New Books In Religion

In Thailand’s Theory of Monarchy: The Vessantara Jataka and the Idea of the Perfect Man (SUNY Press, 2016; in paperback from 2017), Patrick Jory offers a compelling reinterpretation of religious text as political theory. The Vessantara Jataka is one of the most historically significant stories of Gautama Buddha’s previous births. Rather than reading the jataka as religious narrative or folktale, Jory convincingly resituates it at the centre of statecraft and ruling ideology in pre-modern Thailand. Tracking the jataka’s rising popularity from the period of early state formation, he shows how its preeminence gradually came to an end with European empire in the 1800s, when the country’s elites undertook to save Buddhism by recasting the religion and its larger traditions to fit with colonial forms of knowledge. Although the jatakas lost favour in the capital they remained popular in the countryside. Today their relationship to the Thai monarchy has been partly restored, with the idea of t

Benjamin L. Gladd is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. He completed his Ph.D. from Wheaton College in New Testament in 2008, and teaches courses in Greek, Exegesis, the New Testament, and the Use of the Old Testament in the New. His publications include (co-authored with G.K. Beale) Hidden But Now Revealed: A Biblical Theology of Divine Mystery (IVP, 2004), and (co-edited with Daniel M. Gurtner) From Creation to New Creation: Essays on Biblical Theology and Exegesis (Hendrickson, 2013). On this program we talk about Gladds recent work, co-authored with Matthew S. Harmon, Making All Things New: Inaugurated Eschatology for the Life of the Church (Baker Academic, 2016) which investigates the interface between eschatology (the study of last things) and pastoral ministry, and demonstrates how biblical theology applies to the church. During the interview we also talk about the biblical theology and influence of Greg K. Beale, who writes the introductory c

In this program, we discuss Glory in Romans and the Unified Purpose of God in Redemptive History (Pickwick Publications, 2016), a revision of Donald Berry’s doctoral dissertation. With this publication, Berry fills in a gap in Pauline studies, setting forth the glory of God as central to Paul’s theology. Not only does his book cover a significant motif in the New Testament, but it also provides crucial insights into the Epistle to the Romans and to the field of biblical theology. Donald Berry is a pastor at Christian Fellowship in Columbia, Missouri. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Amridge University in Montgomery, AL, and an M.Div. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. L. Michael Morales, Ph.D. Professor of Biblical Studies. He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The so called “Pariah Problem” emerged in public consciousness in the 1890s in India as state officials, missionaries and “upper”caste landlords, among others, struggled to understood the situation of Dalits (those subordinated populations once called untouchables). In The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India (Columbia University Press, 2014) Rupa Viswanath unpacks the creation and application of this so called “problem.”The interview explores the ways in which land, labour and ritual combined in producing the Pariah and the affect Protestant missionaries had in reshaping Pariah-ness, as well as the role of the colonial state and changes in house site ownership among other issues. Amazingly rich in detail and theoretically dynamic throughout, the book is relevant to numerous discussions in present day India and beyond.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sister Mary Corita, IHM (1918-1986), was a beloved artist and teacher whose role as the rebel nun continues to inspire contemporary audiences. Corita joined the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1936 when she was just eighteen years old, and soon after became an initially reluctant Art teacher at Immaculate Heart College. Corita remained part of the community on Franklin and Western Avenues in Hollywood until 1968 when Los Angeles archbishop Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, and other conservatives, targeted the orders reformist ways. Corita’s Pop Art styled prints celebrating the presence of God in the most ordinary of everyday subjects (Mary is the juiciest tomato of all) drew the ire of McIntyre in particular. At age fifty, she took one of many unconventional steps and left the order to start life anew as an independent woman. In Corita Kent: Art and Soul: The Biography (Angel City Press, 2015), April Dammann traces Corita’s path as an artist and religious woman who participated in the

Caroline Winterer is the Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason (Yale University Press, 2016) gives us a glimpse into how eighteenth-century Americans, as the “first prophets of tomorrow,” thought of enlightenment, what it meant and how to achieve it. For centuries, enlightenment had a religious meaning of the soul awakening to divine light; increasingly it meant using reason and empirical evidence as guides and exchanging tradition and divine revelation for a humanistic and historical view of the world. The aim was nothing short of the pursuit of happiness. Winterer challenges mid-twentieth-century Cold War conceptualization of an American Enlightenment, as largely an appropriation of European ideas. The language of enlightenment was ubiquitous among educated Americans and applied to a broad range of endeavors. She demonstrates how the encounter with Indians, the expansion of slavery, the applica

Arie L. Molendijk is Professor of the History of Christianity and Philosophy in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He has written Friedrich Max Muller and the Sacred Books of the East (Oxford University Press, 2016) to study how this seminal series of translations had started a novel way of understanding religions through a comparative study of texts and how it led to the shaping of the Western understanding of Eastern faith-traditions. Molendijk critically analyzes this rise of “big science” and also discusses the problems inherent in this approach of “textualisation of religion.” He revisits the limitations of translation and questions the assumptions behind them. He also looks into the person of Max Muller, specifically his scholarly aspect.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The historical convergence of European imperialism and technological innovation in communication and travel made multiple social sites of intersection between the local and global possible. Nile Green, Professor of South Asian and Islamic history at UCLA, examines how these terrains of exchange transformed Islam during the modern period from roughly 1800-1940 in his book, Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam (Oxford University Press, 2015). Green sees religion as a tool for social power and explores various religious economies to determine how interpretations of Islam are negotiated and deployed. What he shows is that modern iterations of the tradition are often shaped not only by Muslims, but also Christians and Hindus. In these sites of exchange religious actors and institutions can be analyzed as entrepreneurs and firms, which effectively compete for their clientele. Religious entrepreneurial competition and innovation fostered by Muslim/Christian interactions in imperial contexts cont

Beginning with the Catholic doctrine of the literal, embodied presence of Christ, scholar of religion Robert Orsi imagines an alternative to the future of religion that early moderns proclaimed was inevitable. The gods really present, in the Catholic sense, were translated into metaphors and symptoms, and into functions of the social and political. Presence became evidence of superstition, of the infantile and irrational. History and Presence (Harvard University Press, 2016) confronts this intellectual heritage, proposing instead a model for the study of religion that begins with humans and gods present to each other in everyday life. These intersubjective encounters are always, Robert Orsi writes, an engagement with oneself and ones world in all modalities of being. Along the way, History and Presence examines Marian apparitions, the cult of the saints, relations with the dead, clerical sexual abuse, and a host of other events and encounters. Robert Orsi holds the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studi

What does it mean to be a Christian historian? Can there be such a thing as Christian history? In his new book, Christian Historiography: Five Rival Versions (Baylor University Press, 2015), Jay Green of Covenant College explores these and other related questions. Dr. Green manages to both objectively present different approaches to Christian historiography while providing his own helpful evaluations of their strengths and weaknesses gained through years of study and teaching. Dr. Green’s own approach, combined with his clear writing style and the tight organization of his book means that this work is not only of interest to historians (both Christians and non-Christians) but would be perfect for classroom use by undergraduates and graduates as well.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The words “Buddhism” and “enlightenment” are, at least in the West, tightly connected. “Everyone” knows that the goal–or at least one of the goals–of Buddhist practice is “enlightenment.” But what the heck is “enlightenment,” exactly? It’s a tough question, but Dale S. Wright takes it on in his aptly named book What is Buddhist Enlightenment? (Oxford University Press, 2016). Using a kind of Zen approach (my characterization, not his), Wright doesn’t slice and dice the concept in order to come up with some Platonic ideal of “enlightenment.” You won’t find any pithy definition of the idea in the pages of this book. Rather, you’ll discover a wide-ranging exploration of “Buddhist enlightenment”–what it has meant, what it now means, and what it might and even should mean in the future. Buddhists teach that everything is changing all the time, like it or not. So it is, Wright argues, with &#

Rory Dickson’s Living Sufism in North America: Between Tradition and Transformation (SUNY Press, 2015) is the first monograph in English to focus on Sufism in North America. On this note, Dickson takes a risk by marking himself as a trendsetter in this emerging field, and he succeeds admirably. The book offers a fine balance of historical analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and theoretical frameworks, which can help inform future studies of Sufism in North America as well as Western Sufism more broadly. Although there are a few edited volumes that explore Sufism in the West, Dickson’s single-author voice gives continuity to his study and narrative in an important and unique way. One of the elephants in the room, moreover, that he tackles head on is in response to the question: What’s the relationship between Islam and Sufism? In a way, responses to this question are what produced the phenomenon of Western Sufism in the first place, and the cacophony of voices that continue to address this ques

Why were German Jews so fascinated by Iberian Sephardic history? In Role Model and Countermodel: The Golden Age of Iberian Jewry and German Jewish Culture during the Era of Emancipation (Lexington Books, 2015), University of Oklahoma Professor Dr. Carsten Schapkow looks beyond the typical model of German-Jewish assimilation in response to emancipation in German lands a failed model, according to many to uncover the paradigm that Jews in Germany really spoke, wrote, and dreamed about during the long 19th century: the history of the Iberian Sephardic Jews as their model. From popular journalists and authors such as Heinrich Graetz and Ludwig Philippson to elite academics, from scientists to philosophers, Jews in Germany imagined their future according to their understanding of Jewish life under Muslims and Christians in Spain and Portugal during the so-called Golden Age and the period of la convivencia. According to their understanding of that era in Iberia, Jews had served as cultural mediators, their language

What do our myths say about us? Why do we choose to believe stories that have been disproven by science? In Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), David M. Krueger takes an in-depth look at a legend that held tremendous power in one corner of Minnesota, helping to define a community’s identity for decades. In 1898, a Swedish immigrant farmer claimed to have discovered a large rock with writing carved into its surface in a field near Kensington, Minnesota. The writing was interpreted to tell a North American origin story, predating Christopher Columbus’ exploration, in which Viking missionaries reached what is now Minnesota in 1362 only to be massacred by Native Americans. The tales credibility and the inscription’s authenticity was quickly challenged and ultimately undermined by experts, but the myth took hold. Popular faith in the dubious artifact emerged as a local expression of American civil religion, which appealed to

On this program, I talk with Fleming Rutledge about her new book, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2015), and the themes and motifs surrounding the topic in the history of biblical interpretation. While theologians and preachers have often focused exclusively on concepts such as atonement or justification, Rutledge highlights many other biblical motifs and themes of no lesser value and importance. Ordained to the diaconate in 1975, Rutledge received her Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York and was one of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church in January 1977. Widely recognized in the United States, Canada, and in the UK not only as a preacher and lecturer but also as one who teaches other preachers, Rutledge is an expert on the intersection of Biblical theology with contemporary culture, current events and politics, literature, music, and art. She has often been invited to preach in prominent pulpits such as

The story of the martyrdom of Husayn, the prophet Muhammad’s grandson, is recounted annually around the world. More broadly, the communal retelling of the lives of Shia imams has played an important part in shaping Shia identity and practice. Matthew Pierce, Assistant Professor of Religion at Centre College, examines the early canonization of these life stories in Twelve Infallible Men: The Imams and the Making of Shiism (Harvard University Press, 2016). Pierce carefully conceptualizes the relationship between history, author, text, and audience through an examination of several collective biographies of the twelve imams from the 10th-12th centuries. From this sub-genre several themes arise in the presentation of the imams, their families, and their actions. Martyrdom is central to the retellings not only of Husayn, but of all the imams. The imams’ death are remembered through images of suffering and mourning but structured in ways that provide solace for the audience. The collective biographies a

In his book, In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel (New York University Press, 2014), Adam Rovner, Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver, explores the possibilities for Jewish homelands before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. From Angola and Madagascar to southern Australia and Suriname, the unsuccessful attempts to create Jewish territories around the world show that the victory of Zionism was not inevitable.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anger is among the most familiar phenomena in our moral lives. It is common to think that anger is an appropriate, and sometimes morally required, emotional response to wrongdoing and injustice. In fact, our day-to-day lives are saturated with inducements not only to become angry, but to embrace the idea that anger is morally righteous. However, at the same time, were all familiar with the ways in which anger can go morally wrong. We know that anger can eat away at us; it can render us morally blind; it can engulf our entire lives. So one might wonder: What exactly is the point of anger? In Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice (Oxford University Press, 2016), Martha Nussbaum argues that, in its most familiar forms, anger is not only pointless, but morally confused and pernicious. Drawing lessons from the Stoics, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Nussbaum advocates replacing anger with forms of generosity, friendship, justice, and kindness. She develops her critique of anger acr

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, antebellum African Americans elites turned to the newspaper as a means of translating their belief in black “chosenness” into programs for black liberation. Benjamin Fagan’s The Black Newspaper and the Chosen Nation (University of Georgia Press, 2016) demonstrates how the belief that God had marked black Americans as his chosen people on earth became a central article of faith in many northern African American communities throughout the nineteenth century. Directed by varying understandings of black “chosenness,” black periodicals helped to frame public debate, shape the black public sphere and to define forms of respectability and strategies for racial uplift. Fagan joins podcast host James West to discuss many of the key protagonists and periodicals of his work in more detail, shedding new light on prominent editors such as Frederick Douglass, Samuel Cornish and Mary Ann Shadd, and important early black periodicals such as Freedoms Jo

In The Myth of the Cultural Jew: Culture and Law in Jewish Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2015), Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, the Raymond P. Niro Professor of Intellectual Property Law at DePaul University College of Law, applies a cultural analysis framework to Jewish law, to show that Jewish culture has a grounding in Jewish law. The evolution of Jewish law is guided and shaped by human elements and shifting power dynamics. Kwall argues that both law and culture are necessary for forging meaningful Jewish identity.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices