New Books in Religion

South Asian Animal Divination: A Critical Anthology (Brill, 2025) examines the history and practice of animal omen divination in South Asia, comparing it to similar traditions in Mesopotamia and classical antiquity. It provides critical editions and translations of relevant texts, focusing on the interpretation of bird calls and behaviour. The study incorporates ornithological and natural historical information to enhance the understanding of the omens and their regional origins. Furthermore, it explores the evolution of omen literature and the transmission of knowledge across cultures and time periods, highlighting the enduring significance of sound and direction in divination practices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Conceiving the Mother of Tibet: The Early Literary Lives of the Buddhist Saint Yeshe Tsogyel (Oxford UP, 2026) is the first comprehensive study dedicated to the literary tradition surrounding Yeshe Tsogyel, revered as the foremost matron saint of Tibetan Buddhism. It traces the emergence and development of a rich body of narratives about Yeshe Tsogyel during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, focusing on the Tibetan Nyingma Buddhist tradition. Through careful textual analysis, the book constructs an emic (insider) Tibetan Buddhist theory of gender and female religious eminence, examining how Yeshe Tsogyel's multifaceted identities--as a devoted disciple, tantric consort, sky-goer (dakini), and spiritual mother--embody a dialectic that shifts back and forth between Tibetan women's social and cultural marginalization and a Buddhist discourse of soteriological inclusivity. Jue Liang queries these texts for their social and religious functions, especially where ambivalence and contradictions abound. However, these ambivalences do not necessarily disadvantage women in Tibetan Buddhism. Operating with ambivalent, sometimes competing, discourses on womanhood, Nyingma Buddhist theorists in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries created a space for a flexible treatment of gender, where they traverse between theological terms and embodied reality. Ultimately, Conceiving the Mother of Tibet not only illuminates the unique position of Yeshe Tsogyel within Tibetan Buddhist literature but also offers a methodological framework for understanding localized theories of gender. This approach highlights alternative ways of being and acting in the world as embodied agents, providing valuable insights for the broader field of Buddhist studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Whispers in the Pews: Evangelical Uniformity in a Divided America (NYU Press, 2026) reveals how mundane social interactions in an evangelical church silence difference and reinforce right-wing conformity Small talk, whether enjoyed or despised, is often thought of as trivial and largely useless. In certain situations, however, it can be surprisingly powerful. Whispers in the Pews offers a bottom-up explanation of Christian nationalism, revealing how cultural homogeneity within evangelical church communities is upheld by an active, manufactured effort to dodge reflective engagement with topics that could stir up diverging points of view. Whispers in the Pews exposes how small talk is utilized to construct an appearance of social and political sameness in evangelical church communities. Based on an ethnography of a church that appeals to students, working class residents, and racial minorities alike in a politically divided Southern college town, McDowell showcases how churchgoers avoid consequential issues that could expose disagreements on border control, electoral politics, race and gender. By confining themselves to blander topics, the church, which prides itself on inclusivity, positions itself as welcoming to all. But by creating an environment in which certain topics are discouraged from discussion, a façade is developed in which everyone is assumed to believe the same things, and any sort of debate is silenced. Whispers in the Pews shows that the presumption that everyone is of the same mind makes it difficult for churchgoers to articulate or contemplate progressive views, and by extension, advances the idea that differences of opinion are un-Christian, and therefore un-American. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Kira Ganga Kieffer (Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Wesleyan University; PhD, Boston University, 2023) studies contemporary American spiritualities, health, gender, and marketing. Her first book, a history of religion and vaccine skepticism, Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America (Princeton UP, 2026), is  forthcoming from Princeton University Press. She is the author of “Smelling Things: Essential Oils and Essentialism in Contemporary American Spirituality,” in Religion & American Culture (2021) and “Manifesting Millions: How Women’s Spiritual Entrepreneurship Genders Capitalism,” in Nova Religio (2020), which received the Thomas Robbins Award for Article of the Year. She has written for Religion & Politics, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Religion for Breakfast. Kieffer uses textual analysis of spiritual marketing materials to discover how consumer culture creates religious concepts within a secular context. Focused on spiritual items and practices that are marketed to women, Kieffer compares the usage of essential oils by three very different groups of spiritual practitioners: contemporary yogis, evangelical Christians, and witches. Although the usage of essential oils is consumerized, Kieffer argues, the beliefs and practices created by “oilers” are nonetheless meaningful responses to the spiritual yearning. Essential oil practices blur the lines between religious traditions, sharpen individual spirituality, and work to create new collective identities. Order "Unvaccinated Under God" here: here Visit Sacred Writes here: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Revisiting the God-fearer Thesis in the Development of Early Christianity (T&T Clark, 2025) examines in depth the theory, evidence, and trail of scholarly work on god-fearers. Thomas A. Robinson argues for substantial revisions in the depiction of the god-fearer phenomenon, the story of early Christianity and its engagement with both Jews and with the larger Greco-Roman population. Robinson provides a thorough analysis of the god-fearer theory, examining scholarly debate and primary literary and inscriptional materials put forward as evidence for the god-fearer theory. Robinson begins with an exploration of the god-fearing community, its definition, or lack thereof, and its role as a bridge to Christianity in the Greco-Roman world. He then examines the key features of god-fearers, and the scholarly appeal to circumcision as the primary barrier preventing god-fearer conversion to Judaism. The volume concludes with an exploration of Luke's Acts and its readers and a thorough investigation of inscriptional and literary evidence supporting god-fearer theory. Thomas A. Robinson holds a PhD in Religious Studies from McMaster University, having majored in Judaism and Christianity in the Greco-Roman Era and minored in Indian Philosophy. He has taught world religions courses for over thirty years and has published several books on early and modern Christianity, co-authored a world religions text, and developed books and software for New Testament Greek. Among his other publications on early Christianity, he has authored Ignatius of Antioch and the Parting of the Ways: Early-Jewish Christian Relations (Hendrickson, 2009) and Who Were the First Christians? Dismanting the Urban Thesis (Oxford University Press, 2017). Jonathon Lookadoo is Associate Professor at the Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary in Seoul, South Korea. While his interests range widely over the world of early Christianity, he is the author of books on the Epistle of Barnabas, Ignatius of Antioch, and the Shepherd of Hermas, including The Christology of Ignatius of Antioch (Cascade, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Samiha Rahman’s Black Muslim Freedom Dreams: Islamic Education, Pan-Africanism, and Collective Care (New York University Press, 2026) follows three generations of Black American Muslims as they pursue education through the Tijani Sufi order in Medina Baye, Senegal, outside the anti-Black and anti-Muslim racism of the United States. This deeply rich ethnographic book captures the transatlantic flows of Black American religious life through the prism of Black mothers and othermothers (as conceptualized by Patricia Hill Collins “motherwork”) and the young people whose lives are transformed through the process. By focusing on the Islamic education offered by the Tijani Order, such as Qur’an education, we learn about the intricate networks of kin that step in to support the young Black Muslims who have migrated for schooling, highlighting the tangible realities of collective care and service that circulates within the Tijani Order. These registers of care and service are informed by Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, the Senegalese Islamic scholar, Sufi Shaykh, and pan-Africanist, whose teachings define these networks of education, organizing, and care work. The book then offers critical insights into the flow of one particular Sufi community between the United States and Senegal, and how dreams of better futures for Black Muslim youth and the liberatory goals of Pan-Africanism intersect to co-constitute a significant economy of collective care, Sufi service, and Islamic piety. This book will be of interest to anyone who works on education, Sufism, Black and African Islam and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In Genesis 9, Noah plants a vineyard, and eventually becomes drunk and uncovered in his tent. Then we are told that Ham sees the nakedness of his father, but when Noah wakes up he curses Canaan, Ham’s son. For more than two thousand years, interpreters have struggled to make sense of this story, trying to fill its gaps and explain its ambiguities. Tune in as we speak with Justin Michael Reed, who offers a novel explanation in his recent book, The Injustice of Noah's Curse (Oxford UP, 2025) Justin Michael Reed is Associate Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In The Noise Silence Makes: Secularity and Ghana's Drum Wars (Duke UP, 2025) Mariam Goshadze traces the history of noise regulation in Accra, Ghana, showing how the 1990s and 2000s conflicts between the Ga people and Pentecostal/Charismatic churches during the annual city-wide ban on drumming illuminates the inner workings of Ghanaian secularity and the importance of "traditional religions" to African urbanity. Goshadze shows how the drumming ban represents a reversal of the top-down model of noise regulation and illuminates the reality of Ghanaian secularity, in which the state unofficially collaborates with indigenous religious authorities to control sound. In so doing, Goshadze counters the tendency to push African “traditional religions” to the margins. The author, Mariam Goshadze, is an Assistant Professor in the Study of Religion at Leipzig University. The host, Elisa Prosperetti, is an Assistant Professor of African and global history at NIE/NTU in Singapore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Today Pierce Salguero sit down with Prof. Jeff Kripal, noted scholar of religion at Rice University, to talk about extraordinary, mysterious, and “impossible” experiences. This is a conversation I’ve been waiting a few years to have. Together we explore what you can or can’t talk about in the humanities — and what we risk when we break the rules. Along the way, we touch on paranormal phenomena, epistemological pluralism, conspiracy theories, Plato’s cave, and why no one dresses up as a humanities professor for Halloween. 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. Enjoy the show! Resources related to this conversation: Jeff Kripal's website Archives of the Impossible & Conferences Pierce Salguero, "Secret Lives of Buddhist Studies Scholars" (2024) Pierce Salguero, "The Fractal of Humanities" (2021) Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, "On the need for metaphysics in psychedelic therapy and research" (2023) Jeff Kripal, The Flip (2020) Jeff Kripal, Secret Body (2019) Commonweal Podcast Subscribe here to unlock our members-only benefits, including: PDF of the introduction of Jeff's book, How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else (2024) 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Manusmriti occupies a prominent place in Indian textual tradition as one of the authentic sources of dharma. However, contemporary engagement with the text has been wrought with prejudice and discomfort left in the wake of colonialism. Chatuh Shloki Manusmriti: An English Commentary (Vitasta, 2025) aims to address the gap in contemporary approach and facilitate a better understanding through a philosophical analysis of the first four verses of Manusmriti, shedding light on the object, purpose and relevance of dharma texts. Rather than reducing Manusmriti to a mere relic of the past through a historical study, the book locates the text within the larger Hindu epistemological, ontological, and theological worldview and extracts the eternal teachings embedded within it. The book addresses common misconceptions on topics such as the definition of dharma, the integrity and importance of Manusmriti, the notion of ritual competency, and the Hindu conception of varna. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Edith Szanto’s Twelver Shi'i Self-Flagellation Rites in Contemporary Syria: Mourning Sayyida Zaynab (Edinburgh UP, 2025) is a striking and deeply immersive ethnographic study that takes the reader into the shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab in Syria. This town was a vibrant center of Shi‘i life, pilgrimage, and healing, especially for Iraqi refugees until the 2011 Syrian uprising. By combining meticulous fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2010 with rich historical and social context, Szanto shows how these contested rituals served as both spiritual expression and pathways to worldly and psychological healing. The book examines controversial Muharram practices, especially self-flagellation, not simply as ritual acts but as deeply meaningful responses to trauma, displacement, and the search for justice and healing. In doing so, Szanto pays close attention to how people actually live their religion: through relationships with saints, engagement with religious authorities, media, ritual performance, and forms of spiritual healing. In this conversation, Szanto and I explore specific Muharram practices, including self-flagellation, the wedding of Qasim, and other ritualized forms of mourning, as well as gendered dynamics in who participates and why. We discuss what these practices looked like on the ground—what Muharram in Sayyida Zaynab felt like, how different communities understood and debated these rituals, and what purposes they served for those who participated in them. We talk about the Zaynabiyya seminary and how changes in its physical and institutional structure reshaped how knowledge was taught and who held authority. We also discuss relationships with saints, spiritual healers like Shaykh Abu Ahmad, and the ways that media, music, and ritual performance mediate piety. Szanto also treats us to reflecting on some of her experiences observing and engaging with these rituals. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Islamic studies generally, Shi‘i studies, Middle Eastern religious life, or the ways that communities navigate devotion, trauma, and healing through ritual. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The contentious life and times of the most widely cited book of the New Testament. Written some two thousand years ago, the Gospel of John is the only Christian Gospel to place Jesus at the creation of the world, and the only one where we find the stories of the raising of Lazarus, the woman taken in adultery, and the changing of water into wine at the wedding in Cana. The Gospel of John also points an accusing finger at Jesus’s Jewish opponents and has been used by medieval crusaders, Protestant reformers, and white supremacists to legitimize antisemitic violence. In The Gospel of John: A Biography (Princeton UP, 2026) Kim Haines-Eitzen traces the legacy of this complex, beautiful, and at times deeply troubling work, from its composition in the late first century to its enduring power today. Haines-Eitzen sheds light on the book’s reception by early Christian gnostic and patristic commentators, its use in the Crusades and Reformation, its revered status among American evangelicals, and the many ways it has inspired novels, films, music, and art. The earliest papyrus fragment of an identifiably Christian Gospel is a fragment of John, and John is the only canonical Gospel that depicts Jesus as a savior who teaches openly about his divinity. Haines-Eitzen shows how John simultaneously carries a message of inclusion and intolerance, and how its story teaches us about the nature and enormous influence of scriptural religions. Compelling and provocative, The Gospel of John reveals how this dynamic, malleable biblical work has both unified and divided Christians over centuries of translation, interpretation, and creative reimagining. Kim Haines-Eitzen (Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1997) is a Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions with a specialty in Early Christianity, Early Judaism, and Religion in Late Antiquity in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. Her most recent book is Sonorous Desert: What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks and What It Can Teach Us (Princeton University Press, 2022), a project that traces how desert sounds shaped early Christian monasticism and includes field recordings she has made in desert environments. She is the author of Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (Oxford University Press, 2000), a social history of the scribes who copied Christian texts during the second and third centuries; and The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity, which deals with the intersection of gender and text transmission (Oxford University Press, 2012). She is a member of the programs in Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, Medieval Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell. For the 2024-25 academic year, she is a Fellow at the National Humanities Center where she is working on a new project, tentatively entitled Earth, Wind, and Fire: A Field Guide to the Apocalypse. To learn more about her recent work and her media appearances, visit her website: http://kimhaineseitzen.wordpress.com Jonathon Lookadoo is Associate Professor at the Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary in Seoul, South Korea. While his interests range widely over the world of early Christianity, he is the author of books on the Epistle of Barnabas, Ignatius of Antioch, and the Shepherd of Hermas, including The Christology of Ignatius of Antioch (Cascade, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In my conversation with Rev. Dr Carmen Lansdowne about her book Wearing a Broken Indigene Heart on the Sleeve of Christian Mission (CMU Press, 2025), she emphasised the priority of truth-telling over comfort. Her work does not offer a polished narrative of reconciliation or a toolkit for “better mission.” Instead, it confronts Christian mission with its unresolved colonial entanglements and asks whether the church is willing to pursue justice rather than seek emotional closure. Carmen’s language of a “broken heart” names the cost of remaining Christian while being Indigenous within institutions that continue to benefit from colonial structures. In our interview, she spoke candidly about vulnerability as a theological practice, not as confession for its own sake but as witness. The book also challenges dominant ways of knowing. As Carmen explains, Indigenous epistemologies reveal how Western theology has privileged abstraction and certainty at the expense of relational responsibility and right action. For anyone engaged in theology, ministry, or scholarship, especially in North American, European, or settler contexts, this is a deeply unsettling yet necessary challenge. During our conversation, Carmen also highlighted helpful resources and ongoing reflections available on her website, which readers and listeners may find valuable. You can explore them here. She also writes regularly on Substack, where you can follow or subscribe to keep engaging with her thoughts beyond the book. Wearing a Broken Indigene Heart on the Sleeve of Christian Mission poses a difficult but important question: What kind of church emerges when justice matters more than innocence? It is a question worth sitting with, uncomfortably and honestly. Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African diasporic communities in the Netherlands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Evangelicals claim that their opposition to homosexuality is an inherent feature of their faith, rooted in their unchanging beliefs about the Bible. Most scholars, journalists, and observers have accepted this account; in Born Again Queer: A History of Evangelical Gay Activism and the Making of Antigay Christianity (Princeton UP, 2026) William Stell upends it. Arguing that the antigay majority in evangelicalism has been less dominant and more vulnerable than previously thought, Stell describes a network of authors, ministers, and professors—all veterans of major evangelical institutions—who worked in the 1970s and 1980s to persuade Christians that their churches should affirm the relationships and ministries of gay and lesbian members. By the late 1970s, some even thought that these activists might shape the future of evangelicalism.Of course, that speculation proved mistaken, and the antigay evangelical majority eventually overpowered the gay-affirming minority. Stell’s history of the rise and fall of evangelical gay activism shines a light on this largely forgotten chapter in American evangelicalism. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews, Stell documents the work of four prominent activists: the founder of a predominantly LGBTQ+ denomination called the Metropolitan Community Churches, the leader of a gay advocacy organization called Evangelicals Concerned, and the evangelical feminist coauthors of the influential book Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? By recovering the successes of evangelical gay activists and the struggles of their opponents, Stell’s account transforms how we think about evangelicalism, how we talk about the culture wars, and how we approach both religion in queer movements and queer activism in religious movements. William Stell teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at New York 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 Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Religion Department is an online learning platform dedicated to the academic, nonsectarian study of religion, created by the team behind Religion for Breakfast — the YouTube channel with over a million subscribers. Co-founded by Dr. Andrew Mark Henry and Dr. Andrew Ali Aghapour, The Religion Department offers guest lectures, multi-week seminars, and guided reading courses taught by scholars of religion, all designed to make university-level religious studies accessible to anyone, anywhere. Inspired by creator-driven platforms like Dropout TV and Nebula, The Religion Department is built on a user-funded model that compensates scholars fairly for their teaching and expertise. Current offerings include a guided reading of Attar's twelfth-century Sufi masterpiece The Conference of the Birds with Dr. Patrick D'Silva, a 52-week course on key concepts in religious studies led by Dr. Henry, and many more upcoming programs. In this episode, we talk with the co-founders about how Religion for Breakfast grew into something bigger, what The Religion Department offers, and why they believe the academic study of religion deserves a home beyond the traditional university. Learn more and become a member at religiondepartment.com Dr. Andrew Mark Henry is a scholar of late Roman religion who holds a PhD from Boston University. He is the creator and host of Religion for Breakfast, and the 2026 recipient of the American Academy of Religion's Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. Dr. Andrew Ali Aghapour is a scholar of religion and science who holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is an award-winning comedian and storyteller, and has served as the Consulting Scholar of Religion and Science for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

First published in 1997, Manufacturing Religion was a controversial book because it critiqued a widely adopted style of scholarship that presumes that religion is utterly unique, inexplicable, and therefore able only to be interpreted by privileged scholars. Claiming religion to be sui generis (or self-caused), this approach has undisclosed practical effects--institutional and geo-political--at a variety of sites, from the types of textbooks commonly used in introductory classes to the way that political events are often represented in the mass media. Russell McCutcheon documented the ubiquity of this approach and showed how harmful it was Updating its wide-ranging evidence and adding new chapters, this new edition demonstrates the impact of this critique while showing how little the field has generally moved in the past thirty years. Russell T. McCutcheon earned his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and is now an honorary life member of the International Association for the History of Religions. Beginning in 2001, he was the Department Chair at the University of Alabama, a role that he played for 18 years. His many publications on the history of the field and the practical effects of the category religion in liberal democracies, along with a number of resources created specifically for teachers and students, are widely used in the field today. This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com00:00 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Rambam, Maimonides, was one of the intellectual giants of world history. His greatest and most ambitious work was the Mishne Torah. And now the Steinsaltz Center together with Koren Publishers have produced a beautiful new edition with English translation and commentary by the late and esteemed Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz. Tune in as we speak with Rav Meni Even-Israel about the Rambam. Rabbi Meni Even-Israel serves as the Executive Director of the Steinsaltz Center, which oversees the teachings and publications of his father, Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Most people today understand contraception as central to women’s liberation, and when the birth control pill arrived in 1960, the media thought it would usher in a sexual revolution. But a surprising number of religious Americans in the mid-twentieth century also saw contraception as part of God’s plan—a tool to create happy, prosperous American families in the post–World War II era.In God Bless the Pill: The Surprising History of Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion (UNC Press, 2026), Dr. Samira K. Mehta traces the remarkable story of how mid-twentieth-century Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish voices promoted the use of birth control and made it more accessible for many Americans. They hoped birth control methods would curb divorce rates by encouraging sexually dynamic marriages and families unstrained by “too many” children—thereby creating a postwar upwardly mobile middle class. Religious leaders also promoted this understanding of the family as tied to Cold War capitalism and encouraged neither racial nor gender equity.But then came the backlash, both from the Right—which failed to anticipate the feminist potential of contraception—and from the Left, where women, particularly women of color, sought to ensure that birth control was a tool of liberation rather than one rooted in patriarchal and racial oppression. Ultimately, Dr. Mehta offers compelling new insights into the way religion accommodates itself to social, technological, and medical change. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In Late Antiquity (ca. 200–600 CE), the world was alive with unseen forces—divine agents who influenced every aspect of daily life. For most ordinary people, religion was not found in temples, synagogues, and churches, but in lived experience as they interacted with the supernatural in a world of uncertainty and danger. In An Enchanted World, Michael Satlow uncovers a shared spiritual landscape that stretched beyond the confines of Judaism, Christianity, and the pantheon of Greek and Roman deities. From healing rituals to protective amulets, spiritual practices were a matter of necessity, transcending religious labels. To get by in the world required being on good terms with the right supernatural beings and being able to ward off the bad ones.Rejecting traditional narratives that focus on institutional religion and theological divisions, Satlow presents a compelling case for viewing the period through the lens of “lived religion.” This was not a religion of abstractions formulated by rabbis and priests, but an enchanted world populated by divine beings who had as much—if not more—agency as any person. Drawing on archaeological evidence, historical documents, and a rich trove of magical texts, Satlow vividly reconstructs how ordinary people lived in a world that crackled with the energy of the supernatural. His account reimagines the spiritual history of Late Antiquity, centering shared human fears and aspirations and challenging preconceived notions about religious boundaries. With An Enchanted World, Satlow offers a fresh perspective on a transformative period—one that has much to teach us even today about the role that spirituality can play in the secular world. New Books in Late Anqituiy is Presented by Ancient Jew Review Michael Satlow is professor of Judaic Studies and Religious Studies at Brown University Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Nurhaizatul Jamil’s Faithful Transformations: Islamic Self-Help in Contemporary Singapore (U Illinois Press, 2025) is a complex and meticulous ethnography of recent trends in Islamic self-help circles based in Singapore. Drawing on research conducted with primarily young, college-educated and working professional Malay Muslim women, Jamil details how they negotiate aspirational pursuits related to faith, love, work, and beyond through participation in self-help seminars and classes. The role of the state in racializing minority Malay Muslim identities as backward and culturally deficient looms large in Jamil’s discussion, as self-help teachers instruct their students operating within these structures to cultivate gratitude, remain optimistic, and redirect their efforts towards patience and piety. Themes of the book include gender and religious authority, Islamic discursive traditions, Malay minority history, state neoliberal projects and religious self-help discourse, projects of piety and self-improvement under conditions of racialized capitalism, and the intersections of belonging, class, gender, and state initiatives in twenty-first century Singapore. Jamil’s work offers important new perspectives on global Islamic traditions by putting research and theory from Black, ethnic, feminist, and critical Muslim studies into conversation with the anthropology of Islam and of Southeast Asia. Dr. Nurhaizatul Jamil is an Associate Professor of Global South Studies at the Pratt Institute (USA). Dr. Jaclyn Michael is an Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (USA). She is the author of several articles on Muslim cultural representation, performance, and religious belonging in India and in the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Religion, Spirituality and Public Health: Competing and Complementary Epistemes (British Academy, 2025) focuses on exploring the role of different 'ways of knowing' or arriving at truth, i.e. epistemes, particularly those found in religious and alternative health milieus. While biomedical solutions offer a dominant narrative, these are articulated differently in global contexts. Moreover, individuals often draw upon alternative framings that are sometimes oppositional to and at other times engaged with directives from medical and governmental authorities. The focus of this volume is worldviews and epistemes that are often marginalised or rejected in dominant discourses -- from shamanism in Korea to African Pentecostalism in Britain, and from global online 'AntiVax' narratives to traditional Siddha medicine in South India. Detailed case studies explore the contested, competing and strategically aligned relationships between mainstream and marginal epistemes; between religious healing, spirituality and biomedicine; and between politics and belief. These explorations promote greater insight into how marginalised religious epistemes are employed. Which beliefs and practices are drawn upon to create meaningful and effective responses? And how can we better understand the depth and breadth of these reactions to design more successful public health strategies for future global health crises? Links Inform: here  Book: here 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 fifth episode of Season 5, I interview Professor Thomas C. Schmidt, a historian who focuses on the New Testament, Patristics, and Eastern Christianity. An Associate Professor at Fairfield University, he is currently a 2025-2026 Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University. Drawing on his new book, Josephus and Jesus (OUP, 2025), we discuss in this Part II of a two-part series the writings of the ancient historian Josephus and what they reveal about the historical identity of Jesus of Nazareth as well as the events surrounding the rise of early Christianity. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on our new Substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Most accounts of Christian leadership in the first two centuries focus on the diversity of leadership structures and the various cultural influences that impacted it. The First Pastors: Early Christianity’s Vision for Ministry (Gorgias Press, 2026) demonstrates that within these structures and contexts early Christians shared a clear set of theological convictions about pastoral leadership. Through literary and theological analysis of relevant passages in the Apostolic Fathers and New Testament, The First Pastors demonstrates four shared convictions about pastoral ministry: (1) the necessity of a particular kind of virtue for pastoral leaders, (2) the authority of pastoral leaders, (3) the essentials of pastoral work, and (4) the reality of pastoral suffering. These shared convictions emerge from the variety of communities represented by these texts and are so well attested to that they suggest a much greater degree of unity than is presently assumed in the field. Moreover, even with the various dating issues surrounding the Apostolic Fathers and New Testament, the agreement between these sets of texts show second-century Christians carrying forward the convictions of the first century. Finally, they present an interesting example of the coexistence and interaction between unity and diversity in early Christianity: theological unity persisted in diverse communities with varying practices and contexts. Gorgias Press has generously offered a coupon code for listeners of this podcast. The coupon is valid until the end of 2026 on orders from the publisher’s website here. Use code LAUNCH40% Leland Brown serves as a pastor in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina and is an adjunct professor at Phoenix Seminary. He studied patristics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and received his PhD with a focus on first- and second-century Christianity. He also serves as an editor for the London Lyceum. His research seeks to exposit how pastoral leadership has been understood and practiced in the history of the church. Jonathon Lookadoo is Associate Professor at the Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary in Seoul, South Korea. While his interests range widely over the world of early Christianity, he is the author of books on the Epistle of Barnabas, Ignatius of Antioch, and the Shepherd of Hermas, including The Christology of Ignatius of Antioch (Cascade, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Amir Saemi’s exciting book Morality and Revelation in Islamic Thought and Beyond: A New Problem of Evil (Oxford UP, 2024) is a fascinating and deeply thought-provoking study that challenges how we think about scripture, morality, and divine authority. Saemi tackles what he calls the “New Problem of Evil,” a divinely prescribed problem of evil, which is the tension between the commands found in sacred texts, our own moral judgments, and the belief in a morally perfect God. Saemi demonstrates the limits of scripture-first approaches, which is to say that scripture is given precedence over our independent moral judgments in cases where the two conflict. He explores ethics-first solutions that allow the believer to take moral reasoning seriously, while also showing that scripture’s injunctions can be understood as legal or social mandates. By tracing the arguments of Ashʿarites, Mu’tazilites, and other medieval Islamic thinkers, and developing alternative solutions, Saemi offers a methodical and historically grounded framework for reconciling moral judgment with scriptural authority. In our conversation, Amir and I explore how Islamic philosophers like al-Ghazālī, al-Rāzī, al-Fārābi, and others navigated the relationship between reason and revelation, and how we might approach morally troubling passages in scripture today, including through an ethics-first approach. We also discuss thick and thin moral concepts, the Moses Principle, and what it means to reconcile modern moral sensibilities with ancient texts. Amir shares insights on gendered morality, the ethical significance of the Abraham story, and the broader implications of his work for progressive Muslims and theists alike. This book is essential reading for readers interested in the ethics of interpretation, the challenges faced by contemporary religious communities when re-interpreting historical texts, theists wrestling with moral dilemmas, and anyone interested in the intersection of philosophy, religion, and ethics. 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 fourth episode of Season 5, I interview Professor Thomas C. Schmidt, a historian who focuses on the New Testament, Patristics, and Eastern Christianity. An Associate Professor at Fairfield University, he is currently a 2025-2026 Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University. Drawing on his new book, Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ (Oxford UP, 2025), we discuss in this Part I of a two-part series the stupendous life of Josephus, the ancient historian who lived in both elite Jewish and Roman circles his whole life, as well as the cultural, religious, and political world of the New Testament as found in his main works. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on our new Substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Derek Krueger Monastic Desires: Homoeroticism, Homophobia, and Love of God in Medieval Constantinople (Cambridge UP, 2026) The Byzantine Abbot Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) transgressed the homophobic norms of medieval Orthodox society. His longing for God was distinctly homoerotic, and he depicted union with the divine as a queer sort of marriage. His Orthodox theology of theosis, the deification of the entire person, meant that Symeon taught the salvation of all the parts of the body. But monks also desired the eradication of lust and the punishment of those who fell prey to it. Sermons and biblical commentary defined men who had sex with men as sodomites; and saints' lives warned of the consequences of same-sex desires. Those who renounced sex redirected their desire rather than eliminating it. Symeon's queer erotics shed light on other devotions distinctive to medieval Orthodoxy, including the veneration of saints and worship with icons. Monastic Desires makes a groundbreaking contribution to the history of sexuality and the history of Christianity. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Derek Krueger is emeritus professor of religious studies at UNC Greensboro, the author of multiple books including Liturgical Subjects: Biblical Narratives and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium, the editor of far more, and former editor of the book series Divinations: Rereading Late Antiquity. Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

What does it mean to tell the Passover story as a truly diverse people? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with editor Rabbi Sarah Berman to discuss Haggadah Shel Erev Rav: The Mixed Multitude Haggadah (CCAR Press, 2026), a bold and beautiful reimagining of the Passover seder. Inspired by the biblical image of the erev rav—the “mixed multitude” that left Egypt together—this Haggadah celebrates the many voices that make up the Jewish people. It invites readers to rediscover the Exodus story through four distinctive pathways: the voices of children, the experiences of women, the moral urgency of social justice, and the presence of God in the work of liberation. With an inclusive and accessible translation, thoughtful commentary, and vivid original artwork by Indian Jewish artist Siona Benjamin, Haggadah Shel Erev Rav blends deep tradition with contemporary insight. Created in celebration of Rabbi Angela W. Buchdahl’s twentieth anniversary at Central Synagogue, the book offers a fresh lens on one of Judaism’s most beloved rituals—helping families and communities transform the seder into a space of reflection, connection, and renewal. Together, Berman and Katz explore how the Passover story continues to evolve, what it means to honor many voices at the table, and how the ancient narrative of liberation can speak powerfully to modern Jewish life. About the Guest Rabbi Sarah Berman is the Director of Jewish Culture and Programming at Central synagogue. She is the editor of Haggadah Shel Erev Rav: The Mixed Multitude Haggadah. About the Host Marc Katz is the Senior rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid and the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

From its birth in seventh-century Arabia, Islam has been a faith on the move. In Worlds of Islam: A Global History (Basic Books, 2026), James McDougall explores its origins and transformations from Late Antiquity to the digital age. Over the span of a thousand years, armies, missionaries, and merchants carried it to the edges of Europe, the coasts of Southeast Asia, and the remote interior of China. By the nineteenth century, Islam encompassed a world of great diversity, from Muslim-ruled empires to nations where Muslims lived out their faith among many others. In the twentieth century, while monarchs in the Gulf asserted dynastic privilege and fundamentalists in Egypt and Pakistan preached social morality, revolutionaries from Algeria to Indonesia fought for national self-determination, and activists in North America and Europe campaigned for civil liberties and social justice. As empires fell and new superpowers rose, Muslims proved to be as adaptable and dynamic as modernity itself. Sweeping and authoritative, Worlds of Islam narrates the epic story of how Muslims emerged as a community, built empires, traversed the globe, came to number in the billions, and became modern. James McDougall is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History and a Fellow of Trinity College, University of Oxford. He previously taught at Princeton and at SOAS, London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Today’s guest, John Kuhn, is the author of Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024). Making Pagans argues that drama played a powerful role in the articulation of religious difference in the seventeenth century. Examining the common scenes of pagan ritual that filled England's seventeenth-century stages—magical conjurations, oracular prophecies, barbaric triumphal parades, and group suicides—Kuhn traces these tropes across dozens of plays, from a range of authors including Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, John Dryden, and Philip Massinger. Tracing connections between the history of stagecraft and ethnological disciplines such as ethnography, antiquarianism, and early comparative religious writing, Kuhn shows how early modern repertory systems that leaned heavily on thrift and reuse produced an enduring theatrical vocabulary for understanding religious difference through the representation of paganism—a key term in the new taxonomy of world religions emerging at this time, and a frequent subject and motif in English drama of the era.Drawing together theater history, Atlantic studies, and the history of comparative religion, Making Pagans reconceptualizes the material and iterative practices of the theater as central to the construction of radical religious difference in early modernity and of the category of paganism as a tool of European self-definition and colonial ambition. Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Professor English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) and Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh UP, 2012). She is also a co-editor of the academic journal English Literary Renaissance. 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 third episode of Season 5, I interview Dr. R.J. Snell, a visiting instructor at Princeton University, the director of academic programs at the Witherspoon Institute, and the editor-in-chief of Public Discourse. Drawing on his book, Lost in the Chaos (2023), we discuss modern disenchantment, recent attempts at re-enchantment, and the virtue of hope from its pale imitators to its authentic examples, from Anglo-Saxon warriors to Soviet dissidents. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on our new Substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

How do people justify what others see as transgression? Taking that question to the Persian-Muslim and Latin-Christian worlds over the period 1200 to 1700, Justifying Transgression: Muslims, Christians, and the Law - 1200 to 1700(de Gruyter, 2023) shows that people in both these worlds invested considerable energy in worrying, debating, and writing about proscribed practices. It compares how people in the two worlds came to terms with the proscriptions of sodomy, idolatry, and usury. When historians speak of the gap between premodern practice and the legal theory of the time, they tend to ignore the myriad of justifications that filled this gap. Moreover, a focus on justification evens out many of the contrasts that have been alleged to exist between the two worlds, or the Muslim and Christian worlds more generally. The similarities outweigh the differences in the ways people came to terms with the various rules of divine law. The level of flexibility of the theologians and jurists in charge of divine law varied more over time and by topic than between the two worlds. Both worlds also saw the development of ever more sophisticated justifications. Amid the increasing complexity of justifications, a particular kind of reasoning emerged: that good outcomes are more important than upholding rules for their own sake. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Ken Chitwood's Borícua Muslims: Everyday Cosmopolitanism among Puerto Rican Converts to Islam (University of Texas Press, 2025), uses rich ethnographic fieldwork across multiple cities and the digital space to capture the complex lived realities of Puerto Rican Muslims both on the island and in the United States. The study is attuned to the archipelago’s context that accents Puerto Rican Islam, such as through histories that link it to Andalusian Spain, and culture, especially through foodscapes. Puerto Rico also has a diverse Arab Muslim diasporic population, especially Palestinians. Due to this diversity of Muslim experiences, throughout the book there emerge conversations about the boundaries of Islam in relation to culture, ethnicity, and theology. At times, when these varied communities share ritual and communal space together, questions of authenticity unfold, such as over language or notions of piety. Despite moments of tension around tribalism and questions of legitimacy, we learn that often Islam for both these communities is understood through their experiences of colonialism, and so anti-colonial registers of Islam influence the solidarity building and social justice organizing that unites Puerto Rican and Palestinian Muslims. The book also has an accompanying Spotify playlist that you definitely should check out. This book will be of interest to anyone working on Islam in South America and/or North America, and Arab and Palestinian diasporic studies, and food studies. Ken Chitwood is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer with the Department for the Study of Religion at Universität Bayreuth and Affiliate of the University of Southern California's Center for Religion and Civic Culture. Shobhana Xavier is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Queen’s University. More details about her research and scholarship may be found here. She may be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In 1760, following the largest slave revolt in the eighteenth-century British Empire, the Afro-Caribbean word Obeah first appeared in British colonial law. In Archival Irruptions, Katharine Gerbner traces how British authorities in Jamaica came to criminalize Obeah, a practice that was variously seen as a healing method, an Africana religion, a science, and a form of witchcraft. Gerbner shows that in the years directly preceding its criminalization, for enslaved Africans and Maroons, Obeah was a prophetic practice tied to healing and death rites. Drawing on Moravian missionary archives, Gerbner theorizes these descriptions of African religious beliefs, rituals, and concepts as "irruptions" moments when Africana epistemologies break the narrative of a European-authored archival document. In these irruptions, we see European assertions of authority through the lens of Obeah. Moreover, we find that the modern category of religion is rooted in the histories of slavery, rebellion, and the criminalization of Black religious practices. Gerbner's search for archival irruptions not only creates an opportunity to write an alternative narration about Obeah; it provides a new methodology for all those conducting archival research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The beginnings of contemporary Jewry are often associated with Jewish figures in Western Europe such as Moses Mendelssohn. But in his book, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism, Eliyahu Stern offers a new and provocative narrative for understanding contemporary Jewish life, which begins in the East, with the leading East European mystic and rabbinic scholar of the 18th century, Elijah ben Solomon, or the “Vilna Gaon.” Eliyahu Stern joined in conversation with Jeremy Dauber for a discussion about the Vilna Gaon, his influence on modern Judaism, and why his legacy has been claimed by traditionalists, enlighteners, Zionists and the Orthodox. Winner of the 2012 Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication Finalist for the 2013 Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature Eliyahu Stern was the Tell fellow at the YIVO Institute in 2004. This book talk originally took place on November 7, 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In a world beset by climatic emergencies, the continuing resonance of the flood story is perhaps easy to understand. Whether in the tortured alpha male intensity of Russell Crowe’s Noah, in Darren Aronofsky’s eponymous 2014 film, or other recent derivations, the biblical narrative has become a lightning rod for gathering environmental anxieties. However, Philip C. Almond’s masterful exploration of Western cultural history uncovers a far more complex Noah than is commonly recognised: not just the father of humanity but also the first shipbuilder, navigator, zookeeper, farmer, grape grower, and wine maker. Noah’s pivotal significance is revealed as much in his forgotten secular as in his religious receptions, and their major impact on such disciplines as geology, geography, biology, and zoology. While Noah’s many interpretations over two millennia might seem to offer a common message of hope, the author’s sober conclusion to Noah and the Flood in Western Thought (Cambridge UP, 2025) is that deliverance now lies not in divine but rather in human hands. Philip C. Almond is Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought at The University of Queensland. A noted authority in the history of religion and of ideas, he has written many books on subjects as diverse as God, the Devil, the afterlife, witchcraft and witches, Adam and Eve, heaven and hell in Enlightenment England, and early modern demonic possession. His recent works include The Buddha: Life and Afterlife Between East and West (2024), Mary Magdalene: A Cultural History (2023), and The Antichrist: A New Biography (2020), all published by Cambridge University Press. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Twitter: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

What happens to the environment when the state enters previously self-governed villages in rural China? We explore this question in the Blang mountains in southwestern China, a region that was incorporated into the nascent people’s republic of China from 1953 onwards, with immense consequences for Blang communities and ecologies. Our guest Daniel Mohseni Kabir Bäckström disentangles how the arrival of the state disrupted long-standing relations between Blang communities and the local mountain gods, making the land sick. And what Blang people can teach us about tackling the ongoing climate crisis. Daniel Mohseni Kabir Bäckström is a guest researcher at the Department of Culture, Religion, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oslo. Kenneth Bo Nielsen, your host, is a social anthropologist working at the University of Oslo where he also heads the Centre for South Asian Democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Hindu sacred geographies are shaped by interwoven webs of myth, ritual, and pilgrimage. Routes, Patterns, Ideologies: Navigating Sacred Sites in India (HASP, 2025) brings together essays that offer in-depth explorations of Hindu sacred spaces, focusing on the relationships between sites as a crucial dimension of their theological and social significance. Drawing on textual analysis, visual studies, and ethnographic insights, the contributors to this volume illuminate the patterns and mechanisms that link sacred sites into dynamic networks, demonstrating how sacrality is continually negotiated through evolving cultural, political, and theological landscapes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Bible is arguably the world’s most influential book, but do we really know what it says? Every day across social media and in homes, businesses, and public spaces, people try to cut debate short by claiming that "the Bible says so!" However, they commonly disagree about what it actually does and doesn't say, particularly when it comes to socially significant issues. For instance, does the Bible say we should be on the lookout for an antichrist associated with the number 666? Does it say women shouldn’t wear revealing clothing? Does it say it’s okay to hit your kids?In The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues (St. Martin's Essentials, 2025), Dan McClellan leverages his popular "data over dogma" approach, and his years of experience in the academy and on social media, to lay out in clear and accessible ways what the data indicate the Bible does and doesn't say about issues ranging from homosexuality, abortion, and slavery to monotheism, inspiration, and even God's wife. The Bible Says So is an invaluable resource for our fractious times. Interviewees: Dan McClellan is an award-winning public scholar of the Bible. He has over one million followers on social media and is a host on the Data Over Dogma Podcast. Dan received his PhD from the University of Exeter and is currently an honorary fellow at Birmingham University's Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion. Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey out of Hasidism and Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

With fasting at an all-time high in popularity, here is an enlightening exploration into the history, science, and philosophy behind the practice—essential to many religions and wellness routines. Whether for philosophical, political, or health-related reasons, fasting marks a departure from daily routine. Based on extensive historical, scientific, and cultural research and reporting, John Oakes The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and the Promise of Doing Without (Avid Reader Press, 2024) illuminates the numerous facets of this act of self-deprivation. John interviews doctors, spiritual leaders, activists, and others who guide him through this practice—and embarks on fasts of his own—to deliver a book that supplies anyone curious about fasting with profound new understanding, appreciation, and inspiration. In recent years, fasting has become increasingly popular for a variety of reasons—from weight loss to detoxing, to the faithful who fast in prayer, to seekers pursuing mindfulness, to activists using hunger strikes as protest. Notable fasters include Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Gandhi, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Cesar Chavez, and a long list of others who have drawn on its power over the ages and across borders and cultures. The Fast looks at the complex science behind the jaw-dropping biological changes that occur inside the body when we fast. Metabolic switching can prompt repair and renewal down to the molecular level, providing benefits for those suffering from obesity and diabetes, cancer, epilepsy, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and more. Longer fasts can both reinvigorate the immune system and protect it against damage. Beyond the physical experience, fasting can be a great collective unifier, and it has been adopted by religions and political movements all over the world for millennia. Fasting is central to holy seasons and days such as Lent (Christianity), Ramadan (Islam), Yom Kippur (Judaism), Uposatha (Buddhism), and Ekadashi (Hinduism). On an individual level, devout ascetics who master self-deprivation to an extreme are believed to be closer to the divine, ascending to enlightenment or even sainthood. Fasting reminds us of the virtues of holding back, of not consuming all that we can. “Broad in scope and rich in insight” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), this book shows us that fasting is about much more than food: it is about taking control of your life in new and empowering ways and reconsidering your place in the world. John Oakes is the publisher of The Evergreen Review and the editor at large of OR Books. The Fast is his first book. Saman Nasser holds an M.A. in World History from James Madison University, where he currently works as an administrative staff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Manuela Ceballos’ new book Between Dung and Blood: Purity, Sainthood, and Power in the Early Modern Western Mediterranean (University of California Press, 2025) engages with the life and legacies of two sixteenth-century saints; the Spanish Christian Teresa de Jesús (also known as Teresa of Avila) and the Moroccan Sufi Sidi Ridwan al-Januwi. The book draws from rich Arabic and Spanish sources that moves us between Morocco and Iberia. In the process, we learn that these saints both descent from families of converts and as such blood and bodily pollution operated as material and metaphoric symbols to define their identities. Through this generative comparison, we see how constructions of blood and dung circulate across these varied but entangled temporal geographies to constitute notions of impurity and purity, such as in the case of the deathly hemorrhaging experienced by Teresa. In end though blood is used to set different boundaries around religious or racial identities, and even at times gender norms. As such, the discourses that are utilized for such argumentations are not stable, and so blood and how it is deployed is not the same across the stories of these two saints and their enduring legacies nor does it refract power consistently. This book will be of interest to those who think about embodiment, material culture, the early modern Mediterranean world, and Christian-Muslim mysticism. Manuela Ceballos is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Shobhana Xavier is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Queen’s University. More details about her research and scholarship may be found here. She may be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

An innovative approach in the field of material culture and consumption studies, Life in the Georgian Parsonage: Morals, Material Goods and the English Clergy (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Jon Stobart looks at the houses, consumption and lifestyle of Church of England clergy in the long 18th century, linking moral debates and popular representations of the clergy to the material culture of their houses and their motivations as consumers.By focusing on ethical and moral dimensions of consumer practices, it challenges established readings of consumption in the long 18th century as an essentially secular process in which goods were markers of wealth, status and taste, by bringing the clergyman into the frame – their lives, their habits and their homes.Cross-disciplinary in its approach, combining material culture and religious and social history and sitting at the intersection of these fields, Life in the Georgian Parsonage fills a significant gap, enhancing in important ways our knowledge of this group as a crucial but understudied set of 18th-century consumers, while also contributing to understanding the parish clergy of England in the context of 18th-century society and culture. Bringing together a wide range of source material – from probate inventories to personal account books, satirical prints to sermons, diaries to designs for parsonages – the author reconstructs the material lives and household arrangements of the Georgian clergy in glorious detail. Examining the parish clergy over this period of profound social and religious change through the lens of consumption, and consumption through the lives of these clergymen, has a transformative impact both on these areas of enquiry and on our understanding of English society in the 18th century. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In recent surveys, one in four Canadians say they have no religion. A century ago, Canada was widely considered to be a Christian nation, and the vast majority of Canadians claimed they were devoutly religious. But some were determined to resist. In the 1920s and ’30s, groups of militant unbelievers formed across Canada to push back against the dominance of religion. Towards a Godless Dominion: Unbelief in Interwar Canada by Dr. Elliot B. Hanowski (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023), explores both anti-religious activism and the organized opposition unbelievers faced from Christian Canada during the interwar period. Despite Christianity’s prominence, anti-religious ideas were propagated by lectures in theatres, through newspapers, and out on the streets. Secularist groups in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver actively tried to win people away from religious belief. Looking at interwar controversies around religion, Hanowski shows how unbelievers were able to use these conflicts to get their skeptical message across to the public. Challenging the stereotype of Canada as a tolerant, secular nation, Towards a Godless Dominion returns to a time when intolerant forms of Christianity ruled a country that was considered more religious than the United States. Dr. Elliot Hanowski is an academic librarian at the University of Manitoba with a doctorate in Canadian history and one of the founders of the International Society for Historians of Atheism, Secularism, and Humanism. His research focuses specifically on the history of unbelief in Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Today I sit down with Dr. Tawni Tidwell, a biocultural anthropologist and Tibetan medicine doctor at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Together we discuss how Tibetan medicine approaches the challenges that arise in the course of meditation. Along the way, we talk about reconnecting with indigenous knowledge, establishing a more intimate relationship with the body and the land, and the importance of social context in supporting spiritual practice. 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 related to this conversation: Tawni Tidwell, “Life in Suspension with Death: Biocultural Ontologies, Perceptual Cues, and Biomarkers for Tibetan Tukdam Postmortem Meditative State” (2024) Tawni Tidwell et al, “Effect of Tibetan Herbal Formulas on Symptom Duration Among Ambulatory Patients with Native SARS-CoV-2 Infection: A Retrospective Cohort Study” (2024) Tawni Tidwell, “Tibetan Medical Paradigms for the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: Understanding COVID-19, Microbiome Links, and Its Sowa Rigpa Nosology” (2021) New open access book! Crafting Potency: Sowa Rigpa Artisanship Across the Himalayas Tawni’s research profile at the Center for Healthy Minds Please note that Tawni is not taking new patients at this time, but she recommends the American Tibetan Medical Association Become a paid subscriber on blackberyl.substack.com to unlock our members-only benefits, including downloading scholarly articles by Dr Tidwell 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Supreme Refuge: Durgā's Transformation Into the Hindu Great Goddess (SUNY Press, 2025) provides the first comprehensive examination of the Hindu Great Goddess Durgā, one of the most significant deities in the Hindu pantheon, who is celebrated annually during the Navarātra festival, a widely observed event across the Hindu world. Drawing on textual, inscriptional, and iconographic evidence, the study traces Durgā's evolution from a minor goddess to her identification as the Mahādevī, or Great Goddess. It presents an alternative chronology for hymnic materials, aligning them more closely with early iconographic depictions and offering new insights into misidentified attributes of the goddess. The work incorporates evidence from beyond South Asia to contextualize external influences on Durgā's persona and her central myths, particularly her defeat of the buffalo demon Mahiṣa. A detailed analysis of the myths in the influential Devī Māhātmya against earlier Purāṇic accounts highlights the text's sophisticated theological approach. Its strategy places Durgā in a transcendent role while asserting her as the supreme deity and ultimate refuge, accessible to both kings and commoners in dire need of her support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Can someone be Chinese and Muslim? For some academics, this has been a surprisingly fraught question, with some asserting that Chinese Muslims are not really Chinese, or not really Muslim. Rian Thum, in his book Islamic China: An Asian History (Harvard UP, 2025), strives to make Chinese Muslims “ordinary”, placing them in both Chinese and global history by following pilgrims, merchants, and others across the Ming, Qing, and Republican eras. Rian is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Manchester. A contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Nation, he is the author of The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History, winner of the Fairbank Prize for East Asian History from the American Historical Association and the Hsu Prize for East Asian Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Islamic China. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The rabbinic sages of antiquity are known for their sophisticated and creative reading of Scripture. But beginning in the third century CE, these sages also took on extensive commentary on another kind of text: the sages' own teachings. Focusing on the first collection attesting to this branch of scholarship, the oft-neglected Talmud Yerushalmi, The Rise of Talmud (Princeton University Press, 2025) argues that this new project presented a wide-ranging transformation of the sages' scholarly practice and self-perception. On the one hand, it engaged premises and methods distinct from those the sages applied to Scripture, such as textual criticism and the interpretation of texts in light of the individuals to whom they were attributed. On the other hand, this book shows, this distinct approach did not stem from preexisting differences in the conceptions of Scripture and rabbinic teachings: it reflected a broad reconceptualization of the tradition, diverging from how these teachings were construed by earlier generations. Recognizing these unique aspects of ancient Talmudic scholarship centers its development as a pivotal moment in Jewish intellectual history and offers a richer picture of rabbinic hermeneutics; it also allows us to situate it better among other scholarly traditions of the Greco-Roman world and to examine how different ideas, aims, and contexts shape textual scholarship—including our own. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review. Moulie Vidas is Associate Professor of Religion and the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University. Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Textiles, embroidered with religious imagery, express lay piety in public and private shrinesThis beautifully illustrated volume highlights Jain devotional textiles (choḍs) from the Ronald and Maxine Linde Collection at UCLA's Fowler Museum. Fashioned in the Indian states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra, these works of velvet and sateen cloth, lavishly embroidered with gold and silver gilt thread, depict Jain mythology, influential spiritual teachers, sacred sites, and ritual traditions. Visualizing Devotion: Jain Embroidered Shrine Hangings (U Washington Press, 2025) delves into the innovative material approaches taken by the creators of choḍs, the captivating religious stories they convey, and the social lives of these objects in Jain communities. They offer a mode of devotional patronage to lay people, who frequently commission them as gifts for places of worship in recognition of deceased relatives or upon completion of important rituals, such as monastic initiation or a lengthy fast. 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 expanded edition to a groundbreaking work, now in paperback, Lincoln and the Jews: A History (NYU Press, 2025), Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell reveal how Abraham Lincoln's unprecedentedly inclusive relationship with American Jews broadened him as president, and, as a result, broadened America. A conversation with Professor Jonathan D. Sarna. Co-authored with collector and scholar Benjamin Shapell, the book began as a lush coffee-table volume built around Shapell’s remarkable Civil War–era collection: letters, photographs, and documents that reveal Lincoln’s Jewish connections in real time. It has since been reissued in paperback by NYU Press, making it far easier to teach, carry, and assign. The shift mirrors the project’s purpose: from a beautiful artifact to a working tool for rethinking Lincoln’s world. Sarna stresses that Lincoln didn’t “know Jews” in the abstract; he knew particular Jews who mattered. Abraham Jonas, an early ally, saw Lincoln as presidential material and encouraged the Republican Party to build a coalition of “outsiders,” explicitly including Jews. Lincoln also developed ties with German-speaking Jewish “48ers,” refugees of the failed 1848 revolutions who brought democratic ideals and anti-slavery commitments. Even in Illinois, Lincoln’s visits to Jewish clothing stores signaled a new kind of everyday encounter between Americans and Jewish merchants. The book opens with a table of concentric circles of relationships between Lincoln and the Jews. Equally important is Lincoln’s religious formation. Raised in a Protestant culture steeped in the Hebrew Bible and divine providence, he drew heavily on biblical language. His letters and speeches are studded with scriptural echoes, reflecting a worldview in which Jews remain central to God’s historical drama rather than a superseded people. This helps explain his “live and let live” stance toward religious difference at a time when some ministers were moving toward more exclusionary theologies. Our conversation touched on Lincoln’s reference to Haman from the Book of Esther in a letter to Joshua Speed. In an age of deep biblical literacy, Haman was a recognizable symbol of evil, later applied by some Jews to Grant after General Orders No. 11. Sarna also recounted the visit of a self-proclaimed prophet named Monk, who asked Lincoln to endorse a plan to “free the Jews” worldwide. Lincoln’s witty, biblically informed response (from the book of Joel) both acknowledged Jewish suffering abroad and rejected the idea of a special “Jewish problem” in the United States. We also explored how 19th-century debates over the Mortara affair in Italy—where a secretly baptized Jewish child was taken from his parents by papal authorities—intersected with American slavery. President Buchanan’s refusal to condemn Rome, Sarna noted, reflected fears that criticizing Church-sanctioned child removal could invite scrutiny of the United States’ own separation of enslaved families. Lincoln and the Jews ultimately invites us to place Jews back into the center of the American story. Lincoln’s friendships, his Hebrew Bible–shaped imagination, and his commitment to equality created a landscape in which Jews were not an abstract “question,” but neighbors and citizens. To understand Lincoln fully, Sarna suggests, we must see the Jews who walked beside him—and to understand American Jewish history, we must see how deeply it is entwined with Lincoln’s moral and political world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Jewish law, known as halakhah, is a unique legal system that has developed over a period of nearly two millennia, across multiple continents, and in innumerable different contexts. Dealing not only with ritual, Jewish law extends to virtually every aspect of life including ethics, business, war, and sex. This Handbook highlights foundational questions about the nature of Jewish law, emphasizing what distinguishes it from other legal systems and illuminating its vitality throughout history. The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law (Oxford UP, 2025) navigates core issues such as halakhah's authority, its interpretation, and the meaningfulness of an ancient legal system in a modern period. With contributions from an interdisciplinary cast of authors, the Handbook spans law, history, sociology, and religion. Its chapters draw from a wide range of sources, including traditional texts such as Mishnah and Talmud, rabbinical codes, and legal opinions known as responsa. Moreover, chapters addressing pressing modern issues cover the material from diverse denominational perspectives. As halakhah remains deeply woven into the fabric of Jewish life and scholarship, The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law offers readers an in-depth understanding of this rich and enduring legal tradition. Zev Eleff is President and Professor of American Jewish history at Gratz College. Roberta Rosenthal Kwall is the Raymond P. Niro Professor at DePaul University College of Law. Chaim Saiman is Chair in Jewish Law at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939. Mentioned in this episode: Ronit Irshai and Tanya Zion-Waldoks, Holy Rebellion: Religious Feminism and the Transformation of Judaism and Women's Rights in Israel (Brandeis University Press, 2024). Shari Rabin and Michael R. Cohen (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of American Jewish History (Oxford University Press, 2025). Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, Remix Judaism: Preserving Tradition in a Diverse World (‎Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022). Chaim N. Saiman, Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law (Princeton University Press, 2018). Benjamin Steiner, Translating the Ketubah: The Jewish Marriage Contract in America and England (University Alabama Press, 2025). Essays from the Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law: Chapter 15: Chaim Saiman, “Formalism in Jewish Law.” Chapter 19: Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, “Lawmaking in the Conservative Movement: A Balance of Law and Norms.” Chapter 21: Arye Edrei, “The Impact of Zionism on Jewish Law.” Chapter 24: Rachel Levmore and Steven Gotlib, “Divorce and Agunah: Halakhic Responses to Modernity.” Chapter 30: Zev Eleff, “Judaism and the Modern Family.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Growing up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn as a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Orthodox Jewish community, Zalman Newfield was raised in an atmosphere of strict gender segregation, rigorous religious education, and nearly all-consuming ritual practices. Trained to be a Lubavitch emissary, he traveled around the world doing Jewish outreach to help usher in the messianic redemption. However, after exposure to the wider world, he abandoned the faith of his youth. Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey Out of Hasidism (Temple University Press, 2026) is Newfield's poignant and hopeful memoir about exiting Orthodoxy. He recounts asserting his individuality and taking the radical step of shaving his beard. Reflective about his upbringing, Newfield is open to and curious about a world beyond Brooklyn while also maintaining his profound bond with his family and Jewish tradition. He writes candidly about his emotional, intellectual, and social experiences in and out of the Lubavitch community. From pivotal moments of devastation, including the illness and death of his younger brother and of his revered spiritual leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to moments of joyful resolve, including the decision to pursue a doctorate and marry a non-Orthodox Jew, Newfield takes readers on his moving and impactful journey. Zalman Newfield is Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple). Visit him online at zalmannewfield.com. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion