Spotlight on CrossCurrents

Following the end of World War II, an American soldier named Joseph Cunneen, who served under General George Patton, wandered the streets of Paris. Afforded this opportunity by the GI Bill, he soaked up the sights of this historic and then-partially destroyed city, as well as its philosophical and theological traditions. A devout Catholic, he realized that many intelligent Americans of faith did not have easy access to European thought. Cunneen envisioned a journal where, in his words, readers could “look for an English-language reflection of the most advanced and interdisciplinary European Christian thought.” Working with a small group of like-minded individuals, Cunneen began to assemble essays by leading religious thinkers such as Karl Barth, Gabriel Marcel, Emil Brunner, and Nicolas Beryaev with the idea of compiling them into a scholarly theological journal.

In 1950, using a title thought up by his fiancé Sally’s mother, Cunneen independently published the first issue of CrossCurrents. While originally conceived of as a journal routed in Cunneen’s personal Catholic faith, it quickly expanded to include Protestant and Jewish perspectives as well. In the backdrop of a post-war world just beginning to come to grips with the horrors of the Holocaust, it became a place where religions could participate in an open dialogue to build mutual understanding, a mission it continues to this day more than seventy years later. It now publishes not only Jewish and Christian works but also scholarship by leading Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and Indigenous thinkers. Over twenty years ago, Atla participated in the digitization of the entire back catalog of CrossCurrents and today indexes the journal in Atla Religion Database^® (Atla RDB^®) and houses the full text of the catalog in AtlaSerials^® (Atlas^®). Atla Product Specialist Todd Aiello spoke to CrossCurrents Editor S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate about the journal’s history, scope, and contributions to the world of religion and theology.

CrossCurrents was a truly independent operation for its first four decades, with a small group of people responsible for editing, printing, and shipping thousands of copies across the country. Starting with a base of 300 subscribers at its launch, it grew to over 1700 subscribers in its first year and eventually grew to the thousands. It developed into what Rodriguez-Plate described as “a bridge between worlds, linking academics with activists and artists. We create a space where scholarly work meets interests in social justice.” A major goal of the journal is to make serious scholarly inquiry available outside of academia. This is reflected in its tagline: “Connecting the wisdom of the heart with the life of the mind and the experiences of the body.”

CrossCurrents built its reputation initially by bringing European philosophy and thought to the postwar United States, exposing its audience to works by scholars such as Paul Tillich, Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Martin Buber in the 1950s and 1960s. It remained at the forefront of its field by publishing early works of feminist theology in the 1960s, some of the first English-language works of Latin American Liberation Theology, and early works of the Black Theology movement. They have remained on the cutting edge by publishing works on environmental issues, LGBTQIA+ rights, the impact of the Global South on worldwide religious movements, the Black Lives Matter movement, and more, as well as a continuous focus on interreligious dialogue. They take a “big tent” approach to publication, covering interwoven subjects such as environmental ethics, de-colonial Christian theology, Jewish sociology, Islamic studies as influenced by media studies, and more. Topics that touch on art and education are also a major focus of the journal.

In 1990, the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, which is now known as the Association for Public Religion and Intellectual Life (APRIL), became the operator and publisher of CrossCurrents. APRIL continues to own the content of the journal, but it is now published in conjunction with the University of North Carolina Press, which oversees the typesetting, printing, and posting of issues and manages subscriptions. Joseph Cunneen and his wife Sally served as editors of the journal until the 1990s, and the journal has continued through the stewardship of William Birmingham, Kenneth Arnold, Charles Henderson, and now Rodriguez-Plate, whose first involvement with the journal was as a published scholar, and then as a guest editor before permanently joining the editorial board and then the board of directors for APRIL. He has served as Editor of CrossCurrents since 2020.

CrossCurrents remains as vital to the world of religious and theological scholarship as it did in its founding nearly seventy-five years ago. In its recent history, it has featured numerous thematic issues which can be accessed through Atlas and Atlas PLUS^®, including topics such as “Guilt and Impurity”, “Black Religions in Brazil”, and “Theopoetics.” They have also recently created more space to receive open submissions for publication, which they receive from around the world. These submissions are peer-reviewed, and those chosen for publication are then edited alongside the authors. The journal is proud to bring new voices to the broader public, and contributors have included priests, community organizers, imams, artists, rabbis, and poets. The journal is published quarterly.

When asked to summarize the scholarly significance of CrossCurrents, Rodriguez-Plate said, “[It is] encapsulated in our name. We are constantly flowing with new currents and adapting to new socio-religious environments. Sometimes we are paddling against the current, and other times seeming to float but always looking for new influences and confluences.” The journal’s editors constantly seek to collaborate with other groups in education and religious life. As Rodriguez-Plate put it,

We seek collaboration, the sharing of ideas, and the mutual promotion of social movements bending toward justice.

Atla is proud to house this journal and looks forward to what the future brings for this institution of modern religious thought.

View the latest information from CrossCurrents on the APRIL website: