New Books in Religion

Stephen L. Field‘s new translation and study of the Zhouyi offers an inspiring and fresh take that importantly differs from previous translators approaches to the text. The Duke of Zhou Changes: A Study and Annotated Translation of the Zhouyi (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015) serves both scholarly readers who come to it with an interest in Chinese classics, and general readers who come to it with an int...

In The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan (Indiana University Press, 2013), Mel Scult, professor emeritus at Brooklyn College, explores the ways in which Mordecai Kaplan, the only rabbi to have been excommunicated by the Orthodox rabbinical establishment in America, was a radical. Using Kaplan’s 27-volume diary, Scult places Kaplan’s thought in conversation with other thinkers like Spi...

In Becoming Un-Orthodox: Stories of Ex-Hasidic Jews (Oxford University Press, 2015), Lynn Davidman, Robert M. Beren Distinguished Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the University of Kansas, utilizes interviews with more than forty individuals who have left their Hasidic communities to vividly document the ways in which these men and women grapple with questions of faith, ritual, and communal a...

As the title of the monograph suggests, Contemporary Issues in Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2015) by Asma Afsaruddin, guides the reader through an organized and compelling narrative of reflections on hot-button topics in the modern world. The monograph offers a provocative balance of historical contextualization, close reading of texts, review of key scholars, and political analysis. Given i...

In Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition (Yale University Press, 2013), Gary A. Anderson, Hesburgh Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Notre Dame, explores the theological underpinnings of alms-giving, or charity. Anderson looks back to the Bible and post-biblical texts to show how, contrary to our modern view, a belief in a heavenly treasury was not just about s...

Anthropologist Birgit Meyer‘s most recent book, Sensational Movies: Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana (University of California Press, 2015), explores the dynamic process of popular video filmmaking in Ghana as a new medium for the imagination that interweaves technological, economic, social, cultural, and religious aspects. Stepping into the void left by the defunct state film industry, vi...

Although there are many deep criticisms of a scientific view of humanity and the world, a persistent theme is that the scientific worldview eliminates mystery, and in particular, the wonders and mysteries of the world’s religions. In Excellent Beauty: The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of the World (Columbia University Press), Eric Dietrich argues that the human thirst for mystery w...

Despite remaining neutral on his personal religious beliefs, Freud’s commitment to empiricism and his determination in relegating psychoanalysis to a scientifically valid position has had a lasting impact. In some sense, its created a taboo against theological considerations. This taboo, Earl Bland and Brad Strawn, the editors of Christianity and Psychoanalysis: A New Conversation (IntraVarsity Pr...

Ever wonder what Kabbalah is really about? Or how you might have a close relationship with God? Is cleaving to God an expectation that might have been medieval but no longer is sought? Rabbi Dr. Daniel M. Horwitz ‘s new book A Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism Reader (The Jewish Publication Society, 2016) answers these questions and many more in an easily readable, even entertaining, highly authentic...

In his path clearing new book, Parables of Coercion: Conversion and Knowledge at the End of Islamic Spain (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Seth Kimmel, Assistant Professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University, presents a fascinating account of how conversion from Islam to Christianity was imagined, debated, and contested in early modern Spain. Shifting focus from the e...

In Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015), Marc B. Shapiro, the Weinberg Chair of Judaic Studies at the University of Scranton, explores how segments of the Orthodox Jewish world rewrite the past by editing or erasing that which does not fit in with their contemporary world-view.  He surveys a variety of types of censors...

Heather Miyano Kopelson explores how religion, primarily expressed through bodily action, contributed to colonial notions of difference in her recent book Faithful Bodies: Performing Religion and Race in the Puritan Atlantic (NYU Press, 2014). She examines the religious rituals of Taíno, Algonquian, and West African peoples in the New World, and how they intersected with Puritan theology and expr...

Modern Biblical Studies usually begins from an assumption that there is an established original text and clear exegetical genres that extend from the original. Reception History is structured around the premise that they are investigating how individuals and communities have interpreted and deployed the original in later contexts. But what if there is no original text? What if the border between o...

Daniel K. Williams is an associate professor of history at the University of West Georgia. His book, Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade (Oxford University Press, 2016) offers the origins of the pro-life movement not as reactionary and anti-feminist, but rather as a New Deal-inspired crusade for human rights and part of a progressive Catholic social agenda. Pro-lifers...

Erik J. Hammerstrom‘s new book looks carefully at “what Chinese Buddhists thought about science in the first part of the twentieth century” by exploring what they wrote in articles and monographs devoted to the topic in the 1920s and early 1930s. The Science of Chinese Buddhism: Early Twentieth-Century Engagements (Columbia University Press, 2015) grounds its analysis in writings that appeared in...

Should the member of a Christian congregation be injured in a car accident, that person will likely be the subject of public prayers and hospitality. But if that same person suffers a mental breakdown, reactions will likely be much more complex and awkward. In her fascinating book, Madness: American Protestant Responses to Mental Illness (Baylor University Press, 2015), Dr. Heather Vacek examines...

What role do images play in the enlightenment experience? Can Buddha images, calligraphy, mandalas, and portraits function as nodes of access for a practitioner’s experience of enlightenment? Or are these visual representations a distraction from what ultimately matters? Pamela D. Winfield‘s recent award-winning monograph, Icons and Iconoclasm in Japanese Buddhism: Kukai and Dogen on the Art of En...

In That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South (NYU Press, 2014), Caroline E. Light, Lecturer on Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University, examines the American Jewish tradition of benevolence and charity and explores its southern roots. Light provides us with a critical analysis of benevolence as it was inflected by regional ideas o...

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111) is one of the most famous Muslim thinkers in history. His autobiographical account, The Deliverer from Error, tells us of his spiritual crisis and transformative experience of journeying, which lead to his subsequent life as a pious recluse. From this experience al-Ghazali wrote his magnum opus, The Revival of the Religious Sciences, filled with mystical knowledge. A...

In Jewish Youth and Identity in Postwar France: Rebuilding Family and Nation (Indiana UP, 2015), Daniella Doron, Lecturer in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Monash University, looks at the post-WWII effort to rehabilitate Jewish children and to reconstruct Jewish families in France.  She argues that ideas about the family were tied to national identity, citizenship, and ethnicity. Her works adds...

John D. Wilsey, assistant professor of history and Christian apologetics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. His book American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea (IVP Academic, 2015) is a work of historical political theology and examination of the idea of American exceptionalism that many have held as true and compatible with the evangelical faith. Exc...

In his book, In the Shadow of Hitler: Alabama’s Jews, the Second World War, and the Holocaust (University of Alabama Press, 2014), Dan J. Puckett, Associate Professor of History at Troy University, traces how Alabama’s Jews overcame community divisions to work together on behalf of European Jewry during the Holocaust.  Utilizing a variety of archival sources, Puckett shows how Alabama’s Jews lobbi...

In Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition (Yale University Press, 2015), Benjamin D. Sommer, Professor of Bible at The Jewish Theological Seminary, describes a “participatory theory of revelation,” which views the Bible as the result of a dialogue between God and the people of Israel.  Sommer reads Biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern Jewish texts in conversation, ex...

In her gripping new book Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca (Cornell University Press, 2015), Eileen M. Kane, Associate Professor of History at Connecticut College, presents a compelling narrative of the Russian empire’s patronage of the Hajj in the late nineteenth century. Through a careful study of a variety of sources including previously unexplored archives and memoirs, Kane prov...

There is no female religious figure so widely known and revered as the Virgin Mary. Filipino Catholics are especially drawn to Mama Mary and have a strong belief in her power, including her ability to appear to her followers. In Mother Figured: Marian Apparitions and the Making of a Filipino Universal (University of Chicago Press, 2015), historical anthropologist Deirdre de la Cruz offers a detail...