New Books in Religion

In The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World Jordan D. Rosenblum explores how cultures critique and defend their religious food practices. In particular he focuses on how ancient Jews defended the kosher laws, or kashrut, and how ancient Greek, Romans, and early Christians critiqued these practices. As the kosher laws are first encountered in the Hebrew Bible, this study is rooted in ancient biblical interpretation. Rosenblum explores how commentators in antiquity understood, applied, altered, innovated upon, and contemporized biblical dietary regulations. He shows that these differing interpretations do not exist in a vacuum; rather, they are informed by a variety of motives, including theological, moral, political, social, and financial considerations. In analyzing these ancient conversations about culture and cuisine, he dissects three rhetorical strategies deployed when justifying various interpretations of ancient Jewish dietary regulations: reason, revelation, and allegory. Finally, Rosenblum reflects upon wider, contemporary debates about food ethics. Phillip Sherman is Associate Professor of Religion at Maryville College in Maryville, TN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Paul Harvey is a professor of history at the University of Colorado. His book Bounds of Their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) provides an accessible and expansive narrative of the relationship between race, religion and the American nation from the colonial age to recent times. Harvey encompasses the story of Anglo-Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans and how their religious experience defined their place within the national promise of religious freedom and pluralism. He demonstrates how religion was a tool for both subjugation and resistance to racial hierarchy. More recently Muslim, against the tide of religious prejudice and racialization, have sought their place in the nation and new immigrants are changing the face American Christianity. From the Spanish-American missions in the southwest to contemporary multi-ethnic urban churches, Harvey demonstrates the unique nature of American culture and how the nation has dealt with religious and racial diversity. As a synthesis of broad scholarship, Bounds of their Habitation is a must-read for anyone venturing out to understand this distinctive American phenomenon. Here is my conversation with Paul Harvey. Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is tentatively entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. 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 monograph, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Benjamin Schonthal examines the relationship between constitutional law and religious conflict in Sri Lanka during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Situating his study alongside broader conversations in the field of constitutional law and specifically debates about law’s effects on religion, Schonthal challenges the widely-held idea that constitutional law, properly administered, is a useful tool for reducing conflict between and within religious communities. Drawing on unpublished and previously unexamined archival materials written in Tamil, Sinhalese, and English, Schonthal argues that in the case of Sri Lanka constitutional law has actually hardened pre-existing religious conflicts and encouraged religious actors to use the law and courts to frame a variety of legal fights in explicitly religious terms. The pyrrhic constitutionalism in the subtitle of the book is the term that Schonthal has coined to describe how, in this case, the practice of constitutional law actually exacerbates the very problems it was designed to resolve. In the first half of the book, Schonthal details the fascinating history of two of Sri Lankas most important constitutions–an initial one in 1948, and a revised version ratified in 1972–focusing specifically on the section that addresses Buddhism and religion. Many familiar with the post-independence history of Sri Lanka might interpret this section as but a product of Buddhist chauvinism and Sinhala nationalism. However, by looking at an impressive number of drafts and archival materials, Schonthal reveals that the process of drafting this religious clause was in fact a messy back-and-forth between several competing parties, including those who wanted the government to completely remove itself from religious affairs, those who wanted the government to proactively protect religious rights, and those who hoped the state would grant Buddhism a special, protected status in post-colonial Sri Lanka. He further shows that even among those who wanted Buddhism to enjoy special protection there was much disagreement about how the government should execute such protection, and to what degree the government should assume responsibilities traditionally allocated to the saṅghas elders or sometimes to the king. The second half of the book provides case studies that detail precisely how it is that constitutional law exacerbates extant conflicts within and between religious groups. After providing a number of examples of the way in which the Buddhism and religion clause created an incentive for Buddhist groups to use the courts as a space for publicly airing their grievances, Schonthal then moves on to the case of a monk who applied for a driving license but, after a long legal process, was eventually denied. Scholars of Buddhism will find this case fascinating regardless of their area or period of expertise, for this highly contentious case, which captivated the Sri Lankan media and public, gets to the heart of a perennial issue within Buddhist societies, namely the degree to which secular rulers should be involved in enforcing Buddhist monastic rules. In the book’s penultimate chapter, Schonthal looks at Buddhist anxiety over religious conversion–specifically cases of Buddhists converting to Christianity–and again argues that constitutional law has inadvertently intensified this controversy. In the interview we barely scratch the surface of the book, and listeners interested in following Schonthal’s arguments in greater detail and reading the case studies, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Matthew Poole (1624-1679) was an English Nonconformist theologian educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; he held the rectory of St Michael le Querne in London from 1649 to 1662. Poole is principally associated with the work Synopsis Criticorum Biblicorum (5 vols. folio), in which he summarizes the views of one hundred and fifty biblical commentators, including Jewish sources and Roman Catholic commentators–an undertaking of ten years, and a monument not only of his extensive reading, but of his great acumen and learning. He also wrote English Annotations on the Holy Bible, completing as far as Isaiah 58 before his death in 1679. Much of Poole’s valuable contribution, being written in Latin, has been out of reach for many students of the Bible, including pastors and teachers. To remedy this problem, Dr. Steven Dilday has been laboring to translate the works of Poole, publishing them in English. In today’s podcast, Steven Dilday talks about his Matthew Poole Project. He tells us about the life of Matthew Poole, and how we can obtain his recent publications of Poole’s work in English. Steven Dilday holds a BA in Religion and Philosophy from Campbell University, a Master of Arts in Religion from Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia), and both a Master of Divinity and a PhD in Puritan History and Literature from Whitefield Theological Seminary. He is also the translator of De Moor’s Compendium of Christian Theology. Dilday is Assistant Professor of Religion at Southern Wesleyan University in Central, South Carolina. L. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

What is Jewish about Jewish American literature? While the imaginative possibilities are numerous many scholars approach literary products with an established notion of a Jewish identity before they reach their subjects. This is one of the central concerns for Benjamin Schreier, Associate Professor at Penn State University, in The Impossible Jew: Identity and the Reconstruction of Jewish American Literary History (NYU Press, 2015). He calls for a critical study of identity and identification within his field, which should have broader applications in other identity-based investigations. Schreier provides a comprehensive and productive reevaluation of approaches to identity, which explores the meaning and power of the uses of identity in literary products. He puts his new approach into action through a rereading of key works and authors from an established Jewish American literary canon. On the other end of the spectrum, he tests the boundaries of the deployment of Jewishness when it does not align with the dominant assumptions in Jewish American literary study. In our conversation we discussed the place of Jewish American Literary studies within adjacent fields, the dominant scholarly practices of this field, racialized nationalist grounds of Jewishness, Abraham Cahan’s spectral Jew, the New York Intellectuals, the anxiety of Jewish identity in Philip Roth’s work, the irrepresentation of identity in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and how to think about identity as an analytical category. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. His research and teaching interests include Theory and Methodology in the Study of Religion, Islamic Studies, Chinese Religions, Human Rights, and Media Studies. 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

Archaeologists and scholars of the ancient Near East regularly make statements to the effect that there is absolutely no archaeological evidence for many events of the Bible, including Israel’s sojourn in Egypt, the Exodus out of Egypt, and the conquest of cities like Jericho. Textbooks surveying the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, and books on the history of Israel make the same assertions. Then Egyptologist David Rohl comes along and ignites a revolution in the academic world, arguing that there is indeed much evidence for these same biblical events. In this podcast, well be speaking with David Rohl about his recent book, Exodus: Myth or History? (Thinking Man Media, 2015), along with the companion DVD set of his lectures, The David Rohl Lectures. David Rohl is an Egyptologist, historian and archaeologist specializing in the historical relationship between pharaonic Egypt and the Bible. He is known principally for his internationally acclaimed television documentary series, Pharaohs and Kings (1995) and In Search of Eden (2001), as well as for his best-selling book, A Test of Time (published in the USA as Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest). L. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

When you think of black power, do you think about churches and religious institutions, or do you relate them more to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s? How do the social justice struggles of the past relate to those of today? In this vital reassessment of the impact of religion on the black power movement, Faith in Black Power: Religion, Race, and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois (University Press of Kentucky, 2016) presents a nuanced discussion of the ways in which black churches supported and shaped the United Front black power organization in Cairo, Illinois during the 1970s. The book deftly challenges conventional narratives of the de-Christianization of the movement, revealing that Cairoites embraced both old-time religion and revolutionary thought. Not only did the faithful fund the mass direct-action strategies of the United Front, but activists also engaged the literature on black theology, invited theologians to speak at their rallies, and sent potential leaders to train at seminaries. In Faith in Black Power: Religion, Race, and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois the author also investigates the impact of female leaders on the organization and their influence on young activists, offering new perspectives on the hypermasculine image of black power. Based on extensive primary research, Faith in Black Power: Religion, Race, and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois contributes to and complicates the history of the black freedom struggle in America. It not only adds a new element to the study of African American religion but also illuminates the relationship between black churches and black politics during this tumultuous era. Kerry Pimblott is a Lecturer in American History at the University of Manchester. She earned a B.A. with First Class Honours in American Studies from King’s College London and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include African American history, Black social movements, urban history, working class history, and religious cultures and institutions. James Stancil is an independent scholar, freelance journalist, and the President and CEO of Intellect U Well, Inc. a Houston-area non-profit dedicated to increasing the joy of reading and media literacy in young people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Many historians have documented the Second Vatican Council yet virtually no attention has been devoted to the Catholics who found themselves living behind an iron curtain at the end of the 1940s. Piotr Kosicki’s edited volume, Vatican II Behind the Iron Curtain (The Catholic University of America Press, 2016), changes this story by profiling four Communist-run countries: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia. Drawing on extensive research in English-language scholarship and the national historiographies of the countries that it examines, Vatican II Behind the Iron Curtain offers an unparalleled glimpse into the vibrant and complicated politics of the Cold War period. Piotr Kosicki is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maryland. Hillary Kaell co-hosts NBIR and is Associate Professor of Religion at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Medieval Egypt had a rapid influx of Sufis, which has previously been explained through reactionary models of analysis. It was argued that the widespread popularity of Sufism was marked by a public adoption of practices that satisfied the masses in ways the religious elite were not fully addressing. In The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173-1325 (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), Nathan Hofer, Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri, critiques the social binary that these assumptions create, as well as, rethinks the mechanisms within the social production of Sufi culture. He explores these concerns in the context of the Ayyubid and Mamluk states and their relationships with Sufi masters and communities. First, a state-sponsored Sufi lodge serves as the site for professionalization of Sufis and the public consumption of Sufi culture that aligns with state objectives. The emergence of the Shādhilīya sufi order serves as a case of the textualization of an idealized sufi identity, and its subsequent popularization through the production of a collective community. Finally, Hofer explores the unique context of Upper-Egyptian Sufism, which relied on charismatic authority and miraculous work in the creation of a community. In our conversation we discussed the notion of Popular Culture in the medieval world, hagiography and biography, miracles, the khanqah of Cairo, state religious sponsorship, professional sufis, and contemporary methods for investigating the past. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. His research and teaching interests include Theory and Methodology in the Study of Religion, Islamic Studies, Chinese Religions, Human Rights, and Media Studies. 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

Before the Bible Belt fastened itself across the South, competing factions of evangelicals fought over the faith’s future, and a contrarian sect, self-named the Primitive Baptists, made its stand. In Strangers Below: Primitive Baptists and American Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) Joshua Guthman tells the story of how a band of anti-missionary and anti-revivalistic Baptists defended Calvinism, America’s oldest Protestant creed, from what they feared were the unbridled forces of greed and power. In their harrowing confessions of faith and in the quavering uncertainty of their singing, Guthman finds the emotional catalyst of the Primitives’ early 19th century movement: a searing experience of doubt that motivated believers rather than paralyzed them. Strangers Below demonstrates the unlikely but enduring influence of Primitive Baptists on American religious and cultural life. Phillip Sherman is Associate Professor of Religion at Maryville College in Maryville, TN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion