New Books In Religion

Dr. Deonnie Moodie is Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions at the University of Oklahoma. Her book, The Making of a Modern Temple and a Hindu City: Kālīghāṭ and Kolkata (Oxford University Press, 2018), examines the history of the Kalighat temple of Kolkata and how that temple has been a symbol for competing expressions of Bengali middle class modernity.Shandip Saha is associate professor of Religious Studies at Athabasca University, the world leader in the realm of distance education and open learning. His research interests focus on religion and politics in pre-modern North India and on the changing performance practices in devotional music in India and Pakistan.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dirk Jongkind is Senior Research Fellow in New Testament Text and Language, Tyndale House, University of Cambridge, and the editor of one of the most exciting projects in modern New Testament criticism. The Greek New Testament (Crossway, 2017), which he edited, and which has been co-published by Cambridge University Press and Crossway, is an ambitious attempt to recover as closely as possible an early text of the New Testament. So closely does this edition follow early manuscript preferences that it reproduces both an alternative ordering of the New Testament canon and elements of the text that have almost always been edited out of the editions with which we are most familiar – including spelling variations. Jongkind, together with the larger editorial team based at Tyndale House, Cambridge, has made the text freely available online. Ground-breaking in approach, beautiful in design, this edition has the potential to revolutionize our experience of reading the Greek New Testament.Crawford Gribben is a professo

In this podcast, I speak with Prof. Jane Caple about her recently published book, Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet (University of Hawaii Press, 2019). The revival of mass monasticism in Tibet in the early 1980s is one of the most extraordinary examples of religious resurgence in post-Mao China. Caple argues that in order to understand the shape that this revival has taken, we need to look beyond the Chinese state and take into account the multiple competing moral terrains that monastics must navigate in order to develop their institutions.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Dr. John Givens of the University of Rochester discusses classics of Russian literature such as The Brothers Karamazov and Dr. Zhivago, as well as texts of less renown to English-speaking audiences, such as Tolstoy’s Resurrection. These texts and others, Givens suggests, portray Christ apophatically: that is, by showing who Christ was not, in order to illuminate who Christ therefore must be. In addition to the novels themselves, Givens cites sources such as personal correspondence and important theological works, thus bringing an English-speaking public to greater depth of understanding than would be possible simply by reading Russian novels in translation. Though focused on a specific topic, Givens’ book is an excellent resource for anyone interested in familiarizing themselves with some of the “greats” of the Russian literary canon. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the

Why is the Indian Goddess sometimes figured as a corpse in Tantric Traditions? What is the significance of this? How is it different from when the Hindu god Shiva is figured as a corpse? Centered on the myth of Sati (whereby the Goddess was dismembered after her self-immolation), Anway Mukhopadhyay's new book The Goddess in Hindu-Tantric Traditions: Devī as Corpse (Routledge, 2018) features a fascinating take on why the “death” of the Goddess in this myth is no death at all, especially in contrast to Shiva as corpse.For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Countless sociological studies and surveys present a rather bleak picture of religion and religious engagement in the United States. Attendance at worship services remains very low and approximately one quarter of Americans indicate that they are not affiliated with any religion. This trend extends to the Jewish community, and American Jews are also experiencing decreasing synagogue attendance and low levels of adherence. However, Jack Wertheimer presents an alternative reading of American Jewish life in his new book, The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice their Religion Today (Princeton University Press, 2018). Wertheimer argues that American Jews are indeed engaging with Judaism, albeit in unique and unorthodox ways. Wertheimer analyses how certain American values and phenomena, such as hyper-individualism and “do-it-yourself” religion, are impacting the ways in which American Jews practice their religion and have paved the way for new forms and expressions of Judaism. Wertheimer also demonstrates how

John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) is widely recognised as the greatest epic poem in the English language – and it is buried in the commentary of thousands of other texts. William Poole, who is John Galsworthy Fellow and Tutor in English at New College, Oxford, has written what will be recognised as one of the most important contributions to this formidable body of scholarship. Milton and the Making of Paradise Lost (Harvard University Press, 2017) offers a new account of the author and of his best-known work. Structured in two parts, and with short but determinedly focused chapters, Poole’s new book reconstructs the intellectual world within which Milton began to read towards his greatest project, and comments upon the poem to illustrate the variety and capacity of its author’s intellectual range. Pulling together biography and criticism, Poole’s new book is an outstanding and superbly resourceful achievement – and one that will help many new readers to discover this greatest of literary texts.Crawford Gribb

Alan Watts (1915-1973) was one of the first to interpret Eastern wisdom for a Western audience. Joan Watts, Alan's eldest daughter, is the co-editor (along with her sister, Anne) of the new volume, The Collected letters of Alan Watts, out now in hardback and paperback from New World Library (2017). This is part one in a two-part series on the life of Alan Watts, featuring Joan and Anne Watts.Greg Soden is the host “Classical Ideas,” a podcast about religion and religious ideas. You can find it on iTunes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is there evidence to believe the Gospels? The Gospels―Matthew, Mark, Luke, John―are four accounts of Jesus’s life and teachings while on earth. But should we accept them as historically accurate? What evidence is there that the recorded events actually happened?In his new book Can We Trust the Gospels (Crossway, 2018), New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams examines evidence from non-Christian sources, assesses how accurately the four biblical accounts reflect the cultural context of their day, compares different accounts of the same events, and looks at how these texts were handed down throughout the centuries. Everyone from the skeptic to the scholar will find powerful arguments in favor of trusting the Gospels as trustworthy accounts of Jesus’s earthly life.Dr. Williams is the principal of Tyndale House, Cambridge, chair of the International Greek New Testament Project, and a member of the ESV Translation Oversight Committee.Jonathan Wright is a PhD student in New Testament at Midwestern Baptist Theologic

One of the most important trends within evangelicalism over the last half-century has been a renewal of Reformed theology. In this important new book, Jeffrey S. McDonald, who is a Presbyterian pastor in Bellevue, Nebraska, and an affiliate professor of church history at Sioux Falls Seminary, Omaha, reconstructs the life of one of the individuals who did most to make that renewal possible. John Gerstner and the Renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed Evangelicalism in Modern America (Pickwick, 2017) is the story of how one theologian moved ever closer to the margins of his mainstream denomination while simultaneously shaping the individuals and institutions that would do most to recover traditional theological claims within the broader movement of evangelicals. This impressive new work documents the failures as well as the successes of the individual who did more than almost any other to renew the reformation.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus o

In her new book, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019), Ann Gleig makes a major contribution to scholarship on American Buddhism. Gleig focuses on meditation-based convert Buddhist lineages in North America, and in particular she is interested in the generational changes underway in these groups. The first generations of convert Buddhist teachers often modernized the tradition in distinctly American ways, and now Gen X and millennial Buddhists are re-engaging with the tradition but bringing to their Buddhist practice and teaching new questions. The issues that they—and Gleig, in her study—tackle include mindfulness as a secular and commercialized practice, sex scandals, and new technologies. These Buddhists ask how their communities should address racism and social injustice, and what the goal of practice should be. Gleig sets her fine-grained ethnographic research within a larger discussion of Buddhist modernism, arguing that the convert Buddhism is better understood throug

Why are myths of the Indian Great Goddess couched in a conversation between a deposed king and forest-dwelling ascetic? What happens when we examine these myths as a literary whole, frame and all? What interpretive clues might we find in their very narrative design? Join us in the "flip interview" as as your New Books Network Hindu Studies host Raj Balkaran (University of Toronto School of Continuing Studied) is interviewed on his new book The Goddess and The King in Indian Myth: Ring Composition, Royal Power and The Dharmic Double Helix (Routledge, 2018) by guest-interviewer Craig Ginn from the University of Calgary. Learn how the narrative design of Indian Great Goddess myths and the manner in which that design highlights the Goddess' association with royal power.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anne Watts is one of the co-editors of the new book, The Collected letters of Alan Watts, released in January 2018 from New World Library. Anne Watts is a facilitator and educator who is committed to creating a world where everyone wins.  She honors each individual for the gift she or he is, and believes that love and nurturance are the most important aspects in human healing. She regularly leads workshops at the Esalen Institute and you can find her upcoming events online at www.annewatts.org.Greg Soden is the host “Classical Ideas,” a podcast about religion and religious ideas. You can find it on iTunes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Muhammad Qasim Zaman’s Islam in Pakistan: A History(Princeton University Press, 2018) is a landmark publication in the fields of Religious Studies, modern Islam, South Asian Islam, and by far the most important and monumental contribution to date in the study of Islam in Pakistan. This book takes the reader on an intellectual roller-coaster, that through mesmerizingly layered archival work, makes visible for the first time in the Euro-American academy the religious thought of a number of previously unknown yet extremely important actors, while thoroughly complicating conventional wisdom about a number of familiar religious and political actors. As has been the hallmark of Zaman’s previous scholarship that traverses early, medieval, and modern Islam, the main strength of Islam in Pakistan also lies in the way it seamlessly moves between the close and unexpected analyses of complex religious texts and the careful historicizing of the significance and ambiguities invested in those texts and in the careers of the

What does a typical American Catholic parish look like? Tricia Bruce, an affiliate of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society, argues in her new book that America’s largest denomination is held together by the differences it contains. Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church, published by Oxford University Press (2017), offers an outstanding account of how ecclesiastical structures have changed to take account of the tensions that can exist when “mobile people encounter immobile infrastructure.” Existing alongside the more familiar territorial and national parish structures, personal parishes allow believers with similar ethnic, linguistic, political or liturgical preferences to gather together. But does this represent a concession to the congregational impulse of American Protestantism, or to the market created by religious competition? Are personal parishes a symbol of the success or failure of American Catholicism? Do they represent new

Why does the narrative motif of ‘dialogue’ pervade Hindu texts?  What role does it serve?  Join me as I speak with Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad (Fellow of the British Academy, and distinguished professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University), co-editor of In Dialogue with Classical Indian Traditions: Encounter, Transformation and Interpretation (Routledge, 2019). This volume presents 13 fascinating studies on the role of dialogue in Indian religious tradition, all of which are touched on in the interview. This book is part of a series entitled "Dialogues in South Asian Traditions: Religion, Philosophy, Literature and History."For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Patrick S. McKay, an apostle of the Joint Conference of Restoration Branches, believes that the Latter Day Saint movement is fractured. But one day soon, he hopes, that will change. In his new book, Healing the Breach: Mormonism, Metaphors, and the Pieces of the Puzzle(Lulu Press, 2018), McKay has collected testimonies from various Latter Day Saints to reveal the rich tradition of similarity that exists among them. It is McKay’s intent to reunite the Latter Day Saint churches and to prove once and for all that they have more in common than previously thought.Each branch of the Latter Day Saint movement has a legacy of testimony that has been created, preserved, and transmitted since the movement’s founding, he asserts, and by revealing these testimonies, McKay hopes to promote an ecumenical ministry of healing, one that will unify the Latter Day Saint churches and encourage them to see their shared heritage. McKay’s musings are definitely worth a listen.Daniel P. Stone holds a PhD in American religious histor

Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade to force museums to return their sacred objects and allow them to rebury their kin. Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to help them recover their looted heritage from museums across the country. As senior curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Chip Colwell has navigated firsthand the questions of how to weigh the religious freedom of Native Americans against the academic freedom of scientists and whether the emptying of museum shelves elevates human rights or destroys a common heritage. Winner of the 2019 National Council on Public History Book Award, Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's Culture(University of Chicago Press, 2017) offers Colwell's personal account of the process of repatriation, following the trail of four objects as they were created, collected, and ultimately returned to their sources: a sculpture that i

Naomi Pullin, who is Assistant Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of Warwick, UK, has just published an outstanding account of Female Friends and the Making of Trans-Atlantic Quakerism, 1650-1750 (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Appearing in the prestigious series, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History, the book offers the first account of the ways in which the institutionalism of one of the most controversial of the mid-seventeenth century new religious movements enhanced opportunities for its female members in the period leading up to the American war of independence. Drawing on a massive range of archival sources, Pullin reconstructs the Meetings that monitored the lives of Quaker women and which gave permissions for everything from marriage to missionary work. Paying attention to change over time, and variation across space, Pullin’s book sets a new standard in the study of early modern religious movements.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s Univer

To what extent may we say that religion is a theatrical phenomenon, and that theatre is a religious experience? Can making sense of one help us make sense of the other? Join us as we dive into The Performative Ground of Religion and Theatre (Routledge, 2018) with its author David V. Mason (editor-in-chief for Ecumenica: Performance and Religion and the South Asia area editor for Asian Theatre Journal) who posits an intriguing parity between theatre and religion.  Drawing heavily from Hindu aesthetic theory and Hindu religious performance, Mason examines the phenomenology of religion in an attempt to better understanding of the phenomenology of theatre, arguing that religion can show us the ways in which theatre is not fake.For information about your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com/academiaLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices