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New Books in Religion

New Books Network

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:

religion & spirituality

All Episodes

54:48

An Honest Death: Life's End and Humanist Funerals...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/28

A fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at non-religious funerals in contemporary London,An Honest Death:Life's End and Humanist Funerals(Princeton UP, 2026)is an intimate and moving ethnographic account of funerals for people who don’t believe in God or an afterlife. Focusing on secular funeral celebrants of the British Humanist Association (now called Humanists UK), the book examines how their ritual work is geared toward helping realize a secular world. There is a strong ethical commitment behind

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43:14

Jamie L. Brummitt, "Protestant Relics in Early...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/27

Edward Blum interviews Dr. Jamie L. Brummitt on how new bookProtestant Relics in Early America. InProtestant Relics in Early America(Oxford UP, 2025), JamieL. Brummitt upends long-held assumptions about religion and material culture in the early United States. Brummitt chronicles how American Protestants cultivated a lively relic culture centered around collecting supernatural memory objects associated with dead Christian leaders, family members, and friends. These objects materialized the real

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53:17

Jacqueline Vayntrub, "Body Language: Voice,...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/23

Tune in to this interviewaboutBody Language: Voice, Embodiment, and Textuality in the Hebrew Bible(Yale UP, 2026).Jacqueline Vayntrub is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale University in the Divinity School. She holds a Ph.D. with honors in Northwest Semitic Philology from the University of Chicago. Her research operates at the intersection of biblical philology, poetics, and the history of biblical scholarship. She is the author of Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on its own Terms

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40:13

Ian Bradley, "Liquid Faith: Scotland's Sacred and...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/22

Since time immemorial, water has been a major theme in myth, religionand folklore throughout the world. With its 12,000-mile coastline, as well as a plethora of rivers and lochs, Scotland is a particularly rewarding place in which to explore the spiritual dimensions of what is both the most commonplace and yet the most mysterious of all chemical compounds. Liquid Faith: Scotland's Sacred and Supernatural Waters (Birlinn, 2026) by Ian Bradley is a journey from healing wells, springs, river

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70:29

A Very Jewish Christmas: When Jesus Spoke Yiddish

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/18

It is a curious fact that among the first Yiddish books ever printed was a translation of the New Testament, which appeared in 1540, only 18 years after Luther's famous translation (which it shamelessly cribbed). In the centuries that followed, another dozen or so missionary translations directed to Yiddish-speaking Jews followed. This talk will explore a dramatic change in the character of these translations in the twentieth century, when new conceptions of the Yiddish language, new cosmopolitanism

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27:44

Rick Ramseyer, "Girl Without a Country: The Untold...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/15

Should willingness to kill be a requirement for U.S. citizenship?Girl Without a Country: The Untold Story of a Landmark Fight for U.S. Citizenship(Purdue University Press, 2026) by Rick Ramseyer tells the compelling, confounding story of Martha Graber—a Mennonite, registered nurse, and conscientious objector who in 1929 was twice denied citizenship because she refused to say she would take up arms to defend the United States. The unexpected denials, which came despite Martha's pledge to give her

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53:03

David W. Congdon, "Who is a True Christian?:...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/14

Who Is a True Christian?: Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture(Cambridge UP, 2024)examines how American Christians have tried to determine who qualifies as an authentic Christian and which beliefs should be treated as authoritative. Congdon approaches the question historically, tracing debates over terms such as orthodox, historic and biblical Christianity across the twentieth century and into the present.The book distinguishes between describing Christianity as it has existed and

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45:54

James Lochtefeld, "God’s Own Land: Sacred Landscape,...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/13

God’s Own Land: Sacred Landscape, Pilgrim Economy and Religious Change in the Ganga Himalaya(Lever Press, 2026)follows the tectonic shift from traditional religious pilgrimage in the early twentieth-century to contemporary pilgrim tourism, in which ever-burgeoning visitor numbers have brought both benefits and challenges to the Garhwal region of India—the source of Hindu India’s sacred river, the Ganges. Despite Hinduism’s regional and sectarian variation, India’s Garhwal Himalaya region is one the

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35:36

Yigal Levin, "The Chronicles of David and Solomon: 1...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/13

In this New Books Network interview, Professor Željko Stanojević speaks with Professor Yigal Levin of Bar-Ilan University about his new book,The Chronicles of David and Solomon: 1 Chronicles 10–2 Chronicles 9: A New Translation and Commentary, published by Bloomsbury.The conversation explores what is new in Levin’s translation and commentary, how the Book of Chronicles reshapes the stories of David and Solomon, and why Jerusalem, the Temple, the priesthood, the Levites, geography, political

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56:40

Why the Roman Empire Fell: On Edward Gibbon with Hugh...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/12

250 years ago when the United States declared independence, Edward Gibbon across the ocean published the first volume of his magisterial series,The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.Immediately his text caused a storm of controversy. Many readers thought that Gibbon had implied that the rise of Christianity caused the fall of the western empire. But is that the real story?To answer that question, in Episode 1 of Season 6, I have as our guestHugh Liebert. A Professor of Political Science at West

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46:11

Younus Y. Mirza, "The Islamic Mary: Maryam Through...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/12

Mary, the mother of Jesus, has been historically revered throughout the Islamic tradition. This began already in the Qur'an, where she is called by the name "Maryam."The Islamic Mary: Maryam Through the Centuries(Fortress Press, 2025)examines the varied appearances of Maryam in different Islamic cultural and theological contexts. The chapters in this history extend from Maryam's scriptural mentions in the Qur'an and the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, her appearances in medieval debates regarding

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36:20

Eckart Otto, "Max Weber's Studies of Ancient Judaism:...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/11

InMax Weber's Studies of Ancient Judaism: The Historical Foundation for a Theory of the Modern Age(Mohr Siebeck, 2002)Eckart Otto provides a history of Max Weber's work on the cultural history of ancient Judaism, a subject on which Weber spent more than 10 years. He shows how closely these studies are linked not only to theology and Jewish studies, jurisprudence and economics, the science of history and philosophy but also to the contemporary discussions surrounding the historico-cultural

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40:32

Eckart Otto, "Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch and the...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/10

InDeuteronomy in the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch: Studies of the Literary History of the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch within the Framework of Deuteronomy(Mohr Siebeck, 2000; unrevised e-book edition, 2019), Eckart Otto contributes to the study of Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch, the Hexateuch. The book argues that both the Hexateuch and the Pentateuch developed ideas already articulated in the Deuteronomistic form of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy therefore appears not simply as one component of the

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106:32

Jin Y. Park and Sumi Lee eds., "Korean Buddhism:...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/08

Today we're looking at a book that fills a gap that has existed for a long time.Korean Buddhism: Selected Readings from Primary Texts(U Hawaii Press, 2026),edited by Jin Park and Sumi Lee and published this year by the University of Hawai'i Press, is the first comprehensive introduction to the Korean Buddhist tradition built entirely around primary sources. Bringing together twenty-five foundational texts spanning the seventh to the twenty-first centuries, each translated and introduced by a

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45:06

Ryan Schweitzer, "Homosexuality in Central Asia:...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/08

Homosexuality in Central Asia: Stories of Hardship and Hope (Barnes and Noble Press, 2026) is Ryan Michael Schweitzer's collection of first-hand narratives from LGBTQ individuals across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the region, Schweitzer gathers stories of violence, blackmail, forced marriage, surveillance, and exile alongside quieter accounts of love, friendship, and endurance. Rather than presenting a single Central Asian

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51:48

Deborah Barer, "Going Off Script: Improvisational...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/08

What does it really mean to go "beyond the letter of the law"? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with scholar Deborah Barer to discuss her book Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud, which offers a surprising new interpretation of one of the Talmud's most enduring ethical concepts: lifnim mi-shurat ha-din. For generations, lifnim mi-shurat ha-din has been understood to mean acting "beyond the letter of the law"—choosing generosity or compassion over strict legal

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56:19

Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz and Alaka Atreya Chudal...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/06

TheSwasthani Vrata Kathais the most widely read, recited, and listened to Hindu devotional text, especially of local indigenous origin, among Hindu laity in Nepal. Dedicated to and itself the physical embodiment of a local goddess named Swasthani, Nepali Hindus recite theSwasthanievery year from cover to cover over the winter month of Magh (January–February). It is a collection of widely circulating Hindu myths about gods, demons, and divine dalliances that forefront Shiva, Sati, and Parvati but it

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26:22

Onyekachi Ugwu, "The Woman Caught in Adultery and the...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/02

The story of the woman caught in adultery in John’s Gospel has long stirred controversy. Given its checkered manuscript witness, many scholars don’t believe it belongs in John’s Gospel or even in the Scriptures at all, while others think it is Scripture but belongs in a different canonical setting, and still others, like our guest today, believe it is indeed authentically Johannine, foreshadowing Jesus’ own trial and his final victory over darkness.Tune in as we speak with Onyekachi Ugwu about his

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54:28

Posen Library: Jewish Studies Teaching Modules

New Books in Religion ·

2026/08/01

Bring the breadth of Jewish history and civilization into your classroom with ready-to-use teaching modules curated by experts. The Posen Library is an educational resource grounded in primary sources and made broadly accessible through the creation and curation of engaging contextual material. Its goal is to highlight the varieties of Jewish culture and civilization across time and space for English-speaking audiences and to be the first stop for those, in university settings and beyond, who are

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92:56

Marios Koutsoukos, "Restoring the Ancient Religion:...

New Books in Religion ·

2026/07/31

Restoring the Ancient Religion: The Theurgic Orthopraxy of Iamblichus(Palgrave MacMillan, 2026)reconsiders Iamblichus’Response to Porphyry, Late Antiquity’s seminal work on theurgy, which is often referred to asDe Mysteriis. Was this text intended to be more than just a defense of ritualism or a philosophical crossing of metaphysical wits between Porphyry and Iamblichus? This volume examines whetherDe Mysteriisconstituted a manifesto of restoration, a call to resignify and revive a religion that

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2,069 results

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