New Books in Religion

We laugh without thinking — but what if laughter is one of the most revealing human acts? In this episode of The Van Leer Institute Series On Ideas, Dr. Tikva Blaukopf Schein explores laughter not as humor, but as power. Across ancient Roman and rabbinic texts, laughter could strengthen leadership, threaten institutions, or expose hidden fear. The same laugh that comforts one audience can unsettle another. Our conversation moves from classical literature to contemporary academic life, touching on scholarship, family, identity, and the challenges facing Jewish and Israeli scholars today. Along the way emerges a surprising idea: societies become nervous about laughter precisely when they feel most fragile. Thoughtful, personal, and deeply relevant, this episode asks why humans so often laugh in moments of crisis — and what that laughter reveals about hope, survival, and meaning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Scholar, Serpent, Yogin, and Devotee: The Many Faces of Patañjali in Indian Traditions (Brill, 2025) illuminates the many faces of Patañjali in Indian traditions. Often regarded as an incarnation of the cosmic serpent Ādiśeṣa or Anantanāga, Patañjali is celebrated, in both story and art, as a grammarian, scholar and practitioner of yoga, physician-alchemist, medical authority, teacher, ascetic, and devotee of the Dancing Śiva (Naṭarāja). The first three chapters examine the literary works attributed to Patañjali, explore legendary accounts and beliefs associated with this multifaceted figure, and survey temples and shrines dedicated to the sage. The following five chapters trace the development of Patañjali's iconography from its earliest forms in Tamilnadu, South India, to contemporary examples. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In his debut work, Companionship and Virtue in Classical Sufism: The Contribution of al-Sulami (I.B. Tauris, 2024), Jason Welle sheds a new light on al-Sulami, an influential Sufi master during Sufism's formative era, by examine his work on suhba (companionship). Welle provides a historical reconstruction of Sufi companionship in Khurasan in the period, arguing that al-Sulami's concept of suhba, specifically among and between young disciples, envisioned the transformation of society as whole, not just the master-disciple relationship. Bringing debates in contemporary virtue ethics to bear on al-Sulami's spiritual method, the book offers an original analysis of the latter's thought that will be of interest to scholars of early Islam and classical Sufism as well as moral theologians interested in virtue ethics, character and friendship. Jason Welle is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Boston College, where he teach courses on Christian-Muslim Relations and Islamic Mysticism. Saman Nasser holds an MA in history from James Madison University, where he works as an educational staff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In Late Antiquity (ca. 200–600 CE), the world was alive with unseen forces—divine agents who influenced every aspect of daily life. For most ordinary people, religion was not found in temples, synagogues, and churches, but in lived experience as they interacted with the supernatural in a world of uncertainty and danger. In An Enchanted World, Michael Satlow uncovers a shared spiritual landscape that stretched beyond the confines of Judaism, Christianity, and the pantheon of Greek and Roman deities. From healing rituals to protective amulets, spiritual practices were a matter of necessity, transcending religious labels. To get by in the world required being on good terms with the right supernatural beings and being able to ward off the bad ones.Rejecting traditional narratives that focus on institutional religion and theological divisions, Satlow presents a compelling case for viewing the period through the lens of “lived religion.” This was not a religion of abstractions formulated by rabbis and priests, but an enchanted world populated by divine beings who had as much—if not more—agency as any person. Drawing on archaeological evidence, historical documents, and a rich trove of magical texts, Satlow vividly reconstructs how ordinary people lived in a world that crackled with the energy of the supernatural. His account reimagines the spiritual history of Late Antiquity, centering shared human fears and aspirations and challenging preconceived notions about religious boundaries. With An Enchanted World, Satlow offers a fresh perspective on a transformative period—one that has much to teach us even today about the role that spirituality can play in the secular world. New Books in Late Anqituiy is Presented by Ancient Jew Review Michael Satlow is professor of Judaic Studies and Religious Studies at Brown University Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Nurhaizatul Jamil's Faithful Transformations: Islamic Self-Help in Contemporary Singapore (U Illinois Press, 2025) is a complex and meticulous ethnography of recent trends in Islamic self-help circles based in Singapore. Drawing on research conducted with primarily young, college-educated and working professional Malay Muslim women, Jamil details how they negotiate aspirational pursuits related to faith, love, work, and beyond through participation in self-help seminars and classes. The role of the state in racializing minority Malay Muslim identities as backward and culturally deficient looms large in Jamil's discussion, as self-help teachers instruct their students operating within these structures to cultivate gratitude, remain optimistic, and redirect their efforts towards patience and piety. Themes of the book include gender and religious authority, Islamic discursive traditions, Malay minority history, state neoliberal projects and religious self-help discourse, projects of piety and self-improvement under conditions of racialized capitalism, and the intersections of belonging, class, gender, and state initiatives in twenty-first century Singapore. Jamil's work offers important new perspectives on global Islamic traditions by putting research and theory from Black, ethnic, feminist, and critical Muslim studies into conversation with the anthropology of Islam and of Southeast Asia. Dr. Nurhaizatul Jamil is an Associate Professor of Global South Studies at the Pratt Institute (USA). Dr. Jaclyn Michael is an Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (USA). She is the author of several articles on Muslim cultural representation, performance, and religious belonging in India and in the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Religion, Spirituality and Public Health: Competing and Complementary Epistemes (British Academy, 2025) focuses on exploring the role of different 'ways of knowing' or arriving at truth, i.e. epistemes, particularly those found in religious and alternative health milieus. While biomedical solutions offer a dominant narrative, these are articulated differently in global contexts. Moreover, individuals often draw upon alternative framings that are sometimes oppositional to and at other times engaged with directives from medical and governmental authorities. The focus of this volume is worldviews and epistemes that are often marginalised or rejected in dominant discourses -- from shamanism in Korea to African Pentecostalism in Britain, and from global online 'AntiVax' narratives to traditional Siddha medicine in South India. Detailed case studies explore the contested, competing and strategically aligned relationships between mainstream and marginal epistemes; between religious healing, spirituality and biomedicine; and between politics and belief. These explorations promote greater insight into how marginalised religious epistemes are employed. Which beliefs and practices are drawn upon to create meaningful and effective responses? And how can we better understand the depth and breadth of these reactions to design more successful public health strategies for future global health crises? Links Inform: here  Book: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In this fifth episode of Season 5, I interview Professor Thomas C. Schmidt, a historian who focuses on the New Testament, Patristics, and Eastern Christianity. An Associate Professor at Fairfield University, he is currently a 2025-2026 Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University. Drawing on his new book, Josephus and Jesus (OUP, 2025), we discuss in this Part II of a two-part series the writings of the ancient historian Josephus and what they reveal about the historical identity of Jesus of Nazareth as well as the events surrounding the rise of early Christianity. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison's Notes is the podcast of Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on our new Substack page, “Madison's Footnotes.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Most accounts of Christian leadership in the first two centuries focus on the diversity of leadership structures and the various cultural influences that impacted it. The First Pastors: Early Christianity's Vision for Ministry (Gorgias Press, 2026) demonstrates that within these structures and contexts early Christians shared a clear set of theological convictions about pastoral leadership. Through literary and theological analysis of relevant passages in the Apostolic Fathers and New Testament, The First Pastors demonstrates four shared convictions about pastoral ministry: (1) the necessity of a particular kind of virtue for pastoral leaders, (2) the authority of pastoral leaders, (3) the essentials of pastoral work, and (4) the reality of pastoral suffering. These shared convictions emerge from the variety of communities represented by these texts and are so well attested to that they suggest a much greater degree of unity than is presently assumed in the field. Moreover, even with the various dating issues surrounding the Apostolic Fathers and New Testament, the agreement between these sets of texts show second-century Christians carrying forward the convictions of the first century. Finally, they present an interesting example of the coexistence and interaction between unity and diversity in early Christianity: theological unity persisted in diverse communities with varying practices and contexts. Gorgias Press has generously offered a coupon code for listeners of this podcast. The coupon is valid until the end of 2026 on orders from the publisher's website here. Use code LAUNCH40% Leland Brown serves as a pastor in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina and is an adjunct professor at Phoenix Seminary. He studied patristics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and received his PhD with a focus on first- and second-century Christianity. He also serves as an editor for the London Lyceum. His research seeks to exposit how pastoral leadership has been understood and practiced in the history of the church. Jonathon Lookadoo is Associate Professor at the Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary in Seoul, South Korea. While his interests range widely over the world of early Christianity, he is the author of books on the Epistle of Barnabas, Ignatius of Antioch, and the Shepherd of Hermas, including The Christology of Ignatius of Antioch (Cascade, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Amir Saemi's exciting book Morality and Revelation in Islamic Thought and Beyond: A New Problem of Evil (Oxford UP, 2024) is a fascinating and deeply thought-provoking study that challenges how we think about scripture, morality, and divine authority. Saemi tackles what he calls the “New Problem of Evil,” a divinely prescribed problem of evil, which is the tension between the commands found in sacred texts, our own moral judgments, and the belief in a morally perfect God. Saemi demonstrates the limits of scripture-first approaches, which is to say that scripture is given precedence over our independent moral judgments in cases where the two conflict. He explores ethics-first solutions that allow the believer to take moral reasoning seriously, while also showing that scripture's injunctions can be understood as legal or social mandates. By tracing the arguments of Ashʿarites, Mu'tazilites, and other medieval Islamic thinkers, and developing alternative solutions, Saemi offers a methodical and historically grounded framework for reconciling moral judgment with scriptural authority. In our conversation, Amir and I explore how Islamic philosophers like al-Ghazālī, al-Rāzī, al-Fārābi, and others navigated the relationship between reason and revelation, and how we might approach morally troubling passages in scripture today, including through an ethics-first approach. We also discuss thick and thin moral concepts, the Moses Principle, and what it means to reconcile modern moral sensibilities with ancient texts. Amir shares insights on gendered morality, the ethical significance of the Abraham story, and the broader implications of his work for progressive Muslims and theists alike. This book is essential reading for readers interested in the ethics of interpretation, the challenges faced by contemporary religious communities when re-interpreting historical texts, theists wrestling with moral dilemmas, and anyone interested in the intersection of philosophy, religion, and ethics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In this fourth episode of Season 5, I interview Professor Thomas C. Schmidt, a historian who focuses on the New Testament, Patristics, and Eastern Christianity. An Associate Professor at Fairfield University, he is currently a 2025-2026 Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University. Drawing on his new book, Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ (Oxford UP, 2025), we discuss in this Part I of a two-part series the stupendous life of Josephus, the ancient historian who lived in both elite Jewish and Roman circles his whole life, as well as the cultural, religious, and political world of the New Testament as found in his main works. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison's Notes is the podcast of Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on our new Substack page, “Madison's Footnotes.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Derek Krueger Monastic Desires: Homoeroticism, Homophobia, and Love of God in Medieval Constantinople (Cambridge UP, 2026) The Byzantine Abbot Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) transgressed the homophobic norms of medieval Orthodox society. His longing for God was distinctly homoerotic, and he depicted union with the divine as a queer sort of marriage. His Orthodox theology of theosis, the deification of the entire person, meant that Symeon taught the salvation of all the parts of the body. But monks also desired the eradication of lust and the punishment of those who fell prey to it. Sermons and biblical commentary defined men who had sex with men as sodomites; and saints' lives warned of the consequences of same-sex desires. Those who renounced sex redirected their desire rather than eliminating it. Symeon's queer erotics shed light on other devotions distinctive to medieval Orthodoxy, including the veneration of saints and worship with icons. Monastic Desires makes a groundbreaking contribution to the history of sexuality and the history of Christianity. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Derek Krueger is emeritus professor of religious studies at UNC Greensboro, the author of multiple books including Liturgical Subjects: Biblical Narratives and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium, the editor of far more, and former editor of the book series Divinations: Rereading Late Antiquity. Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

What does it mean to tell the Passover story as a truly diverse people? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with editor Rabbi Sarah Berman to discuss Haggadah Shel Erev Rav: The Mixed Multitude Haggadah (CCAR Press, 2026), a bold and beautiful reimagining of the Passover seder. Inspired by the biblical image of the erev rav—the “mixed multitude” that left Egypt together—this Haggadah celebrates the many voices that make up the Jewish people. It invites readers to rediscover the Exodus story through four distinctive pathways: the voices of children, the experiences of women, the moral urgency of social justice, and the presence of God in the work of liberation. With an inclusive and accessible translation, thoughtful commentary, and vivid original artwork by Indian Jewish artist Siona Benjamin, Haggadah Shel Erev Rav blends deep tradition with contemporary insight. Created in celebration of Rabbi Angela W. Buchdahl's twentieth anniversary at Central Synagogue, the book offers a fresh lens on one of Judaism's most beloved rituals—helping families and communities transform the seder into a space of reflection, connection, and renewal. Together, Berman and Katz explore how the Passover story continues to evolve, what it means to honor many voices at the table, and how the ancient narrative of liberation can speak powerfully to modern Jewish life. About the Guest Rabbi Sarah Berman is the Director of Jewish Culture and Programming at Central synagogue. She is the editor of Haggadah Shel Erev Rav: The Mixed Multitude Haggadah. About the Host Marc Katz is the Senior rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid and the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

From its birth in seventh-century Arabia, Islam has been a faith on the move. In Worlds of Islam: A Global History (Basic Books, 2026), James McDougall explores its origins and transformations from Late Antiquity to the digital age. Over the span of a thousand years, armies, missionaries, and merchants carried it to the edges of Europe, the coasts of Southeast Asia, and the remote interior of China. By the nineteenth century, Islam encompassed a world of great diversity, from Muslim-ruled empires to nations where Muslims lived out their faith among many others. In the twentieth century, while monarchs in the Gulf asserted dynastic privilege and fundamentalists in Egypt and Pakistan preached social morality, revolutionaries from Algeria to Indonesia fought for national self-determination, and activists in North America and Europe campaigned for civil liberties and social justice. As empires fell and new superpowers rose, Muslims proved to be as adaptable and dynamic as modernity itself. Sweeping and authoritative, Worlds of Islam narrates the epic story of how Muslims emerged as a community, built empires, traversed the globe, came to number in the billions, and became modern. James McDougall is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History and a Fellow of Trinity College, University of Oxford. He previously taught at Princeton and at SOAS, London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Today's guest, John Kuhn, is the author of Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024). Making Pagans argues that drama played a powerful role in the articulation of religious difference in the seventeenth century. Examining the common scenes of pagan ritual that filled England's seventeenth-century stages—magical conjurations, oracular prophecies, barbaric triumphal parades, and group suicides—Kuhn traces these tropes across dozens of plays, from a range of authors including Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, John Dryden, and Philip Massinger. Tracing connections between the history of stagecraft and ethnological disciplines such as ethnography, antiquarianism, and early comparative religious writing, Kuhn shows how early modern repertory systems that leaned heavily on thrift and reuse produced an enduring theatrical vocabulary for understanding religious difference through the representation of paganism—a key term in the new taxonomy of world religions emerging at this time, and a frequent subject and motif in English drama of the era.Drawing together theater history, Atlantic studies, and the history of comparative religion, Making Pagans reconceptualizes the material and iterative practices of the theater as central to the construction of radical religious difference in early modernity and of the category of paganism as a tool of European self-definition and colonial ambition. Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Professor English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) and Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh UP, 2012). She is also a co-editor of the academic journal English Literary Renaissance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

How do people justify what others see as transgression? Taking that question to the Persian-Muslim and Latin-Christian worlds over the period 1200 to 1700, Justifying Transgression: Muslims, Christians, and the Law - 1200 to 1700(de Gruyter, 2023) shows that people in both these worlds invested considerable energy in worrying, debating, and writing about proscribed practices. It compares how people in the two worlds came to terms with the proscriptions of sodomy, idolatry, and usury. When historians speak of the gap between premodern practice and the legal theory of the time, they tend to ignore the myriad of justifications that filled this gap. Moreover, a focus on justification evens out many of the contrasts that have been alleged to exist between the two worlds, or the Muslim and Christian worlds more generally. The similarities outweigh the differences in the ways people came to terms with the various rules of divine law. The level of flexibility of the theologians and jurists in charge of divine law varied more over time and by topic than between the two worlds. Both worlds also saw the development of ever more sophisticated justifications. Amid the increasing complexity of justifications, a particular kind of reasoning emerged: that good outcomes are more important than upholding rules for their own sake. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In this third episode of Season 5, I interview Dr. R.J. Snell, a visiting instructor at Princeton University, the director of academic programs at the Witherspoon Institute, and the editor-in-chief of Public Discourse. Drawing on his book, Lost in the Chaos (2023), we discuss modern disenchantment, recent attempts at re-enchantment, and the virtue of hope from its pale imitators to its authentic examples, from Anglo-Saxon warriors to Soviet dissidents. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison's Notes is the podcast of Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on our new Substack page, “Madison's Footnotes.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Ken Chitwood's Borícua Muslims: Everyday Cosmopolitanism among Puerto Rican Converts to Islam (University of Texas Press, 2025), uses rich ethnographic fieldwork across multiple cities and the digital space to capture the complex lived realities of Puerto Rican Muslims both on the island and in the United States. The study is attuned to the archipelago's context that accents Puerto Rican Islam, such as through histories that link it to Andalusian Spain, and culture, especially through foodscapes. Puerto Rico also has a diverse Arab Muslim diasporic population, especially Palestinians. Due to this diversity of Muslim experiences, throughout the book there emerge conversations about the boundaries of Islam in relation to culture, ethnicity, and theology. At times, when these varied communities share ritual and communal space together, questions of authenticity unfold, such as over language or notions of piety. Despite moments of tension around tribalism and questions of legitimacy, we learn that often Islam for both these communities is understood through their experiences of colonialism, and so anti-colonial registers of Islam influence the solidarity building and social justice organizing that unites Puerto Rican and Palestinian Muslims. The book also has an accompanying Spotify playlist that you definitely should check out. This book will be of interest to anyone working on Islam in South America and/or North America, and Arab and Palestinian diasporic studies, and food studies. Ken Chitwood is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer with the Department for the Study of Religion at Universität Bayreuth and Affiliate of the University of Southern California's Center for Religion and Civic Culture. Shobhana Xavier is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Queen's University. More details about her research and scholarship may be found here. She may be reached at shobhana.xavier@queensu.ca. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In 1760, following the largest slave revolt in the eighteenth-century British Empire, the Afro-Caribbean word Obeah first appeared in British colonial law. In Archival Irruptions, Katharine Gerbner traces how British authorities in Jamaica came to criminalize Obeah, a practice that was variously seen as a healing method, an Africana religion, a science, and a form of witchcraft. Gerbner shows that in the years directly preceding its criminalization, for enslaved Africans and Maroons, Obeah was a prophetic practice tied to healing and death rites. Drawing on Moravian missionary archives, Gerbner theorizes these descriptions of African religious beliefs, rituals, and concepts as "irruptions" moments when Africana epistemologies break the narrative of a European-authored archival document. In these irruptions, we see European assertions of authority through the lens of Obeah. Moreover, we find that the modern category of religion is rooted in the histories of slavery, rebellion, and the criminalization of Black religious practices. Gerbner's search for archival irruptions not only creates an opportunity to write an alternative narration about Obeah; it provides a new methodology for all those conducting archival research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The beginnings of contemporary Jewry are often associated with Jewish figures in Western Europe such as Moses Mendelssohn. But in his book, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism, Eliyahu Stern offers a new and provocative narrative for understanding contemporary Jewish life, which begins in the East, with the leading East European mystic and rabbinic scholar of the 18th century, Elijah ben Solomon, or the “Vilna Gaon.” Eliyahu Stern joined in conversation with Jeremy Dauber for a discussion about the Vilna Gaon, his influence on modern Judaism, and why his legacy has been claimed by traditionalists, enlighteners, Zionists and the Orthodox. Winner of the 2012 Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication Finalist for the 2013 Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature Eliyahu Stern was the Tell fellow at the YIVO Institute in 2004. This book talk originally took place on November 7, 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In a world beset by climatic emergencies, the continuing resonance of the flood story is perhaps easy to understand. Whether in the tortured alpha male intensity of Russell Crowe's Noah, in Darren Aronofsky's eponymous 2014 film, or other recent derivations, the biblical narrative has become a lightning rod for gathering environmental anxieties. However, Philip C. Almond's masterful exploration of Western cultural history uncovers a far more complex Noah than is commonly recognised: not just the father of humanity but also the first shipbuilder, navigator, zookeeper, farmer, grape grower, and wine maker. Noah's pivotal significance is revealed as much in his forgotten secular as in his religious receptions, and their major impact on such disciplines as geology, geography, biology, and zoology. While Noah's many interpretations over two millennia might seem to offer a common message of hope, the author's sober conclusion to Noah and the Flood in Western Thought (Cambridge UP, 2025) is that deliverance now lies not in divine but rather in human hands. Philip C. Almond is Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought at The University of Queensland. A noted authority in the history of religion and of ideas, he has written many books on subjects as diverse as God, the Devil, the afterlife, witchcraft and witches, Adam and Eve, heaven and hell in Enlightenment England, and early modern demonic possession. His recent works include The Buddha: Life and Afterlife Between East and West (2024), Mary Magdalene: A Cultural History (2023), and The Antichrist: A New Biography (2020), all published by Cambridge University Press. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Twitter: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

What happens to the environment when the state enters previously self-governed villages in rural China? We explore this question in the Blang mountains in southwestern China, a region that was incorporated into the nascent people's republic of China from 1953 onwards, with immense consequences for Blang communities and ecologies. Our guest Daniel Mohseni Kabir Bäckström disentangles how the arrival of the state disrupted long-standing relations between Blang communities and the local mountain gods, making the land sick. And what Blang people can teach us about tackling the ongoing climate crisis. Daniel Mohseni Kabir Bäckström is a guest researcher at the Department of Culture, Religion, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oslo. Kenneth Bo Nielsen, your host, is a social anthropologist working at the University of Oslo where he also heads the Centre for South Asian Democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Hindu sacred geographies are shaped by interwoven webs of myth, ritual, and pilgrimage. Routes, Patterns, Ideologies: Navigating Sacred Sites in India (HASP, 2025) brings together essays that offer in-depth explorations of Hindu sacred spaces, focusing on the relationships between sites as a crucial dimension of their theological and social significance. Drawing on textual analysis, visual studies, and ethnographic insights, the contributors to this volume illuminate the patterns and mechanisms that link sacred sites into dynamic networks, demonstrating how sacrality is continually negotiated through evolving cultural, political, and theological landscapes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Bible is arguably the world's most influential book, but do we really know what it says? Every day across social media and in homes, businesses, and public spaces, people try to cut debate short by claiming that "the Bible says so!" However, they commonly disagree about what it actually does and doesn't say, particularly when it comes to socially significant issues. For instance, does the Bible say we should be on the lookout for an antichrist associated with the number 666? Does it say women shouldn't wear revealing clothing? Does it say it's okay to hit your kids?In The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture's Most Controversial Issues (St. Martin's Essentials, 2025), Dan McClellan leverages his popular "data over dogma" approach, and his years of experience in the academy and on social media, to lay out in clear and accessible ways what the data indicate the Bible does and doesn't say about issues ranging from homosexuality, abortion, and slavery to monotheism, inspiration, and even God's wife. The Bible Says So is an invaluable resource for our fractious times. Interviewees: Dan McClellan is an award-winning public scholar of the Bible. He has over one million followers on social media and is a host on the Data Over Dogma Podcast. Dan received his PhD from the University of Exeter and is currently an honorary fellow at Birmingham University's Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion. Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey out of Hasidism and Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

With fasting at an all-time high in popularity, here is an enlightening exploration into the history, science, and philosophy behind the practice—essential to many religions and wellness routines. Whether for philosophical, political, or health-related reasons, fasting marks a departure from daily routine. Based on extensive historical, scientific, and cultural research and reporting, John Oakes The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and the Promise of Doing Without (Avid Reader Press, 2024) illuminates the numerous facets of this act of self-deprivation. John interviews doctors, spiritual leaders, activists, and others who guide him through this practice—and embarks on fasts of his own—to deliver a book that supplies anyone curious about fasting with profound new understanding, appreciation, and inspiration. In recent years, fasting has become increasingly popular for a variety of reasons—from weight loss to detoxing, to the faithful who fast in prayer, to seekers pursuing mindfulness, to activists using hunger strikes as protest. Notable fasters include Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Gandhi, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Cesar Chavez, and a long list of others who have drawn on its power over the ages and across borders and cultures. The Fast looks at the complex science behind the jaw-dropping biological changes that occur inside the body when we fast. Metabolic switching can prompt repair and renewal down to the molecular level, providing benefits for those suffering from obesity and diabetes, cancer, epilepsy, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and more. Longer fasts can both reinvigorate the immune system and protect it against damage. Beyond the physical experience, fasting can be a great collective unifier, and it has been adopted by religions and political movements all over the world for millennia. Fasting is central to holy seasons and days such as Lent (Christianity), Ramadan (Islam), Yom Kippur (Judaism), Uposatha (Buddhism), and Ekadashi (Hinduism). On an individual level, devout ascetics who master self-deprivation to an extreme are believed to be closer to the divine, ascending to enlightenment or even sainthood. Fasting reminds us of the virtues of holding back, of not consuming all that we can. “Broad in scope and rich in insight” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), this book shows us that fasting is about much more than food: it is about taking control of your life in new and empowering ways and reconsidering your place in the world. John Oakes is the publisher of The Evergreen Review and the editor at large of OR Books. The Fast is his first book. Saman Nasser holds an M.A. in World History from James Madison University, where he currently works as an administrative staff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Manuela Ceballos' new book Between Dung and Blood: Purity, Sainthood, and Power in the Early Modern Western Mediterranean (University of California Press, 2025) engages with the life and legacies of two sixteenth-century saints; the Spanish Christian Teresa de Jesús (also known as Teresa of Avila) and the Moroccan Sufi Sidi Ridwan al-Januwi. The book draws from rich Arabic and Spanish sources that moves us between Morocco and Iberia. In the process, we learn that these saints both descent from families of converts and as such blood and bodily pollution operated as material and metaphoric symbols to define their identities. Through this generative comparison, we see how constructions of blood and dung circulate across these varied but entangled temporal geographies to constitute notions of impurity and purity, such as in the case of the deathly hemorrhaging experienced by Teresa. In end though blood is used to set different boundaries around religious or racial identities, and even at times gender norms. As such, the discourses that are utilized for such argumentations are not stable, and so blood and how it is deployed is not the same across the stories of these two saints and their enduring legacies nor does it refract power consistently. This book will be of interest to those who think about embodiment, material culture, the early modern Mediterranean world, and Christian-Muslim mysticism. Manuela Ceballos is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Shobhana Xavier is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Queen's University. More details about her research and scholarship may be found here. She may be reached at shobhana.xavier@queensu.ca. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

An innovative approach in the field of material culture and consumption studies, Life in the Georgian Parsonage: Morals, Material Goods and the English Clergy (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Jon Stobart looks at the houses, consumption and lifestyle of Church of England clergy in the long 18th century, linking moral debates and popular representations of the clergy to the material culture of their houses and their motivations as consumers.By focusing on ethical and moral dimensions of consumer practices, it challenges established readings of consumption in the long 18th century as an essentially secular process in which goods were markers of wealth, status and taste, by bringing the clergyman into the frame – their lives, their habits and their homes.Cross-disciplinary in its approach, combining material culture and religious and social history and sitting at the intersection of these fields, Life in the Georgian Parsonage fills a significant gap, enhancing in important ways our knowledge of this group as a crucial but understudied set of 18th-century consumers, while also contributing to understanding the parish clergy of England in the context of 18th-century society and culture. Bringing together a wide range of source material – from probate inventories to personal account books, satirical prints to sermons, diaries to designs for parsonages – the author reconstructs the material lives and household arrangements of the Georgian clergy in glorious detail. Examining the parish clergy over this period of profound social and religious change through the lens of consumption, and consumption through the lives of these clergymen, has a transformative impact both on these areas of enquiry and on our understanding of English society in the 18th century. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In recent surveys, one in four Canadians say they have no religion. A century ago, Canada was widely considered to be a Christian nation, and the vast majority of Canadians claimed they were devoutly religious. But some were determined to resist. In the 1920s and '30s, groups of militant unbelievers formed across Canada to push back against the dominance of religion. Towards a Godless Dominion: Unbelief in Interwar Canada by Dr. Elliot B. Hanowski (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023), explores both anti-religious activism and the organized opposition unbelievers faced from Christian Canada during the interwar period. Despite Christianity's prominence, anti-religious ideas were propagated by lectures in theatres, through newspapers, and out on the streets. Secularist groups in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver actively tried to win people away from religious belief. Looking at interwar controversies around religion, Hanowski shows how unbelievers were able to use these conflicts to get their skeptical message across to the public. Challenging the stereotype of Canada as a tolerant, secular nation, Towards a Godless Dominion returns to a time when intolerant forms of Christianity ruled a country that was considered more religious than the United States. Dr. Elliot Hanowski is an academic librarian at the University of Manitoba with a doctorate in Canadian history and one of the founders of the International Society for Historians of Atheism, Secularism, and Humanism. His research focuses specifically on the history of unbelief in Canada. 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 sit down with Dr. Tawni Tidwell, a biocultural anthropologist and Tibetan medicine doctor at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Together we discuss how Tibetan medicine approaches the challenges that arise in the course of meditation. Along the way, we talk about reconnecting with indigenous knowledge, establishing a more intimate relationship with the body and the land, and the importance of social context in supporting spiritual practice. If you want to hear scholars and practitioners engaging in deep conversations about the dark side of Asian religions and medicines, then subscribe to Black Beryl wherever you get your podcasts. Also check out our members-only benefits on Substack.com to see what our guests have shared with you. Enjoy the show! Resources related to this conversation: Tawni Tidwell, “Life in Suspension with Death: Biocultural Ontologies, Perceptual Cues, and Biomarkers for Tibetan Tukdam Postmortem Meditative State” (2024) Tawni Tidwell et al, “Effect of Tibetan Herbal Formulas on Symptom Duration Among Ambulatory Patients with Native SARS-CoV-2 Infection: A Retrospective Cohort Study” (2024) Tawni Tidwell, “Tibetan Medical Paradigms for the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: Understanding COVID-19, Microbiome Links, and Its Sowa Rigpa Nosology” (2021) New open access book! Crafting Potency: Sowa Rigpa Artisanship Across the Himalayas Tawni's research profile at the Center for Healthy Minds Please note that Tawni is not taking new patients at this time, but she recommends the American Tibetan Medical Association Become a paid subscriber on blackberyl.substack.com to unlock our members-only benefits, including downloading scholarly articles by Dr Tidwell Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University's Abington College, located near Philadelphia. See www.piercesalguero.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 Supreme Refuge: Durgā's Transformation Into the Hindu Great Goddess (SUNY Press, 2025) provides the first comprehensive examination of the Hindu Great Goddess Durgā, one of the most significant deities in the Hindu pantheon, who is celebrated annually during the Navarātra festival, a widely observed event across the Hindu world. Drawing on textual, inscriptional, and iconographic evidence, the study traces Durgā's evolution from a minor goddess to her identification as the Mahādevī, or Great Goddess. It presents an alternative chronology for hymnic materials, aligning them more closely with early iconographic depictions and offering new insights into misidentified attributes of the goddess. The work incorporates evidence from beyond South Asia to contextualize external influences on Durgā's persona and her central myths, particularly her defeat of the buffalo demon Mahiṣa. A detailed analysis of the myths in the influential Devī Māhātmya against earlier Purāṇic accounts highlights the text's sophisticated theological approach. Its strategy places Durgā in a transcendent role while asserting her as the supreme deity and ultimate refuge, accessible to both kings and commoners in dire need of her support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Can someone be Chinese and Muslim? For some academics, this has been a surprisingly fraught question, with some asserting that Chinese Muslims are not really Chinese, or not really Muslim. Rian Thum, in his book Islamic China: An Asian History (Harvard UP, 2025), strives to make Chinese Muslims “ordinary”, placing them in both Chinese and global history by following pilgrims, merchants, and others across the Ming, Qing, and Republican eras. Rian is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Manchester. A contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Nation, he is the author of The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History, winner of the Fairbank Prize for East Asian History from the American Historical Association and the Hsu Prize for East Asian Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Islamic China. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The rabbinic sages of antiquity are known for their sophisticated and creative reading of Scripture. But beginning in the third century CE, these sages also took on extensive commentary on another kind of text: the sages' own teachings. Focusing on the first collection attesting to this branch of scholarship, the oft-neglected Talmud Yerushalmi, The Rise of Talmud (Princeton University Press, 2025) argues that this new project presented a wide-ranging transformation of the sages' scholarly practice and self-perception. On the one hand, it engaged premises and methods distinct from those the sages applied to Scripture, such as textual criticism and the interpretation of texts in light of the individuals to whom they were attributed. On the other hand, this book shows, this distinct approach did not stem from preexisting differences in the conceptions of Scripture and rabbinic teachings: it reflected a broad reconceptualization of the tradition, diverging from how these teachings were construed by earlier generations. Recognizing these unique aspects of ancient Talmudic scholarship centers its development as a pivotal moment in Jewish intellectual history and offers a richer picture of rabbinic hermeneutics; it also allows us to situate it better among other scholarly traditions of the Greco-Roman world and to examine how different ideas, aims, and contexts shape textual scholarship—including our own. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review. Moulie Vidas is Associate Professor of Religion and the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University. Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Textiles, embroidered with religious imagery, express lay piety in public and private shrinesThis beautifully illustrated volume highlights Jain devotional textiles (choḍs) from the Ronald and Maxine Linde Collection at UCLA's Fowler Museum. Fashioned in the Indian states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra, these works of velvet and sateen cloth, lavishly embroidered with gold and silver gilt thread, depict Jain mythology, influential spiritual teachers, sacred sites, and ritual traditions. Visualizing Devotion: Jain Embroidered Shrine Hangings (U Washington Press, 2025) delves into the innovative material approaches taken by the creators of choḍs, the captivating religious stories they convey, and the social lives of these objects in Jain communities. They offer a mode of devotional patronage to lay people, who frequently commission them as gifts for places of worship in recognition of deceased relatives or upon completion of important rituals, such as monastic initiation or a lengthy fast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In this expanded edition to a groundbreaking work, now in paperback, Lincoln and the Jews: A History (NYU Press, 2025), Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell reveal how Abraham Lincoln's unprecedentedly inclusive relationship with American Jews broadened him as president, and, as a result, broadened America. A conversation with Professor Jonathan D. Sarna. Co-authored with collector and scholar Benjamin Shapell, the book began as a lush coffee-table volume built around Shapell's remarkable Civil War–era collection: letters, photographs, and documents that reveal Lincoln's Jewish connections in real time. It has since been reissued in paperback by NYU Press, making it far easier to teach, carry, and assign. The shift mirrors the project's purpose: from a beautiful artifact to a working tool for rethinking Lincoln's world. Sarna stresses that Lincoln didn't “know Jews” in the abstract; he knew particular Jews who mattered. Abraham Jonas, an early ally, saw Lincoln as presidential material and encouraged the Republican Party to build a coalition of “outsiders,” explicitly including Jews. Lincoln also developed ties with German-speaking Jewish “48ers,” refugees of the failed 1848 revolutions who brought democratic ideals and anti-slavery commitments. Even in Illinois, Lincoln's visits to Jewish clothing stores signaled a new kind of everyday encounter between Americans and Jewish merchants. The book opens with a table of concentric circles of relationships between Lincoln and the Jews. Equally important is Lincoln's religious formation. Raised in a Protestant culture steeped in the Hebrew Bible and divine providence, he drew heavily on biblical language. His letters and speeches are studded with scriptural echoes, reflecting a worldview in which Jews remain central to God's historical drama rather than a superseded people. This helps explain his “live and let live” stance toward religious difference at a time when some ministers were moving toward more exclusionary theologies. Our conversation touched on Lincoln's reference to Haman from the Book of Esther in a letter to Joshua Speed. In an age of deep biblical literacy, Haman was a recognizable symbol of evil, later applied by some Jews to Grant after General Orders No. 11. Sarna also recounted the visit of a self-proclaimed prophet named Monk, who asked Lincoln to endorse a plan to “free the Jews” worldwide. Lincoln's witty, biblically informed response (from the book of Joel) both acknowledged Jewish suffering abroad and rejected the idea of a special “Jewish problem” in the United States. We also explored how 19th-century debates over the Mortara affair in Italy—where a secretly baptized Jewish child was taken from his parents by papal authorities—intersected with American slavery. President Buchanan's refusal to condemn Rome, Sarna noted, reflected fears that criticizing Church-sanctioned child removal could invite scrutiny of the United States' own separation of enslaved families. Lincoln and the Jews ultimately invites us to place Jews back into the center of the American story. Lincoln's friendships, his Hebrew Bible–shaped imagination, and his commitment to equality created a landscape in which Jews were not an abstract “question,” but neighbors and citizens. To understand Lincoln fully, Sarna suggests, we must see the Jews who walked beside him—and to understand American Jewish history, we must see how deeply it is entwined with Lincoln's moral and political world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Jewish law, known as halakhah, is a unique legal system that has developed over a period of nearly two millennia, across multiple continents, and in innumerable different contexts. Dealing not only with ritual, Jewish law extends to virtually every aspect of life including ethics, business, war, and sex. This Handbook highlights foundational questions about the nature of Jewish law, emphasizing what distinguishes it from other legal systems and illuminating its vitality throughout history. The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law (Oxford UP, 2025) navigates core issues such as halakhah's authority, its interpretation, and the meaningfulness of an ancient legal system in a modern period. With contributions from an interdisciplinary cast of authors, the Handbook spans law, history, sociology, and religion. Its chapters draw from a wide range of sources, including traditional texts such as Mishnah and Talmud, rabbinical codes, and legal opinions known as responsa. Moreover, chapters addressing pressing modern issues cover the material from diverse denominational perspectives. As halakhah remains deeply woven into the fabric of Jewish life and scholarship, The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law offers readers an in-depth understanding of this rich and enduring legal tradition. Zev Eleff is President and Professor of American Jewish history at Gratz College. Roberta Rosenthal Kwall is the Raymond P. Niro Professor at DePaul University College of Law. Chaim Saiman is Chair in Jewish Law at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939. Mentioned in this episode: Ronit Irshai and Tanya Zion-Waldoks, Holy Rebellion: Religious Feminism and the Transformation of Judaism and Women's Rights in Israel (Brandeis University Press, 2024). Shari Rabin and Michael R. Cohen (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of American Jewish History (Oxford University Press, 2025). Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, Remix Judaism: Preserving Tradition in a Diverse World (‎Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022). Chaim N. Saiman, Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law (Princeton University Press, 2018). Benjamin Steiner, Translating the Ketubah: The Jewish Marriage Contract in America and England (University Alabama Press, 2025). Essays from the Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law: Chapter 15: Chaim Saiman, “Formalism in Jewish Law.” Chapter 19: Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, “Lawmaking in the Conservative Movement: A Balance of Law and Norms.” Chapter 21: Arye Edrei, “The Impact of Zionism on Jewish Law.” Chapter 24: Rachel Levmore and Steven Gotlib, “Divorce and Agunah: Halakhic Responses to Modernity.” Chapter 30: Zev Eleff, “Judaism and the Modern Family.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The open access Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe (Bloomsbury, 2025) offers readers a state-of-the-art guide to the public debates and scholarship on religious heritage in contemporary Europe. It contains articles by scholars, policy makers and heritage practitioners, who explore the key challenges facing the organizations, churches, and government bodies concerned with religion and heritage. Featuring polemics, case studies, and analysis, the volume is united by major themes,including Jewish, Muslim and Christian heritage, the (post)secular, interreligious heritage, sacred texts, museums, tourism, and contemporary art. The book explores the shifting significance of Europe's historic churches, synagogues, and mosques, many of which are caught between declining numbers of worshippers, increasing numbers of tourists, and the pressure to find new uses. It also examines the key role religious heritage plays in political discourse, both in the interest of including and excluding religious minorities. Todd H. Weir is Professor of History of Christianity and Director of the Centre for Religion and Heritage at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Lieke Wijnia is Head of Curation and Library at Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht, The Netherlands. James Bielo is an anthropologist and associate professor of religious studies at Northwestern University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Growing up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn as a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Orthodox Jewish community, Zalman Newfield was raised in an atmosphere of strict gender segregation, rigorous religious education, and nearly all-consuming ritual practices. Trained to be a Lubavitch emissary, he traveled around the world doing Jewish outreach to help usher in the messianic redemption. However, after exposure to the wider world, he abandoned the faith of his youth. Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey Out of Hasidism (Temple University Press, 2026) is Newfield's poignant and hopeful memoir about exiting Orthodoxy. He recounts asserting his individuality and taking the radical step of shaving his beard. Reflective about his upbringing, Newfield is open to and curious about a world beyond Brooklyn while also maintaining his profound bond with his family and Jewish tradition. He writes candidly about his emotional, intellectual, and social experiences in and out of the Lubavitch community. From pivotal moments of devastation, including the illness and death of his younger brother and of his revered spiritual leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to moments of joyful resolve, including the decision to pursue a doctorate and marry a non-Orthodox Jew, Newfield takes readers on his moving and impactful journey. Zalman Newfield is Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple). Visit him online at zalmannewfield.com. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The essays in Islamic Ecumene: Comparing Muslim Societies (Cornell UP, 2023) address the ways in which Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia and from sub-Saharan Africa to the steppes of Uzbekistan are members of a broad cultural unit. Although the Muslim inhabitants of these lands speak dozens of languages, represent numerous ethnic groups, and practice diverse forms of Islam, they are united by shared practices and worldviews shaped by religious identity. To highlight these commonalities, the co-editors invited a team of scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine Muslim societies in comparative and interconnected ways.  The result is a book that showcases ethics, education, architecture, the arts, modernization, political resistance, marriage, divorce, and death rituals. Using the insights and methods of historians, anthropologists, literary critics, art historians, political scientists, and sociologists, Islamic Ecumene seeks to understand Islamic identity as a dynamic phenomenon that is reflected in the multivalent practices of the more than one billion people across the planet who identify as Muslims. Eric Taliacozzo: John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University.  David S. Powers: Professor of Islamic studies at Cornell University.  Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the Western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on X @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In the midst of academic debates about the utility of the term “magic” and the cultural meaning of ancient words like mageia or khesheph, this Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic seeks to advance the discussion by separating out three topics essential to the very idea of magic. The three major sections of this volume address (1) indigenous terminologies for ambiguous or illicit ritual in antiquity; (2) the ancient texts, manuals, and artifacts commonly designated “magical” or used to represent ancient magic; and (3) a series of contexts, from the written word to materiality itself, to which the term “magic” might usefully pertain.The individual essays in this volume cover most of Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquity, with essays by both established and emergent scholars of ancient religions.In a burgeoning field of “magic studies” trying both to preserve and to justify critically the category itself, this volume brings new clarity and provocative insights. This will be an indispensable resource to all interested in magic in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, ancient Greece and Rome, Early Christianity and Judaism, Egypt through the Christian period, and also comparative and critical theory.Contributors are: Magali Bailliot, Gideon Bohak, Véronique Dasen, Albert de Jong, Jacco Dieleman, Esther Eidinow, David Frankfurter, Fritz Graf, Yuval Harari, Naomi Janowitz, Sarah Iles Johnston, Roy D. Kotansky, Arpad M. Nagy, Daniel Schwemer, Joseph E. Sanzo, Jacques van der Vliet, Andrew Wilburn. David Frankfurter holds the William Goodwin Aurelio Chair of the Appreciation of Scripture at Boston University. He joined the faculty of B.U. in the fall of 2010. A scholar of ancient Mediterranean religions with specialties in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature, magical texts, popular religion, and Egypt in the Roman and late antique periods, Frankfurter's particular interests revolve around theoretical issues like the place of magic in religion, the relationship of religion and violence, the nature of Christianization, and the representation of evil in culture.  Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Chips from a Calcutta Workshop: Comparative Religion in Nineteenth Century India (Cambridge University Press, 2025) explores the development and nature of comparative religion in nineteenth-century India. It focuses on the ideas and intellectual currents behind a range of thinkers who explored comparative religion in India, drawing on a variety of inspirations from Indian religions. Rather than emanate out of a European Christian set of politics as in the Western world, comparative religion emerged out of religious reform movements, including the Brāhmo Samaj in Bengal and the Arya Samaj in the Punjab. With chapters on Rammohan Roy, Debendranath Tagore, Keshab Chandra Sen, and Swami Vivekananda, the book includes a re-evaluation of familiar figures alongside lesser-known thinkers within an intellectual history of modern Indian comparative religion. Neilesh Bose is Professor of History at the University of Victoria. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In The Meeting of Rivers: Translating Religion in Early Modern India (Oxford UP, 2025), Elaine Fisher reconstructs Vīraśaiva origins from unstudied multilingual archives, overturning the conventional narrative of a monolingual Kannada bhakti movement protesting Sanskrit Brahmanism. The evidence reveals Vīraśaivism as multilingual from inception—its anti-caste inheritance deriving from Sanskrit Śaiva tradition, not rejecting it. Fisher proposes a "linguascape" model replacing unidirectional vernacularization with multidirectional flows through which local Vīraśaivisms were translated into being across south India. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In one of the most important books published in 2025—Dilemmas of Authenticity: The American Muslim Crisis of Faith, published by UNC Press—Zaid Adhami explores questions of religious doubt, authenticity, and crisis of faith. The book examines what many American Muslims describe as a crisis of faith, but Adhami shows that this crisis is less about losing belief and more about the pressures of authenticity. In a cultural moment where people are expected to be true to themselves and to believe sincerely, faith becomes something that must feel emotionally real and personally chosen. Drawing on ethnographic research and intimate conversations with American Muslims, Adhami shows how this demand for authenticity can produce doubt and anxiety, while also becoming a powerful ground for recommitment to tradition. The book challenges familiar narratives of secularization and religious decline, and instead offers a nuanced account of how faith is lived, questioned, and sustained in an age that privileges “authenticity.” The book would be of tremendous benefit to scholars and students of religion, anthropology, sociology, and American studies, as well as to those working on Islam in the United States. It will also resonate with scholars, students, and anyone who has tried to make sense of the complicated relationship between doubt, authenticity, and faith in contemporary American society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

"Sincerely held religious belief" is now a common phrase in discussions of American religious freedom, from opinions handed down by the US Supreme Court to local controversies. The "sincerity test" of religious belief has become a cornerstone of US jurisprudence, framing what counts as legitimate grounds for First Amendment claims in the eyes of the law. In Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers (U Chicago Press, 2022), Charles McCrary provides an original account of how sincerely held religious belief became the primary standard for determining what legally counts as authentic religion. McCrary skillfully traces the interlocking histories of American sincerity, religion, and secularism starting in the mid-nineteenth century. He analyzes a diverse archive, including Herman Melville's novel The Confidence-Man, vice-suppressing police, Spiritualist women accused of being fortune-tellers, eclectic conscientious objectors, secularization theorists, Black revolutionaries, and anti-LGBTQ litigants. Across this history, McCrary reveals how sincerity and sincerely held religious belief developed as technologies of secular governance, determining what does and doesn't entitle a person to receive protections from the state. This fresh analysis of secularism in the United States invites further reflection on the role of sincerity in public life and religious studies scholarship, asking why sincerity has come to matter so much in a supposedly "post-truth" era. Dr. Charles McCrary is a scholar of American religion, focusing on secularism, religious freedom, race, and science. His work has been published in academic journals including the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Religion & American Culture, and Religion. He also has written for popular outlets such as Religion & Politics, The Revealer, and The New Republic, many of which are linked in the show notes of this episode. Before coming to ASU, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Read more by Charles McCrary: "The Supreme Court and the Strange Politics of the 'Sincere Believer,'" Religion & Politics, Apr. 2022 "The Antisocial Strain of Sincere Religious Beliefs Is on the Rise," The New Republic, Apr. 2022 "The Baffling Legal Standard Fueling Religious Objections to Vaccine Mandates," The New Republic, Sept. 2021 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion