On Religion

Madison Tarleton is a Ph. D. candidate and scholar of Medieval Judaism in Christian Europe, antijudaism and antisemitism. Madison is studying at the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology’s joint PhD program. Read "The Krampus Conundrum" here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Geoffrey Barstow is assistant professor of religious studies at Oregon State University. His research focuses on the history and theory of vegetarianism in Tibet. He is the editor and contributor to the new book The Faults of Meat: Tibetan Buddhist Writings on Vegetarianism, out now from Wisdom Publications. He is also the author of the academic monograph Food of Sinful Demons: Meat, Vegetaria...

Dr. Jackson W. Crawford is Instructor of Nordic Studies and Coordinator of the Nordic Program at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Crawford is the author and translator of The Wanderer’s Havamal and The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes. Both books are available from Hackett Publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Simran Jeet Singh is columnist for Religion News Service, Senior Fellow at the Sikh Coalition, Chaplain at New York University and Columbia University, and serves on the Governor’s Interfaith Advisory Committee for the State of New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Samira Mehta a scholar of religion and the politics of the American Family and an assistant professor of Women and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She has a degree in divinity from Harvard University, and a PhD from Emory University, Her book is Beyond Chrismukkah: Christian-Jewish Interfaith Families in the United States, from the University of North C...

Dr. Liz Bucar is a professor in the department of philosophy and religion and Dean’s Leadership Fellow at Northeastern University in Boston. Dr. Bucar is the author of the award-winning Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress which came out from Harvard University Press in 2017, and was issued in paperback in July 2019. Furthermore, Bucar writes and teaches about gender, sexuality, and politics in e...

Dr. Shari Rabin is a scholar of modern Judaism and American religions. Her first book, Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America (New York University Press, 2017), was the winner of the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies and a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Rabin is currently an assistant professor of Jewish studies and re...

Ordained as a Soto Zen priest, Brad Warner is also a punk bassist, filmmaker, and blogger. He is the founder of Angel City Zen Center in Los Angeles and the author of Hardcore Zen, Sit Down and Shut Up, and several other books about Zen Buddhism. His writing appears on SuicideGirls.com and in Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, Buddhadharma, and Alternative Press. He lives in Los Angeles. Learn more about your...

Dr. Chris Babits is an Andrew W. Mellon Engaged Scholar Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Ph. D. in History from UT-Austin in May 2019. His work examines the intersections of religion, medicine, gender, and sexuality in the modern United States. His current in-progress book project, To Cure a Sinful Nation: A History of Conversion Therapy in the Uni...

Dr. Amy Artman teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at Missouri State University. Her research interests are in Pentecostalism and Charismatic Christianity, focusing on women in American religions, such as Aimee Semple McPherson and Kathryn Kuhlman. Her other research interests include world religions, and bodies and theories of American religion. Artman's newest book is The Miracle Lady...

Mark Coleman has taught meditation retreats and trainings worldwide for twenty years. He is the founder of the Mindfulness Institute and Awake in the Wild Programs. A senior teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, he lives in Northern California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In reggae song after reggae song Bob Marley and other reggae singers speak of the Promised Land of Ethiopia. "Repatriation is a must!" they cry. The Rastafari have been travelling to Ethiopia since the movement originated in Jamaica in 1930s. They consider it the Promised Land, and repatriation is a cornerstone of their faith. Though Ethiopians see Rastafari as immigrants, the Rastafari see themse...

Dr. Maren Freudenberg is a research associate at the Center for Religious Studies at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, and the associate editor of the journal Entangled Religions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Alex Gardner is the author of the brand new biography, The Life of Jamgon Kongtrul the Great, out now from Snow Lion, an imprint of Shambhala Publications. Gardner is the director and Chief Editor of the Treasury of Lives, which we talk about extensively in this conversation. Gardner completed his PhD in Buddhist Studies at the University of Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...

Lama Palden Drolma is a western teacher trained by Tibetan Buddhist masters. She the founder of Sukhasiddhi Foundation. She is a licensed psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, coach, and has studied Buddhism in the Himalayas with some of the preeminent Tibetan masters of the 20th century. She was authorized to become one of the first western lamas by Kalu Rinpoche.   Learn more about your ad choices...

Jay Wexler is a professor at the Boston University School of Law and is the author of the new book, Our Non-Christian Nation: How Atheists, Satanists, Pagans, and Others are Demanding Their Rightful Place in Public Life. The book is out from Stanford University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Ira Helderman is a psychotherapist in private practice and he holds a PhD in religious studies. He's the author of Prescribing the Dharma (University of North Carolina Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christian B. Miller is the A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. Miller's research is primarily in contemporary ethics and philosophy of religion. His book The Character Gap: How Good Are We? is just out from Oxford University Press. Miller has also published two other books with Oxford: Moral Character: An Empirical Theory (2013), and Character and Moral Psychology (2014)....

Gesshin Claire Greenwood is the author of Bow First, Ask Questions Later and the popular blog That’s So Zen. She trained in Japanese Zen monasteries, including in the kitchen, for several years before returning to the United States to obtain a master’s degree in East Asian Studies. She lives in San Francisco, where she cooks, teaches meditation, and works in the mental-health field. Learn more abo...

Stanley Lombardo is Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of Kansas. His previous translations include Homer's Iliad (1997, Hackett) and Odyssey (2000, Hackett), Hesiod's Works & Days and Theogony (1993, Hackett), among others.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jason Josephson-Storm is Professor of Religion and Chair of Science and Technology Studies at Williams College in Massachusetts. He received his Ph. D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University in 2006 and has held visiting positions in the US, France, and Germany. He has three primary research foci: Japanese Religions, European Intellectual History, and Theory more broadly.  Learn more about...

Sam Kestenbaum is an independent religion journalist. He writes for The New York Times and is a contributing editor and former staff writer for The Forward. He spent several years working in Asia and the Middle East, where he edited a newspaper in Sana, a website in Ramallah, and a magazine in Beijing. In recent pieces, Sam explores enchanted politics in his profiles of of Jonathan Cahn, a doomsda...

Dr. Judith Weisenfeld teaches in the Department of Religion at Princeton University where she is the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion and Associated Faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Weisenfeld is the author of New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity During the Great Migration, out now in pap...

Dr. Brett Malcolm Grainger is a scholar of American religion and an award-winning journalist. He is Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University and the author of Church In The Wild: Evangelicals In Antebellum American and In The World but Not of It: One Family's Militant Faith and the History of Fundamentalism in America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...

L. Benjamin Rolsky received his PhD from Drew University in American Religious Studies. His work has appeared in a variety of academic and popular venues including Method and Theory in the Study of Religion and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion as well as The Christian Century, The Los Angeles Review of Books, CNN Opinion, and the Religion and Culture Forum at the University of Chica...