Review of When the Roll is Called: Trauma and the Soul of American Evangelicalism

There are books that offer a radically new perspective on old topics. Such is the case with When the Roll Is Called: Trauma and the Soul of American Evangelicalism. In this review essay, the author examines the fresh perspective that psychoanalysis can offer to religion as psychologist/psychoanalyst Marie Hoffman focuses on the trauma that she perceives has lain at the foundation of modern evangelicalism. This trauma, she asserts, has led to incalculable suffering in “believers” who have not realized how far some of evangelicalism has deviated from the message of Christ. The author examines Hoffman’s contention that dualisms prevailed as a result of trauma in the lives of some of evangelicalism’s progenitors, and also as a result of the American Civil War that prepared the soil for reception of this apocalyptic theology. After reviewing Hoffman’s ideas, the author adds theological expansion to the book’s perspective on eschatology.     

The impact of violations on uncertainty and the consequences for attractiveness

This investigation aimed at extending past research on expectation violations by arguing that violations vary both in valance and in their influence on uncertainty and that the combination of valence and uncertainty states conjointly influences judgments of a violator's social attractiveness. In explaining the predicted variance in uncertainty following violations, a distinction is proposed between congruent violations (i.e., behaviors that are more intense instantiations of a previously displayed message) and incongruent violations (i.e., behaviors that are opposite in meaning from previously displayed messages). Five models for explaining violation effects are contrasted. Results (a) confirm that violations differ in their impact on uncertainty, (b) generally support the validity of the proposed distinction between congruent and incongruent violations, and show that the inclusion of uncertainty and valence in models of violation outcomes accounts for greater variance in social attraction than either one separately.     

Jesus and Menachem: A Book Review

This article reviews Siegfried E. Van Praag’s Jesus and Menachem: A Historical Novel in the Time of the Second Temple, translated by Lewis Kaplan.     

A psychodynamic hermeneutic of the fall story: Genesis 2:25–3:24: Through a psychological lens

Genesis 3 is a theological myth in the form of a dramatic narrative of extraordinary literary quality which attempts to take account of the righteousness of God and the problem of pain in the created universe. It is an ancient Mesopotamian story which, appears in the Gilgamesh Epic as well as in Enuma Elis and was edited by the Yahwist theologian for the Genesis account to make it fit the essential requirements of an early Hebrew theological woridview. To appreciate its full weight the passage must be read through the lens of theological reflection, exegetical explication, literary criticism, and psychological analysis. This article suggests a way in which viewing the text through a psychological lens illumines the literary structure, the exegetical implications, and the theological interpretation of the story of the fall of humanity into pain, perplexity, and alienation.J. Harold Ellens, is Executive Director Emeritus of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, Founding Editor and Editor in Chief Emeritus of theJournal of Psychology and Christianity, a retired Presbyterian pastor and theologian, and a licensed psychotherapist. He holds graduate degrees of MDiv from Calvin Theological Seminary, a ThM from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a PhD from Wayne State University.