New Books In Religion

Melissa M. Wilcox received her doctorate in Religious Studies from U.C. Santa Barbara in 2000. Her transdisciplinary research program focuses on gender studies and queer studies in religion, with particular emphasis on the U.S. and Europe in the context of transnational queer and religious politics. Her books include Coming Out in Christianity: Religion, Identity, and Community (Indiana University Press, 2003); Sexuality and the World’s Religions (co-edited with David W. Machacek; ABC-CLIO, 2003); Queer Women and Religious Individualism (Indiana University Press, 2009); and Religion in Today’s World: Global Issues, Sociological Perspectives (Routledge, 2013). Her 2009 book received the annual book award from the Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association. Her newest book, Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody, is forthcoming in 2018 from the Sexual Cultures series at NYU Press, and she is currently working on two textbooks focused on sexuality and queer studies in reli

Jeffery D. Long and Michael G. Long's Nonviolence in the World's Religions: A Concise Introduction (Routledge, 2021) introduces the reader to the complex relationship between religion and nonviolence. The meanings of both religion and nonviolence are explored through engagement with nonviolence in Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese, Sikh, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Jain, and Pacific Island religious traditions. This is the ideal introduction to the relationship between religion and violence for undergraduate students, as well as for those in related fields, such as religious studies, peace and conflict studies, area studies, sociology, political science, and history. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Populism has been at the center of academic and non-academic discussions over the past century and one may argue that there has been an upsurge in populist movements in recent times, often with prominent religious ideals determining the course of political thought. Is populism, then, the source of politics in religion, or does political theology beat at the heart of populism? In this episode, Dr. Ulrich Schmiedel, Lecturer in Theology, Politics and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh, and Dr. Joshua Ralston, Reader in Christian-Muslim Relations at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, help listeners find answers to these questions with respect to Europe and America through a discussion of their book "The Spirit of Populism: Political Theologies in Polarized Times." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Today I talked to Christopher Clohessy about his book Angels Hastening: The Karbalāʾ Dreams (Gorgias Press, 2021), When, on an autumn Medina night in 61/680, the night that saw al-Ḥusayn killed, Umm Salama was torn from her sleep by an apparition of a long-dead Muḥammad, she slipped effortlessly into a progression of her co-religionists who, irrespective of status, gender or standing with God, were the recipients of dark and arresting visions. At the core of those Delphian dreams, peopled by angels or ğinn or esteemed forbears and textured with Iraqi dust and martyrs’ blood, was the Karbalāʾ event. Her dream would be recounted by an array of Muslim scholars, from al-Tirmiḏī, stellar pupil of al-Buḫārī, and Ibn ʿAsākir, untiring chronicler of Syrian history, to bibliophile theologian Ibn Ṭāʾūs and Egyptian polymath al-Suyūṭī. But this was not Umm Salama’s only otherworldly encounter and she was not the only one to have al-Ḥusayn’s fate disturb her nights. This is their story. Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in

Astrology in India: A Sociological Inquiry (Taylor & Francis, 2021) critically examines the larger world of astrology in India, its ubiquity and relationship with religion, caste, gender, class, and aspirations. It looks at astrology through an empirical and phenomenological lens, analyzing different meanings and questions associated with it. How do people see astrology—as magic, science, religion, or a knowledge system? The volume analyses the role of astrology in religious and social ceremonies; the interplay of faith and fear; beliefs, practices, mysticism, and skepticism in middle-class households; and gendered negotiations in everyday life. It also delves into how astrology has emerged as a livelihood and an industry, the continued fascination with it even in an era of technological advancement, and its domination of the vernacular media. Insightful and highly comprehensive, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of sociology, political sociology, social anthropology, cultural studies, gen

How can we each do our part to reduce inequality and help the poor, not just in our own communities but around the world? As a devout Christian, Bruce Wydick views helping the poor as an essential requirement of his faith. But is it enough just to give if it may not even be helping? We all have limited time and resources, so where do we allocate them? As an economist, Professor Wydick has the tools to figure out what works, and what works best. As he explains in Shrewd Samaritan: Faith, Economics, and the Road to Loving Our Global Neighbor (Thomas Nelson, 2019), he wants to not just be a Good Samaritan, but a Shrewd Samaritan. Regardless of the foundations of your own ethical system, this book can help you understand not just the latest research findings from development economics, but also all the different ways you can personally contribute to reducing global inequality. Bruce Wydick is a professor at the University of San Francisco who has conducted research on global development for over twenty-five years

Stef Aupers is professor of media culture in the Institute for Media Studies at the University of KU Leuven in the Netherlands. As a cultural sociologist, he studies the role of cultural meaning in the production, textual representation and consumption of media. Stef has published widely in international journals on the topics of religion, modern myth, conspiracy theories and the way these cultures are mediatized. We discuss the fascinating phenomenon of conspirituality, which refers to the overlap between conspiracies and spirituality, something we have seen explode with Covid, and now the attack by Russia on the Ukraine. In this conversation we dive into conspiracies, the spiritual turn, the sacralisation of the self, the New Age, Covid, and more. As always, these conversations bridge the gap between the intelligent practitioner and the academic expert and there is something for everybody in this rich conversation. Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can

In Producing Islam(s) in Canada: On Knowledge, Positionality and Politics (University of Toronto, 2021), Amélie Barras, Jennifer Selby, and Melanie Adrian bring together twenty-nine interdisciplinary scholars of all levels to engage and reflect on how Islam and Muslims in Canada has been studied from the 1970s to the present moment. Originating from a workshop, the contributors were asked to reflect on diverse approaches to the study of Islam and Muslims in Canada, especially as it centers gender, race, religion, class, and much more. For instance, the chapters include discussions on politics of research funding, hypervisibility of studies of the hijab, surveillance by the state, and issues integration and assimilation in the Muslim diaspora. The collection also includes wonderful interviews with senior scholars in the field, such as with Jasmin Zine, Karim H. Karim and Katherine Bullock. This edited volume is an important contribution to the field of Islam and Muslim studies in Canada, as it provides a neces

Brandon X used to be a member of a church called the “Church of God Preparing for the kingdom of God." The group holds an apocalyptic view of end times prophecy and the end of the world as we know it. Brandon left in 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Brad Warner is the author of several books on Zen. A Soto Zen priest, he is a punk bassist, filmmaker, Japanese-monster-movie marketer, and popular blogger based in Los Angeles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The first book on alcohol in pre-modern India, James McHugh's An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian Religion and History (Oxford UP, 2021) uses a wide range of sources from the Vedas to the Kamasutra to explore intoxicating drinks and styles of drinking, as well as sophisticated rationales for abstinence found in South Asia from the earliest Sanskrit written records through the second millennium CE. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Silicon Valley is known for its lavish perks, intense work culture, and spiritual gurus. Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley (Princeton UP, 2022) explores how tech companies are bringing religion into the workplace in ways that are replacing traditional places of worship, blurring the line between work and religion and transforming the very nature of spiritual experience in modern life. Over the past forty years, highly skilled workers have been devoting more time and energy to their jobs than ever before. They are also leaving churches, synagogues, and temples in droves—but they have not abandoned religion. Carolyn Chen spent more than five years in Silicon Valley, conducting a wealth of in-depth interviews and gaining unprecedented access to the best and brightest of the tech world. The result is a penetrating account of how work now satisfies workers’ needs for belonging, identity, purpose, and transcendence that religion once met. Chen argues that tech firms are offering spiritual

Dennis Kelley is an associate professor of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He received his Master’s and Doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with emphases in American Indian Religious Traditions, Religion in American Culture, and Myth and Ritual Theory. His most recent book is Tradition, Performance, and Religion in Native America: Ancestral Ways, Modern Selves, and is currently working on a book tentatively titled Having Had a Spiritual (Re)Awakening: Religion and Alcohol Addiction Recovery in Indian Country.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In Shelter Theology: The Religious Lives of People without Homes (Fortress Press, 2021), Susan J. Dunlap offers the theological fruits of time spent working as a chaplain with people without homes. After depicting the local history of Durham, North Carolina, she describes the prayer service she co-leads in a homeless shelter. Clients offer words of faith and encouragement that take the form of prayer, sayings, testimony, song, and short sermons. Dunlap describes both these forms of expression and their theological content. She asserts that these forms and beliefs are a means of survival and resistance in a hostile world. The ways they serve these purposes are further demonstrated in life stories told as testimonies, incorporating scripture, sayings, oral tradition, and popular culture. Dunlap concludes that white supremacy and neoliberalism have produced the problem of homelessness in America and are forms of idolatry. The faith and practices shared at the shelter are spiritual and theological resources for p

The story of how the Lisu of southwest China were evangelized one hundred years ago by the China Inland Mission is a familiar one in mission circles. The subsequent history of the Lisu church, however, is much less well known. Songs of the Lisu Hills: Practicing Christianity in Southwest China (Penn State University Press, 2020) brings this history up to date, recounting the unlikely story of how the Lisu maintained their faith through twenty-two years of government persecution and illuminating how Lisu Christians transformed the text-based religion brought by the missionaries into a faith centered around an embodied set of Christian practices. Based on ethnographic fieldwork as well as archival research, this volume documents the development of Lisu Christianity, both through larger social forces and through the stories of individual believers. It explores how the Lisu, most of whom remain subsistence farmers, have oriented their faith less around cognitive notions of belief and more around participation in

As the rabbi of a Sephardic synagogue for over twenty years who is himself of Ashkenazic descent and trained in Ashkenazic yeshivot, Rabbi Haim Jachter has a unique vantage point from which to observe the differences in customs and halachot between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. In Bridging Traditions: Demystifying Differences Between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews (Maggid, 2022), Rabbi Jachter applies his wide-ranging expertise to explaining an encyclopedic array of divergences between Ashkenazic and Sephardic halachic practice, while also capturing the diversity within different Sephardic communities.  Join us as we talk with Rabbi Haim Jachter about his recent book, Bridging Traditions. Rabbi Haim (Howard) Jachter, who lives with his wife and children in Teaneck, New Jersey, is a veteran teacher of Judaic studies at Torah Academy, serves as spiritual leader of Congregation Shaarei Orah, the Sephardic congregation of Teaneck, and Dayan on the Beit Din of Elizabeth. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies

Diana Dimitrova's book Rethinking the Body in South Asian Traditions (Routledge, 2020) analyses cultural questions related to representations of the body in South Asian traditions, human perceptions and attitudes toward the body in religious and cultural contexts, as well as the processes of interpreting notions of the body in religious and literary texts. Utilising an interdisciplinary perspective by means of textual study and ideological analysis, anthropological analysis, and phenomenological analysis, the book explores both insider- and outsider perspectives and issues related to the body from the 2nd century CE up to the present-day. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In Gilded Age Manhattan, Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant leaders agonized over the fate of traditional religious practice amid chaotic and multiplying pluralism. Massive immigration, the anonymity of urban life, and modernity’s rationalism, bureaucratization, and professionalization seemingly eviscerated the sense of religious community. Yet fears of religion’s demise were dramatically overblown. Jon Butler finds a spiritual hothouse in the supposed capital of American secularism. By the 1950s Manhattan was full of the sacred. Catholics, Jews, and Protestants peppered the borough with sanctuaries great and small. Manhattan became a center of religious publishing and broadcasting and was home to august spiritual reformers from Reinhold Niebuhr to Abraham Heschel, Dorothy Day, and Norman Vincent Peale. A host of white nontraditional groups met in midtown hotels, while black worshippers gathered in Harlem’s storefront churches. Though denied the ministry almost everywhere, women shaped the lived religion of con

In the late 1960s and on into the next decade, the American pastor and bestselling author Francis Schaeffer regularly received requests from evangelicals across North America seeking his help to replicate his innovative learning community, L'Abri, within their own contexts. At the same time, an innovative school called Regent College had started up in Vancouver, British Columbia, led by James Houston and offering serious theological education for laypeople. Before long, numerous admirers and attendees of L'Abri and of Regent had launched Christian "study centers" of their own—often based on or near university campuses—from Berkeley to Maryland. For evangelical baby boomers coming of age in the midst of unprecedented educational opportunity and cultural upheaval, these multifaceted communities inspired a generation to study, pray, and engage culture more faithfully—in the words of James M. Houston, "to think Christianly." In To Think Christianly: A History of L'Abri, Regent College, and the Christian Study Cen

In Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics (Harvard University Press, 2021), Sarah Shortall examines the twentieth-century transformation of Roman Catholicism by tracing the origins and evolution of the so-called nouvelle théologie. Developed in the interwar years by French Jesuits and Dominicans, “new theology” reimagined the Church’s relationship to public life, encouraging political activism, engaging with secular philosophy, and inspiring doctrinal changes adopted by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. By recoding political statements in the ostensibly apolitical language of doctrine, priests were able to enter into debates over fascism and communism, democracy and human rights, and colonialism and nuclear war. Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wo