quite a bit this fall. Lindsay is a member of the sociology faculty at Rice University and the author of Faith In The Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined The American Elite. Faith In The Halls of Power draws on interviews Lindsay conducted with an array of prominent Americans — including two former presidents, dozens of political and government leaders, more than 100 top business executives, plus Hollywood moguls, intellectuals, athletes and other powerful figures. His book shows who the real evangelical power brokers are, how they rose to prominence, and what they’re doing with their clout.

In the post below Lindsay recounts introducing himself Karen Hughes in a bookstore. Would you have had the “chutzpah” to walk up and introduce yourself?

Sitting down with some of the nation’s most powerful figures to talk about their faith has been an exhilarating part of my life for the last five years. More than once someone said to me, “I can’t believe I’m telling you this stuff.” (more…)

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