New Books in Religion

Ian Reader and John Shultz's Pilgrims Until We Die: Unending Pilgrimage in Shikoku (Oxford University Press, 2021)" explores the Shikoku pilgrimage by focusing on the themes of repetition and perpetual pilgrimage. Reader and Shultz employ a wide array of methods to portray how these itinerant pilgrims view their unending life on the trails. Some spend most of their life walking the pilgrimage, while others use cars and other methods of modern transportation, allowing them to complete the circuit hundreds of times. The Shikokubyō or the Shikoku illness is a common term that people use to describe a sense of addiction to the pilgrimage, revealing how the pilgrimage has become a part of their life. Based in extensive fieldwork this book shows that unending pilgrimage is the dominant theme of the Shikoku pilgrimage, and argues that this is not specific to Shikoku but found widely in global contexts, although it has barely been examined in studies of pilgrimage. It counteracts normative portrayals of pilgrimage as a transient activity involving temporarily leaving home to visit sacred places outside the everyday parameters of life; rather pilgrimage, for many participants, means creating a sense of home and permanence on the road. As such this book presents new theoretical perspectives on pilgrimage in general, along with rich ethnographic examples of pilgrimage practices in contemporary Japan.Raditya Nuradi is a Phd student at Kyushu University. He works on religion and popular culture, particularly anime pilgrimages. He’s done fieldwork at Hitoyoshi city, Kumamoto prefecture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Leonard Cohen's troubled relationship with God is here mapped onto his troubled relationships with sex and politics. Analysing Covenantal theology and its place in Cohen's work, Marcia Pally's From This Broken Hill I Sing to You: God, Sex, and Politics in the Work of Leonard Cohen (Bloomsbury, 2021) is the first to trace a consistent theology across sixty years of Cohen's writing, drawing on his Jewish heritage and its expression in his lyrics and poems.Cohen's commitment to covenant, and his anger at this God who made us so prone to failing it, undergird the faith, frustration, and sardonic taunting of Cohen's work. Both his faith and ire are traced through:  Cohen's unorthodox use of Jewish and Christian imagery  His writings about women, politics, and the Holocaust  His final theology, You Want It Darker, released three weeks before his death Professor Marcia Pally teaches at New York University, at Fordham University, and is an annual guest professor at Humboldt University’s Theology Faculty Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Gloria Maité Hernández's Savoring God: Comparative Theopoetics (Oxford UP, 2021) compares two mystical works central to the Christian Discalced Carmelite and the Hindu Bhakti traditions: the sixteenth-century Spanish Cántico espiritual (Spiritual Canticle), by John of the Cross, and the Sanskrit Rāsa Līlā, originated in the oral tradition. These texts are examined alongside theological commentaries: for the Cántico, the Comentarios written by John of the Cross on his own poem; for Rāsa Līlā, the foundational commentary by Srīdhara Swāmi along with commentaries by the sixteenth-century theologian Jīva Goswāmī, from the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava school, and other Gauḍīya theologians. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Ali ibn Abi Talib is arguably the single most important spiritual and intellectual authority in Islam after prophet Mohammad. Through his teachings and leadership as fourth caliph, Ali nourished Islam. But Muslims are divided on whether he was supposed to be Mohammad’s political successor and he continues to be a polarizing figure in Islamic history.In The Prophet's Heir: The Life of Ali ibn Abi Talib (Yale UP, 2021), Hassan Abbas provides a nuanced, compelling portrait of this towering yet divisive figure and the origins of sectarian division within Islam. Abbas reveals how, after Mohammad, Ali assumed the spiritual mantle of Islam to spearhead the movement that the prophet had led. While Ali’s teachings about wisdom, justice, and selflessness continue to be cherished by both Shia and Sunni Muslims, his pluralist ideas have been buried under sectarian agendas and power politics. Today, Abbas argues, Ali’s legacy and message stands against that of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Taliban.Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi’i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Japan is often imagined as a homogeneous society with few immigrant communities, but it is increasingly home to migrants from across the world. How does an extended stay in Japan influence Indian migrants’ sense of their identity as they adapt to a country very different from their own? Indian Migrants in Tokyo: A Study of Socio-Cultural, Religious, and Working Worlds (Routledge, 2020) by Megha Wadhwa explores the small but growing community of Indian migrants living in Japan. Japan has very distinctive customs and a complex culture, to which foreigners often struggle to adapt. Links between India and Japan go back a long way in history, and the connections and relations between the two countries have evolved and transformed over the years. The emerging Indian diaspora in Japan is one contemporary and important facet of this relationship between the two countries. Focusing on Indian migrants settled in Tokyo, this book analyzes their lives through interviews with approximately one hundred respondents among them, as well as extensive participant observation. Wadhwa examines the lifestyles, fears, problems, relations, and expectations of Indians who attempt to create “a home away from home” in Japan. This book will be of great interest to anthropologists and sociologists concerned with diaspora communities and the impact of migration, as well as scholars who research Japan, India, or both countries and regions.Megha Wadhwa is a Research Associate at the Institute of Japanese Studies at the Free University of Berlin and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University in Tokyo.Shatrunjay Mall is a PhD candidate at the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He works on transnational Asian history, and his dissertation explores intellectual, political, and cultural intersections and affinities that emerged between Indian anti-colonialism and imperial Japan in the twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed addressed Jews of his day who felt challenged by apparent contradictions between Torah and science. We Are Not Alone: A Maimonidean Theology of the Other (Academic Studies Press, 2021) uses Maimonides' writings to address Jews of today who are perplexed by apparent contradictions between the morality of the Torah and their conviction that all human beings are created in the image of God and are the object of divine concern, that other religions have value, that genocide is never justified, and that slavery is evil. Individuals who choose to emphasize the moral and universalist elements of Jewish tradition can often find support in positions explicitly held by Maimonides or implied by his teachings. We Are Not Alone offers an ethical and universalist vision of traditionalist Judaism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In Indic religious traditions, a number of rituals and myths exist in which the environment is revered. Despite this nature worship in India, its natural resources are under heavy pressure with its growing economy and exploding population. This has led several scholars to raise questions about religious communities’ role in environmentalism. Does nature worship inspire Hindus to act in an environmentally conscious way? Pankaj Jain's Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communities: Sustenance and Sustainability (Routledge, 2011) explores the above questions with three communities, the Swadhyaya movement, the Bishnoi, and the Bhil communities. Presenting the texts of Bishnois, their environmental history, and their contemporary activism; investigating the Swadhyaya movement from an ecological perspective; and exploring the Bhil communities and their Sacred Groves, this book applies a non-Western hermeneutical model to interpret the religious traditions of Indic communities.Tiatemsu Longkumer is a Ph.D. scholar working on ‘Anthropology of Religion’ at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong: India. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Whether valorized as the heartland or derided as flyover country, the Midwest became instantly notorious when COVID-19 infections skyrocketed among workers in meatpacking plants—and Americans feared for their meat supply. But the Midwest is not simply the place where animals are fed corn and then butchered. Native midwesterner Kristy Nabhan-Warren (Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa) spent years interviewing Iowans who work in the meatpacking industry, both native-born residents and recent migrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland (University of North Carolina Press, 2021), she digs deep below the stereotype and reveals the grit and grace of a heartland that is a major global hub of migration and food production—and also, it turns out, of religion.Across the flatlands, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims share space every day as worshippers, employees, and employers. On the bloody floors of meatpacking plants, in bustling places of worship, and in modest family homes, longtime and newly arrived Iowans spoke to Nabhan-Warren about their passion for religious faith and desire to work hard for their families. Their stories expose how faith-based aspirations for mutual understanding blend uneasily with rampant economic exploitation and racial biases. Still, these new and old midwesterners say that a mutual language of faith and morals brings them together more than any of them would have ever expected. This podcast will highlight the human right dimensions of the book and features a conversation between Nabhan-Warren and John McKerley, Curator of the Iowa Labor History Oral Project at the University of Iowa.This podcast was produced by the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Personal reinvention is a core part of the human condition. Yet in the mid-twentieth century, certain private religious choices became lightning rods for public outrage and debate.Rebecca L. Davis's book Public Confessions: The Religious Conversions That Changed American Politics (UNC Press, 2021) reveals the controversial religious conversions that shaped modern America. Rebecca L. Davis explains why the new faiths of notable figures including Clare Boothe Luce, Whittaker Chambers, Sammy Davis Jr., Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali, Chuck Colson, and others riveted the American public. Unconventional religious choices charted new ways of declaring an authentic identity amid escalating Cold War fears of brainwashing and coercion. Facing pressure to celebrate a specific vision of Americanism, these converts variously attracted and repelled members of the American public. Whether the act of changing religions was viewed as selfish, reckless, or even unpatriotic, it provoked controversies that ultimately transformed American politics. Public Confessions takes intimate history to its widest relevance, and in so doing, makes you see yourself in both the private and public stories it tells. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The autumnal Navarātri festival—also called Durgā Pūjā, Dassehra, or Dasain—is the most important Hindu festival in South Asia and wherever Hindus settle. A nine-night-long celebration in honor of the goddess Durgā, it ends on the tenth day with a celebration called “the victorious tenth” (vijayadaśamī). The rituals that take place in domestic, royal, and public spaces are closely connected with one’s station in life and dependent on social status, economic class, caste, and gender issues. Exploring different aspects of the festival as celebrated in diverse regions of South Asia and in the South Asian diaspora, Ute Hüsken, Vasudha Narayanan and Astrid Zotter's Nine Nights of Power: Durgā, Dolls, and Darbārs (SUNY Press, 2021) addresses the following common questions: What does this festival do? What does it achieve, and how? Why and in what way does it sometimes fail? How do mass communication and social media increase participation in and contribute to the changing nature of the festival? The contributors address these questions from multiple perspectives and discuss issues of agency, authority, ritual efficacy, change, appropriation, and adaptation. Because of the festival’s reach beyond its diverse celebrations in South Asia, its influence can be seen in the rituals and dances in many parts of Western Europe and North America.Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion