Writing my global religion cycle – and where I go next

There are great magisterial scholars who are planning large, multi-volume series on major topics. Then there are people like me who write a lot, but only afterwards do they get a sense of what they’ve really been up to all those years. To that extent, this post is about me, but perhaps it also applies to many other authors who only see the literary forest for the trees in retrospect. And in my own case, it helps me enormously in deciding where to go in my research career.

Over the years I’ve published about 36 books by one author, plus a bunch of articles. At first glance these seem to cover a lot of ground in an almost random way, but that is misleading. In 2020, I made a post on this site called “Writing My Christian History Sequence,” which showed how those books of mine fell into four or five different groups, each with a strong internal theme. The most important was what I call the Christian History cycle, which includes a dozen separate titles from different presses, but which actually provides a remarkably logical sequence, from the Old Testament through early and medieval Christianity to the modern world. , in books like mine The next Christianity (2002). I found putting that list together really informative because it allowed me to see all kinds of long themes and trajectories that I had never emphasized so prominently before. As an exercise, it also helped me understand what I needed to work on next within that overall framework, and effectively shaped my research agenda for the next two years. You can’t see where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.

If I were to do that Christian history list again, I would expand it to include two 2023 items that came directly from that process, namely my He will save you from the deadly plague (Oxford University Press) about the many lives of Psalm 91 through Jewish and Christian history and culture; and also mine A storm of images: iconoclasm and religious reformation in the Byzantine world (Baylor University Press). Including these would expand my cycle of Christian history to about a dozen titles, spanning twenty years, and it would also close a few glaring holes (SEE BELOW for a summary list). It’s starting to look like I almost planned this!

And now, in 2024, I’m here again to announce a new series or cycle that I never quite recognized while writing it, but now suddenly seems very obvious. Over the past four years I have published the following three books: Fertility and Faith: The Demographic Revolution Transforming the World’s Religions (Baylor University Press, 2020); Climate, catastrophe and faith: how changes in climate are causing religious unrest (Oxford University Press, 2021); and now, or at least in a few months, Kingdoms of this World: How Empires Made and Remade Religions (Baylor University Press, forthcoming July 2024). If you’ll forgive the grandiloquence, I call this my Global Religion Cycle.

Although the topics are diverse, in common these have a very broad geographical and temporal scope in the study of religion worldwide, focusing respectively on demography, climate and empire. Each of them is a Big Concept book by nature. Each, in its own way, identifies one of the absolutely critical factors that drives and shapes religion in every era, every region, and indeed every faith tradition. These are three decisive forces that we must consider, whether we look at Christianity, Buddhism, Islam or any other faith. The three factors also work closely together: climate forces influence the growth or shrinkage of empires, and the religions that depend on them. Empires also have a profound effect on migration and demographic shifts, which often serve as vectors for religious beliefs. The interconnections are actually numerous, but I will briefly mention these connections.

For the sake of argument, assume that I state this case fairly, and that these forces do indeed interact as I suggest. So where should I go with my writing? An obvious topic is the pandemic and the plague, but that is already very well-trodden territory, and I have a lot of material on that in my Climate, catastrophe and faith book. If you try to understand historical pandemics without taking climate factors into account, you are making a big mistake.

So what other force am I leaving out that could have equal weight as a force influencing religious change and development? I’m not saying this is the only one, but the way I see things now, it has to be warfare, very broadly defined. I have often posted about these topics on this site, for example here and here and here. Let me emphasize that I am not specifically referring to the attitudes of certain religions towards violence and war, although that could be part of the research. Rather, I mean how war spreads or restricts religions; how it raises mystical and apocalyptic expectations and stimulates revivals and new religious movements; how beliefs and superstitions that arise during wars influence the character of certain religions; and how war promotes militarized versions of faith, for example in the rhetoric and language of theology. I have a lot more to say, but that’s enough for now. At each stage we see clear links with the other ‘big three’ factors, namely empires, climate and demography.

Hmm, and when I put the argument like this, I realize that I already have another publication that is directly relevant, namely my The Great and Holy War: How the First World War Became a Religious Crusade (HarperOne, 2014). That’s a global theme too, with a lot of material on how war made and remade Islam, Hinduism and other world religions, along with Christianity and Judaism. If so, then that book would also fit well into my newly defined Global Religion cycle. The only problem is that it covers a limited chronology, about 1910-24 or so.

My plans may change, but at this point the natural next phase in my Global Religion cycle would be a new and very comprehensive book on war, religion and religions, covering a much broader time frame. Of course, this wouldn’t mean trying to write a whole history of war, religion, the universe and everything. I would think of a two-part book, with the first part describing the ways in which war and religion interact across multiple societies. The second part could consist of half a dozen detailed case studies. It would be a substantial book, but well within the bounds of possibility.

Climate, demography, empires and war.

Watch this space.

For reference, here are the titles in my Christian History series. They are presented in the order of the historical eras they cover, rather than their dates of publication:

Putting Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses (HarperOne, 2011).

Crucible of Faith: The Age-Old Revolution That Created Our Modern Religious World (Basic Books, 2017).

He will deliver you from the deadly plague: The Many Lives of Psalm 91 (Oxford University Press, 2023)

Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost its Way (Oxford University Press, 2001).

The Many Faces of Christ: The Millennial Story of the Survival and Influence of the Lost Gospels (Basic Books, 2015).

Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (HarperOne, 2010).

The Lost History of Christianity: The Millennial Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died (HarperOne, 2008).

A storm of images: iconoclasm and religious reformation in the Byzantine period World (Baylor University Press, 2023)

Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History (Oxford University Press, 2000).

The Great and Holy War: How the First World War Became a Religious Crusade (HarperOne, 2014).

The Next Christianity: The Rise of Global Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2002: third edition, 2011).

The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (Oxford University Press, 2006).

God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam and Europe’s Religious Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2007).