Sunday, August 29, 2010

Science and the Spirit now available

I recently received my copies of Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences, the book I co-edited with Amos Yong (published by Indiana University Press). Gathering an interdisciplinary range of scholars from the sciences and humanities, I hope the volume signals a new stage of maturity for Pentecostal scholarship, without that meaning that Pentecostals have simply learned to tack to the winds of dominant orthodoxies. There is both give and take in this engagement.

A peek at the Table of Contents provides a look inside:

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: Science and the Spirit—Questions and Possibilities in the Pentecostal Engagement with Science / James K. A. Smith and Amos Yong

Part 1. What Hath Azusa Street to Do with MIT? The Big Questions

1. What Have the Galapagos to Do with Jerusalem? Scientific Knowledge in Theological Context / Telford Work

2. Is There Room for Surprise in the Natural World? Naturalism, the Supernatural, and Pentecostal Spirituality / James K. A. Smith

3. How Does God Do What God Does? Pentecostal-Charismatic Perspectives on Divine Action in Dialogue with Modern Science / Amos Yong

Part 2. The Spirit of Matter: Questions and Possibilities in the Natural Sciences

4. Does God Have a Place in the Physical Universe? Physics and the Quest for the Holy Spirit / Wolfgang Vondey

5. Does the Spirit Create through Evolutionary Processes? Pentecostals and Biological Evolution / Steve Badger and Mike Tenneson

6. Can Religious Experience Be Reduced to Brain Activity? The Place and Significance of Pentecostal Narrative / Frederick L. Ware

7. Serotonin and Spirit: Can There Be a Holistic Pentecostal Approach to Mental Illness? / Donald F. Calbreath

Part 3. The Human Spirit: Questions and Possibilities in the Social and Technological Sciences

8. Can Social Scientists Dance? Participating in Science, Spirit, and Social Reconstruction as an Anthropologist and Afropentecostal / Craig Scandrett-Leatherman

9. Is Integrating Spirit and Sociology Possible? A Postmodern Research Odyssey / Margaret M. Poloma

10. Is There Room for the Spirit in a World Dominated by Technology? Pentecostals and the Technological World / Dennis W. Cheek