New Books In Religion

In Elizabeth J. Harris' Buddhism in Five Minutes (Equinox Publishing, 2021), academic specialists offer answers to 75 questions about Buddhism that people curious about Buddhism might ask. The questions cover the Buddha, what the Buddha taught, Buddhist monasticism and the role of lay people, the historical development of Buddhism, Buddhist art, Buddhist ethics, Buddhist responses to other religions, and Buddhist thought on contemporary issues. They include: Who is the fat Buddha figure? Can we know what the historical Buddha taught? What is Nirvāṇa? Why do Buddhists meditate? Does Buddhism support gender equality? What is Zen Buddhism? Are Buddhists pacifist? What do Buddhists think about those who are LGBTQI? Are alcohol and drugs ever acceptable to Buddhists? How do Buddhists view Artificial Intelligence? Taken together the questions cover most aspects of Buddhist belief and practice in the contemporary world. The collection is sponsored by the UK Association for Buddhist Studies but contributors are drawn

In his new book cum manifesto, Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit (Wiley-Blackwell, 2021), legendary scholar of Islam Bruce Lawrence outlines his politico-conceptual manifesto for the study and place of Islam in the modern world. He does so by expounding, lyrically and brilliantly, on the key category of his book that also forms its title: "Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit.” Much of the book is devoted to elaborating and nuancing what these three categories mean to Lawrence and their significance to the craft of Islamic Studies today. He also delves on some other central themes such as the notion of Persianate Cosmopolis and its importance to the manifesto he details in this book. Analytically piercing and refreshingly unhinged, this manifesto should and will be widely read and debated. SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His book Defending Muhammad in Mo

In Afterlives of Affect: Science, Religion, and an Edgewalker’s Spirit (Duke UP, 2020), Matthew C. Watson considers the life and work of artist and Mayanist scholar Linda Schele (1942-1998) as a point of departure for what he calls an excitable anthropology. As part of a small collective of scholars who devised the first compelling arguments that Maya hieroglyphs were a fully grammatical writing system, Schele popularized the decipherment of hieroglyphs by developing narratives of Maya politics and religion in popular books and public workshops. In this experimental, person-centered ethnography, Watson shows how Schele’s sense of joyous discovery and affective engagement with research led her to traverse and disrupt borders between religion, science, art, life, death, and history. While acknowledging critiques of Schele’s work and the idea of discovery more generally, Watson contends that affect and wonder should lie at the heart of any reflexive anthropology. With this singular examination of Schele and the

In Kindred Spirits: Friendship and Resistance at the Edges of Modern Catholicism (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Brenna Moore takes us inside a global network of Catholic historians, theologians, poets, and activists who pushed against both the far-right surge in interwar Europe and the secularizing tendencies of the leftist movements active in the early to mid-twentieth century. With meticulous attention to the complexity of real lives, Brenna Moore explores how this group sought a middle way anchored in “spiritual friendship”—religiously meaningful friendship understood as uniquely capable of facing social and political challenges. Some of the figures are still well-known—philosopher Jacques Maritain, Nobel Prize laureate Gabriela Mistral, influential Islamicist Louis Massignon, poet of the Harlem renaissance Claude McKay—while others have unjustly faded from memory. Friendship, they believed, was a key to both divine and human realms, a means of accessing the transcendent while also engaging with our

How does Ultra-Orthodox Jewish literature describe the male body? What does the body represent? What is the ideal male body? In The Male Body in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Theology, published in 2021 by Pickwick Publications, Yakir Englander presents a philosophical-theological exploration of the different images of the male body in Ultra-Orthodox literature since the holocaust. The body is not incidental to this community but is the axis by which it tries to understand its meaning and its role in life. In the first part of the book, Englander explains the “problem of the body” and the different ways that Ultra-Orthodox theology deals with it. These different and even contradictory voices can teach the reader about the shifting of ideas inside Ultra-Orthodox thought in the last decades. The second part of the book focuses on the image of the ideal body and describes how the rabbis train their bodies to reach ultimate form. Yakir Englander is a scholar and an activist who teaches at the Academy for Jewish Religion

Raj Balkaran speaks with Laurie Patton, Professor of Religions and President at Middlebury College, about her scholarly journey, educational administration, poetry, trends in scholarship, the significance of Indian myth, and more. 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

Jake Johnson, author of Lying in the Middle: Musical Theater and Belief at the Heart of America (University of Illinois Press, 2021) takes as his subject the artifice of musicals—no one really bursts into song and dance to liven up a simple conversation and even the historical characters are not true-to-life. He argues that it is the very unreality of musicals that makes them powerful sites of belief—whether it is a reflection of the beliefs of the creators of the work, or what audiences want to believe about themselves. He focuses on how musicals serve large and small communities across America and shape local religious, political, cultural, and familial identities. Rather than using examples from the commercial Broadway theater, however, Johnson brings to life more idiosyncratic productions from the middle of America from the “Senior Follies,” a Ziegfeld-follies like production staffed by older performers to a re-imagining of The Sound of Music written for a polygamous community called the Fundamentalist Ch

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either.” The relationship between religion and state presents complex challenges to liberal democracies around the world. In this work, Gideon Sapir and David Statman Propose a comprehensive theory about state and religion relations, providing tools to think systematically about questions in this field Use a clear philosophical underpinning for its analysis Offer a detailed case study of the arrangements in Israel which encourages sensitivity to the unique circumstances of different countries State and Religion in Israel: A Philosophical-Legal Inquiry (Cambridge UP, 2019) begins with a philosophical analysis of the two main questions regarding the role of religion in liberal states: should such states institute a 'Wall of Separation' between state and religion? Should they offer religious practices and religious communities special protection? Sapir and Statman argue that liberalism in not committed to Separat

Based on comparative ethnographic research in four countries and three continents, Butinage: The Art of Religious Mobility (U Toronto Press, 2021) explores the notion of "religious butinage" as a conceptual framework intended to shed light on the dynamics of everyday religious practice. Derived from the French word butiner, which refers to the foraging activity of bees and other pollinating insects, this term is employed by the authors metaphorically to refer to the "to-ing and fro-ing" of believers between religious institutions. Focused on urban, predominantly Christian settings in Brazil, Kenya, Ghana, and Switzerland, Butinage examines commonalities and differences across the four case studies and identifies religious mobility as existing at the meeting points of religious-institutional rules and narratives, social norms, and individual agency and practice. Drawing on anglophone, francophone, and lusophone academic traditions, Butinage is dedicated to a dialogue between ethnographic findings and theoretic

Neha Sahgal, Associate Director, Research, at the Pew Research Center speaks of Pew’s ground-breaking research on Indian public opinion on religion. The data shows that Indians maintain a commitment to religious tolerance while also living highly religiously segregated lives. The survey report explores these themes in greater detail along with Indians’ attitudes about caste, religious observance, and a variety of other social and political issues. Find out more about the report here and here.  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

The Ansaru Allah Community, also known as the Nubian Islamic Hebrews (AAC/NIH) and later the Nuwaubians, is a deeply significant and controversial African American Muslim movement. Founded in Brooklyn in the 1960s, it spread through the prolific production and dissemination of literature and lecture tapes and became famous for continuously reinventing its belief system. In this book, Michael Muhammad Knight studies the development of AAC/NIH discourse over a period of thirty years, tracing a surprising consistency behind a facade of serial reinvention. It is popularly believed that the AAC/NIH community abandoned Islam for Black Israelite religion, UFO religion, and Egyptosophy. However, Knight sees coherence in AAC/NIH media, explaining how, in reality, the community taught that the Prophet Muhammad was a Hebrew who adhered to Israelite law; Muhammad’s heavenly ascension took place on a spaceship; and Abraham enlisted the help of a pharaonic regime to genetically engineer pigs as food for white people. Again

Astrologers play an important role in Indian society, but there are very few studies on their social identity and professional practices. Based on extensive fieldwork carried out in the city of Banaras, Words of Destiny: Practicing Astrology in North India (SUNY Press, 2021) shows how the Brahmanical scholarly tradition of astral sciences (jyotiḥśāstra) described in Sanskrit literature and taught at universities has been adapted and reformulated to meet the needs and questions of educated middle and upper classes in urban India: How to get a career promotion? How to choose the most suitable field of study for children? When is the best moment to move into a new house? The study of astrology challenges ready-made assumptions about the boundaries between "science" and "superstition," "rationality" and "magic." Rather than judging the validity of astrology as a knowledge system, Caterina Guenzi explores astrological counseling as a social practice and how it "works from within" for both astrologers and their cli

Founded in 1676 during a cosmopolitan early modern period, Mindröling monastery became a key site for Buddhist education and a Tibetan civilizational center. Its founders sought to systematize and institutionalize a worldview rooted in Buddhist philosophy, engaging with contemporaries from across Tibetan Buddhist schools while crystallizing what it meant to be part of their own Nyingma school. At the monastery, ritual performance, meditation, renunciation, and training in the skills of a bureaucrat or member of the literati went hand in hand. Studying at Mindröling entailed training the senses and cultivating the objects of the senses through poetry, ritual music, monastic dance, visual arts, and incense production, as well as medicine and astrology. Dominique Townsend investigates the ritual, artistic, and cultural practices inculcated at Mindröling to demonstrate how early modern Tibetans integrated Buddhist and worldly activities through training in aesthetics. Considering laypeople as well as monastics an

In The Book of Revelation and Its Eastern Commentators (Cambridge UP, 2021), T. C. Schmidt offers a new perspective on the formation of the New Testament by examining it simply as a Greco-Roman 'testament', a legal document of great authority in the ancient world. His work considers previously unexamined parallels between Greco-Roman juristic standards and the authorization of Christianity's holy texts. Recapitulating how Greco-Roman testaments were created and certified, he argues that the book of Revelation possessed many testamentary characteristics that were crucial for lending validity to the New Testament. Even so, Schmidt shows how Revelation fell out of favor amongst most Eastern Christian communities for over a thousand years until commentators rehabilitated its status and reintegrated it into the New Testament. Schmidt uncovers why so many Eastern churches neglected Revelation during this period, and then draws from Greco-Roman legal practice to describe how Eastern commentators successfully argued

Sanctified Sex: The Two-Thousand-Year Jewish Debate on Marital Intimacy (Jewish Publication Society, 2021) draws on two thousand years of rabbinic debates addressing competing aspirations for loving intimacy, passionate sexual union, and sanctity in marriage. What can Judaism contribute to our struggles to nurture love relationships? What halakhic precedents are relevant, and how are rulings changing? The rabbis, of course, seldom agree. Underlying their arguments are perennial debates: What kind of marital sex qualifies as ideal—sacred self-control of sexual desire or the holiness found in emotional and erotic intimacy? Is intercourse degrading in its physicality or the highest act of spiritual/mystical union? And should women or men (or both) wield ultimate say about what transpires in bed? Noam Sachs Zion guides us chronologically and steadily through fraught terrain: seminal biblical texts and their Talmudic interpretations; Talmud tales of three unusual rabbis and their marital bedrooms; medieval codifie

This book introduces readers to Indian philosophy by presenting the first integral English translation of Vaiśeṣikasūtra with the earliest extant commentary of Candrānanda on the old aphorisms of Vaiśeṣika school of Indian philosophy. A new reference work and a fundamental introduction to anyone interested in Indian and Comparative Philosophy, this book will be of interest to academics and students in the field of Classical Studies, Modern Philosophy and Asian Religions and Philosophies. 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

The Nuosu people, who were once overlords of vast tracts of farmland and forest in the uplands of southern Sichuan and neighboring provinces, are the largest division of the Yi ethnic group in southwest China. Their creation epic plots the origins of the cosmos, the sky and earth, and the living beings of land and water. This translation is a rare example in English of Indigenous ethnic literature from China. Transmitted in oral and written forms for centuries among the Nuosu, The Nuosu Book of Origins: A Creation Epic from Southwest China (U Washington Press, 2019) is performed by bimo priests and other tradition-bearers. Poetic in form, the narrative provides insights into how a clan- and caste-based society organizes itself, dictates ethics, relates to other ethnic groups, and adapts to a harsh environment. A comprehensive introduction to the translation describes the land and people, summarizes the work's themes, and discusses the significance of The Book of Origins for the understanding of folk epics, et

Ian Reader and John Shultz's Pilgrims Until We Die: Unending Pilgrimage in Shikoku (Oxford University Press, 2021)" explores the Shikoku pilgrimage by focusing on the themes of repetition and perpetual pilgrimage. Reader and Shultz employ a wide array of methods to portray how these itinerant pilgrims view their unending life on the trails. Some spend most of their life walking the pilgrimage, while others use cars and other methods of modern transportation, allowing them to complete the circuit hundreds of times. The Shikokubyō or the Shikoku illness is a common term that people use to describe a sense of addiction to the pilgrimage, revealing how the pilgrimage has become a part of their life. Based in extensive fieldwork this book shows that unending pilgrimage is the dominant theme of the Shikoku pilgrimage, and argues that this is not specific to Shikoku but found widely in global contexts, although it has barely been examined in studies of pilgrimage. It counteracts normative portrayals of pilgrimage as

Leonard Cohen's troubled relationship with God is here mapped onto his troubled relationships with sex and politics. Analysing Covenantal theology and its place in Cohen's work, Marcia Pally's From This Broken Hill I Sing to You: God, Sex, and Politics in the Work of Leonard Cohen (Bloomsbury, 2021) is the first to trace a consistent theology across sixty years of Cohen's writing, drawing on his Jewish heritage and its expression in his lyrics and poems. Cohen's commitment to covenant, and his anger at this God who made us so prone to failing it, undergird the faith, frustration, and sardonic taunting of Cohen's work. Both his faith and ire are traced through:  Cohen's unorthodox use of Jewish and Christian imagery  His writings about women, politics, and the Holocaust  His final theology, You Want It Darker, released three weeks before his death Professor Marcia Pally teaches at New York University, at Fordham University, and is an annual guest professor at Humboldt University’s Theology Faculty Learn mo

Gloria Maité Hernández's Savoring God: Comparative Theopoetics (Oxford UP, 2021) compares two mystical works central to the Christian Discalced Carmelite and the Hindu Bhakti traditions: the sixteenth-century Spanish Cántico espiritual (Spiritual Canticle), by John of the Cross, and the Sanskrit Rāsa Līlā, originated in the oral tradition. These texts are examined alongside theological commentaries: for the Cántico, the Comentarios written by John of the Cross on his own poem; for Rāsa Līlā, the foundational commentary by Srīdhara Swāmi along with commentaries by the sixteenth-century theologian Jīva Goswāmī, from the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava school, and other Gauḍīya theologians.  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