Methodist University Department of Philosophy and Religion

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Faculty Publications

SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS

Books

	Bailey, Lloyd. Leviticus-Numbers: Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2005). The contrast in appreciation of Leviticus and Numbers by the synagogue on the one hand, and by the church on the other, is little short of astonishing. The former has considered it crucial to an understanding of God and of the nature of the "chosen people" of Israel. The latter has usually reduced it to allegory or as a mere historical record of Israelite religion. In this new volume, Hebrew Bible scholar Lloyd R. Bailey examines these often overlooked or underappreciated books of Moses in the contexts of both the Jewish and Christian traditions.
	Bailey, Lloyd. Genesis, Creation, and Creationism (Wipf & Stock, 2006) Genesis, Creation, and Creationism is an important new study that explores all sides of the creationism debate, and gives a sound and spiritually rich way of understanding the creation stories of Genesis.
	Bailey, Lloyd. Capital Punishment: What the Bible Says. Contemporary Christian Concern Series (Abingdon Press, 1987). In Capital Punishment, Lloyd R. Bailey offers straight talk about the death penalty. Focusing squarely on what the Bible says, Bailey clears up confusion and misinformation on this emotionally charged issue.
	Brey, Steven and Lynda Ward. Ready, Set Lead: The New Pastor's Guide to Starting Ministry (Abingdon, 2006). This book leads the new pastor through creative ideas and concrete suggestions for getting started in church ministry by providing, for example, worksheets for planning and organizing worship, weddings, and funerals; questions to ask during pastoral visits to help both the pastor and parishioner feel at ease; suggestions for managing conflict; and ways to create opportunities for fellowship, study, outreach, and mission in the church.
	Potts, Michael; Byrne, Paul A.; Nilges, Richard G. (eds.) Beyond Brain Death: The Case against Brain Based Criteria for Human Death (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000). Beyond Brain Death offers a provocative challenge to one of the most widely accepted conclusions of contemporary bioethics: the position that brain death marks the death of the human person. Eleven chapters by physicians, philosophers, and theologians present the case against brain-based criteria for human death. Each author believes that this position calls into question the moral acceptability of the transplantation of unpaired vital organs from brain-dead patients who have continuing function of the circulatory system.
	Walsh, Richard G. Finding St. Paul in Film (T&T Clark International, 2005). Walsh finds a Paul who is a stranger to our questions and ideologies. As Paul does not appear often in film, the films that the book brings into dialogue with Paul have only metaphorical connections with the Paul of Christian and academic discourse. The films relate to Paul only as Walsh's interpretations of the films and of Paul render Paul the films' precursor. Walsh's book works more abstractly. It has four major topics distributed in an equal number of chapters: (1) Paul's concept of grace (the inclusion of the Gentiles); (2) Paul's apocalyptic visions and worldview; (3) Paul's struggles with theodicy and community formation; and (4) Paul's "apostolic" or "canonical" status. He examines movies such as Tender Mercies, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Places in the Heart, Donnie Darko, Witness, The Truman Show, Strange Days, Being John Malkovich, Fargo, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and The Apostle.
	Walsh, Richard G. Reading the Bible: An Introduction (Cross Cultural Publications, 1998). Excellent background information on all the books of the Bible. Indispensable for the understanding of the Scriptures, prepared by a most respected scholar and teacher. Full of helpful charts and literary parallels.
	Walsh, Richard G. Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus in Film (Trinity Press International, 2003). From The Greatest Story Ever Told to Jesus of Montreal to Shane, the figure of Jesus has made repeated—and varied—appearances in American cinema. In Reading the Gospels in the Dark, Richard Walsh brings "Jesus-films," the canonical gospels, and American culture into conversation. The discourse begins in the theater with the lights down low and the Jesus-films on the big screen. Walsh's commentary starts with the films themselves and the American Jesus(es) portrayed therein. Ironically, while we do not expect Jesus-films to "get Jesus or the gospels right," they do cast light on interesting literary and mythical features of the gospels—and on American culture.
	Walsh, Richard G., and George Aichele (eds). Screening Scripture: Intertextual Connections Between Scripture and Film (Trinity Press International, 2002). The book proposes that there is no natural connection between scripture and film—even for those movies that seem to have an obvious relationship to religious text. It is only the viewer that makes this connection. From this perspective, Screening Scripture opens up new possibilities for viewing these movies and reading these texts with each other. The contributors to this volume serve as creative viewers who make these connections for some of today's most popular and provocative films. The scriptures discussed include not only the Bible, but apocryphal, heretical, and non-Western scriptures.
	Walsh, Richard G., and George Aichele (eds). Those Outside: Noncanonical Readings of Canonical Gospels. (T&T Clark, 2005). Readings of the canonical gospels have a particular place in this history. Indeed, the gospels are the pride and joy of the church(es), as they are of an academy that scarcely separates itself from the church. The following essays, however, all share a desire to read Herme(s)tically, in heterodox or even heretical directions. In this volume, and against the traditional readings and their keepers, the contributors practice interpretative thefts or, put differently, they pursue "lines of flight" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987), not movements of escape but rather creative ways of contesting prevailing ideologies.
	Walsh, Richard G. Three Versions of Judas (Equinox Publishing, 2010). Three Versions of Judas explores the mythic work transpiring in the Judases of the gospels and of subsequent scholarly and artistic interpretation from the perspective of Jorge Luis Borges' "Three Versions of Judas".

Recent Articles and Chapters

Hustwit, J. R. "Models, Idols, and the Great White Whale: Toward a Christian Faith of Nonattachment," in Models of God and of Other Ultimate Realities, ed. Jeanine Diller and Asa Kasher. (Forthcoming, Springer Publishing, 2012).

_____. "Is Paul Ricoeur a Process Philosopher? Interpretation and Becoming," Process Studies 37, no. 1 (2008).

_____. "Can Models of God Compete?" Philosophia 35, no. 3-4 (Fall 2007), 433-439. Revised and republished in Models of God and of Other Ultimate Realities, ed. Jeanine Diller and Asa Kasher. (Forthcoming, Springer Publishing, 2012).

_____. "Process Philosophy," The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, hosted by the University of Tennessee at Martin, available at http://www.iep.utm.edu/p/processp.htm.

_____. "Open Interpretation: Whitehead and Schleiermacher on Hermeneutics," in Whitehead and Schleiermacher: Open Systems in Dialogue, ed. Christine Helmer et al. (New York: De Gruyter, 2004), 185-213.

_____. "Self-Determination, Evil, and Process Theology," New Perspectives 16:1 (Winter 2004), 20-21.

Potts, Michael; Verheijde, Joseph L; Rady, Mohamad Y. (2012). "When a Nudge Becomes a Shove." The American Journal of Bioethics 12:2 (February):40-42.

_____. and Rady, Mohamad Y.; Verheijde Joseph L.; Potts, Michael. "Quality Palliative Care or Physician-Assisted Death: A Comment on the French Perspective of End-of-life Care in Neurological Disorders." Journal of Clinical Research and Bioethics (2011) 2:102e

_____. and Verheijde, Joseph L.; Rady, Mohamad Y.; Evans, David W. "Normative Consent and Presumed Consent for Organ Donation: A Critique." Journal of Medical Ethics 36 (2010):498-499.

_____. and Verheijde, Joseph L.; (2010). Commentary on the Concept of Brain Death within the Catholic Bioethical Framework. Christian Bioethics 16:3 (December 2010):246-256.

_____.; and Byrne, Paul A.; Evans, David W. (2010). "Infant Heart Transplantation after Cardiac Death: Ethical and Legal Problems." Journal of Clinical Ethics 21:3 (Fall 2010):224-228.

_____. "Risk Management, Chaos Theory, and the Corporate Board of Directors." In Corporate Boards: Managers of Risk, Sources of Risk, ed. Robert W. Kolb and David Schwartz (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 55-69.

_____. and Byrne, Paul A. (2009). "Is it Morally Right to Kill Patients that Good may Come?" The Internet Journal of Law, Healthcare, and Ethics 6:1 (2009)

_____. and Evans, David W. (2008). "Is Solid Organ Donation by Living Kidney Donors Ethical?" The Case of Kidney Donation. In Organ Transplantation: Ethical, Legal, and Psychosocial Aspects, ed. W. Weimar, M. A. Bos, and J. J. Busschlach (Lengerich: Pabst Science Publishers), pp. 377-381.

_____. (2008). "Pharmaceutical Mergers and Genetic Technology: A Problematic Combination." In The Ethics of Genetic Commerce, ed. Robert Kolb (Malden, MA: Blackwell), pp. 177-189.

Walsh, Richard. "(Carrying the Fire on) No Road for Old Horses: Cormac McCarthy's Untold Biblical Stories," The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (forthcoming,Fall 2012).

_____. "Crimes and Misdemeanors," in Adele Reinhartz, ed. Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films (London: Routledge, forthcoming).

_____. "Monty Python's Life of Brian," in Adele Reinhartz, ed. Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films (London: Routledge, forthcoming).

_____. "Jesus and the Zealots: A Leitmotif in BibleFilms." Forthcoming in a Collection of the Papers of the Religion und Gewalt im Bibelfilm Internationales Symposium.

_____. "Epic, Film," in The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (Walter DeGruyter).

_____. "Metamorphosis, Transfiguration, and the Body." With George Aichele. Biblical Interpretation 19.3 (2011): 253-75.

_____. "The Christians Kill Jesus Again: Spectacle, Drama, and Politics at Oberammergau." The Bible and Critical Theory 7.1 (2011): 42-50.

_____. "The Horror, the Horror: What Kind of (Horror) Movie is the Apocalypse?" The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 22.3 (Fall 2010).

_____. "Sanctifying Empire: Or the (Hopeful?) Paradox of Apocalysia." In John Walliss and Lee Quinby, eds., Reel Revelations: Apocalypse and Film, Apocalypse and Popular Culture Series 1 (Sheffield Phoenix, 2010).

_____. "Imagine There's No Heaven Canon." The Bible and Critical Theory. 6.3 (2010) (Monash University EPress).

_____. "The Hollywood Gospel and its Scholars: Lessons from Stigmata." Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 4.1 (2008, published 2010): 93-109.

_____. "Passover Plots: From Modern Fictions to Mark and Back Again." Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 3.2-3 (August-November2007; published Feb. 2010): 201-22.

_____. "'Realizing' Paul's Visions: The New Testament, Caravaggio, and Paxton's Frailty." Biblical Interpretation 18.1 (2010):28-51.

_____. "Bible Movies." In William L. Blizek, ed. The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film (London/New York: Continuum, 2009). Reprinted as The Bloomsbury Companion to Religion and Film (2013).

_____. "An Elephant in the Room: Historical, Critical, and Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible." With George Aichele and Peter Miscall. The Journal of Biblical Literature 128.2 (Summer 2009): 399-419.

_____. "The Passionas Horror Show: St. Mel of the Cross," The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 20 (Fall 2008).

_____. "Barabbas: The Cross that Damns." In David Shepherd, ed. Images of the Word: Hollywood's Bible and Beyond. Semeia Studies 54 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature,2008), pp. 113-29.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Potts, Michael. End of Summer (Tullahoma, TN: WordCrafts Press, 2011).

_____. From Field to Thicket. (North Carolina Writers' Network, 2006). Winner, 2006 Mary Belle Campbell Poetry Book Award, North Carolina Writers' Network