Moral Apologetics Press is pleased to announce plans for a new series, Apologetics and Pop Culture. Individual volumes in this series will engage with artifacts from popular culture to dig deeper into weighty matters of worldview, philosophy, and theology, an approach modeled after St. Paul’s posture at Mars Hill reported in Acts 17. There the Apostle mines the rich cultural landscape of the Athenians to draw out nuggets of truth about God and human existence, to correct misconceptions, and to bring his audience to repentance and Christian faith. The Apologetics and Pop Culture Series aspires to these same goals.
Much like the Philosophy and Pop Culture movement inaugurated by William Irwin, this Moral Apologetics project provides a means for readers and writers alike to engage in substantive conversations based on pop culture relics that allow for a pre-existing connection. Television shows and movies occupy much of our time, and when we look closer as this series aims to, we find that they are rife with philosophical, theological, and apologetic significance. Apologetics and Pop Culture seeks to make possible apologetics at its best, through friendly conversations built on shared grounds.
Although not itself part of the series, David and Marybeth Baggett’s collection, Telling Tales: Intimations of the Sacred in Popular Culture—now officially launching!—provides the template for the Apologetics and Pop Culture series. All proceeds from Telling Tales, and a portion from all the books in the series, will support the work of the Center for the Foundations of Ethics at Houston Baptist University, including scholarships, conferences, and lectureships.
Call for Proposals
The Apologetics and Pop Culture series is seeking proposals for books that fit the spirit of the project as described above. Before crafting a proposal, potential editors should reach out to the series editor (mbaggett@hbu.edu) to discuss their ideas and get preliminary feedback and direction. A successful proposal will be for an edited collection of new essays by a variety of contributors, where individual entries center on a unifying pop culture element (television show, film, band, artist, director, etc.).
These submissions should come directly from prospective editors of such volumes and should include the following:
25-30 potential topics with memorable titles for corresponding chapters
Explanation of why the artifact would serve as a good starting point for apologetics arguments or discussions
Justification for their role as editor, including their qualifications
Current curriculum vitae
Discussion of why the project would be marketable or of reader interest
Interested editors should also keep the following in mind while crafting their proposals:
While contributions can be sophisticated or high brow, an intentional effort must be made to make the material accessible to the wider public
Volumes in the series should have 20-25 chapters of 3,000 to 4,000 words each
The writing of the volume should be punchy, engaging, pithy, memorable, and fun, written in the same vein of the cultural artifact under discussion
Contributors generally need a graduate degree, preferably with a track record of previous publications; contributors with enough interest but not much experience may be paired with a more seasoned collaborator
Even though this is an initiative of the Center for the Foundations of Ethics at Houston Baptist University, many and varied apologetics methods are acceptable and encouraged for use in such volumes. These include, but are not limited to, literary or imaginative apologetics, comparative religions, cultural apologetics, scientific apologetics, philosophical apologetics, historical apologetics, moral apologetics, and more
Proposals should be emailed to the series editor, Marybeth Baggett, at mbaggett@hbu.edu