New Books in Religion
- Folgen
- 600
- Erscheint
- täglich
- Letzte Folge
- 12. Nov. 2026
Über den Podcast
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion
Folgen 600
Reframing Dynamism: Indic Philosophies of Being, Time and Freedom with Sthaneshwar Timalsina
In Reframing Dynamism: Indic Philosophies of Being, Time and Freedom (Bloomsbury, 2026), the first book to explore the philosophy of dynamism from classical India, Sthaneshwar Timalsina interrogates central …
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In Reframing Dynamism: Indic Philosophies of Being, Time and Freedom (Bloomsbury, 2026), the first book to explore the philosophy of dynamism from classical India, Sthaneshwar Timalsina interrogates central metaphysical questions about the nature of reality.
Timalsina argues for change and time as intrinsic to being. Exploring instances from Yaska to Abhinavagupta, and reading philosophical and cultural texts in a comparative light, he reveals the absolute being as inherently dynamic. Alongside Bergson and Husserl, his study directs attention to the importance of the arguments of classical Sanskrit grammarians such as Yaska, Bhartthari, and Kauna Bhatta.
By engaging with schools and other Sakta philosophies that have not received serious engagement, Timalsina reinvigorates the conversation on creativity, freedom, dynamism, temporality, and the dynamism of being. His cutting-edge view of time as a fundamental element of reality is necessary reading for scholars of classical Sanskrit traditions, consciousness and the philosophy of life.
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Pioneering Contemplative Studies, with Hal Roth
Professor Pierce Salguero sits down with Professor Harold Roth, Director of the Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown University. Hal is the person who coined the term “contemplative studies,” and he has …
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Professor Pierce Salguero sits down with Professor Harold Roth, Director of the Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown University. Hal is the person who coined the term “contemplative studies,” and he has been a pioneer in this emerging academic field. Together, we explore the benefits of combining third-person critical study with first-person contemplative approaches, as well as the entrenched resistance to this kind of scholarship within religious studies. Along the way, we touch on contemplative education, the need to overcome dualistic thinking, and Hal’s transcendent vision of how contemplative studies can benefit humanity.
If you want to hear scholars and practitioners engaging in multidisciplinary conversations about Asian religious, medical, healing, and mystical traditions, then subscribe to Black Beryl wherever you get your podcasts.
If you would be willing to help support the pod so we can pay our bills, please look us up on Substack and become a member! Each month our guests share downloadable PDFs of articles, book chapters, and other materials in our members area. Check it out!
One last thing: we are planning an “Ask Me Anything” episode in the future, so reach out via Substack or my website here, and let me know your questions.
Resources relevant to this episode:
- Brown University’s Contemplative Studies Initiative
- Richard Wilhelm, The I Ching or Book of Changes (1967)
- Harold Roth et al, The Essential Huainanzi (2012)
- Harold Roth, The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism (2021)
- R.H. Sharf, “The rhetoric of experience and the study of religion” (2000)
- Roth, “Critical Subjectivity in the New Field of Contemplative Studies” Yin-Cheng Journal of Contemporary Buddhism (2026)
- B. Alan Wallace, The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness(2000)
- Russell T. McCutcheon, Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (2001)
- International Society for Contemplative Research
- Contemplative Education Network
Subscribe on Substack to unlock our members-only benefits, including all of the following:
- Roth, “Against Cognitive Imperialism A Call for a Non-Ethnocentric Approach to
- Cognitive Science and Religious Studies” (2008) [PDF]
- Roth, “Contemplative Learning and Inquiry Across Disciplines” (2014
- Hal’s list of Contemplative Studies programs [PDF]
- Hal’s interviews with Joseph Needham, Benjamin Schwartz, KC Chang, AC Graham, Sarah Allan, and other famous Sinologists [MP3]
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 and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. See www.piercesalguero.com.
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Ritual: An Ancient Jewish Perspective with Naftali S. Cohn (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
A comprehensive study of the Mishnah that argues it manifests an implicit theory of what performing rituals accomplishesJews are known for having many ritual practices. Many of these come from the Bible, but …
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A comprehensive study of the Mishnah that argues it manifests an implicit theory of what performing rituals accomplishes
Jews are known for having many ritual practices. Many of these come from the Bible, but Jewish ritual practice as we know it today is as much a product of the earliest rabbis who lived in the late-second and early-third centuries. These rabbis created the text known as the Mishnah, which collects, develops, and records in great detail rules about the proper way to carry out traditional rituals, what the text terms mitsvot. Naftali S. Cohn’s book Ritual: An Ancient Jewish Perspective (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026) is a comprehensive study of ritual in the Mishnah, focused especially on the fundamental questions of the nature of ritual, what ritual does or accomplishes, and what motivates people to do rituals, all according to the Mishnah’s authors.
Reading the text of the Mishnah closely and drawing widely from the analytic toolbox of ritual studies, Cohn argues that ritual, in the perspective of the Mishnah’s authors, has multiple effects. Performing mitsvot—and refraining from the mitsvot “not to do”—shapes individual bodies by choreographing a person’s interactions with the objects, spaces, times, and other bodies that form the environment in which they act. It shapes collective bodies by enabling social life and creating group identity, even as it establishes differences between people and social hierarchy. Doing mitsvot also activates cultural ideas, connecting the people of Israel to their God, their past, their place, and each other. Repeated ritual action, further, forges body habits and generates the powerful feelings of obligation and, at times, even joy and love, which move people to continue to carry out these rituals. Mitsvot, according to the Mishnah, have the power to shape Israeliteness, or Jewishness, in its every facet. By focusing so much attention on ritual behavior, Cohn shows how the Mishnah can also be understood as a rumination on the fundamental nature of activity itself, of doing, being, moving, and engaging with the world.New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review
Naftali Coen is chair of religions and cultures at Concordia University in Montreal
Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston
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The Concept of Tolerance in Judaism, Christianity and Islam with Catharina Rachik and Georges Tamer (de Gruyter, 2025)
Is tolerance an achievement of secular modernity that religion has always resisted? The Concept of Tolerance in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (De Gruyter, 2026), the seventh volume in the Key Concepts in …
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Is tolerance an achievement of secular modernity that religion has always resisted? The Concept of Tolerance in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (De Gruyter, 2026), the seventh volume in the Key Concepts in Interreligious Discourses series, says the answer is more complicated. Edited by Catharina Rachik and Georges Tamer of FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, the book gives one substantial chapter to each tradition and closes with an epilogue in which the editors compare the three.
Menachem Kellner draws on Maimonides to build a Jewish account of tolerance grounded in epistemological humility. The Torah is true, but no human mind, not even Moses’s, grasps that truth completely. Christian Polke treats tolerance as a virtue practiced in the habits of a community, especially in the confession of sin and in reading scripture critically. Anna Akasoy declines to ask whether Islam is “essentially” tolerant or intolerant. She asks instead why that question keeps being put to Islam, and then traces how Muslims have handled difference across scripture, law, theology, Sufism, and political rule.
In this conversation, Tamer and Rachik discuss the series’ “archaeology of religious knowledge.” They explain why “tolerance” works as an analytical category rather than a historical one, and why the limits of tolerance require public justification. Finally, they argue that naming irreconcilable differences gives interreligious life a sturdier foundation than a manufactured consensus. Taking a cue from Goethe, they make the case for moving beyond tolerance toward recognition.
Iqbal Akhtar teaches in the Departments of Religious Studies and Politics & International Relations at Florida International University and is the Executive Director of The East-West Foundation. He is the author of Covenantal Pluralism: The Geopolitics of Interfaith Religious Freedom (Springer, 2026), available open access at this link.
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Constructing a Renaissance Pope: Leo X (1513–1521) with Elizabeth M. McCahill (Oxford UP, 2026)
Constructing a Renaissance Pope: Rhetoric, Ceremony, and Authority in the Age of Leo X (1513-1521) (Oxford University Press, 2026) by Dr. Elizabeth McCahill examines the rhetoric and ceremony of the papal court …
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Constructing a Renaissance Pope: Rhetoric, Ceremony, and Authority in the Age of Leo X (1513-1521) (Oxford University Press, 2026) by Dr. Elizabeth McCahill examines the rhetoric and ceremony of the papal court during the pontificate of Pope Leo X (1513-1521).
The son of Lorenzo de' Medici, Leo has been celebrated for bringing a Golden Age of cultural efflorescence to Renaissance Rome, but he has also been excoriated for the prodigality, nepotism, and corruption that provoked Martin Luther first to criticize and then to split from the church. This study does not focus on Leo as a historical individual but analyses the collaborative efforts of curial officials, humanists, and ceremonial experts to construct his image. Although personal loyalty and private self-interest motivated these bureaucrats and scholars, so too did commitment to a traditional vision of papal authority, a vision facing new challenges in an era of rapid spiritual, social, and political change.
Weaving together material from the diaries and manuals of Paris de' Grassi, the papal Master of Ceremonies, and a variety of letters, orations, and other humanist texts, the book situates papal image-making techniques within the broader context of Renaissance culture. It argues that the scripted rites and Ciceronian rhetoric on which the papal court spent so much time and money served as tools of persuasion, creating a rarefied arena in which power, hierarchy, and tradition were continually enacted and negotiated. By embedding curial activities within the geopolitical and cultural landscape of early sixteenth-century Europe, the book illuminates the tension between the mystique of traditional authority and the new technologies, political norms, and religious dissent that conspired to destabilize the papal role.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Zion’s Last Frontier: LDS Ranchers, Federal Regulators, and the Clash of the New West in Capitol Reef Country, Utah with Thomas E. Sheridan (U Arizona Press, 2026)
Zion’s Last Frontier: LDS Ranchers, Federal Regulators, and the Clash of the New West in Capitol Reef Country, Utah (U Arizona Press, 2026) is a historical ethnography that documents the uniquely Latter-Day …
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Zion’s Last Frontier: LDS Ranchers, Federal Regulators, and the Clash of the New West in Capitol Reef Country, Utah (U Arizona Press, 2026) is a historical ethnography that documents the uniquely Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) ranching community around Capitol Reef National Park in south-central Utah over the last 150 years.
From the arrival of the first LDS pioneers in the 1870s to fifth- and sixth-generation descendants of those pioneers today, anthropologist Thomas E. Sheridan documents their ongoing struggles with the federal and state agencies that control 96 percent of the land they ranch. Changing policies and management philosophies profoundly impact the ranchers’ livelihoods and ways of life. Sheridan argues that the ranchers should qualify as Traditionally Associated People. Only one allotment on the Park remains, but the Park still allows ranchers to drive their cattle on horseback along the few canyons that cut through the Waterpocket Fold as they move their herds from their traditional summer grazing lands to their winter grazing lands.
Pushing beyond binary arguments, Sheridan offers an empathetic look at the lived experiences of rural communities often mischaracterized in debates over public lands and environmentalism. Tensions have been aggravated by a massive increase in the number of tourists that swarm the area in the warmer months and a steady increase in the number of seasonal residents who build second homes there.
Zion’s Last Frontier provides an in-depth look at the clash of cultures between the agrarian Old West and the New West of tourism and second-homers that is playing itself out across so many parts of the rural West today.
This interview was conducted by Mary Reynolds, publicity manager for The University of Arizona Press. Her book, The Quake That Drained the Desert, investigates the 1887 borderlands earthquake that forever changed surface water and groundwater in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico.
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The Phoenix Rises: On Restoring Notre Dame Cathedral with Philippe Villeneuve
Philippe Villeneuve has been chief architect of Notre Dame Cathedral since 2013. On the night of the shocking 2019 fire, he learned by phone that the building he had loved since boyhood, and modeled in …
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Philippe Villeneuve has been chief architect of Notre Dame Cathedral since 2013. On the night of the shocking 2019 fire, he learned by phone that the building he had loved since boyhood, and modeled in miniature at just 16, was burning.
In this conversation with host Ryan Shinkel, he traces how a career spent restoring fire-damaged monuments prepared him for the five-year effort to bring the cathedral back, and explains why he describes the result not as a restoration but as a restitution. Along the way he makes the case for Eugène Viollet-le-Duc as the father of his discipline, defends the judgment of the craftsman against the certainties of computer modeling, and recounts the three “miracles” he found in the ruins. Underneath it all runs a striking humility: the conviction that he is a single point in a long story, preparing the cathedral for generations he will never meet.
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Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America with Kati Curts (NYU Press, 2025)
How Henry Ford institutionalized a social gospel Henry Ford did not just mass produce cars. As a member of the Episcopal Church, reader of New Thought texts, believer in the “gospel of reincarnation,” mass …
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How Henry Ford institutionalized a social gospel Henry Ford did not just mass produce cars.
As a member of the Episcopal Church, reader of New Thought texts, believer in the “gospel of reincarnation,” mass marketer of antisemitic material, and employer who institutionalized a social gospel, Henry Ford’s contributions to American models of business were informed by and produced for an America he understood to be broadly Christian. Though Ford’s efforts at the head of the Ford Motor Company have commonly been understood as secular, Ford himself was explicit that his work in engineering and auto production was prophetic and meant to remake the world. This religious history of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company repositions them within critical studies of religion, examining how Ford transformed American religious practice in the twentieth century. Drawing directly on documents from Ford’s archive, Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America (NYU Press, 2025) examines Ford’s mass production methods and bureaucratic reforms as examples of prosperity gospel traditions, illuminating the ways manufacturing and technology intersect with American religious practice. Bridging American religious and industrial history, Assembling Religion offers a new and surprising way to understand Ford’s impact on culture, commerce, and the technology of labor.
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Islamophobia and Freedom of Speech with Asim Qureshi, hosted by Chella Ward
In this episode, Chella Ward interviews Dr Asim Qureshi about the relationship between Islamophobia, the counter-terror framework and freedom of speech. Asim is the Research Director at CAGE International, and …
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In this episode, Chella Ward interviews Dr Asim Qureshi about the relationship between Islamophobia, the counter-terror framework and freedom of speech. Asim is the Research Director at CAGE International, and the author of numerous important books and articles about Islamophobia, racism and political prisoners including I Refuse to Condemn and A Virtue of Disobedience. His conversation with Chella took place as part of the Islamophobia Awareness Month events at the Open University in 2026.
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Vākyamālā: A Garland of Words in Honour of John D. Smith with Wendy J. Phillips Rodríguez (Cardiff UP, 2026)
A multimedia collection dedicated to John D. Smith on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, edited by Wendy J. Phillips Rodríguez and Simon Brodbeck.Open Access here Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company …
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A multimedia collection dedicated to John D. Smith on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, edited by Wendy J. Phillips Rodríguez and Simon Brodbeck.
Open Access here
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Meta-Theory, with Brendan Graham Dempsey
Today I sit down with Brendan Graham Dempsey, Director of Research at the Institute of Applied Metatheory, where he thinks about human meaning-making systems. It’s rare that I have someone on the pod who …
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Today I sit down with Brendan Graham Dempsey, Director of Research at the Institute of Applied Metatheory, where he thinks about human meaning-making systems. It’s rare that I have someone on the pod who doesn’t specialize in Asian traditions, but I thought a conversation with Brendan might help crystalize some of the ideas we’ve been discussing so far this season. We talk about what kind of spirituality is possible after postmodernism, the advantages of an integrative worldview, and how to decide which perspective should win out over others when they’re in conflict. In our conversation, it is apparent that Brendan and I are coming at this from different directions, but ultimately we discover some common ground.
If you want to hear scholars and practitioners engaging in multidisciplinary conversations about Asian religious, medical, healing, and mystical traditions, then subscribe to Black Beryl wherever you get your podcasts.
If you would be willing to help support the pod so we can pay our bills, please look us up on Substack and become a member! Each month our guests share downloadable PDFs of articles, book chapters, and other materials in our members area. Check it out!
One last thing: we are planning an “Ask Me Anything” episode in the future, so reach out via Substack or my website here and let me know your questions. Ok, on with the show!
Resources relevant to this episode:
- Discussion of Pierce’s publication in Metamodern Theory and Praxis: here
- Brendan’s main website: here
- Evolution of Meaning: here
- Ω (Omega): here
Subscribe to Black Beryl Substack to unlock our members-only benefits, including a chapter from Brendan’s forthcoming book Evolution of Meaning (PDF).
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 and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. See here.
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Holocaust Distortion in Poland: A Comparative European Perspective
Holocaust distortion in Poland involves reshaping or minimizing facts about the Holocaust, often emphasizing Polish victimhood while obscuring instances of local collaboration, participation, or indifference …
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Holocaust distortion in Poland involves reshaping or minimizing facts about the Holocaust, often emphasizing Polish victimhood while obscuring instances of local collaboration, participation, or indifference. It appears in political rhetoric, memory laws, public commemorations, and attacks on critical scholarship. YIVO’s Poland vs. Holocaust History series examines these dynamics and situates the Polish case within a broader European context.
This lecture by Jan Grabowski will examine the phenomenon of Holocaust distortion in Poland within a broader comparative European framework. It explores how historical narratives about the Holocaust are reshaped, minimized, or selectively reinterpreted in public discourse, politics, education, and law. Particular attention will be paid to the interaction between state-sponsored memory policies, nationalist narratives, and scholarly research, as well as to the pressures faced by historians and educators. By comparing developments in Poland with those in other European countries—including Hungary, Lithuania, Germany, and Russia—the lecture highlights both shared patterns and national specificities in confronting difficult pasts. The discussion addresses legal instruments, public controversies, commemorative practices, and the role of civil society in shaping Holocaust memory. Ultimately, the lecture asks how and why Holocaust distortion emerges, what distinguishes distortion from legitimate historical debate, and what the consequences are for democratic culture, academic freedom, and Europe’s collective understanding of the Holocaust.
Purchase Whitewash: Poland and the Jews by Jan Grabowski here
This lecture originally took place on March 24, 2026.
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Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers with Anthony Flood (Atmosphere Press, 2026)
In Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers (Atmosphere Press, 2026), Anthony Flood traces Sellers's journey from Baptist pastor to independent Bible teacher, a man whose …
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In Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers (Atmosphere Press, 2026), Anthony Flood traces Sellers's journey from Baptist pastor to independent Bible teacher, a man whose pursuit of the truth cost him his pulpit, his home, and his standing among the so-called "orthodox."
Consecrating his life to "rightly dividing the Word of Truth," Sellers followed Scripture beyond the boundaries of inherited doctrine. What he learned about baptism made it impossible for him to remain a Baptist. Over time, traditional teachings about the soul, "born again," "the Lord's Supper," eternal life, and hell also fell before his meticulous study.
In the depths of the Great Depression, Sellers left his pastorate and comfortable home, moving into his parents' attic with his young family to begin the work that would define the next six decades of his life. Virtually alone, he distinguished Christ's prophesied world government from His millennial presence on the Earth.
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Mormon Barrio: Latino Belonging in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with Sujey Vega (NYU Press, 2026)
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The Invisibility Of Religion In Contemporary Art with Jonathan A. Anderson and James Elkins
In this episode of the Books for Better Understanding series from Notre Dame Press, David Carlson hosts Jonathan A. Anderson and James Elkins for a discussion of Anderson's new book, The Invisibility Of …
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In this episode of the Books for Better Understanding series from Notre Dame Press, David Carlson hosts Jonathan A. Anderson and James Elkins for a discussion of Anderson's new book, The Invisibility Of Religion In Contemporary Art (U Notre Dame Press, 2025). Order your copy here
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I Am The Other: Debating the Role of Islam in a Divided America with Imam Azhar Subedar and Robert Gary (Liminal Space, 2025)
What happens when a devout imam and a secular Jewish former federal prosecutor decide to talk about the things that divide them rather than the things they share? In I Am the Other: Debating the Role of Islam …
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What happens when a devout imam and a secular Jewish former federal prosecutor decide to talk about the things that divide them rather than the things they share? In I Am the Other: Debating the Role of Islam in a Divided America (Liminal Space Publications, 2025), Imam Azhar Subedar and Robert Gary offer an unusual model of dialogue. It is not a search for common ground but a sustained, candid engagement with disagreement. Their collaboration began when Gary, attending one of Subedar’s talks at a Florida church, asked a deliberately provocative question about a difficult Qur’anic passage. Subedar answered it directly rather than deflecting, and a friendship and five-year writing partnership followed.
In this conversation, Subedar and Gary reflect on how September 11 reshaped the place of Muslims in American public life. They discuss how selectively quoted scripture and the actions of extremist groups have sustained Islamophobia, and what Subedar sees as the American Muslim community’s own failures of silence and disengagement. They describe how the book, nearly finished on October 7, 2023, had to be reopened. Even so, their dialogue survived a moment when many Jewish–Muslim partnerships collapsed. Subedar argues that much interfaith work failed because it was built on agreement alone. Gary contends that Jews and Muslims, so often targeted by the same forces, have a shared stake in the survival of American democracy.
The conversation closes on their proposals for rebuilding trust through engagement and fact-checking. It also addresses the resistance their public dialogues have met, and why they believe that differing without demonizing is the work this moment requires.
Imam Azhar Subedar is a Canadian-raised Islamic scholar and has served as an imam in American Muslim communities since 2002. Robert Gary is a former prosecutor in the Organized Crime Section of the U.S. Department of Justice and teaches on the Qur’an and geopolitics at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
Iqbal Akhtar is teaches in the Departments of Religious Studies and Politics & International Relations at Florida International University and is the Executive Director of The East-West Foundation. His recent book is Covenantal Pluralism, an open-access book published by Springer Nature. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-31479-6
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Mediating God: Muhammad Al-Ghazali and the Politics of Divine Presence in Twentieth-Century Egypt with Arthur Shiwa Zárate (Oxford UP, 2025)
Mediating God: Muhammad Ghazali and the Politics of Divine Presence in 20th century Egypt (Oxford UP, 2025) is a fascinating and compelling intellectual biography of the Egyptian Muslim theologian, scholar, and …
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Mediating God: Muhammad Ghazali and the Politics of Divine Presence in 20th century Egypt (Oxford UP, 2025) is a fascinating and compelling intellectual biography of the Egyptian Muslim theologian, scholar, and activist, Muhammad al-Ghazali (1917–1996). Al-Ghazali shaped the views of multiple generations of Muslim activists and was a one-time leading intellectual of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Mediating God charts his rise as a leading theologian in the Brotherhood during the 1940s, his subsequent clash and expulsion from the group in 1953, and his extensive post-Brotherhood career during the Nasser years.
To tell this story, it excavates a massive collection of writings by Brotherhood members and their affiliates, many of which have never before been utilized in secondary scholarship. Through an analysis of this collection, Mediating God provides the first in-depth view at the richly cosmopolitan and eclectic intellectual milieu of the Brotherhood and its affiliates from the 1930s through the 1960s. It focuses particular attention on the underexamined, though voluminous, writings al-Ghazali and his colleagues dedicated to charting God as real and meaningful presence in all arenas of human life, from the mundane realms of daily life to political struggles and scientific enterprises. Ultimately, by highlighting the centrality of God as an inscrutable and incalculable-yet intimately known and felt-presence in al-Ghazali and his colleagues' project of spiritual and social uplift, Mediating God provides a way of understanding modern Islamic politics beyond the scholarly framework of Islamism and attendant claims about the functionalization, objectification, and systemization of Islam in modernity.Dr. Zarate is an assistant professor of Global Humanities at San Jose State University. He completed his PhD at Columbia University and is now a historian of the modern Middle East whose research explores Islam, theology, politics, science, and spirituality in twentieth-century Egypt. His scholarship has appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. His work combines historical research with approaches drawn from religious studies and anthropology, building on his training at Columbia University as a historian of global Islam. He has conducted extensive archival research in Egypt and the United States and works with Arabic-language primary sources.
Dr. Amanie Yahia Antar is a post doctoral fellow at the Institute of Islamic Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada whose research concentrates on the history of Islamophobia in the premodern era, with a focus on sixteenth century Iberia.
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Sacred Betrayal: How the French Catholic Church Broke Its Pledge to Protect Jews During the Holocaust (Harvard UP, 2026)
When German occupiers rolled into Paris in June 1940, they arrived wary of the French Catholic Church. In a country where more than 80 percent of citizens were Catholic, bishops held enormous moral sway. During …
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When German occupiers rolled into Paris in June 1940, they arrived wary of the French Catholic Church. In a country where more than 80 percent of citizens were Catholic, bishops held enormous moral sway. During the 1930s, many used their positions to forcefully condemn the rise of Nazism. But as the persecution of Jews escalated during the Occupation, every bishop in France maintained a deafening silence. In fact, the Church stood publicly alongside Marshal Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy regime. Even when bishops famously broke silence to protest the deportation of Jews in 1942—a moment long remembered as one of moral awakening—they quickly retreated, discouraging further defiance.
The French Church’s public silence during the Holocaust is no secret. But as Aliza Luft shows, private interactions between bishops, French Jewish leaders, and Vichy officials were just as consequential. Turning to letters, diaries, and records of private conversations, Luft traces the moral dilemmas and calculated choices that shaped these hidden negotiations. As Jewish leaders turned to the Church for information and protection, bishops repeatedly assured them of the Church’s sympathy and support. These guarantees from the nation’s highest moral authorities, combined with the false promises of Vichy officials, encouraged French Jews to place their faith in relationships and republican ideals that proved tragically hollow.
Drawing on years of archival research, Sacred Betrayal: How the French Catholic Church Broke Its Pledge to Protect Jews During the Holocaust (Harvard UP, 2026) is a harrowing account of how genocide unfolds day by day—not only through spectacular violence, but also through misleading assurances, quiet capitulations, and broken promises.
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In Pursuit of the Inconceivable: An Investigation of Metaphysics and Mysticism with Peter G. Jones (Essentia Books, 2025)
In Pursuit of the Inconceivable: An Investigation of Metaphysics and Mysticism (Essentia Books, 2025) is a compelling exploration of fundamental questions about existence, reality, and the meaning of life that …
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In Pursuit of the Inconceivable: An Investigation of Metaphysics and Mysticism (Essentia Books, 2025) is a compelling exploration of fundamental questions about existence, reality, and the meaning of life that challenges the traditional scepticism of Western thought. It presents evidence for a systematic, comprehensive, and fundamental world-theory, and places the reader in a position to judge its merits and plausibility for themselves.
Peter G. Jones explains the ongoing failure of Western philosophers to comprehend metaphysics as a consequence of not engaging with the only world-theory that survives analysis, the one endorsed by the writers of the Indian Upanishads, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Meister Eckhart and, many would say, Jesus and Muhammad. The findings of philosophers in the Western analytical ‘rational’ tradition are compared with the teachings of the Perennial tradition and shown to be in complete harmony. In Pursuit of the Inconceivable presents a philosophical explanation of mysticism, an apology for Abrahamic religion, a solution for all metaphysical problems, and an appeal for a significant change of attitude in the academic and scientific communities.Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Hidden Scrolls, Buried Bibles: How We Discover the Sacred Past with Eva Mroczek (Yale UP, 2026)
From the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Zohar, this is the untold story behind our enduring fascination with lost and found religious texts The Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts ever …
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From the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Zohar, this is the untold story behind our enduring fascination with lost and found religious texts The Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts ever found, were discovered in a cave by a shepherd and his goat. This story is mostly true, and it is not the first such tale about long-lost books. Legend has it that the Zohar--the foundational text of Jewish Kabbalah--was lost for centuries before being discovered in a cave by a farmer, who sold it to spice merchants as packing material. It was only when a scholar picked through a trash heap and joined the fragments together that the world recovered its mystical secrets. These are just two of many tales recounting the discovery of ancient religious manuscripts. Tracing a time-honored pattern of storytelling about lost and recovered sacred texts, in Hidden Scrolls, Buried Bibles: How We Discover the Sacred Past (Yale UP, 2026) Eva Mroczek reveals a surprising feature of Jewish and Christian thought: the idea that scripture is not complete--that it is partly lost, destroyed, or hidden--is not only the stuff of fantasy novels and conspiracy theories. Mroczek shows that modern scholarly mythmaking is more tightly bound with Jewish and Christian legends than we may think. Through the lens of discovery tales, this innovative book explores how traditions live in tension with the possibility of unknown pasts and surprising discoveries.
New books in late antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review
Eva Mroczek is Simon and Riva Spatz Chair in Jewish Studies; Professor; Religious Studies; Undergraduate Advisor for Religious Studies
Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston
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Palimpsests Past and Present: The Sufis and Sultans of the Maklī Necropolis, 1380–1660 with Fatima Quraishi (UNC Press, 2026)
Established in the late fourteenth century in what is now Sindh Province, Pakistan, the Maklī necropolis grew over three centuries to a site of more than seventy monumental tombs and mosques, and hundreds, if …
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Established in the late fourteenth century in what is now Sindh Province, Pakistan, the Maklī necropolis grew over three centuries to a site of more than seventy monumental tombs and mosques, and hundreds, if not thousands, of graves. Maklī’s distinctive architecture sheds light on the intersection of transregional artistic styles through its accretional building practices by generations of craftspeople. Over its long history, Maklī became a site layered with multiple meanings as regional elites and everyday Sufi devotees sought to be buried in the shadow of saints—and as the living visited the necropolis to enact devotions and duty.
In Palimpsests Past and Present: The Sufis and Sultans of the Maklī Necropolis, 1380–1660 (UNC Press, 2026), Fatima Quraishi uses rarely consulted archives in Pakistan alongside close analysis of Maklī’s built environment to understand the site as an artistic and architectural palimpsest, mutually established by elite patronage and humble devotions. At Maklī, the passage of time merges with changes in religion and society to reveal the vibrant lives and afterlives of tombs integral to the communal life of surrounding areas. By studying what has long been treated as an interstitial space between Central Asia and India, Quraishi speaks to wider explorations of borderlands of the premodern past.Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
A Protestant Air: Gide, Sartre, Barthes, and the Religion of Literary Modernity with Clémentine Fauré-Bellaïche (Cornell UP, 2026)
A Protestant Air: Gide, Sartre, Barthes, and the Religion of Literary Modernity (Cornell UP, 2026) focuses on the Protestant connection linking three intellectual giants of twentieth-century French thought. All …
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A Protestant Air: Gide, Sartre, Barthes, and the Religion of Literary Modernity (Cornell UP, 2026) focuses on the Protestant connection linking three intellectual giants of twentieth-century French thought. All three came from a Protestant background and thus shared a common marginality in a nation culturally marked by Catholicism, one that profoundly shaped their personalities, thinking, and literary careers. When Gide received the Nobel Prize in 1947, he declared that if he had represented anything as a writer, it was the "spirit of protestation." Clémentine Fauré-Bellaïche explores the filiation that this spirit weaves between Gide, Sartre, and Barthes. She shows how their Protestant difference, confronted with France's Catholicity, informed their posture as writers, their conceptualization of literature, and their elaboration of the figure of the French intellectual as a counterauthority, with a distinctive positioning vis-à-vis the individual and the institution. As such, A Protestant Air examines the religious underpinnings of twentieth-century letters and politics, their interaction with the secularization of French society, and, more broadly, the historical and philosophical relationship between the Protestant ethos and modernity itself.
Guest Clémentine Fauré-Bellaïche is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Brandeis University; she is currently at work on two projects. The first one, tentatively titled Transnational Theologies — Religious Networks and The Making of French Thought, is centered on the reconfiguration of French thought between the wars, informed by transnational circulations, exchanges of ideas across cultural spaces, and intellectual transfers between the religious and the secular spheres. The second one is a French literary history of the notion of conspiracy, both as form and as imaginary, from Balzac and Marcel Proust to Paul Nizan and Michel Houellebecq.
Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean. Their monograph Posthumanist Ecology in Global French Surrealism is forthcoming in 2027 from Northwestern University Press.
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Incense and Performance: The Lives of Mexica Ritual Specialists with Josefrayn Sánchez-Perry (U Arizona Press, 2026)
At the time of the conquest of Mexico, the anonymous authors of the Anales de Tlatelolco (1560s) recorded the deaths of two Mexica ritual specialists. During the tumultuous events of the times, Quauhnochtli (a …
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At the time of the conquest of Mexico, the anonymous authors of the Anales de Tlatelolco (1560s) recorded the deaths of two Mexica ritual specialists. During the tumultuous events of the times, Quauhnochtli (a telpochcalli specialist) and Quauhcoatl (a calmecac specialist) died protecting the temple of Huitzilopochtli and his bundled embodiment in the neighborhood of Huitznahuac.
In Incense and Performance: The Lives of Mexica Ritual Specialists (U Arizona Press, 2026), Dr. Josefrayn Sánchez-Perry reconstructs the lives and labors of the two specialists, articulated through Nahuatl-language texts, material culture from neighborhood and temple spaces, and the academic study of religion. The book expands on known theories on Mexica ritual specialists by providing new insights about telpochcalli and calmecac duties, their interrelated educational models, and the collective practices that brought people, animals, flora, specialists, and teteo (more-than-human forces) together. The book demonstrates that telpochcalli and calmecac specialists shared the ritual responsibilities of collective and elective practices.
Giving care to teteo, giving life, and giving offerings were balanced with giving war, giving council, and giving music and dance. As Quauhnochtli and Quauhcoatl ensured the safety of the bundled Huitzilopochtli, they characterized how a Mexica ritual specialist lived and what they did.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Shared Sacred Sites in South Asia: Negotiating Coexistence and Belonging with Christophe Jaffrelot (Hurst, 2026)
What can shared sacred sites tell us about religious coexistence in South Asia? Political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot joins Shreya Urvashi to discuss Shared Sacred Sites in South Asia: Negotiating …
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What can shared sacred sites tell us about religious coexistence in South Asia? Political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot joins Shreya Urvashi to discuss Shared Sacred Sites in South Asia: Negotiating Coexistence and Belonging (Hurst, 2026), co-edited with Laurent Gayer, Aminah Mohammad-Arif, and Grégoire Schlemmer. The book examines shrines, pilgrimage sites, and other sacred spaces across South Asia where people from different religious communities continue to worship, make offerings, and participate in overlapping devotional practices.
Christophe and Shreya discuss why “shared” does not necessarily mean harmonious, the book’s idea of coexistence as a “tensile equilibrium,” and what everyday religious practice can reveal about the boundaries between religious communities. The conversation explores religious reform, nationalism, and the everyday work required to sustain coexistence. More broadly, they discuss what shared sacred spaces can tell us about religion, belonging, and political change in South Asia.
Find the book at the publisher's site here
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Constructing Christendom: Conquest and Diocese Formation in Medieval Iberia with Thomas W. Barton (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
In Constructing Christendom: Conquest and Diocese Formation in Medieval Iberia (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026), Dr. Thomas W. Barton examines how church leaders partnered with lay rulers to integrate lands …
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In Constructing Christendom: Conquest and Diocese Formation in Medieval Iberia (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026), Dr. Thomas W. Barton examines how church leaders partnered with lay rulers to integrate lands conquered from the Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula from the ninth through the fourteenth centuries. In tracing the intricate developmental histories of a cluster of competitive neighboring bishoprics, Dr. Barton reveals how rival factions fought over new territory by asserting that it belonged to their foundations according to ancient precedent. Wielding self-interested, manipulated recollections of the organization of the Visigothic church that had predated the eighth-century Muslim conquest did more than further these local territorial battles; it helped promote a shared revisionist Christian historical vision that delegitimized non-Christian rule and emphasized the elemental, divinely ordained centrality of papal authority.
Based on over a decade of research and drawing on documentation from numerous underutilized local archives, Constructing Christendom presents the unwritten histories of these foundations to demonstrate how such local efforts to expand Latin Christendom’s frontiers and establish or enlarge dioceses came to be associated with the reordering of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the solidification of a cohesive European Christian identity. Despite the persistence of some unique features deriving from the formational histories of these frontier bishoprics, the overarching trend, Dr. Barton finds, was toward gradual homogenization, as dioceses on Christendom’s periphery and established ones situated closer to its core increasingly came to resemble one another in terms of their administrative and cultural attributes and relationships to papacy-centric governance.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Selling the Word of God: The Early Commercial History of the English Bible with Harry Spillaine (Bodleian, 2026)
Selling the Word of God: The Early Commercial History of the English Bible (Bodleian, 2026) by Dr. Harry Spillane is a history of the English Bible as a book. A book that in order to be read had first to be …
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Selling the Word of God: The Early Commercial History of the English Bible (Bodleian, 2026) by Dr. Harry Spillane is a history of the English Bible as a book. A book that in order to be read had first to be sold.
The Bible is the most published text in history and the story of its publication in the English language is extraordinary. Published on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Tyndale’s groundbreaking printed translation of the New Testament, this book traces the evolution of the English Bible from 1525 to the much celebrated King James version of 1611. By this date, readers could already choose from over a dozen English versions, each of them printed in vastly different ways. Behind each edition are stories of rivalries, mistakes, bankruptcies and bestsellers. Far from being fixed, stable publications, Bibles were consistently undergoing change and development in the early modern period.
Creativity and enterprise were at the heart of the English Bible market, something that the usual focus on Bible translators has often overshadowed. Illustrated with early editions, this book considers how printers created new markets for Bibles, how they advertised them, and how they commissioned innovative forms of illustration and decoration to attract buyers. How, it asks, did the English Bible become a bestseller?
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Forgive Us Our Debts: How Black Churches Use Bankruptcy to Survive with Pamela Foohey (U Chicago Press, 2026)
When American churches face financial difficulties, a disproportionately high number of Black churches reorganize under chapter 11 bankruptcy. There are no easy explanations for this distinction: not location …
Shownotes
When American churches face financial difficulties, a disproportionately high number of Black churches reorganize under chapter 11 bankruptcy. There are no easy explanations for this distinction: not location, denomination, leadership structure, or the reasons for the loans. In Forgive Us Our Debts: How Black Churches Use Bankruptcy to Survive (U Chicago Press, 2026), legal scholar Pamela Foohey asks why, then, Black churches account for two-thirds of all congregations that file for chapter 11 bankruptcy every year.
Drawing on case studies of six Black churches and one white church, and 150 interviews with church leaders, members, and attorneys, Foohey finds answers in a long history of predatory lending. Unable to negotiate with recalcitrant loan officers, Black churches turn to the legal system to force reasonable concessions from lenders to prevent the stripping of their wealth and the destruction of their communities. While the structural discrimination remains, these churches have found in the bankruptcy system a refuge and some power to fight back.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Coming of Age As Syrian Jewish Mexicans: The Pragmatics of Diaspora with Evelyn María Dean-Olmsted (Brill, 2025)
Drora interviewed Dr. Eveyln Maria Dean-Olmsted about her book, Coming of Age as Syrian Jewish Mexicans: The Pragmatics of Diaspora (Brill, 2025), published by Brill in 2026. Dr. Dean-Olmsted is a linguistic …
Shownotes
Drora interviewed Dr. Eveyln Maria Dean-Olmsted about her book, Coming of Age as Syrian Jewish Mexicans: The Pragmatics of Diaspora (Brill, 2025), published by Brill in 2026. Dr. Dean-Olmsted is a linguistic anthropologist who lived with the Jewish community in Mexico City for a time to research this book. The community includes four distinct groups: Ashkenazi, Aleppans, Damascenes, and Ottoman Sephardim. She explained how these communities formed in the early 20th century following migration from the Ottoman Empire and later Syria and Lebanon, with each group maintaining separate institutions for social and religious purposes. Evelyn noted that while these communities were once strictly separated, there is now more mixing between them, though specific ethnic and geographic identifications remain important within the community.
Dean-Olmsted discussed increased social mixing and institutional collaboration between different Jewish communities, noting that intermarriages between Ashkenazi and Syrian Jews have become more normal though family dynamics can still be tense. She explained that young people are actively navigating questions about religious practice and lifestyle choices, with many experiencing a "holy struggle" she terms "Le'heavec" - referencing Jacob wrestling with an angel - as they make personalized decisions about their Judaism. She described this as an ongoing process that counters stereotypes about Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews' religiosity, while noting that community pressure remains strong, particularly for those who don't fit traditional molds.
As an example, they discussed the tebilah ceremony of immersing in a mikveh before one's wedding. In the traditional Syrian communities this is cause for a large party and in the Ashkenazi community, which has been seeping in to all communities through ultra-orthodox Rabbis and classes, it is a very quiet private affair. This struggle to understand what is one's Judaism and how do we rethink our heritage while staying true to it and our community was a key part of the discussion.
Continue to struggle with the future of our heritage by following and participating in Jewish Tapestry talks and events.
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Theologies of Remembering: Modernity, Ambiguity, and Transcendence in Islamic Indonesia with Verena Hanna Meyer (U California Press, 2026)
The claim to moderate or modernist Islam in Indonesia is particularly contentious today, as these labels participate in the global politics of identity for Muslims past and present. Who gets to claim to be …
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The claim to moderate or modernist Islam in Indonesia is particularly contentious today, as these labels participate in the global politics of identity for Muslims past and present. Who gets to claim to be representative of an Islam that is modernist, progressive, or tolerant? What constitutes a traditionalist Islamic orientation? And why and for whom do these distinctions matter? In her new book Theologies of Remembering: Modernity, Ambiguity, and Transcendence in Islamic Indonesia (U California Press, 2026), Dr. Verena Meyer raises these questions in an ethnographic study of two major Indonesian Muslim organizations based in Yogyakarta: the Muhammadiyya and the Nahdlatul Ulama.
Within a larger global discourse of Muslim belonging, and in particular anxieties about the growth of so-called radical and intolerant Islam, the labels given to these organizations (traditionalist and modernist) take on new importance. It is the question of categories—what defines them, what work they do, and how they change—that Meyer investigates through interviews with organization members, study of intellectual and genealogical traditions, and observations of institutional building within the groups. Engaging the field of memory studies and critical debates about the role of remembering and commemorating the past through history and heritage, Meyer argues that the terms and connotations of categories like modernist and traditional have shifted as Indonesian Muslims recall their formative pasts in ways that involve, and not preclude, ambiguity and contradiction. As such the book participates in debates within Islamic studies about the role of paradox and contradiction in Muslim historical and theological frameworks, constructed within temporal shifts in agency and power.
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program.
Dr. Verena Meyer is Assistant Professor of Islam in South and Southeast Asia at Leiden University (NL).
Dr. Jaclyn Michael is an Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (USA).
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The Cultural Heritage of Śākta Tantric Communities in India: Goddesses and Magicians in the Holy Groves of Kerala with Maciej Karasinski (Routledge, 2026)
Despite the long tradition of exploring the Tantric temple culture of Nampūtiri Brahmins within Tantric studies, the Śākta stream remains under-researched. The Cultural Heritage of Śākta Tantric Communities in …
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Despite the long tradition of exploring the Tantric temple culture of Nampūtiri Brahmins within Tantric studies, the Śākta stream remains under-researched. The Cultural Heritage of Śākta Tantric Communities in India: Goddesses and Magicians in the Holy Groves of Kerala (Routledge, 2026) therefore enriches understanding of these largely neglected sampradāyas (spiritual traditions), bringing them to the attention of the wider academic community and ultimately shedding light on Śākta communities often marginalised in the discourses on mainstream Asian religions.
Forming one of the richest surviving religious-philosophical traditions of South Asia, Kerala Śākta Tantra is a complex ritualistic system that evolved under the strong influence of various esoteric traditions, including Kashmirian Śaivism (Krama). Drawing on ethnographic data and anthropological research collected during fieldwork in Kerala, as well as interviews with practitioners of kaḷaripayaṯṯu and members of the Nāyar, Piṭārar, Panikkar, and Kalari Kurupp clans, this book explores the diversity of folk and Sanskritic traditions and highlights the importance of Śāktism, particularly Kālī Krama and Śrīvidyā traditions in Kerala. Chapters discuss sacred spaces in Kerala, introduce various Tantric communities, and examine the social changes in modern Kerala that instigated broader acceptance of those from so-called low castes to worship in Hindu temples. The book also offers a philological study of hitherto unexamined Sanskrit and Malayalam manuscripts (ritual manuals) from Kerala, which provide insights into the modes of worship of fierce and fearsome goddesses of the Tantric pantheon.
Arguing that the Kerala Śāktism forms an intricate system preserved by so-called Śākteya clans in Kerala, this important volume will be of use to scholars, postgraduate students, and researchers in the fields of Asian religion, Tantric studies, South Asian religion, and South Asian studies.
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