New Books in Religion

In today’s podcast, I speak with German professor and Buddhist monk Bhikkhu Anālayo about his book Rebirth in Early Buddhism and Current Research (Wisdom Publications, 2018). Bhikkhu Anālayo skillfully analyzes the early Buddhist doctrine of rebirth before discussing the debate around rebirth throughout Buddhist history. In the last half of his book, he presents current research on rebirth as well as a number of thought-provoking case studies. With Bhikkhu Analayo’s trademark combination of rigorous scholarship and lucid writing style, this book will be of great interest to both scholars and Buddhist practitioners alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Why did creative writers in early modern England write so forcefully about the relationship between aesthetics and morality? How did they imagine creative work to reflect religious categories and moral expectations? In his new book, Sinister Aesthetics: The Appeal of Evil in Early Modern Literature (Palgrave, 2017), Joel Elliot Slotkin, a professor of English at Towson University, explores how Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare and Milton considered the appeal of evil, and why their writing moralized about aesthetics only to create characters or contexts in which that moral purpose seemed to be undermined. In this ground-breaking study, Slotkin explains how these writers created a “sinister aesthetics,” in which to test their readers, and to persuade their readers that the fall of humanity into sin had aesthetic as well as moral and noetic consequences.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of John Owen and English Puritanism (Oxford University Press, 2016). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

If you’re a Latter Day Saint, you’ve probably heard of W. W. Phelps, and no doubt, you’ve probably sung some of his hymns. But did you know that he printed the Book of Commandments and other early church works? Or that he was one of the "council of presidents" that guided the Church in Kirtland, Ohio and helped publish the newspaper in Nauvoo, Illinois? Or as political clerk, he assisted Joseph Smith in his roles as mayor of Nauvoo and contender for the U.S. presidency? Phelps also played a key role in the Council of Fifty. He went west with the Saints, helped propose the "State of Deseret," and published prose and poetry in the Deseret News and his Deseret Almanac. Phelps’ strong feelings even put him at odds with Church leaders, and he was excommunicated three times, rejoining each time!Dr. Bruce Van Orden explores Phelps’ fascinating life in the first ever comprehensive biography on him, entitled, We’ll Sing and We’ll Shout: The Life and Times of W. W. Phelps (Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2018). Dr. Orden makes some compelling arguments that have never been fully teased out by scholars. Whether you’re a Latter Day Saint historian, an American religion scholar, or just an interested student. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Over the past decade, and especially in the last several years, anti-Semitic crimes have increased significantly. According to FBI Statistics, hate crimes against Jews in the US spiked 37% between 2016 and 2017. We are witnessing similar trends in Canada, where anti-Semitic crimes increased by 60% since last year, according to Statistics Canada. Why is it that anti-Semitism continues to thrive? Why won’t this irrational hatred die? What factors contribute to the rise of anti-Semitism? Deborah E. Lipstadt addresses these, and many other questions, in her book, Antisemitism: Here and Now(Schocken, 2019). The number 1 best-seller in Human Rights Law on Amazon, Lipstadt’s book is a provocative page-turner about this ancient and persistent form of hatred and prejudice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

People have always sought ecstatic experiences - moments where they go beyond their ordinary self and feel connected to something greater than them. Such moments are fundamental to human flourishing, but they can also be dangerous. Beginning around the Enlightenment, western intellectual culture has written off ecstasy as ignorance or delusion. But philosopher Jules Evans argues that this diminishes our reality and denies us the healing, connection and meaning that ecstasy can bring.In his book, The Art of Losing Control: A Philosopher's Search for Ecstatic Experience (Canongate Books, 2017) he sets out to discover how people find ecstasy in a post-religious culture, how it can be good for us, and also harmful. Along the way, he explores the growing science of ecstasy, to help the reader - and himself - learn the art of losing control.Evans’ exploration of ecstasy is an intellectual and emotional odyssey drawing on personal experience, interviews, and readings from ancient and modern philosophers. From Aristotle and Plato, via the Bishop of London and Sister Bliss, radical jihadis and Silicon Valley transhumanists, The Art of Losing Control is a funny and thought-provoking journey through under-explored terrain, which Evans creatively maps out like a tour through a festival, with stops at the major pavilions along the way. [complete with a cutely drawn festival map at the front of the book]Jules Evans is policy director at the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations, which was published in 19 countries and was a Times Book of the Year. Evans has written for The Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Spectator and WIRED and is a BBC New Generation Thinker. He also runs the London Philosophy Club, the world’s biggest philosophy club.Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance (Beacon Press, 2017) by Linda K. Wertheimer profiles the beauty and difficulty of teaching about religion in public schools. Teaching about religion in a public school in the United States is rewarding, but very difficult. It is not hyperbolic to say that one moment, everything is going fine and students are learning a lot and the next the class is on the news and steeped in controversy. Do an internet search using the term “Burkagate,” or look up the story of a Wellesley, Massachusetts 6th-grade class who visited a mosque on a field trip in Boston in 2010. In 2015, a school district in Virginia cancelled all classes in December 2015 after a controversy erupted from a teacher asking students to copy Arabic calligraphy which just happened to recite the Shahada, the Muslim statement of faith and one of the pillars of Islam. A Florida school district found itself mired in controversy over a guest speaker from the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR for short). The book is out in hardback and paperback from Beacon Press.Greg Soden is the host "Classical Ideas," a podcast about religion and religious ideas. You can find it on iTunes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In today's podcast, I speak with American professor Ira Helderman about his newly published book, Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019) which surveys the diversity of Buddhist practices used in psychotherapy today. Ira shows that psychotherapists approaches to Buddhist traditions are moulded by how they relate to what is and is not religion. This book will be of interest to scholars of psychotherapy, religion, and Buddhism as well as anyone interested in the relationship between psychotherapy and Buddhism in the West today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In today's podcast, I speak with American professor Ira Helderman about his newly published book, Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019) which surveys the diversity of Buddhist practices used in psychotherapy today. Ira shows that psychotherapists approaches to Buddhist traditions are moulded by how they relate to what is and is not religion. This book will be of interest to scholars of psychotherapy, religion, and Buddhism as well as anyone interested in the relationship between psychotherapy and Buddhism in the West today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra(De Gruyter, 2017; open access) probes the backbone of what makes Hinduism the world’s oldest living tradition: the unbroken chain of transmission of Vedic texts composed over 3,000 years ago, originating circa 1750-1200 BCE.  What does the process of that transmission look like? What does it take to apprentice to learn the Vedic corpus?  Why is there an emphasis on precise ritual enunciation of these utterances even above and beyond their semantic meaning? Join me as I talk with Dr. Borayin Larios, Assistant Professor at the Institute for South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Vienna) about his work on the traditional “gurukula” education and training of Brahmins. Based on his study of 25 contemporary Vedic schools across the state of Maharashtra, we discover how contemporary Brahmin males learn with scrupulous care how to recite, memorize and ultimately embody the Vedas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Mary Magdalene’s story of conversion from sinner to saint is one of Christianity’s most compelling and controversial stories. The identity of this woman, but more likely women, has been disputed since the early days of the Church, but her role as the first person to witness the resurrection of Christ makes her an astoundingly important figure in ways I was never privy to growing up.The Magdalene’s interpretation changes throughout history, from medieval times to the Reformation, where the interpretation under Martin Luther takes on different meaning, which is the topic conversation today with Dr. Margaret Arnold. Her new book, The Magdalene in the Reformation is out now from The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2018). Margaret Arnold is the Associate Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Medford, Massachusetts. She received her PhD in Religious and Theological Studies from Boston University.Greg Soden is the host "Classical Ideas," a podcast about religion and religious ideas. You can find it on iTunes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion