Interdisciplinary Research Guide
Processing Request
Interdisciplinary studies explores areas of research that often fall outside of theological curriculum, such as philosophy, politics, economics, psychology, art, and literature, which brings Christianity into conversation with other voices. Since interdisciplinary studies touches on various aspects of culture, this research guide will offer some recommendations for each field, but it will inevitably be incomplete. Many of these books belong to multiple fields; for instance, Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a landmark work in both sociology and economics. However, for students new to a certain field, they offer a helpful way to begin.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Max Weber, trans. Stephen Kalberg
New York: Oxford University press, 2009.
Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire
William T. Cavanaugh
Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008.
Economy of Desire: Christianity and Capitalism in a Postmodern World
Daniel M. Bell
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012.
Christianity and the Culture of Economics
Donald A. Hay, Alan Kreider
Cardiff: Univeristy of Wales Press, 2001.
Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology
Francis A. Schaeffer
Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 1970.
Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism
Mark Stoll
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating
Norman Wirzba
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Keeping God’s Earth: The Global Environment in Biblical Perspective
Noah Toly, Daniel Isaac Block (eds)
Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2010.
Planted: A Story of Creation, Calling, and Community
Leah Kostamo
Eugene: Cascade Books, 2013.
Celluloid Sermons: The Emergence of the Christian Film Industry, 1930-1986
Terry Lindvall, Andrew Quicke
New York: New York University Press, 2011.
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Neil Postman
New York: Penguin Books, 1986.
Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes
Jacques Ellul
New York: Vintage Books, 1973.
Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture
Heather Hendershot
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein
Roger Scruton
London: Routledge, 2002.
Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self
Marilynne Robinson
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.
The Abolition of Man
C.S. Lewis
San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.
Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church
James K. A. Smith
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006.
Passage to Modernity: An Essay on the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture
Louis K. Dupré
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
Ryszard Legutko
New York: Encounter Books, 2016
Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics
Reinhold Niebuhr
New York: Scribner, 1960.
The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology
Oliver O'Donovan
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origin of Radical Politics
Michael Walzer
New York: Atheneum, 1969.
The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America
Richard John Neuhaus
Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1984.
The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud
Philip Rieff
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
Jonathan Haidt
New York: Pantheon Books, 2012
Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship
Paul C. Vitz
Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1994
God and Soul Care: The Therapeutic Resources of the Christian Faith
Eric L. Johnson
Downers Grove: IVP, 2017
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas S. Kuhn
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism
Alvin Plantinga
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Religion and the Rise of Modern Science
R. Hooykaas
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1972
The Territories of Science and Religion
Peter Harrison
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict
William T. Cavanaugh
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
History and Presence
Robert A. Orsi
Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016.
A Secular Age
Charles Taylor
Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.
Beliefs Without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual But Not Religious
Linda A. Mercandante
New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
At the Origins of Modern Atheism
Michael J. Buckley
Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.
To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
James Davison Hunter
New York: Oxford University Press, 2010
The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion
Peter L. Berger
New York: Anchor Books, 1990
Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism
Todd M. Brenneman
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014
American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us
Robert D. Putnam, David E. Campbell
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010
The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since World War II
Robert Wuthnow
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
Neil Postman
New York: Vintage Books, 1993.
Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology
Albert Borgmann
Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003
Letters from Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race
Romano Guardini, Geoffrey William Bromiley
Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1994
