Top 5 Favorite Academic Journal Articles of This Year

Along with my book and magazine reading list I like to throw in a healthy dose of academic journal articles. Sometimes they accompany current reading materials, like my foray into Second Wave Feminist literature. Sometimes they stand alone, like my research into the Radical Reformation. All in all, I love coming across new and old academic research on a myriad of subjects.

My favorite types of academic research are what I like to call “crossover” articles: this is where the author take multiple disciplines, fields, and subjects to analyze a specific topic. Most of the academic journal articles I list here will be of that nature, in no particular order.

“Unpardonable Sins: The Mentally Ill and Evangelicalism in America,” by John Weaver, in The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 23, no. 1, April 2011

[Abstract] This article explores the troubled relationship between evangelicals and the mentally ill community, focusing primarily on a Reformed/fundamentalist movement known as nouthetics or biblical counselling. I argue that for a large number of evangelicals, mentally ill people represent a diseased “other” population, in many ways as inherently “sinful” as gays and lesbians. Through this analysis, I…