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
David de Boer, "The Early Modern Dutch Press in an Age of Religious Persecution" (Oxford UP, 2023)
David de Boer returns to the podcast to talk to Jana Byars about his first book, The Early Modern Dutch Press in the Age of Religious Persecution (Oxford UP…
- New Books in Religion
Nabil Yasien Mohamed, "Ghazālī’s Epistemology: A Critical Study of Doubt and Certainty" (Routledge, 2024)
Focusing on Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) – one of the foremost scholars and authorities in the Muslim world who is central to the Islamic intellectual…
- New Books in Religion
Philip Carr-Gomm, "A Brief History of Nakedness" (Reaktion, 2010)
Philip Carr-Gomm joins Jana Byars to talk about A Brief History of Nakedness (Reaktion, 2010) on the occasion of its newest paperback edition. From the naked…
- New Books in Religion
Iban Heritage and Culture in Malaysia
Every June, there is a significant cultural event in Malaysia, which is called the Gawai Dayak Festival, highly celebrated to mark the end of the harvest…
- New Books in Religion
Kirin Narayan, "Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
On the podcast today I am joined by Kirin Narayan, emerita professor at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Kirin is…
- New Books in Religion
Tatiana Bur, "Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Tatiana Bur, Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge UP, 2025) This open-access book investigates the ways that technological, and…
- New Books in Religion
Karin Roginer Hofmeister, "Remembering Suffering and Resistance: Memory Politics and the Serbian Orthodox Church" (CEU Press, 2024)
Remembering Suffering and Resistance investigates the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in shaping memory politics in Serbia following the fall of Slobodan…
- New Books in Religion
Navijivan Rastogi, "Kalikrama and Abhinavagupta: The Epistemological Ethics of a Tantric Tradition" (Nalanda, 2022)
The Krama School of the Trika Saivism of Kashmir, more familiar as Kalikrama in the contemporary parlance, has turned out to be the most crucial among the…
- New Books in Religion
David D. Hall, "The Puritans: A Transatlantic History" (Princeton UP, 2019)
This book is a sweeping transatlantic history of Puritanism from its emergence out of the religious tumult of Elizabethan England to its founding role in the…
- New Books in Religion
Michael Niebauer, "Four Mountains: Encountering God in the Bible from Eden to Zion" (Lexham Press, 2025)
How can war stories, farming proverbs, and strange visions draw you closer to Jesus? In Four Mountains: Encountering God in the Bible from Eden to Zion…
- New Books in Religion
“Truth is a Pathless Land”: Krishnamurti and Revolutionary Spirituality with Connie Jones
In this episode, “Truth is a Pathless Land,” we speak with Transformative Inquiry Program faculty member Connie Jones to explore the micropolitical stakes of…
- New Books in Religion
When Meditation Causes Harm, with Willoughby Britton & Jared Lindahl
Today I sit down with Willoughby Britton and Jared Lindahl, the interdisciplinary team from Brown University that is responsible for the “Varieties of…
- New Books in Religion
Margaret C. Jacob, "The Secular Enlightenment" (Princeton UP, 2019)
The Secular Enlightenment by Professor Margaret C. Jacob, has been called a major new history on how the Enlightenment transformed people's everyday lives…
- New Books in Religion
Paul Vigna, "The Almightier: How Money Became God, Greed Became Virtue, and Debt Became Sin" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
The pursuit of wealth is considered an essential function of human nature, and greed is an unspoken civic virtue. Many of us revere billionaires and Wall…
- New Books in Religion
Anthony Michael Petro, "Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In the late twentieth century, artists were on the front lines of the culture wars. Leaders of the Christian Right in the U.S. made a national spectacle out of…
- New Books in Religion
Hanno Sauer, "The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality " (Oxford UP, 2024)
In this sweeping new history of humanity, told through the prism of our ever-changing moral norms and values, Hanno Sauer shows how modern society is just the…
- New Books in Religion
Religion in the Lands That Became America
Until now, the standard narrative of American religious history has begun with English settlers in Jamestown or Plymouth and remained predominantly Protestant…
- New Books in Religion
Caroline Johnson Hodge, "The God of This House: Christian Domestic Cult Before Constantine" (Penn State UP, 2025)
Christianity is often thought of as a tradition of belief, interpretation, teachings, and texts. However, a scholarly focus on ideas overlooks how early…
- 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
John Givens, "The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak" (Northern Illinois UP, 2018)
In The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Dr. John Givens of the…
- New Books in Religion
Chiara Formichi, "Islam and Asia: A History" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Challenging the geographical narrative of the history of Islam, Chiara Formichi’s new book Islam and Asia: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2020), helps…
- New Books in Religion
Ian Johnson, "The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao" (Pantheon, 2017)
Ian Johnson’s new book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (Pantheon, 2017), was called "a masterpiece of observation and empathy" by The New…
- New Books in Religion
Magdalena Maria Turek, "Buddhist Hermits in Eastern Tibet: Saint-Making and Ascetic Performance" (Routledge, 2025)
Magdalena Maria Turek is an independent research scholar. She received her PhD from Humboldt University, Germany, and was a Research Fellow with the Robert H…
- New Books in Religion
Amir Hussain, "One God and Two Religions: Christians and Muslims as Neighbors" (Fortress Press, 2025)
Islam is a religion of violence and behind every Muslim there lurks a potential terrorist. Islam is a threat to values of the Christian West. They are like oil…
- New Books in Religion
Beth M. Stovell, "Mapping Metaphorical Discourse in the Fourth Gospel: John’s Eternal King" (Brill, 2012)
How does the metaphor of Jesus as king unify the message of the Gospel of John? Tune in as we speak with Beth Stovell about her monograph, Mapping Metaphorical…
- New Books in Religion
Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, "The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism" (Jewish Publication Society. 2024)
The Triumph of Life is Rabbi Irving Greenberg’s magnum opus—a narrative of the relationship between God and humanity as expressed in the Jewish journey through…
- New Books in Religion
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, "Heaven Has a Wall: Religion, Borders, and the Global United States" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
Our national conversation about the border has taken a religious turn. When televangelists declare, “Heaven has a wall,” activists shout back, “Jesus was a…
- New Books in Religion
Marc Herman, "After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World" (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World offers a dynamic new perspective on medieval Jewish legal thought and its integration in the…
- New Books in Religion
Daniel C. Matt, "Becoming Elijah: Prophet of Transformation" (Yale UP, 2022)
Elijah is a zealous prophet, attacking idolatry and injustice, championing God. He performs miracles, restoring life and calling down fire. When his earthly…
- New Books in Religion
Gary Kulik, "Conscientious Objectors at War: The Vietnam War's Forgotten Medics" (Texas Tech UP, 2025)
During the war in Vietnam, thousands of young men served as conscientious objector medics. They had been certified by their local draft boards as…
- New Books in Religion
Jessica Patterson, "Religion, Enlightenment and Empire: British Interpretations of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century"
In the second half of the eighteenth century, several British East India Company servants published accounts of what they deemed to be the original and…
- New Books in Religion
Ahmad Greene-Hayes, "Underworld Work: Black Atlantic Religion Making in Jim Crow New Orleans" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
A rethinking of African American religious history that focuses on the development and evolution of Africana spiritual traditions in Jim Crow New Orleans. When…
- New Books in Religion
Claudia Setzer, "The Progressives' Bible: How Scriptural Interpretation Built a More Just America" (Fortress Publishers, 2024)
In her book, The Progressives' Bible: How Scriptural Interpretation Built a More Just America, (Fortress Press, 2024), Claudia Setzer argues that while…
- New Books in Religion
Rachel Fell McDermott and Daniel F. Polish, "A Hindu-Jewish Conversation: Root Traditions in Dialogue" (Lexington Books, 2024)
This book engages historically and theologically with the Hindu and Jewish traditions, covering conceptions of the divine, religious heroes, women, devotional…
- New Books in Religion
Pope Leo XIV (with Christopher White)
Vatican Reporter Christopher White has just written book about Pope Leo XIV, our new Holy Father, an American, an Augustinian, from Chicago, from Perú; it’s a…
- New Books in Religion
Daniel I. Block, "Hearing the Gospel According to Moses Volume 2: Chapters 12-23" (Inspirata, 2024)
Some time ago, we spoke with Daniel Block about volume 1 of his Deuteronomy commentary, Hearing the Gospel According to Moses. Tune in as we hear from Dan now…
- New Books in Religion
Laurie Denyer Willis, "Go with God: Political Exhaustion and Evangelical Possibility in Suburban Brazil" (U California Press, 2023)
Through deep attention to sense and feeling, Go with God grapples with the centrality of Evangelical faith in Rio de Janeiro's subúrbios, the city's expansive…
- New Books in Religion
Ilanit Loewy Shacham, "Empire Inside Out: Religion, Conquest, and Community in Kṛṣṇadevarāya's Āmuktamālyada" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Examining the interplay of religion, history, and literature through a case study of King Krsnadevaraya's celebrated Telugu poem Āmuktamālyada, Ilanit Loewy…
- New Books in Religion
Alexus McLeod, "Myth and Identity in the Martial Arts: Creating the Dragon" (Lexington Books, 2025)
Myth and Identity in the Martial Arts: Creating the Dragon (Lexington Books, 2025) is a study of the role of myth and ideology in the formation of social…
- New Books in Religion
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, "The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot Hunters, Mediums, and Alien Enthusiasts Are Wrecking Science" (PublicAffairs, 2025)
In this episode, New Books Network host Nina Bo Wagner talks to Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling about his recently published book The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot Hunters…
- New Books in Religion
Rhythm, Exorcism, and Confrontation with Lexi Eikelboom
In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Lexi Eikelboom. Dr Lexi Eikelboom is both a visual artist and a scholar of philosophical theology. Her academic work…
- New Books in Religion
Michael Amoruso, "Moved by the Dead: Haunting and Devotion in São Paulo, Brazil" (UNC Press, 2025)
In the sprawling city of São Paulo, a weekly practice known as devotion to souls (devoção às almas) draws devotees to Catholic churches, cemeteries, and other…
- New Books in Religion
Ezra Glinter, "Menachem Mendel Schneerson: Becoming the Messiah" (Yale UP, 2024)
The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, one of the world’s best-known Hasidic groups, is driven by the belief that we are on the verge of the messianic age. The man…
- New Books in Religion
Wang Yi, Hannah Nation ed., "Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement" (IVP Academic, 2022)
In this important body of theology, key writings from the Chinese house church movement have been compiled, translated, and made accessible to English…
- New Books in Religion
Richard K. Payne and Glen A. Hayes eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Tantric Studies" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Since the earliest encounters between tantric traditions and Western scholars of religion, tantra has posed a challenge. The representation of tantra, whether…
- New Books in Religion
Michael Marmur, "Living The Letters: An Alphabet of Emerging Jewish Thought" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
Today, most Jewish thinkers have turned away from theology. And if they do, they look into one narrow window into the subject, writing a treatise into topics…
- New Books in Religion
Jonathon Stuart Wright, "Joseph and Aseneth After Antiquity: A Study in Manuscript Transmission" (de Gruyter, 2025)
Joseph and Aseneth: A Study in Manuscript Transmission (de Gruyter, 2025) expands a few verses from the book of Genesis into a novella-length work. It is…
- New Books in Religion
Abeneazer G. Urga et al., "Reading James Missiologically: The Missionary Motive, Message, and Methods of James" (William Carey, 2025)
While books on a New Testament theology of mission abound, most of them focus on tried-and-true Scripture passages from the Gospels and the Acts of the…
- New Books in Religion
Wolfram H. Dressler, "For the Sake of Forests and Gods: Governing Life and Livelihood in the Philippine Uplands" (Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2025)
For the Sake of Forests and Gods: Governing Life and Livelihood in the Philippine Uplands (Cornell University Press, 2025) examines the impacts of religious…
- New Books in Religion
Judith Weisenfeld, "Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake" (NYU Press, 2025)
In the decades after the end of slavery, African Americans were committed to southern state mental hospitals at higher rates as white psychiatrists listed…
- New Books in Religion
Véronique Altglas, "Judaizing Christianity and Christian Zionism in Northern Ireland" (Routledge, 2025)
Véronique Altglas holds a PhD from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris and has served as a as a lecturer in sociology at Queen’s University Belfast…
- New Books in Religion
Jonathan Teubner, "Charity After Augustine: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Practices of Charity in the Latin West" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Jonathan Teubner, Charity After Augustine: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Practices of Charity in the Latin West (Oxford UP, 2025) Through a unique blend of the…
- New Books in Religion
Nicholas de Lange, "Japheth in the Tents of Shem: Greek Bible Translations in Byzantine Judaism" (Mohr Siebeck, 2016)
Japheth in the Tents of Shem: Greek Bible Translations in Byzantine Judaism (Mohr Siebeck, 2016) is the first book-length treatment of the reception and…
- New Books in Religion
Eva De Clercq, Heleen De Jonckheere, and Simon Winant eds., "Literary Transcreation as a Jain Practice" (Ergon-Verlag, 2025)
A vast corpus of Jain texts lies unexamined in manuscript libraries, several of them new versions of earlier works. Though the prevalence of literary…
- New Books in Religion
Omneya Ayad, "Love in Sufi Literature: Ibn ‘Ajiba’s Understanding of the Divine Word" (Routledge, 2023)
Love in Sufi Literature: Ibn ‘Ajiba’s Understanding of the Divine Word (Routledge, 2023) explores the role of divine love in the Quranic commentary of the…
- New Books in Religion
Candace Lukasik, "Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire" (NYU Press, 2025)
Coptic Orthodox Christians comprise the largest Christian community in the Middle East and are among the oldest Christian communities in the world. While once…
- New Books in Religion
Isaac Portilla, "Interfaith Dialogue and Mystical Consciousness in India: Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, the Hari-Hara Mystery, and the Hindu-Christian Encounter" (Routledge, 2025)
Interfaith Dialogue and Mystical Consciousness in India: Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, the Hari-Hara Mystery, and the Hindu-Christian Encounter…
- New Books in Religion
Mark Somos, Matthew Cleary, Pablo Dufour, Edward Jones Corredera, and Emanuele Salerno, "The Unseen History of International Law" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The Unseen History of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2025) locates and describes almost one thousand surviving copies of the first nine editions…
- New Books in Religion
Brook Ziporyn, "Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism. Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two…
- New Books in Religion
Gregory N. Evon, "Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Choson Korea (1392-1910)" (Cambria Press, 2023)
Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Chosŏn Korea (1392-1910) (Cambria Press, 2023) is a fascinating book that sits at the intersection of Buddhist…