New Books in Religion

Why is Jordan Peterson so popular? In what ways is Jordan Peterson's approach to Scripture unique? What can Christians learn from Peterson about the Bible? Christopher Kaczor, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University, joins Madison's Notes to answer these questions and discuss his new book, Jordan Peterson, God, and Christianity: The Search for a Meaningful Life.Jordan Peterson's Biblical Studies series is here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

South Asia is home to more than a billion Hindus and half a billion Muslims. But the region is also home to substantial Christian communities, some dating almost to the earliest days of the faith. The stories of South Asia’s Christians are vital for understanding the shifting contours of World Christianity, precisely because of their history of interaction with members of these other religious traditions. In this broad, accessible overview of South Asian Christianity, Chandra Mallampalli shows how the faith has been shaped by Christians’ location between Hindus and Muslims.South Asia's Christians: Between Hindu and Muslim (Oxford UP, 2023) begins with a discussion of south India’s ancient Thomas Christian tradition, which interacted with West Asia’s Persian Christians and thrived for centuries alongside their Hindu and Muslim neighbors. He then underscores the efforts of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries to understand South Asian societies for purposes of conversion. The publication of books and tracts about other religions, interreligious debates, and aggressive preaching were central to these endeavors, but rarely succeeded in yielding converts. Instead, they played an important role in producing a climate of religious competition, which ultimately marginalized Christians in Hindu-, Muslim-, and Buddhist-majority countries of postcolonial South Asia. Ironically, the greatest response to Christianity came from poor and oppressed Dalit (formerly “untouchable”) and tribal communities who were largely indifferent to missionary rhetoric. Their mass conversions, poetry, theology, and embrace of Pentecostalism are essential for understanding South Asian Christianity and its place within World Christianity today.Byung Ho Choi is a Ph.D. candidate in the History and Ecumenics program at Princeton Theological Seminary, concentrating in World Christianity and history of religions. His research focuses on the indigenous expressions of Christianities found in Southeast Asia, particularly Christianity that is practiced in the Muslim-dominant archipelagic nation of Indonesia. More broadly, he is interested in history and the anthropology of Christianity, complexities of religious conversion and social identity, inter-religious dialogue, ecumenism, and World Christianity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In Mediating Catholicism: Religion and Media in Global Catholic Imaginaries (Bloomsbury, 2022), the authors and the three editors (Eric Hones del Pinal, Marc Rosco Loustau and Kristin Norget) explore how Catholicism is produced, maintained and challenged through processes of communication.This book focuses on the ethnographic study of Catholicism and media. Chapters demonstrate how people engage with the Catholic media-scape, and analyze the social, cultural, and political processes that underlie Catholic media and mediatization.Case studies examine Catholic practices in North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America, South-East Asia, and Africa, providing a truly comparative, de-centered representation of global Catholicism.Illustrating the vibrancy and heterogeneity of Catholicism world-wide, the book also examines how media work to sustain larger global Catholic imaginaries.Eric Hoenes Del Pinal’s chapter in particular examines “how Guatemalan Catholics have variously used FM radio and internet streaming video to manage the uncertainties of producing spectacular public rituals during Holy Week. Focusing on the devotional labor that Catholic lay leaders do to mount these events and the fact that efficacy of that work is not always easy to asses, he asks how their various media practices, which are meant to counterbalance unprecedented social changes, have contributed to the mediatization of parish life” (9).Lauren Horn Griffin is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University. She researches religion, media, and technology with a focus on Catholic communities around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

How did liberationist Christianity develop in Argentina between the 1930s and early 1970s? And how did it respond to state terrorism during the Dirty War? How did liberation theology develop in Argentina between the 1930s and early 1970s? And how did it respond to state terrorism during the Dirty War? Understanding the movement to be dynamic and highly diverse, Pablo Bradbury's book Liberationist Christianity in Argentina (1930-1983): Faith and Revolution (Tamesis Books, 2023) reveals that ecclesial and political conflicts, especially over Peronism and celibacy, were at the heart of the construction of a liberationist Christian identity, which simultaneously internalised deep tensions over its relationship to the Catholic Church. It first situates the rise of a revolutionary Christian impulse in Argentina within changes in society, in Catholicism and Protestantism and in Marxism in the 1930s, before analysing how the phenomenon coalesced in the late sixties into a coherent social movement. Finally, the book examines the responses of liberationist Christians to the intense period of repression under the presidency of Isabel Perón and the rule of the military junta between 1974 and 1983. By exploring these distinct responses and uncovering the heterogeneity of liberationist Christianity, the book offers a fresh analysis of a movement that occupies a major role in the popular memory of the period of state terror, and provides a corrective to narratives that depict the movement as monolithic or as a passive victim of the dictatorship.Roland Clark is a Reader in Modern European History at the University of Liverpool, a Senior Fellow with the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, and the Principal Investigator of an AHRC-funded project on European Fascist Movements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Teena Purohit’s new book Sunni Chauvinism and the Roots of Muslim Modernism (Princeton University Press, 2023) maps how various Muslim modernists from the 19th to the 20th centuries used their Sunni normativity to construct social and political boundaries around conceptions of tawhid or Islamic unity. The book distinctively focuses on how Muslim modernists such as canonical figures like Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad ‘Abduh, Rashid Rida and many others, focused on communities such as Shi‘as, Ismailis, Ahmadis, and Bahai’s in their activist and intellectual projects that aspired for a singular unified Islam against encroaching western modernity. For Muslim modernists who were anxious to reclaim a “lost unity” of Islam that existed in the past and believed could be achieved again in the future (though lacking in their time), non-Sunni groups, like Ahmadis for Muhammad Iqbal or esoteric groups for Rashid Rida, became communities that received disparaging attention and intolerant attitudes that led to a particular Sunni chauvinism, Purohit argues. And as such, this obsession with unity (tawhid) and the privileging of Sunnism that went with it was found in all forms of Muslim modernism. This book then invites a rethinking of our conceptualization of Muslim modernism in light of these thinkers approaches to esoteric (i.e., Sufi) and Shi‘a groups who were viewed as problematic for the social and political goal of tawhid. This accessible book will be of interest to those who think and write on Muslim modernism and non-Sunni movements in Islam. It will also be a great teaching resource for undergraduate and graduate classes.Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Queen’s University. More details about her research and scholarship may be found here and here. She may be reached at shobhana.xavier@queensu.ca. You can follow her on Twitter via @shobhanaxavier. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

“A moving description of a life in practice which goes far beyond text-based ideas of prayer, devotion, guru-connection, or meditation, and most especially of tantric practice." Anne Klein, former Chair of the Department of Religion at Rice University.A ground-breaking book, The Magic of Vajrayana (Unfettered Mind Media, 2023) opens new doors to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Vajrayana, one of the most vibrant traditions of mystical practice in the world today. Ken McLeod deploys his considerable skills in translation, teaching, and writing to weave a rich tapestry of the core practices of this tradition and his experience with them. In simple clear English he immerses the reader in the practice of Vajrayana, bridging the gap between classical instruction and idealized descriptions of insights and understandings. Along with two of his previous books, Reflections on Silver River and A Trackless Path, The Magic of Vajrayana completes a trilogy of experiential instruction and guidance in the Tibetan tradition of Buddhism.As one of the first generation western practitioners and then teacher, Ken is a contemporary of famous teachers across the American, Canadian and British dharma figures. He both shares concerns with them and has made his own way.He is one of those who have sought to innovate, westernise and explore what happens to Buddhism when it is taken out of a traditional setting. Whether through his Pragmatic Dharma website, or his insistence on finding language that works for those he taught and now writes for, Ken has gone deep into Tibetan Buddhism whilst committing to finding ways to have it speak to westerners: he has in many ways been a key early figure in adapting and westernising Buddhism, specifically Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism from Tibet.Ken’s latest book, The Magic of Vajrayana, is the topic of our conversation. In discussing it, we look at a variety of topics that relate to the practising life. What are magic and faith and what role do they have in the Tantric path. Opening to experience and how the path can enable this process. The role of power, and the guru. How mantras and deities can assist practitioners to wake up. The nature and role of reactive patterns and how to counter them. The role of language in opening up practices. Samsara. The future of Vajrayana in the West. Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can find The Imperfect Buddha on Facebook and Twitter (@imperfectbuddha). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Not all atheists are New Atheists, but thanks in large part to the prominence and influence of New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, New Atheism has claimed the pulpit of secularity in Western society. New Atheists have given voice to marginalized nonreligious individuals and underscored the importance of science in society. They have also advanced a derisive view of religion and forcefully argued that science and religion are intrinsically in conflict. Many in the public think that all scientists are atheists and all atheist scientists are New Atheists, militantly against religion and religious people. But what do everyday atheist scientists actually think about religion?Drawing on a survey of 1,293 atheist scientists in the U.S. and U.K., and 81 follow-up in-depth interviews, Varieties of Atheism in Science (Oxford Academic Press, 2021) by Professors Elaine Howard Ecklund and David R. Johnson, explains the pathways that led to atheism among scientists, the diverse views of religion they hold, their perspectives on the limits of what science can explain, and their views of meaning and morality. The findings reveal a vast gulf between the rhetoric of New Atheism in the public sphere and the reality of atheism in science. The story of the varieties of atheism in science is consequential for scientific and religious communities and points to tools for dialogue between these seemingly disparate groups.Elaine Howard Ecklund is the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences, Professor of Sociology, and Director of the Boniuk Institute at Rice University, Houston TX. Her research examines social and institutional change, especially when individuals leverage aspects of their religious, racial, and gender identities to change institutions. Elaine is the author of seven books, over 100 research articles, and numerous op-eds. She has received grants and awards from multiple organizations.David R. Johnson is an associate professor of higher education in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at Georgia State University. His research agenda examines how universities are shaped by changes in their institutional environments, especially as it relates to capitalism, religion, and politics. He has previously published in numerous academic journals, a book with Johns Hopkins University Press, A Fractured Profession: Commercialism and Conflict in Academic Science (2017), and co-authored another book with Elaine Ecklund, Secularity and Science: What Scientists around the World Actually Think, from Oxford University Press (2019). In fact, they joined Carrie Lynn on New Books in Secularism in September 2019 to discuss that book; listen here.Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. carrie-lynn.evans@lit.ulaval.ca @carrielynnland Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Timothy R. Pauketat’s Gods of Thunder: How Climate Change, Travel, and Spirituality Reshaped Precolonial America (Oxford UP, 2023) is a sweeping account of what happened when Indigenous peoples of Medieval North and Central America confronted climate change.Few Americans today are aware of one of the most consequential periods in North American history—the Medieval Warm Period of seven to twelve centuries ago (AD 800-1300 CE)—which resulted in the warmest temperatures in the northern hemisphere since the "Roman Warm Period," a half millennium earlier. Reconstructing these climatic events and the cultural transformations they wrought, Pauketat guides readers down ancient American paths walked by Indigenous people a millennium ago, some trod by Spanish conquistadors just a few centuries later. The book follows the footsteps of priests, pilgrims, traders, and farmers who took great journeys, made remarkable pilgrimages, and migrated long distances to new lands.Along the way, readers discover a new history of a continent that, like today, was being shaped by climate change—or controlled by ancient gods of wind and water. Through such elemental powers, the history of Medieval America was a physical narrative, a long-term natural and cultural experience in which Native people were entwined long before Christopher Columbus arrived or Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztecs.Spanning from North to Central America, Gods of Thunder focuses on remarkable parallels between pre-contact American civilizations separated by a thousand miles or more. Key archaeological sites are featured in every chapter, leading us down an evidentiary trail toward the book's conclusion that a great religious movement swept Mesoamerica, the Southwest, and the Mississippi valley, sometimes because of worsening living conditions and sometimes by improved agricultural yields thanks to global warming a thousand years ago. The author also includes a guide to visiting the archaeological sites discussed in each chapter of the book.Sarah Newman (@newmantropologa) is an archaeologist and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her research explores long-term human-environmental interactions, including questions of waste and reuse, processes of landscape transformation, and relationships between humans and other animals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Today I talked with Senator Joe Lieberman—who ran for Vice President in 2000 with Al Gore, and for President in 2004 in the Democratic primary—about his book, The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath (2011). Senator Lieberman is a devout Jew and talks with me about the Sabbath tradition, a custom rooted in God’s day of rest at the end of creation (Genesis 2) and the Mosaic Law and the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5). It is the shared practice of all Abrahamic monotheists: Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Senator Lieberman’s book, The Gift of Rest Senator Lieberman’s Wikipedia page Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; he is also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Are science and spirituality incompatible? From the acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams comes a rich, fascinating answer to that question...Gazing at the stars, falling in love, or listening to music, we sometimes feel a transcendent connection with a cosmic unity and things larger than ourselves. But these experiences are not easily understood by science, which holds that all things can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. Is there space in our scientific worldview for these spiritual experiences?According to acclaimed physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, there may be. Drawing on intellectual history and conversations with contemporary scientists, philosophers, and psychologists, Lightman asks a series of thought-provoking questions that illuminate our strange place between the world of particles and forces and the world of complex human experience. Can strict materialism explain our appreciation of beauty? Or our feelings of connection to nature and to other people? Is there a physical basis for consciousness, the most slippery of all scientific problems?In The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science (Pantheon, 2023), Lightman weaves these investigations together to propose what he calls “spiritual materialism”—the belief that we can embrace spiritual experiences without letting go of our scientific worldview. In his view, the breadth of the human condition is not only rooted in material atoms and molecules but can also be explained in terms of Darwinian evolution.What is revealed in this lyrical, enlightening book is that spirituality may not only be compatible with science, it also ought to remain at the core of what it means to be human.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il. She's on Twitter @embracingwisdom. She blogs here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion