New Books In Religion

How can war stories, farming proverbs, and strange visions draw you closer to Jesus? In Four Mountains: Encountering God in the Bible from Eden to Zion, Michael Niebauer shows how to see the Bible's big story and meet with God in his word. Four mountain-top encounters with God (Eden, Sinai, Tabor, and Zion) unify the Bible's grand story. The earliest Christians read Scripture with attentiveness to symbols and images like mountains and trees. Learning this method of reading helps us connect seemingly disparate stories and encounter God in his word. Gospel-rich, and Scripture-saturated, Four Mountains reveals how we can see Jesus on every page. Open my eyes that I may see the wondrous things of your law. --Psalm 119:18 (New Coverdale Psalter) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In this episode, “Truth is a Pathless Land,” we speak with Transformative Inquiry Program faculty member Connie Jones to explore the micropolitical stakes of revolutionary spirituality through Krishnamurti’s challenge to religious prescription, psychological conditioning, and egoic identification. We discuss techniqueless meditation, the primacy of awareness over truth, and the distinction between perception and cognition as a path beyond the representational mind. Our conversation engages the unknown as the ground of creativity and examines how culturally conditioned individualism is challenged by non-dual insights. We also explore Bohmian Dialogue as a transformative practice aligned with Krishnamurti’s vision—an open, non-hierarchical mode of collective inquiry that suspends judgment and cultivates shared attention. Through this lens, we consider how his praxis opens onto a micro-political awareness capable of generating new forms of being and transformation beyond all systems of conditioning. Connie Jone

Today I sit down with Willoughby Britton and Jared Lindahl, the interdisciplinary team from Brown University that is responsible for the “Varieties of Contemplative Experience” study on the challenges and adverse effects of meditation. We talk about the design, findings, and outcomes of the study, and how it opened up a new field of interdisciplinary investigation. Along the way we ask: if someone suffers harm from practicing meditation, whose fault is it? What is the ultimate cause? And who gets to interpret the experience? If you want to hear scholars and practitioners engaging in deep conversations about the dark side of Asian religions and medicines, then subscribe to Black Beryl wherever you get your podcasts. Also check out our members-only benefits on Substack.com to see what our guests have shared with you. Enjoy the show! Resources mentioned in this episode: Complete Varieties of Contemplative Experience study publications list Willoughby on the Mind & Life Podcast Willoughby & Jared on T

The Secular Enlightenment by Professor Margaret C. Jacob, has been called a major new history on how the Enlightenment transformed people's everyday lives. It’s a panoramic account of the radical ways that life began to change for ordinary people in the age of Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau. In this landmark book, familiar Enlightenment figures share places with voices that have remained largely unheard until now, from freethinkers and freemasons to French materialists, anticlerical Catholics, pantheists, pornographers, readers, and travelers. Jacob, one of our most esteemed historians of the Enlightenment, reveals how this newly secular outlook was not a wholesale rejection of Christianity but rather a new mental space in which to encounter the world on its own terms. She takes readers from London and Amsterdam to Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and Naples, drawing on rare archival materials to show how ideas central to the emergence of secular democracy touched all facets of daily life. Human frailties once attribute

The pursuit of wealth is considered an essential function of human nature, and greed is an unspoken civic virtue. Many of us revere billionaires and Wall Street rain-makers, then complain about “the system” being rigged, and wonder why the country doesn’t seem to work for the little guy anymore. Some blame the Deep State for income inequality and corruption, and others blame capitalism, but the truth is that these issues have much deeper roots: our devotion to money is a manmade invention that has transformed over thousands of years to replace religion as the foundation of our society, and it is tearing civilization apart. In The Almightier, journalist Paul Vigna uncovers the forgotten history of money, tracing the uneasy and often accidental alliance between wealth and religion as it developed from ancient city-states to today’s secular world, where religious devotion has receded and greed has stepped in to fill the void. Through engaging anecdotes, original research, and fresh perspectives on the causes of

In the late twentieth century, artists were on the front lines of the culture wars. Leaders of the Christian Right in the U.S. made a national spectacle out of feminist and queer art, blasting it as sacrilegious or pornographic--and sometimes both. On the bully pulpits of television and talk radio, as well as in the halls of Congress, conservatives denounced artists ranging from Robert Mapplethorpe and Judy Chicago to Marlon Riggs and David Wojnarowicz. Conservatives, alarmed by shifting sex and gender norms, collided with progressive artists who were confronting sexism, homophobia, and racism. In Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars (Oxford University Press, 2025), Anthony Petro offers a compelling new history of the culture wars that places competing moralities of gender and sexuality alongside competing visions of the sacred. The modern culture wars, he shows, are best understood not as contests pitting religious conservatives against secular activists, but as a series of ongoing historical s

Until now, the standard narrative of American religious history has begun with English settlers in Jamestown or Plymouth and remained predominantly Protestant and Atlantic. Driven by his strong sense of the historical and moral shortcomings of the usual story, Thomas A. Tweed offers a very different narrative in this ambitious new history. He begins the story much earlier—11,000 years ago—at a rock shelter in present-day Texas and follows Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, transnational migrants, and people of many faiths as they transform the landscape and confront the big lifeway transitions, from foraging to farming and from factories to fiber optics. Setting aside the familiar narrative themes, Dr. Tweed highlights sustainability, showing how religion both promoted and inhibited individual, communal, and environmental flourishing during three sustainability crises: the medieval Cornfield Crisis, which destabilized Indigenous ceremonial centers; the Colonial Crisis, which began with the displacement o

In this sweeping new history of humanity, told through the prism of our ever-changing moral norms and values, Hanno Sauer shows how modern society is just the latest step in the long evolution of good and evil and everything in between. What makes us moral beings? How do we decide what is good and what is evil? And has it always been that way? Hanno Sauer's sweeping new history of humanity, covering five million years of our universal moral values, comes at a crucial moment of crisis for those values, and helps to explain how they arose -- and why we need them. We humans were born to cooperate, but everywhere we find ourselves in conflict. The way we live together has changed fundamentally in recent decades: global mobility, demographic upheaval, migration movements, and digital networking, have all called the moral foundations of human communities into question. Modern societies are in crisis: a shared universal morality seems to be a thing of the past. Hanno Sauer explains why this appearance is deceptive

Christianity is often thought of as a tradition of belief, interpretation, teachings, and texts. However, a scholarly focus on ideas overlooks how early Christian doctrine interacted with social exchanges in lay spaces. Author Caroline Johnson Hodge fills this gap, shifting our attention from liturgical settings to religion as it was lived outside the prescriptions of congregations. Through a careful reading of the material record alongside print sources, Johnson Hodge shows that in the first through the early fourth centuries, Christians developed household rituals akin to traditional domestic cult practices around the Roman Empire, and this continuity contributed to the success of the new cult in the Roman world. Rather than a well-organized, universal domestic cult, Johnson Hodge finds that practices were flexible and varied, ranging widely from established household observances to unauthorized rituals, gravesite venerations, and the unpatrolled movements of women and slaves. Just as important as the offi

The apostle Paul was a Jew. He was born, lived, undertook his apostolic work, and died within the milieu of ancient Judaism. And yet, many readers have found, and continue to find, Paul's thought so radical, so Christian, even so anti-Jewish – despite the fact that it, too, is Jewish through and through. This paradox, and the question how we are to explain it, are explored in Matthew Novenson's Paul and Judaism at the End of History (Cambridge UP, 2024). The solution, according to Novenson, lies in Paul's particular understanding of time. This too is altogether Jewish, with the twist that Paul sees the end of history as present, not future. In the wake of Christ's resurrection, Jews are perfected in righteousness and – like the angels – enabled to live forever, in fulfilment of God's ancient promises to the patriarchs. What is more, gentiles are included in the same pneumatic existence promised to the Jews. This peculiar combination of ethnicity and eschatology yields something that looks not quite like Judai

In The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Dr. John Givens of the University of Rochester discusses classics of Russian literature such as The Brothers Karamazov and Dr. Zhivago, as well as texts of less renown to English-speaking audiences, such as Tolstoy’s Resurrection. These texts and others, Givens suggests, portray Christ apophatically: that is, by showing who Christ was not, in order to illuminate who Christ therefore must be. In addition to the novels themselves, Givens cites sources such as personal correspondence and important theological works, thus bringing an English-speaking public to greater depth of understanding than would be possible simply by reading Russian novels in translation. Though focused on a specific topic, Givens’ book is an excellent resource for anyone interested in familiarizing themselves with some of the “greats” of the Russian literary canon. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the

Challenging the geographical narrative of the history of Islam, Chiara Formichi’s new book Islam and Asia: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2020), helps us to rethink how we tell the story of Islam and the lived expressions of Muslims without privileging certain linguistic, cultural, and geographic realities. Focusing on themes of reform, political Islamism, Sufism, gender, as well as a rich array of material culture (such as sacred spaces and art), the book maps the development of Islam in Asia, such as in Kashmir, Indonesia, Malaysia, and China. It considers both transnational and transregional ebbs and flows that have defined the expansion and institutionalization of Islam in Asia, while attending to factors such as ethnicity, linguistic identity and even food cultures as important realities that have informed the translation of Islam into new regions. It is the “convergence and conversation” between the “local” and “foreign” or better yet between the theoretical notions of “centre” and “periphery” o

Ian Johnson’s new book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (Pantheon, 2017),  was called "a masterpiece of observation and empathy" by The New York Review of Books, and The Economist, who included the book on its Best of 2017 list, said the book, "Shows how a resurgence of faith is quietly changing the country." The Guardian said the book is "full of moving encounters with Chinese citizens ... Johnson succeeds in having produced a nuanced group portrait of Chinese citizens striving for non-material answers in an era of frenetic materialism." I just finished the book myself and was stunning in its portrayals. If you hope to understand the trajectory of modern China, arguably the fastest-rising international superpower, understanding the religious Taoist, Christianity, folk religion, and Islam of China will be helpful, if not essential. A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Ian Johnson is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New York Times; his work has also appeared in

Magdalena Maria Turek is an independent research scholar. She received her PhD from Humboldt University, Germany, and was a Research Fellow with the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies at the American Council of Learned Societies, USA. Her research examines how contemporary reiterations of Tibetan Buddhist orthopraxy, local narratives, and religious historiography shape Buddhist identities among Tibetans in China and the diaspora. She just published Buddhist Hermits in Eastern Tibet: Saint Making and Ascetic Performance (Routledge, 2025), a fascinating ethnography of the meditation school of Lapchi in Kham, which is in Eastern Tibet in modern day Yushu Prefecture in Qinghai Province. This is a relatively modern hermitage founded by a charismatic ascetic master named Tsultrim Tarchen, and populated by various nuns and monks who are studying meditation under Tsultrim Tarchen. Her book explores the rise of Tsultrim Tarchen, the activities practiced by the students there, and the how th

How does the metaphor of Jesus as king unify the message of the Gospel of John? Tune in as we speak with Beth Stovell about her monograph, Mapping Metaphorical Discourse in the Fourth Gospel. Beth's study shows how John’s Gospel describes the just character of Jesus’ kingship, the subversion of power implicit in his crucified form of kingship, and the necessity of response to Jesus as king and his reign. Beth Stovell is Professor of Old Testament at Ambrose University, and is working on commentaries on Ezekiel, the Minor Prophets, Hosea, and the Gospel of John. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Islam is a religion of violence and behind every Muslim there lurks a potential terrorist. Islam is a threat to values of the Christian West. They are like oil and water. Clearly, they don't mix. One God and Two Religions: Christians and Muslims as Neighbors (Fortress Press, 2025) confronts these popular perceptions head-on. With keen insight and gentle understanding, Amir Hussain explores the differences between Christianity and Islam, as well as the many things these two enduring faith traditions hold in common - including, first and foremost, their belief in and desire to be faithful to the one, true God; their shared roots and scripture (from the Jewish faith); and the spiritual values of peace and social justice. In all of this, the book invites the reader to a place of reconciliation, to a place where the truth and value of each of these great faith traditions can be recognized and honored by the other. In the end, the metaphor of oil and water is an interesting one for the reality of conflict and the

The Triumph of Life is Rabbi Irving Greenberg’s magnum opus—a narrative of the relationship between God and humanity as expressed in the Jewish journey through modernity, the Holocaust, the creation of Israel, and the birth of Judaism’s next era.Greenberg describes Judaism’s utopian vision of a world created by a God who loves life, who invites humans to live on the side of life, and who enables the forces of life to triumph over death. The Bible proclaims our mission of tikkun olam, repairing the world, such that every human image of God is sustained in the fullness of our dignity. To achieve this ideal, Judaism offers the method of covenant—a realistic, personal, incremental partnership between God and humanity across generations in which human beings grow ever more responsible for world repair.Greenberg calls on us to redirect humanity’s unprecedented power in modernity to overcome poverty, oppression, inequality, sickness, and war. The work of covenant requires an ethic of power—one that advances life col

Our national conversation about the border has taken a religious turn. When televangelists declare, “Heaven has a wall,” activists shout back, “Jesus was a refugee.” For Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, the standoff makes explicit a longstanding truth: borders are religious as well as political objects. In this book, Hurd argues that Americans share a bipartisan border religion, complete with an array of beliefs and practices, including a reverence for national security, a liturgy for immigration, and an eschatological foreign policy. Through an analysis of the many ways the United States creates, enforces, and ignores borders at home and abroad, Hurd offers a bold new perspective on the ties that bind American religion, politics, and public life. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd is Professor and Chair of Religious Studies and Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at

After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World offers a dynamic new perspective on medieval Jewish legal thought and its integration in the wider Islamic world. Here, Marc D. Herman demonstrates that Jews were fully conversant in their contemporaries' ideas about revelation, law, and legal interpretation. Bookended by the two luminaries of medieval Judaism--Saadia Gaon and Moses Maimonides--After Revelation analyzes the legal theory that medieval Jews produced in Islamic lands, mostly in Arabic, and reveals previously unrecognized commonalities between Jewish and Islamic constructions of religious law. Herman tackles one of the central doctrines of post-biblical Judaism: that God had supplemented the written Hebrew Bible with an Oral Torah. Tracing this idea from Baghdad to Córdoba to Cairo, he shows that the Oral Torah took many new forms in the medieval Islamic world. After Revelation makes plain that medieval Judaism took the shapes that it did largely because of contact with Islam. Y

During the war in Vietnam, thousands of young men served as conscientious objector medics. They had been certified by their local draft boards as noncombatants, but many would know intense combat nonetheless. Without weapons training, they ran through the infantry lines, answering the desperate call, "Medic!" Many displayed exemplary heroism even at the cost of their lives. With the end of the draft, we will never see their like again. Conscientious Objectors at War: The Vietnam War's Forgotten Medics (Texas Tech University Press, 2025) tells their stories within the background context of pacifist churches in America. It is the first book exclusively devoted to such men, who emerged initially from the historic peace churches--Quakers, Brethren, Mennonites--and from Seventh-day Adventists, who would comprise roughly half of all conscientious objector medics serving in the Vietnam War. From World War II on, growing numbers of men from mainstream churches made the same choices, and after a Supreme Court decisio