Shows / New Books in Religion
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. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in Religion
Naomi Baker, "Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
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…
- New Books in Religion
Russell T. McCutcheon, "Our Primary Expertise: A Future for the Study of Religion" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
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…
- New Books in Religion
Patrick Brittenden, "Algerian and Christian: Christian Theological Formation, Identity and Mission in Contemporary Algeria" (Regnum Books, 2025)
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…
- New Books in Religion
Louise Nyholm Kallestrup, "The Construction of Witchcraft in Early Modern Denmark, 1536-1617" (Routledge, 2025)
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…
- New Books in Religion
Cosima Clara Gillhammer, "Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
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…
- New Books in Religion
Gavin Flood, "The Concept of Mind in Hindu Tantra" (Routledge, 2024)
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…
- New Books in Religion
Kenneth G. Appold, "Luther and the Peasants: Religion, Ritual, and the Revolt Of 1525" (Oxford UP, 2025)
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…
- New Books in Religion
Mark Mazower, "On Antisemitism: A Word in History" (Penguin Press, 2025)
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…
- New Books in Religion
Radio ReOrient 13.2: “Understanding the Islamic Secular,” with Sherman Jackson, hosted by S.Sayyid and Hizer Mir, part 2
In this episode, Hizer Mir and Salman Sayyid continue the conversation with Professor Sherman Jackson, discussing his work on the Islamic secular, Islamic…
- New Books in Religion
Dagmar Wujastyk, "Indian Alchemy: Sources and Contexts" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Indian Alchemy: Sources and Contexts (Oxford UP, 2025) serves to expand readers' understanding of what it meant to practice alchemy on the Indian subcontinent…
- New Books in Religion
Elliott Rabin, "The Biblical Hero: Portraits in Nobility and Fallibility" (Jewish Publication Society, 2020)
Today I talked to Elliott Rabin about his book The Biblical Hero: Portraits in Nobility and Fallibility (Jewish Publication Society, 2020). Approaching the…
- New Books in Religion
Radio ReOrient 13.1: “Understanding the Islamic Secular,” with Sherman Jackson, hosted by S. Sayyid and Hizer Mir, part 1
This is Radio ReOrient. Welcome to Season 13. This our tenth year of navigating the post-Western and connecting the Islamosphere. In this episode, Sherman…
- New Books in Religion
Barbora Sojkova and Theodora Wildcroft, "Yoga Studies in Five Minutes" (Equinox Publishing, 2025)
Yoga Studies in Five Minutes (Equinox Publishing, 2025) provides an accessible guide to the diverse and growing field of research into yoga as a social…
- New Books in Religion
Chandra Chiara Ehm, "Queens Without a Kingdom Worth Ruling: Buddhist Nuns and the Process of Change in Tibetan Monastic Communities" (Vajra Books, 2024)
Queens without a Kingdom worth Ruling: Buddhist Nuns and the Process of Change in Tibetan Monastic Communities is a fascinating study of nuns in the Tibetan…
- New Books in Religion
Kathryn Hurlock, "Holy Places: How Pilgrimage Changed the World" (Profile, 2025)
This year, as they have for millennia, many people around the world will set out on pilgrimages. But these are not only journeys of personal and spiritual…
- New Books in Religion
Ashis Roy, "Intimacy in Alienation: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu-muslim Relationships" (Yoda Press, 2024)
What happens when an analyst conducts interviews—and I am not speaking here about interviewing other analysts as we do at NBiP, but rather what happens when an…
- New Books in Religion
Lawrence Grossman, "Living in Both Worlds: Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945-2025" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
In American Judaism today, Orthodoxy is the fastest growing movement. However, Orthodoxy is anything but monolithic. Living in Both Worlds: Modern Orthodox…
- New Books in Religion
Melissa M. Matthes, "When Sorrow Comes: The Power of Sermons from Pearl Harbor to Black Lives Matter" (Harvard UP, 2021)
Since World War II, Protestant sermons have been an influential tool for defining American citizenship in the wake of national crises. In the aftermath of…
- New Books in Religion
Karen Pechilis ed., "A Cultural History of Hinduism: Volumes 1-6" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
In this episode, Raj Balkaran speaks with Karen Pechilis, Jarrod Whitaker, and Valerie Stoker about A Cultural History of Hinduism (Bloomsbury, 2024), a…
- New Books in Religion
Nicolae Steinhardt, "The Journal of Joy" (SVS Press, 2025)
A conversation with Fr. Bogdan Bucur and Dr. Razvan Porumb This publication represents the officially authorized translation of The Journal of Joy (SVS Press…
- New Books in Religion
Scott D. Seligman, "The Chief Rabbi's Funeral" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
On July 30, 1902, tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets of New York’s Lower East Side to bid farewell to the city’s chief rabbi, the eminent…
- New Books in Religion
Colleen Dulle, "Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter" (Image, 2025)
Vatican journalist Colleen Dulle discusses her new book, Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter, a memoir of the last seven years…
- New Books in Religion
The Perils of Tantra, with Susannah Deane
Today, host Prof. Pierce Salguero sits down with Susannah Deane, a scholar of Tibetan medicine, Buddhism, and psychiatry. Together, we delve into her work on…
- New Books in Religion
Octavian Gabor, "Immigrant on Earth: A Philosopher on the Road to Emmaus" (Wipf and Stock, 2025)
In a world where faith and reason are perceived as enemies, this book describes them as companions. Readers of Immigrant on Earth: A Philosopher on the Road…
- New Books in Religion
Sarah Hurwitz, "As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us" (HarperOne, 2025)
An urgent exploration of how antisemitism has shaped Jewish identity and how Jews can reclaim their tradition, by the celebrated White House speechwriter and…
- New Books in Religion
Jamal J. Elias, "After Rumi: The Mevlevis and Their World" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Jamal J. Elias' new book After Rumi: The Mevlevis & Their World (Harvard UP, 2025) takes us on a historical journey through the development of the Mevlevi…
- New Books in Religion
Jürgen Schaflechner, "Hinglaj Devi: Identity, Change, and Solidification at a Hindu Temple in Pakistan" (Oxford UP, 2018)
About two hundred kilometers west of the city of Karachi, in the desert of Baluchistan, Pakistan, sits the shrine of the Hindu Goddess Hinglaj. Despite the…
- New Books in Religion
Mehari Tedla Korcho, "Ethiopian Diaspora Churches on Mission: An Intergenerational Perspective on Ethiopian Churches in the United States" (Langham Academic, 2024)
Diaspora churches have a tremendous capacity for mission as they practice their faith in the Western world, yet why do they fail to develop effective…
- New Books in Religion
Emily Vine, "Birth, Death, and Domestic Religion in Early Modern London" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Early modern London has long been recognised as a centre of religious diversity, yet the role of the home as the setting of religious practice for all faiths…
- New Books in Religion
Stuart McHardy, "Scotland's Sacred Goddess: Hidden in Plain Sight" (Luath, 2025)
In Scotland’s Sacred Goddess: Hidden in Plain Sight (Luath Press, 2025), Stuart McHardy delves into the rich tapestry of pre-Christian Scottish beliefs…
- New Books in Religion
Christopher Joby, "Christian Mission in Seventeenth-Century Taiwan: A Reception History of Texts, Beliefs, and Practices" (Brill, 2025)
How do new ideas and beliefs take root when they cross cultural and linguistic borders? In seventeenth-century Taiwan, both Dutch and Spanish missionaries…
- New Books in Religion
Matthew V. Novenson, "Paul and Judaism at the End of History" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
The apostle Paul was a Jew. He was born, lived, undertook his apostolic work, and died within the milieu of ancient Judaism. And yet, many readers have found…
- New Books in Religion
Susan Juster, "A Common Grave: Being Catholic in English America" (UNC Press, 2025)
From Nevis to Newfoundland, Catholics were everywhere in English America. But often feared and distrusted, they hid in plain sight, deftly obscuring themselves…
- New Books in Religion
Brandon Bloch, "Reinventing Protestant Germany: Religious Nationalists and the Contest for Post-Nazi Democracy" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Germany’s Protestant churches, longtime strongholds of nationalism and militarism, largely backed the Nazi dictatorship that took power in 1933. For many…
- New Books in Religion
Jan E. M. Houben and Julieta Rotaru, "Vedic Myths and Rituals" (Dev Publishers, 2025)
Vedic Myths and Rituals, edited by Jan E.M. Houben and Julieta Rotaru, is a scholarly volume exploring the deep interplay between mythic narrative and ritual…
- New Books in Religion
Anna Strhan and Rachael Shillitoe, "Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England" (Princeton UP, 2025)
What do children believe in? In Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England (Princeton UP, 2025) Anna Strhan, a Reader in the…
- New Books in Religion
Leah Hochman and Stanley M. Davids, "Re-forming Judaism: Moments of Disruption in Jewish Thought" (Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2023)
The story of Judaism is the story of change. Throughout Jewish history, revolutionary events and subversive ideas have burst forth, repeatedly transforming…
- New Books in Religion
Michel-Yves Bollore and Olivier Bonnassies, "God, the Science, the Evidence" (Palomar, 2025)
For more than four centuries, the scientific discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, and Freud created the impression that we could explain the workings of…
- New Books in Religion
Ruth E. Toulson, "Necropolitics of the Ordinary: Death and Grieving in Contemporary Singapore" (U Washington Press, 2024)
Can a state make its people forget the dead? Cemeteries have become sites of acute political contestation in the city-state of Singapore. Confronted with high…
- New Books in Religion
Ruth Perini, "Varaha Upanishad: The Path to Supreme Knowledge" (2025)
This conversation examines the newly published translation of the Varāha Upaniṣad, a lesser-known but deeply transformative scripture from the…
- New Books in Religion
Madness & Acute Religious Experiences, with Richard Saville-Smith
Host Pierce Salguero sits down with Richard Saville-Smith, an independent scholar of madness, religion, and psychiatry. We discuss Richard’s book Acute…
- New Books in Religion
Steven Veerapen, "Witches: A King's Obsession" (Birlin, 2025)
Witches – whether broomstick-riding spell-casters or Wiccan earth-worshippers – have been culturally relevant for centuries. For centuries, too, belief in the…
- New Books in Religion
Hyun Ho Park, "Intergroup Conflict, Recategorization, and Identity Construction in Acts: Breaking the Cycle of Slander, Labeling and Violence" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
In Intergroup Conflict, Recategorization, and Identity Construction in Acts: Breaking the Cycle of Slander, Labeling and Violence (Bloomsbury, 2023) Hyun Ho…
- New Books in Religion
Aliyah Khan, "Far From Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
Muslims have lived in the Caribbean for centuries. Far From Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean (Rutgers University Press, 2020) examines the archive of…
- New Books in Religion
Brian A. Stauffer, "Victory on Earth or in Heaven: Mexico’s Religionero Rebellion" (U New Mexico Press, 2019)
In Victory on Earth or in Heaven: Mexico’s Religionero Rebellion (University of New Mexico Press, 2019), Brian A. Stauffer reconstructs the history of Mexico's…
- New Books in Religion
Islam, Society, and Politics in Indonesia: An Interview with Robert Hefner
Today’s episode focuses on the intersection of Islam, society, and politics in Indonesia, the world’s single-largest majority Muslim country and the world’s…
- New Books in Religion
A Ukrainian Translation of the Devi Mahatmya
In this episode, Dr. Raj Balkaran speaks with art historian and curator Alisa Lozhkina about her groundbreaking Ukrainian translation of the Devī Māhātmya—the…
- New Books in Religion
Russell T. McCutcheon, "Religion and the Domestication of Dissent: Or, How to Live in a Less Than Perfect Nation" (Routledge, 2025)
In its first edition, this book focused on the representations of Islam that circulated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks – representations that scholars…
- New Books in Religion
Francesca Stavrakopoulou, "God: An Anatomy" (Knopf, 2022)
The scholarship of theology and religion teaches us that the God of the Bible was without a body, only revealing himself in the Old Testament in words…
- New Books in Religion
Ronald D. Price, "Divrei Halev: Thoughts of Rabbi Professor David Weiss Halivni on the Weekly Torah Portion" (Gefen, 2025)
Rabbi Professor David Weiss Halivni, of blessed memory (1927–2022), was one of the most profound Talmudic scholars and theological voices of the postwar era. A…
- New Books in Religion
Nick Spencer, "The Landscapes of Science and Religion: What Are We Disagreeing About?" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The relationship between science and religion has long been a heated debate and is becoming an ever more popular topic. The scientific capacity to manipulate…
- New Books in Religion
Omid Safi, “Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition” (Yale UP, 2018)
It's often touted that Rumi is one of the best-selling poets in the United States. That may be the case but popular renderings of the writings of this…
- New Books in Religion
Michelle P. Brown, "Bede and the Theory of Everything" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
Bede and the Theory of Everything (Reaktion Books, 2023) investigates the life and world of Bede (c. 673–735), foremost scholar of the early Middle Ages and…
- New Books in Religion
Rima Vesely-Flad, "Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation" (NYU Press, 2022)
Finalist, Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, Constructive-Reflective Studies, given by the American Academy of Religion Explores how Black Buddhist…
- New Books in Religion
Barbara Vinick and Shulamit Reinharz, "100 Jewish Brides: Stories from Around the World" (Indiana UP, 2024)
100 Jewish Brides: Stories from Around the World (Indiana UP, 2024), is the result of a collaboration between two sociologists, Professor Shulamit Reinharz and…
- New Books in Religion
David Commins, "Saudi Arabia: A Modern History" (Yale UP, 2025)
A major new history of Saudi Arabia, from its eighteenth-century origins to the present day Saudi Arabia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, a…
- New Books in Religion
Mariam F. Ayad ed., "Coptic Culture and Community: Daily Lives, Changing Times" (American University in Cairo Press, 2024)
Coptic Culture and Community: Daily Lives, Changing Times (American University in Cairo Press 2024) brings together fourteen contributions from global scholars…
- New Books in Religion
Geoffrey D. Claussen, "Jewish Ethics: The Basics" (Routledge, 2024)
In the Jewish world, we often hear people cite “Jewish values” as defense for their positions. The irony, however, is that in the same argument, two people…
- New Books in Religion
Raphael Cormack, "Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age: A Forgotten History of the Occult" (Norton, 2025)
An international history of the uncanny in the 1920s and 1930s. The interwar period was a golden age for the occult. Spiritualists, clairvoyants, fakirs…
- New Books in Religion
Marla Segol, "Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)
In Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy (Penn State University Press, 2021) a provocative book, Marla Segol explores the development of the…