New Books in Christian Studies

Can creative writing become a form of biblical interpretation?

That is the provocative question at the heart of my conversation with Sarah Rosenson about her new book, Fan Fiction on the Book of Genesis: A Guide to Close Reading of and Creative Writing on the Bible (Cherry Orchard Books, 2026).

The modern phenomenon of fan fiction involves readers writing
creative pieces that answer questions left open in favorite works of
literature. This also describes the ancient tradition of midrash, where
readers write stories filling in gaps in the Bible. In Fan Fiction on the Book of Genesis
Sarah Rosenson discusses the questions left open in the first book of
the Bible, and every chapter includes questions for the characters in
the stories, which can serve as prompts for conversations or creative
writing.

Rosenson argues that careful reading reveals narrative gaps:
characters whose motivations remain unexplained, conversations that
never occur, ethical dilemmas left unresolved, and emotions that are
only implied. Drawing on the long tradition of Jewish midrash, she
proposes that readers can engage these silences through disciplined
creative writing, using imagination not as a substitute for close
reading but as an extension of it.

In our conversation, we
discussed some of Genesis's most familiar stories from unexpected
angles. What if Eve's pursuit of knowledge is more complex than simple
disobedience? Why does Noah never challenge God's decision to destroy
the world? What happens when Hagar's perspective becomes central rather
than peripheral? Why does Abraham argue for the people of Sodom but
remain silent when Isaac is placed on the altar? And how does the Joseph
narrative negotiate the relationship between divine providence and
human responsibility?

We also explore the broader methodological
questions raised by the book. Does describing midrash as "fan fiction"
make an ancient interpretive tradition more accessible, or does it risk
misunderstanding it? How far can readers imaginatively expand biblical
narratives while remaining faithful to the text? And what safeguards
distinguish responsible interpretation from speculation?

Whether
you are interested in biblical studies, literary criticism, Jewish
interpretation, or creative writing, our conversation offers a
thoughtful discussion of how ancient texts continue to invite new
readings. More than providing answers, Rosenson's book encourages
readers to ask better questions and, in doing so, to discover that
Genesis remains as intellectually and ethically challenging today as it
has been for centuries.

You can find more about Sarah and her work here.

Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is
an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of
religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African
diasporic communities in the Netherlands.
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New Perspectives on Old Princeton, 1812-1929 (Routledge, 2024) focuses on Princeton
Theological Seminary and the theologians who taught there from the time
of its founding in 1812 to the time of its reorganization in 1929. It
confronts the standard assessment of Old Princeton in the historiography
of North American evangelicalism and sets out why a new paradigm is
needed. The volume critically engages with the 'Ahlstrom thesis' and
other more recent scholarship concerning Old Princeton's relationship to
the Scottish intellectual tradition. The contributions seek to move
beyond Old Princeton's alleged indebtedness to Enlightenment thought and
advance a more constructive reading of the Old Princetonians, their
theology, and their place in the American evangelical experience. The
book offers a fresh and more accurate assessment of the theological and
philosophical assumptions that held sway at Old Princeton and through
the seminary to the American continent and beyond. It will appeal to
scholars interested in theology, religious history and intellectual
history.

Paul K. Helseth (PhD, Marquette University) is associate professor of
Christian thought at Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and
the author of Right Reason and the Princeton Mind (2010).

David Smith (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is pastor in
the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and adjunct faculty in
historical theology at Erksine Theological Seminary. He received his
M.Div. from Covenant Seminary (1995) and completed his dissertation,
published as B. B. Warfield’s Scientifically Constructive Theological Scholarship in 2010, under John Woodbridge.
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Why has the Catholic Church in India become so engaged in environmental initiatives? And what does the wider Indian political context defined by an assertive Hindu nationalism mean for the ability of church actors to pursue environmental agendas? In this episode, we are joined by Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Nihar Gokhale who have examined these questions in the Indian state of Goa, focusing on church activities and outreach in the domain of sustainable agriculture and agroecology.

You can read more about their research on the relationship between Christian environmentalism, agroecology and the rise of Hindu majoritarianism in the edited volume Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia, published by Leiden University Press.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen is a Social Anthropologist at the University of Oslo in Norway.

Nihar Gokhale is a DPhil student in International Development at the Oxford Department of International Development.

Mette Halskov Hansen, your host, is a Professor of China Studies at the University of Oslo.
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In Sanctified by the Spirit: John Owen, Habits of Grace, and Biblical Counseling (Reformation Heritage Books, 2024) Dr. Colin McCulloch examines how approaches to biblical counseling have diverged over the last generations, proposing John Owen's emphasis on Spirit-infused habitual grace as a helpful corrective and as a richer understanding of the dynamics of sanctification.
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Ever since conquistadores claimed Taino land in the name of their Catholic God and New England Puritans formed their strictly Protestant “city on a hill,” religion has been central to American life. Even as some found religious freedom—Rhode Island welcomed the Quakers, Jews, and Baptists that Massachusetts expelled as dissenters—indigenous people and Africans forced into slavery struggled to protect their religious practices. With the constitutional separation of church and state, it fell to the American people to decide: would they sharpen religion’s formidable powers of division, or reimagine its creative possibilities?

In A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2026) Brook Wilensky-Lanford follows this essential American tension from first contact through the 2024 election. This is an expansive history of extraordinary religious questions, told through the ordinary people who grappled with them. It is a story of defiance: Anne Hutchinson, preaching against Puritan clergy; Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise serving soft-shell crab to his kosher guests at an 1883 banquet; and Wovoka, a Paiute man who envisioned the Ghost Dance movement, which persisted in the face of violent government repression at Wounded Knee. It is also a story of community: Millerites waiting together in vain for Jesus’s return on a rainy October night in 1844; Chinese immigrants bringing Daoist and Buddhist gods to their California temples; Mormons pushing westward to build their “new Zion” in Utah. And in the last fifty years, it has been a story of muscular political power, as the religious right has sought to shape the present and paint the past in its own image.

At a moment when religion penetrates even the most secular aspects of American life, understanding its history is more essential than ever before. “It is in history that the very human work of religion happens,” Wilensky-Lanford shows us, “and in ordinary time that even the most carved-in-stone tenets can and do change.”

Brook Wilensky-Lanford is a religion writer, editor, and teacher. The author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and former managing editor of Killing the Buddha, her work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Republic, and elsewhere. Currently the Associate Director of Sacred Writes Public Scholarship, she holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University and a PhD in Religion in the Americas from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she lives.

This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com
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