New Books In Religion

Since the early days of Buddhism in China, monastics and laity alike have expressed a profound concern with the past. In voluminous historical works, they attempted to determine as precisely as possible the dates of events in the Buddha's life, seeking to iron out discrepancies in varying accounts and pinpoint when he delivered which sermons. Buddhist writers chronicled the history of the Dharma in China as well, compiling biographies of eminent monks and nuns and detailing the rise and decline in the religion's fortunes under various rulers. They searched for evidence of karma in the historical record and drew on prophecy to explain the past. John Kieschnick provides an innovative, expansive account of how Chinese Buddhists have sought to understand their history through a Buddhist lens. Exploring a series of themes in mainstream Buddhist historiographical works from the fifth to the twentieth century, he looks not so much for what they reveal about the people and events they describe as for what they tell u

In this episode Rabbi Marc Katz is in discussion with Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin about his new book Inviting God In: A Guide to Jewish Prayer (Central Conference of American Rabbis Press, 2025), an engaging and insightful commentary on the Shabbat evening and morning services. Designed for students of all ages, from bet mitzvah to adulthood, the book's relatable tone and discussion questions meaningfully engage readers in the worship service they are leading or attending. In the book, Rabbi Salkin breaks down each prayer and ritual, helping learners connect to the service with fresh insight and knowledge. With a blend of humor and depth, Inviting God In shows how the ancient words of prayer still speak to the challenges and joys of contemporary life. Our discussion, not only touches on the main themes and ideas in the book, but about prayer itself and the role that ritual plays in helping Jews connect with God. Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin is the author of numerous books, including Righteous Gentiles in the Hebrew Bibl

Faisal Devji's Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam (Yale UP, 2025) is a compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global historical actor. Until the nineteenth century, Islam was variously understood as a set of beliefs and practices. But after Muslims began to see their faith as an historical actor on the world stage, they needed to narrate Islam's birth anew as well as to imagine its possible death. Faisal Devji argues that this change, sparked by the crisis of Muslim sovereignty in the age of European empire, provided a way of thinking about agency in a global context: an Islam liberated from the authority of kings and clerics had the potential to represent the human race itself as a newly empirical reality. Ordinary Muslims, now recognized as the privileged representatives of Islam, were freed from traditional forms of Islamic authority. However, their conception of Islam as an impersonal actor in history meant that it could not be defined in either religious or political terms. Its

Jasbeer Mamalipurath’s TEDified Islam: Postsecular Storytelling in New Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) is the first of its kind in-depth examination of the TedTalk phenomenon and in particular how Islam and Muslim experiences are represented in these talks. Mamalipurath argues that TED Talks on Islam are part of a larger postsecular (the secular's renewed interest in faith) discourse. The book examines the perspectives of Muslim and non-Muslim TED viewers about TED's storytelling strategies. Finally, the book studies aspects of the authority that both Muslim and non-Muslim TED speakers represent and embody as ‘spokespersons of Islam.’ By doing so, this book offers an empirical and context-oriented understanding of postsecular storytelling by problematizing secular translations of Islam that are part of this TED talk universe. Themes the book explores include the nature of storytelling in a postsecular media environment, insider and outsider dynamics in how Islam is constructed and represented in digital med

Today we will be talking to Yehudah Halper about his new book, Averroes on Pathways to Divine Knowledge (Academic Studies Press, 2025). The twelfth-century Andalusian philosopher Averroes sought to understand the divine in a way independent of religious theology, by turning to the philosophical works of Aristotle and, to a lesser extent, Plato. In doing so, he established standards of scientific inquiry into God that were and remain highly influential on Jewish and Christian thought. Averroes, however, does not provide much in the way of demonstrative knowledge of God, and most of his arguments remain dialectical, rhetorical, or political. This volume explores the various pathways towards attaining divine knowledge that we find in Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics, and on Plato’s Republic, along with Averroes’ Epistle on Divine Knowledge, Decisive Treatise, and more. Yehuda Halper is Professor in the Department of Jewish Philosophy at Bar Ilan University. H

Hinduism in Five Minutes (Equinox Publishing, 2022) is an accessible and lively introduction to common questions about the practices, ideas, and narratives often identified as Hindu. Suitable for beginning students and the general reader. Steven W. Ramey is a Professor in Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, where he also directs the Asian Studies Program. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, online educator, 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

Law in a Culture of Theology: The Use of Canon Law by Parisian Theologians, ca. 1120-ca. 1220 (Routledge, 2025) considers the study of law within its intellectual environment. It demonstrates that theologians associated with the schools of Paris in the twelfth century, particularly Peter the Chanter and his circle, had a working knowledge of Romano-canonical tradition and thought about the human context of the law, which, in turn, reflected the environment in which each master worked. It begins by showing the extent to which law was woven into the fabric of the schools of Paris, and follows with individual case studies. These case studies--marriage in Hugh of St. Victor's De Sacramentis and Peter Lombard's Sententiae, excommunication in Peter the Chanter's Summa de sacramentis et animae consiliis, crusade activity and heresy in Robert of Couçon's Summa penitentiae, homicide in Robert of Flamborough's Liber poenitentialis, and the faces of greed in Thomas of Chobham's Summa confessorum--demonstrate how each t

Sweetening and Intensification: Currents Shaping Hindu Practices (SUNY Press, 2025) explores how these two currents are shaping the contours of contemporary Hindu worship, myth, and visual and material culture in contemporary South Asia and its diasporas. This volume focuses on two alternately converging and diverging currents that increasingly shape Hindu traditions--namely, sweetening and intensification. Sweetening is understood here to include the softening of deities' iconographies, the standardization of religious narratives, and the sanitization of ritual practices. Alongside this current exists intensification, which is understood as an insistence on the continuing relevance of rigorous, visceral, and frequently stigmatized practices and beliefs, often in response to new circumstances and challenges. This volume emphasizes an inclusive approach by bringing these two currents into sustained conversation. As Hindu traditions are increasingly expanding into new settings, including but not limited to new

In her new book, Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas (University of Washington Press, 2019), Karine Gagné explores how relations of reciprocity between land, humans, animals, and glaciers foster an ethics of care in the Himalayan communities of Ladakh. She explores the way these relations are changing due to climate change, the growth of the wage economy at the expense of traditional agricultural and pastoral lifestyles, and increased military presence resulting from Ladakh's status as a border area. This book will be of interest to those who are interested in the anthropology of ethics, ethics in Buddhist communities, and the anthropology of climate change. Kate Hartmann is a PhD candidate in Buddhist Studies at Harvard University. Her work explores issues of perception and materiality in Tibetan pilgrimage literature, and she can be reached at chartmann@fas.harvard.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member!

Naomi Bakes joins Jana Byars to talk about Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century (Reaktion Books, 2025), a book that explores the stories of early modern Protestant women, including Rose Thurgood, Anna Trapnel, and Jane Lead, who defied the religious authority of their age. Voices of Thunder illuminates the stories and beliefs of a dozen seventeenth-century radical Protestant women, including a Colchester woman who feared that her four children would starve to death and a former maidservant from Yorkshire who was granted an audience with the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Their belief in spiritual equality empowered them to resist the status quo, questioning the authority of those who sought to lord it over them. From mostly humble backgrounds, they found ways to make their voices heard, creating some of the earliest autobiographical accounts in English and allowing us a rare and precious glimpse of the lives and experiences of women in the early modern era. Learn more about you

Our Primary Expertise argues counter to the longstanding trend in the field by seeing religion as mundane and not unique, which means that the field's research and teaching can have relevance all across human culture, and well beyond academia. Russell McCutcheon offers a timely argument by taking seriously threats to the humanities now happening all across higher education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Algerian and Christian are two words that many people do not put together. Dr. Patrick Brittenden does. In this episode, we talk with Patrick about his new book Algerian and Christian: Christian Theological Formation, Identity and Mission in Contemporary Algeria (Regnum Books International, 2025). He invites readers into the complex, often painful, yet deeply hopeful journey of following Jesus in a land where faith in Christ is seen as foreign. In a country founded on a vision of being irreducibly Muslim and Arab, what does it mean to be both fully Algerian and fully Christian? Through the lenses of Berber identity, Algerian Islam, and the influence of state education, Brittenden offers a compassionate and contextual approach to theological formation. At the heart of this book is the idea of liminality—the experience of living between worlds. While often marked by pain and marginalization, this in-between space can also become a place of freedom, transformation, and fruitful mission. This is a book about pain

Louise Nyholm Kallestrup joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, The Construction of Witchcraft in Early Modern Denmark, 1536-1617 (Routledge, 2025) This book examines how the experience of witchcraft developed and evolved from the Lutheran Evangelical Reformation of Denmark 1536 to the celebration of the Lutheran centennial of 1617. As well as exploring witchcraft, this volume is a portrait of Denmark and how religion and politics in the 16th and 17th centuries were impossible to separate. It was in this period from 1536 to 1617 that witchcraft went from an offence condemned in the Bible and prohibited in the medieval Law of Jutland, to being described in detail as the worst of crimes. Witchcraft evolved from being defined as imposing harm to someone or something, to being a mockery of God. Approaching the theme from the new history of experience, this book refers to process as the construction of witchcraft as a crime. Contributions draw on a wide range of textual and visual sources, and bring together

The Concept of Mind in Hindu Tantra (Routledge, 2024) presents an account of the concept of mind in Hindu Tantra through a study of religious and philosophical texts in the medieval period. It will be of interest to researchers in the field of Religious Studies, Asian Religion, Hindu Studies, Indian philosophy and comparative philosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

With implications for the history of religion and art alike, an exploration of the lasting influence of Christian liturgy across a range of media. Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy (Reaktion Books, 2025) offers a captivating journey through the history of religious rituals in Western Europe, showcasing the profound impact of Christian liturgy on art, literature, music, and architecture. Through ten evocative stories, it explores medieval rituals and their cultural influence up to the present day, providing fresh insights into the enduring legacy of the liturgy as an expression of human emotion and religious experience. Accessible to all, this guide provides translations and explanations to uncover the hidden treasures of ancient rites and their lasting significance, appealing to those seeking a deeper understanding of Western liturgical traditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingc

Kenneth G. Appold joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Luther and the Peasants: Religion, Ritual, and the Revolt of 1525 (Oxford UP, 2025).  The German Peasants' Revolts of 1525 were a defining moment both for the Protestant Reformation and the history of European culture. But while the conflicts are well-studied, they are typically analyzed today from political and socioeconomic perspectives, whereas the protagonists themselves framed them in religious and theological terms. Luther and the Peasants takes these perspectives seriously to offer a novel and timely reinterpretation of the uprisings. A detailed examination of peasants' religious lives reveals commitments to peace, social harmony, and the environment that came into conflict with spiritual priorities of the Protestant Reformation, notably with those of Martin Luther. Drawing on the peasants' own documents, such as the famous manifesto The Twelve Articles, the book provides a thorough re-examination their actions, including their negotiations

What do we mean when we talk about antisemitism? A thoughtful, vital new intervention from the award-winning historian. For most of history, antisemitism has been understood as a menace from Europe’s political Right, the province of blood-and-soil ethno-nativists who built on Christendom’s long-standing suspicion of its Jewish population and infused it with racist pseudo-science. Such threats culminated in the nightmare of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. The landscape is very different now, as Mark Mazower argues in On Antisemitism: A Word in History (Penguin Press, 2025). More than four-fifths of the world’s Jews now live in Israel and the United States, with the former’s military dominance of its region guaranteed by the latter while the loudest voices decrying antisemitism see it coming from the Left not the Right. Mazower clearly and carefully shows us how we got here, seeking to illuminate rather than blame. Very few words have the punch of ‘antisemitism’ and yet no term is more liable to be misunderstoo

In this episode, Hizer Mir and Salman Sayyid continue the conversation with Professor Sherman Jackson, discussing his work on the Islamic secular, Islamic studies and the state. The second half of this special episode discusses religious pluralism, the modern state and the secular, and the relationship between Sharia and the political. Sherman Jackson holds the King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture at the University of Southern California, where he is also Professor of Religion and of American Studies and Ethnicity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Indian Alchemy: Sources and Contexts (Oxford UP, 2025) serves to expand readers' understanding of what it meant to practice alchemy on the Indian subcontinent. With its broad selection of examined themes, this collection offers a detailed and comprehensive investigation of the Indian alchemical idiom and the beliefs and practices of its practitioners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Today I talked to Elliott Rabin about his book The Biblical Hero: Portraits in Nobility and Fallibility (Jewish Publication Society, 2020). Approaching the Bible in an original way—comparing biblical heroes to heroes in world literature—Rabin addresses a core biblical question: What is the Bible telling us about what it means to be a hero? Focusing on the lives of six major biblical characters—Moses, Samson, David, Esther, Abraham, and Jacob—Rabin examines their resemblance to hero types found in (and perhaps drawn from) other literatures and analyzes why the Bible depicts its heroes less gloriously than do the texts of other cultures. Matthew Miller is a graduate of Yeshivat Yesodei HaTorah. He studied Jewish Studies and Linguistics at McGill for his BA and completed an MA in Hebrew Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. He works with Jewish organizations in media and content distribution, such as TheHabura.com and RabbiEfremGoldberg.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoice