New Books in Religion
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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2501
John Cornwell, “The Dark Box: A Secret History ...
I’ve never been in a confessional box, but I’ve seen a lot of them in films. And if the depiction of them in films is in any way a reflection of popular attitudes toward confession, then I can say with some confidence that the act has a rather poor rep...
57 min
2502
Nathan Schneider. “God in Proof: The Story of a...
Nathan Schneider‘s monograph, God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet (University of California Press, 2013), explores the timeless challenge of how to explain God. Are such explanations rational?
57 min
2503
Lincoln Harvey, “A Brief Theology of Sport” (SC...
Does God care who wins the game? According to a recent survey, plenty of American fans think so. The Public Religion Research Institute found that a quarter of fans said that they had prayed to God for a favorable outcome to a game.
48 min
2504
Kathleen D. Singh, “The Grace in Dying: A Messa...
In this brilliantly conceived and beautifully written book, Kathleen Dowling Singh illuminates the profound psychological and spiritual transformations experiences by the dying as the natural process of death reconnects them with the source of their be...
47 min
2505
Ayesha Chaudhry, “Domestic Violence and the Isl...
How do people make sense of their scriptures when they do not align with the way they envision these texts? This problem is faced by many contemporary believers and is especially challenging in relation to passages that go against one’s vision of a gen...
45 min
2506
Joshua Dubler, “Down in the Chapel: Religious L...
In almost every prison movie you see, there is a group of fanatically religious inmates. They are almost always led by a charismatic leader, an outsized father-figure who is loved by his acolytes and feared by nearly everyone else.
66 min
2507
Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Terror in the Land of...
I have a colleague at Newman who takes students to Guatemala every summer. Since I arrived she’s encouraged me to join her. I would stay with the order of sisters who sponsor our university. I’d learn at least a few words of rudimentary Spanish.
40 min
2508
Ellen J. Amster, “Medicine and the Saints” (Uni...
What is the interplay between the physical human body and the body politic? This question is at the heart of Ellen J. Amster‘s Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956 (University of Texas Press, 2013).
76 min
2509
Josef Stern, “The Matter and Form of Maimonides...
The medieval Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides’ most famous work, The Guide of the Perplexed, has been interpreted variously as an attempt to reconcile reason and religion, as a guide to philosophers on ruling the community while concealing the truth,
68 min
2510
Karen Pechilis, “South Asian Religions: Traditi...
If you’re going to teach a broadly themed survey course, you’ll probably need to assign some readings. One option is to assemble one of those photocopied course readers, full of excerpts taken from different sources. However,
66 min
2511
Steven Engler and Michael Stausberg, eds., “The...
In almost every graduate program in Religious Studies and many undergraduate majors you will find a course on theories and methods in the study of religion. Usually, in these types of courses you will find lots of Freud, Marx,
55 min
2512
Ahmad Atif Ahmad, “The Fatigue of the SharÄ«’a”...
In the book, The Fatigue of the SharÄ«’a (Palgrave, 2012), Ahmad Atif Ahmad explores a centuries-old debate about the permanence, or impermanence, of God’s law, and guidance, in the lives of Muslims. Could God’s guidance simply cease to be accessible a...
60 min
2513
Barbara Bonner, “Inspiring Generosity” (Wisdom ...
“You can measure the depth of people’s awakening by how they serve others.” This quotation by Kobo Daishi, the ninth-century Japanese Buddhist monk, is only one of many observations that fill this small volume with words of wisdom and compassion.
43 min
2514
Afsar Mohammad, “The Festival of Pirs: Popular ...
Several studies about Islam in Asian contexts highlight the pluralistic environment that Muslims inhabit and interplay of various religious traditions that color local practice and thought. In The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in ...
20 min
2515
Sarah Pessin, “Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire...
Neoplatonists, including the 11th century Jewish philosopher-poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol, are often saddled with a cosmology considered either as outdated science or a kind of “invisible floating Kansas” in which spatiotemporal talk isn’t really about spa...
74 min
2516
John L. Modern, “Secularism in Antebellum Ameri...
The notion of secularism is something that has a ubiquitous presence in contemporary society. And while there is a general everyday use of this term, meaning ‘not religious,’ the understanding of this term has shifted throughout time.
67 min
2517
Rebecca Williams, “Muhammad and the Supernatura...
Rebecca Williams‘ book Muhammad and the Supernatural: Medieval Arab Views (Routledge, 2013) is one of the newest additions to the Routledge Studies in Classic Islam series. Despite the Qur’anic proclamation that the only “miracle” which served as proof...
71 min
2518
Judith Orloff, “The Ecstasy Of Surrender: 12 Su...
Surrender is a difficult concept for many people in Western societies, where everything seems to evolve around the desire for control, predictability and power. In our age of anxiety, certainty and control has become the number one tool to help us take...
46 min
2519
Brent Nongbri, “Before Religion: A History of a...
We all know that religion is a universal feature of human history, right? Well, maybe not. In Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (Yale University Press, 2013), Brent Nongbri, Post Doctoral Fellow at Macquarie University,
72 min
2520
Ahmed El Shamsy, “The Canonization of Islamic L...
In his brilliant new book, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History (Cambridge UP, 2013), Ahmed El Shamsy, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago, explores the question of how the discursive tradit...
64 min
2521
Leora Batnitzky, “How Judaism Became a Religion...
From her first book about the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, Leora Batnitzky has been heralded as a rising star in contemporary Jewish thought and the philosophy of religion. Batnitzky, a professor of Jewish studies and chair of the Department of...
32 min
2522
James A. Lindsay, “Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus...
In the depths of the internet there is many an article discussing the infinity of God. Its authors argue that God is infinite and endless and knows no bounds (what the difference is among those attributes is not usually explained).
65 min
2523
Lawrence J. Friedman, “The Lives of Erich Fromm...
Erich Fromm, one of the most widely known psychoanalysts of the previous century, was involved in the exploration of spirituality throughout his life. His landmark book The Art of Loving, which sold more than six million copies worldwide,
50 min
2524
Darrin M. McMahon, “Divine Fury: A History of G...
Here’s an odd thing: there really haven’t been any universally-acclaimed geniuses since Einstein. At least I can’t think of any. Really smart people, yes. But geniuses per se, no. It seems Einstein was such a genius that he destroyed the entire concept...
69 min
2525
Carla Bellamy, “The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyda...
In The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place (University of California Press, 2011), Carla Bellamy explores the role of saint shrines in India, while focusing on a particular venue known as Husain Tekri, or “Husain Hill.
59 min