Tripp York, an instructor of religious studies at Elon, explores the lives of Christian anarchists who attempted to address materialism, racism and militarism in Living on Hope While Living in Babylon: The Christian Anarchists of the 20th Century, published this month by Wipf & Stock and York’s third book since 2007.
The book examines Christian anarchists and their efforts to confront Martin Luther King Jr.’s “triple axis of evil,” York said. The book grew out of his Master’s thesis at Duke University.
“These individuals, including Dorothy Day, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, as well as Clarence Jordan, lived lives that offered both a resistance of and an alternative to these ‘evils’ that King claimed plagued, and continues to plague, North American culture,” York said. “What makes the story of these Christian anarchists so interesting is that they received just as much criticism from their own churches as they did from state authorities.”
York received his undergraduate degree in 1998 from Trevecca Nazarene University in Tennessee, where he majored in religious studies and dramatic arts. He soon enrolled at Duke University to study theological ethics, graduating with his master’s degree in 2000.
By 2006, York has completed his doctoral dissertation, “Purpurea Corona: The Politics of Martyrdom,” at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary on the campus of Northwestern University. Purpurea Corona was the foundation of his first book – The Purple Crown: The Politics of Martyrdom – published by Herald Press in late 2007.
His second book, Anesthesia: A Brief Reflection on Contemporary Aesthetics, was published in late 2008. York also co-authored Calculated Futures: Theology, Ethics and Economics with D. Stephen Long and Nancey Ruth Fox. Calculated Futures was published by Baylor University Press in 2007 as well.
More books are forthcoming in 2009, including Tails of Subversion, a book for children that tells stories from the perspective of the animal as found in scripture – especially as their activity is often as dissident as the humans in scripture, York said.
