New Books in Religion

When teaching the first half of world history, I always do a little section on Augustine. My focus is on how he was an important theologian who shaped Christian understandings of war and even influenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as seen in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. The fact though is that I could have an entire course on Augustine, such was the breadth and depth of his thought. James K. Lee, in his new book Augustine and the Mystery of the Church (Fortress Press, 2017), explores one aspect of Augustine’s thought—his ecclesiology. In this carefully written and researched book, James shows how Augustine’s understanding of the church was Christ-centered, and as such, it was not simply an invisible communion of believers isolated from each other, but has a visible, communal aspect and is active in this world. This book is therefore highly suited to anyone interested in Augustine’s thought and ecclesiology, and would work well in a graduate seminar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In The Haredim: A Guide to their Beliefs and Sectors (Am-Oved and the IDI, 2017, in Hebrew), Benjamin Brown, a professor of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University, offers a mapping of the various sects that compose Jewish Israeli Ultra-Orthodoxy. He aims to provide his readers with a “respectful yet critical approach” to a rather diverse community, which in many senses has become an Israeli “Other.” Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017). You can read more of Yadgar’s work here.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Fashion is often dismissed as trivial, but Reina Lewis‘s Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures (Duke University Press, 2015) takes both it and what Muslims specifically wear and devotes and 300+ eye-opening pages to it. Defining it as, not a history, but “a history of several lived presents.” Largely focusing on Turkey, Western Europe, and North America, Lewis walks us through the landscape of Muslim fashion, incorporating marketing, global trends, social media, and the perspectives of those who wear the clothes themselves, Muslim women. We see how religion and identity shape what people wear, how they don’t necessarily have to even fit within the set of decisions that one makes when picking ones clothes, and how functionality is also key. Ultimately, Muslim Fashion is about the role of personal choice in how Muslim women express themselves through dress and will go far in challenging assumptions about Muslims and specifically, young Muslim women. NA Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

There is no such thing as religious freedom, or at least just one understanding of what that means. That’s the crux of the argument in Finbarr Curtis’ (Assistant Professor at Georgia Southern University), The Production of American Religious Freedom (NYU Press, 2016). Americans are fixated on freedom and saturated in religion but define the concepts in various ways. The production of religious freedom is only possible within this context of malleability, contestation, and disagreement. Curtis demonstrates this process through a number of related examples, including conflicting visions of Christianity, tensions between social dependence and independence, economic issues, questions of racial inclusion, and corporate rights. Through these cases we see how people respond when freedom makes them uncomfortable. Inequality was at the center of American history and the regular rearticulation of individual liberation from social constraints begins to plot the historical boundaries of religious freedom. In our conversation we discuss minister Charles Grandison Finney, author Louisa May Alcott, politician William Jennings Bryan, filmmaker D.W. Griffith, Catholic Governor of New York Al Smith, Malcolm X, arguments for Intelligent Design, and the exercise of religious liberty in the case of Hobby Lobby. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kjpetersen@unomaha.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In his monumental new book, Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017), Kristian Petersen, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, takes his readers on an unforgettable journey through the layers and complexities of Sino-Muslim intellectual and social history. On the way readers meet the major scholars and texts that played a formative role in the development of the Han Kitab tradition, and revel in navigating the terms and stakes of their discourses and debates on critical questions of pilgrimage, scriptural interpretation, and the sanctity of the Arabic language. In addition to constituting a field turning contribution to the study of Islam in China, this book is also among the most dazzling interventions in translation studies. All students and scholars of Islam, Religion, Asian Studies, and Translation Studies will have much to benefit from this brilliant study. It will also make an excellent text in both undergraduate and graduate courses on Muslim intellectual history, Asian Religions, and theories and methods in Religion Studies. SherAli Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available at https://fandm.academia.edu/SheraliTareen/. He can be reached at sherali.tareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Material success and prosperity are the aspirational goal for many Americans. The myth of meritocracy embedded in this national ethos has made this dream a civil religion. In Profane Parables: Film and the American Dream (Baylor University Press, 2016), Matthew S. Rindge, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Gonzaga University, explores critiques of this vision of contemporary America in popular cinema. Through a close investigation of the films Fight Club (1999), American Beauty (1999), and About Schmidt (2002) Rindge dissects constructions of the relationship between national success and the accompanying denial of death. Myth has long been a central motif in the study of religion so he frames film as parables that dismantle orthodox myths. Putting these films in conversation with biblical texts Rindge demonstrates how cinema can be situated as both myth-maker and myth deconstruction. In our conversation we discussed the prosperity gospel of American nationalism, creating a meaningful life, the denial of human fragility, biblical laments, and the field of religion and film. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kjpetersen@unomaha.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

As Bruce R. Berglund, points out in his terrific book Castle and Cathedral in Modern Prague: Longing for the Sacred in a Skeptical Age (CEU Press, 2017), the Czech Republic is an odd place, religion-wise. It’s among the most secular in the world, yet Czechs have a long tradition of believing in “Something.” They even have a thing called “Somethingism.” Just what that Something is and what that Something means for Czechs to do, of course, is and long has been the subject of debate. Bruce takes us into the heart of that debate in the interwar period, a time of great intellectual ferment and creativity in what was then Czechoslovakia. It turns out Czech intellectuals (Masaryk being the foremost of them) wanted the Czechs the be guided by Something in all their affairs. Bruce does a great job of telling us why and how. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In his recent book, The Buddha Party: How the People’s Republic of China Works to Define and Control Tibetan Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2016), John Powers presents a comprehensive overview of propaganda employed by the People’s Republic of China related to Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, showing not only how Han Chinese come to believe it, but also how Tibetans work to resist it. Drawing on previously untranslated material collected from both inside and outside of Tibet and China, this book outlines the narratives constructed by the PRC in an attempt to inform and control Tibetan Buddhist beliefs and practices. In addition to the well-known “patriotic re-education programs,” Powers also describes a booklet entitled Interpreting Tibetan Buddhist Doctrines, which attempts to re-frame Tibetan Buddhism in Chinese contexts for monks and nuns. The book also highlights the ways in which the PRC attempts to inform people’s views of foreign countries that are perceived as being sympathetic to the Dalai Lama and the so-called “Dalai Clique,” while simultaneously presenting the Dalai Lama as a nefarious, but ultimately ineffectual figure. In our conversation, Powers argues that the goal of this book is not to persuade readers to believe anything in particular about the effectiveness of Chinese propaganda, but rather to present and contextualize these materials so that readers can draw their own conclusions. This controversial book draws on years of research and personal experiences in the Tibet Autonomous Region and surrounding areas, and is a comprehensive and engaging read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Rebecca Fraser is a writer, journalist, and broadcaster whose work has been published in Tatler, Vogue, The Times, and The Spectator. President of the Bronte Society for many years, she is the author of a biography of Charlotte Bronte that examines her life in the context of contemporary attitudes about women. Her last book was The Story of Britain, a single-volume history of how England was governed over the past 2000 years. Now, just in time for Thanksgiving, comes her new book, The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America (St. Martin’s Press 2017). It tells the story of the Plymouth colony by focusing on the adventures and trials of Edward Winslow, who sailed over on the Mayflower in 1620, and then his son Josiah, who played a crucial role in the growing wars with the American Indians in the late 1670s. Over the course of the hour, we talk about how Edward, a largely ignored protagonist of America’s founding story, was foundational to maintaining early relationships with the Indians (including for the exchange of food for the ‘first’ Thanksgiving). Fraser talks about how Edward’s ideal of community, and Plymouth’s more ‘tolerant’ society compared to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to its north, was troubled by the influx of new colonists, the consolidation of colonial governance in the region, patriarchal power grabs, and the re-entrenchment of religious orthodoxies. Both in our discussion and in the book—a dramatic, highly detailed narrative of promise and nightmarish turns—Fraser adds much nuance to the emotional, psychological, and material complexities of the early colonists conflicted lives. We dive into Edward’s interest in and writing of ethnographical accounts, particularly of the Indians, as well as the place of women in the Plymouth story. Fraser reveals the wry perspectives women take on the men in their lives as we come to feel the effects of deaths, fluctuating fortunes, the formations of new churches, and the dangers of giving birth on the structure of life. The particularly adventurous energy, and personality, of Edward Winslow, and his less curious son’s re-assertion of an English identity, are the engines of the story. Their paths afford a new view of both the intercultural relationships and negotiations that kept the nascent country alive, and their eventual dismissal by the next generation. The result is a war with the Indians that would forever change the story. Michael Amico holds a PhD in American Studies from Yale University. His dissertation, The Forgotten Union of the Two Henrys: The True Story of the Peculiar and Rarest Intimacy of the American Civil War, is about the romance between Henry Clay Trumbull and Henry Ward Camp of the Tenth Connecticut Regiment. He is the author, with Michael Bronski and Ann Pellegrini, of “You Can Tell Just by Looking”: And 20 Other Myths about LGBT Life and People (Beacon, 2013), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Nonfiction. He can be reached at mjamico@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The categories religion and race share a common genealogy. The modern understanding of these terms emerges within the European enlightenment but grasping their gradual production requires us to investigate further. In Modern Religion, Modern Race (Oxford University Press, 2016), Theodore Vial, Professor at Iliff School of Theology, argues that the intersection of religion and race can be better understood by looking at the work of nineteenth-century German romantics. In the post-enlightenment period religion becomes a racialized category. Vial examines the writings of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Friedrich Max Muller, and Johann Gottfried Herder in order to outline the linked nature of race and religion as social categories. He puts their definitions and positions to work to determine the conceptual framework these authors deploy for theorizing difference. In our conversation we discuss Immanuel Kant on race, Schleiermacher as theologian and scholar of religion, the symbolic power of Max Muller within contemporary Religious Studies, the role of language and nation in the construction of religion and race, W. E. B. Du Bois, theological anthropology, analyzing Australian aborigines, and the legacy of nineteenth-century German constructions of race and religion for Religious Studies today. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kjpetersen@unomaha.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion