New Books in Religion

Few people would describe themselves as antisemites. And yet many Jews living in Europe and the US believe that they encounter anti-semitism quite frequently – so what accounts for these different perceptions? Owen Bennett Jones discusses antisemitism with Dave Rich, author of Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism is Built into our World and How You Can Change It (Backbite, 2023).Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

“It is not events that disturb us, but what we believe about them.” Is this true? Well, apparently Pyrrho, a rather obscure Greek philosopher claimed it to be the case and he may have been influenced by Buddhism in his creation of what today is called “Pyrrhonism”. Pyrrho agreed with the Buddha that delusion was the cause of suffering, but instead of using meditation to end delusion, Pyrrho applied Greek philosophical rationalism.Pyrrho’s Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism (Sumeru Press, 2020) lays out the Pyrrhonist path for modern readers on how to apply Pyrrhonist practice to everyday life. Its author is Douglas C. Bates, founder of the Modern Pyrrhonism Movement. He has been a Zen practitioner for over 25 years, was a founding member of Boundless Way Zen, and is a student of Zeno Myoun, Roshi.“…succeeds in making a difficult and obscure philosophy not only intelligible but, more to the point, something to be practiced in a way that can make a difference to your life here and now.” — STEPHEN BATCHELOR, author of The Art of Solitude“…an intelligent, readable book that succeeds in its goal of introducing Pyrrhonism as practice.” — CHRISTOPHER BECKWITH, author of Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central AsiaMatthew 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

For three weeks in February of 2023, a spontaneous ‘Outpouring’ at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, set the hearts of American Christians aflame, reviving their faith and our spiritual conversation. Fr Norman Fischer, pastor of nearby St. Peter Claver Catholic Church and the chaplain at Lexington Catholic High School, in Lexington Kentucky, went over to Asbury to check it out. He tells us about the glorious events he witnessed there, in Wilmore. He also explains how, for Catholics, to feel the intercession of God is not unusual. God is in the Eucharist, in every miracle, in every saintly martyrdom, in every Marian apparition, and so our world is triumphantly enchanted with His Presence at every turn. Father Norman talks about his own numinous experiences and about his life as a priest. Short Interview with Fr. Norman, National Black Catholic Congress Fr. Norman on Facebook St. Peter Claver Parish on Facebook and on the diocesan webpage. Gina Christian’s article in Detroit Catholic (which talks about Fr Norman at Asbury) Asbury University webpage about the Outpouring “A Gen Z Religious Revival” on the Honestly podcast with Bari Weiss. The Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano, on the Real Presence website and Wikipedia 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

From right to left, notions of religion and religious freedom are fundamental to how many Americans have understood their country and themselves. Ideas of religion, politics, and the interplay between them are no less crucial to how the United States has engaged with the world beyond its borders. Yet scholarship on American religion tends to bracket the domestic and foreign, despite the fact that assumptions about the differences between ourselves and others deeply shape American religious categories and identities.At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion (Columbia UP, 2021) bridges the divide in the study of American religion, law, and politics between domestic and international, bringing together diverse and distinguished authors from religious studies, law, American studies, sociology, history, and political science to explore interrelations across conceptual and political boundaries. They bring into sharp focus the ideas, people, and institutions that provide links between domestic and foreign religious politics and policies. Contributors break down the categories of domestic and foreign and inquire into how these taxonomies are related to other axes of discrimination, asking questions such as: What and who counts as “home” or “abroad,” how and by whom are these determinations made, and with what consequences?Offering a new approach to theorizing the politics of religion in the context of the American nation-state, At Home and Abroad also interrogates American religious exceptionalism and illuminates imperial dynamics beyond the United States. Find the sister-project, Theologies of American Exceptionalism, here.Elizabeth Shakman Hurd is professor of political science and the Crown Chair in Middle East Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (2008) and Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (2015).Winnifred Fallers Sullivan is Provost Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, director of the Center for Religion and the Human, and affiliated professor of law at Indiana University Bloomington. Her books include The Impossibility of Religious Freedom (2005) and Church State Corporation: Construing Religion in U.S. Law (2020).This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with Paula Arai, a scholar of Japanese Zen, gender, and healing ritual. Paula is an inspiration in the way she blends critical analysis and compassion in her work. In this episode, we talk about how her journey into Zen began with her relationship with her Japanese mother, as well as her work on everyday Japanese healing rituals. Our discussion focuses on the ethics of empathetic scholarship and how Paula’s care for relationships has shaped her five books. Along the way, we touch on the centrality of women in Buddhism and the challenges of facing misogyny and sexism in academia.Enjoy the conversation! And, if you want to hear from more experts on Buddhist medicine and related topics, subscribe to Blue Beryl for monthly episodes here.Resources: Article about Paula by Karma Lekse Tsomo in Challenging Bias Against Women Academics in Religion (2021) Women Living Zen: Japanese Soto Buddhist Nuns (1999) Bringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Women's Rituals (2011) Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra (2019) The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice (2022) The Little Book of Zen Healing: Japanese Rituals for Beauty, Harmony, and Love (2023) Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. He is also the host (with Lan Li) of the Blue Beryl podcast. Subscribe to Blue Beryl here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Brahma-sutra, attributed to Badaraya (ca. 400 CE), is the canonical book of Vedanta, the philosophical tradition which became the doctrinal backbone of modern Hinduism. As an explanation of the Upanishads, it is principally concerned with the ideas of Brahman, the great ground of Being, and of the highest good. The Philosophy of the Brahma-sutra: An Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2022) is the first introduction to concentrate on the text and its ideas, rather than its reception and interpretation in the different schools of Vedanta. Covering the epistemology, ontology, theory of causality and psychology of the Brahma-sutra, and its characteristic theodicy, it also:- Provides a comprehensive account of its doctrine of meditation- Elaborates on its nature and attainment, while carefully considering the wider religious context of Ancient India in which the work is situated- Draws the contours of Brahma-sutra's intellectual biography and reception history.By contextualizing the Brahma-sutra's teachings against the background of its main collocutors, it elucidates how the work gave rise to widely divergent ontologies and notions of practice. For both the undergraduate student and the specialist this is an illuminating and necessary introduction to one of Indian philosophy's most important works. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine (Cornell UP, 2022) reveals how and why religion has become a pivotal political force in a society struggling to overcome the legacy of its entangled past with Russia and chart a new future. If Ukraine is “ground zero” in the tensions between Russia and the West, religion is an arena where the consequences of conflicts between Russia and Ukraine keenly play out.Vibrant forms of everyday religiosity pave the way for religion to be weaponized and securitized to advance political agendas in Ukraine and beyond. These practices, Catherine Wanner argues, enable religiosity to be increasingly present in public spaces, public institutions, and wartime politics in a pluralist society that claims to be secular.Based on ethnographic data and interviews conducted since before the Revolution of Dignity and the outbreak of armed combat in 2014, Wanner investigates the conditions that catapulted religiosity, religious institutions, and religious leaders to the forefront of politics and geopolitics.John Vsetecka is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Michigan State University where he is finishing a dissertation that examines the aftermath of the 1932-33 famine in Soviet Ukraine (Holodomor). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Ritual is one of the oldest, and certainly most enigmatic, threads in the history of human culture. It presents a profound paradox: people ascribe the utmost importance to their rituals, but few can explain why they are so important. Apparently pointless ceremonies pervade every documented society, from handshakes to hexes, hazings to parades. Before we ever learned to farm, we were gathering in giant stone temples to perform elaborate rites and ceremonies. And yet, though rituals exist in every culture and can persist nearly unchanged for centuries, their logic has remained a mystery—until now.In Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living (Little, Brown Spark, 2022), pathfinding scientist Dimitris Xygalatas leads us on an enlightening tour through this shadowy realm of human behavior. Armed with cutting-edge technology and drawing on discoveries from a wide range of disciplines, he presents a powerful new perspective on our place in the world. In birthday parties and coronations, in silent prayer, in fire-walks and terrifying rites of passage, in all the bewildering variety of human life, Ritual reveals the deep and subtle mechanisms that bind us together.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

Carla Cevasco, Assistant Professor of American Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, discusses her recent article, "This is My Body: Communion and Cannibalism in Colonial New England and New France." Her article was published in the December 2016 issue of The New England Quarterly.Abstract:Analyzing the material culture of English, French, and Native communion ceremonies, and debates over communion and cannibalism, this article argues that peoples in the borderlands between colonial New England and New France refused to recognize their cultural similarities, a cross-cultural failure of communication with violent consequences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Nishant Kumar's Religious Offense and Censorship of Publications: An Enquiry Through the Prism of Indian Laws and the Judiciary (Routledge, 2022) analyzes the role of laws and the judiciary in the process of censorship in India. It examines the rationales and observations produced by the judiciary when demands for censorship are directed against publications that allegedly offend religious sentiments. Focusing on a micro-level analysis of censorship of publications, it presents a hard case to understand the limitations of freedom of expression and the role played by the judiciary in defining its boundaries. The volume traces the evolution of laws governing freedom of expression since the colonial period and the context in which these laws were amended after Independence. It also explicates how the legal process – the structural and functional aspects of working of judiciary – affects the fate of freedom of expression in India. Employing comparative legal analysis, it tries to understand and situate the Indian case within the larger discourse of censorship and freedom of expression around the world, thereby marking its similarities and differences. In unravelling the politics of censorship, the author also examines the interaction among different stakeholders like government, non-state actors and the judiciary.A tract for our times, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of law, especially constitutional law and fundamental rights, politics, especially political theory and Indian politics, modern India and South Asian studies.Tiatemsu Longkumer is a Ph.D. scholar working on Indigenous Religion and Christianity 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