New Books in Religion

Over the past 50 years, the architects of the religious right have become household names: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson. They have used their massively influential platforms to build the profiles of evangelical politicians like Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, and Ted Cruz. Now, a new generation of leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr. and Robert Jeffress enjoys unprecedented access to the Trump White House.What all these leaders share, besides their faith, is their gender. Men dominate the standard narrative of the rise of the religious right. Yet during the 1970s and 1980s nationally prominent evangelical women played essential roles in shaping the priorities of the movement and mobilizing its supporters. In particular, they helped to formulate, articulate, and defend the traditionalist politics of gender and family that in turn made it easy to downplay the importance of their leadership roles. In This Is Our Message: Women's Leadership in the New Christian Right(Oxford UP, 2019), Emily S. Johnson begins by examining the lives and work of four well-known women-evangelical marriage advice author Marabel Morgan, singer and anti-gay-rights activist Anita Bryant, author and political lobbyist Beverly LaHaye, and televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. The book explores their impact on the rise of the New Christian Right and on the development of the evangelical subculture, which is a key channel for injecting conservative political ideas into purportedly apolitical spaces. Johnson then highlights the ongoing significance of this history through an analysis of Sarah Palin's vice presidential candidacy in 2008 and Michele Bachmann's presidential bid in 2012. These campaigns were made possible by the legacies of an earlier generation of conservative evangelical women who continue to impact our national conversations about gender, family, and sex.Stephen Colbrook is a graduate student at the University College London, where he is researching a dissertation on the interaction between HIV/AIDS and state policy-making. This work will focus on the political and policy-making side of the epidemic and aims to compare the different contexts of individual states, such as California, Florida, and New Jersey. Stephen can be contacted at stephencolbrook@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Life and Times of John Pierce Hawley: A Mormon Ulysses of the American West (Greg Kofford Books, 2019) narrates the wide-ranging life of John Hawley’s search for an authentic Mormon faith. Melvin C. Johnson has been researching Hawley’s adventurous life along the American borderlands and frontier for three decades. Hawley was an active member of several Latter Day Restoration denominations in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, Texas, the Indian Nations of Oklahoma, and Utah Territory from 1838 to 1909.A Mormon Ulysses follows Hawley’s adventures in the West growing up as a logger, woodworker, settler, church official and missionary. He helped build the first Mormon temple west of the Mississippi, battled the Comanches, was entangled in the horrors of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and pioneered the Pine Valley community in southern Utah. Hawley’s western odyssey is timely, worthy, and deserves to belong in the canon of American history and biography.Daniel P. Stone holds a PhD in American religious history from Manchester Metropolitan University (United Kingdom) and is the author of William Bickerton: Forgotten Latter Day Prophet (Signature Books, 2018). He has taught history courses at the University of Detroit Mercy and Florida Atlantic University, and currently, he works as a research archivist for a private library/archive in Detroit, Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

More than half of American adults and more than seventy-five percent of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. This level of belief rivals that of belief in God. In American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology (Oxford University Press, 2019), professor Diana Pasulka examines the mechanisms at work behind the thriving belief system in extraterrestrial life, a system she asserts is changing and even supplanting traditional religions.Over the course of a six-year ethnographic study, Pasulka interviewed successful and influential scientists, professionals, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who believe in extraterrestrial intelligence, thereby disproving the common misconception that only fringe members of society believe in UFOs. She argues that widespread belief in aliens is due to a number of factors including their ubiquity in modern media such as The X-Files, which can influence memory, and the believability lent to that media by the search for planets that might support life. American Cosmic explores the intriguing question of how people interpret unexplainable experiences and argues that the media is replacing religion as a cultural authority that offers believers answers about non-human intelligent life.Diana Walsh Pasulka is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. Her research focuses on religion and technology, including supernatural belief and its connections to digital technologies and environments. She is also a history and religion consultant for movies and television, including The Conjuring (from 2013).Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Some people find the Old Testament to be confusing, out of date, and essentially replaced by the New Testament. They are missing out. The Old Testament offers us a grand narrative that reveals God's work, God's purposes, and God's wisdom.In his new book The Old Testament in Seven Sentences: A Small Introduction to a Vast Topic(IVP Academic, 2019), Christopher J. H. Wright fits the pieces together and shows us the coherent whole. Using seven key sentences drawn straight from the Old Testament, he connects the dots and points us toward Jesus."In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.""All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.""You shall have no other gods before me.""How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news."Such sentences as these are not merely beautiful or helpful (though they are that). They are part of the great drama of Scripture, the story of God's plan of redemption that embraces all nations and the whole of his creation. Wright starts from the beginning, describing God's promises and covenants with his people and his mission to bless the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Thanks to the international tourism industry most people are familiar with the spectacular ruins of Angkor, the great Cambodian empire that lasted from about the 9th to the early 15th century. We are especially familiar with those haunting images of the face of King Jayavarman VII, represented in the stone sculptures of the Bayon temple in Angkor Thom. Archaeologists and historians tend to relate the history of the Angkorean era through the dynasties of great kings. These are, of course, all male images. But this apparent maleness of the Angkorean state contrasts with one of the paradigms of Southeast Asia as a cultural zone: the comparatively high status of women. Ashley Thompson addresses this apparent contradiction in her new book titled, Engendering the Buddhist State: Territory, Sovereignty and Sexual Difference in the Inventions of Angkor (Routledge, 2016). Among the themes of this rich, challenging, and provocative book is the gendered nature of the Angkorean state.Patrick Jory teaches Southeast Asian History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. He can be reached at: p.jory@uq.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In this interview, George Kinder, a global thought leader and mindfulness meditation teacher, talks about his latest book, A Golden Civilization & The Map of Mindfulness (Serenity Point Press, 2018).  He states, “If we want our children to live in a Golden Civilization, the first step is for each of us to imagine it.” To do this, we must reflect upon what really matters and endeavor to work collectively to make mindful changes.George Kinder, known as the father of the Life Planning movement, revolutionized the profession of financial advice by training over 3,000 professionals world-wide in the field of Financial Life Planning.  Harvard educated, he is the recipient of numerous professional awards, a sought after speaker at industry events and conferences, a regular guest on media programs, and the founder and CEO of the Kinder Institute of Life Planning.His expertise extends beyond the role of speaker or advisor.  He is an artist, poet, photographer, author, mindfulness practitioner and teacher. He leads weekly meditation classes and retreats around the world.  His articles have appeared in The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, New Model Adviser, Forbes, and Time magazine. He is the author of Life Planning for You: How to Design & Deliver the Life of Your Dreams (2014), Transforming Suffering into Wisdom: The Art of Inner Listening (2011), A Song for Hana & the Spirit of Leho’ula (2007) and The Seven Stages of Money Maturity: Understanding the Spirit and Value of Money in Your Life (2006).  Elizabeth Cronin, Psy.D., is a licensed psychologist and mindfulness teacher with offices in Brookline and Norwood, MA.  You can follow her on Instagram or visit her website at https://drelizabethcronin.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America (Basic Books, 2019) places religion and oil at the center of American history. As prize-winning historian Darren Dochuk reveals, from the earliest discovery of oil in America during the Civil War, citizens saw oil as the nation's special blessing and its peculiar burden, the source of its prophetic mission in the world. Over the century that followed and down to the present day, the oil industry's leaders and its ordinary workers together fundamentally transformed American religion, business, and politics -- boosting America's ascent as the preeminent global power, giving shape to modern evangelical Christianity, fueling the rise of the Republican Right, and setting the terms for today's political and environmental debates.Ranging from the Civil War to the present, from West Texas to Saudi Arabia to the Alberta Tar Sands, and from oil-patch boomtowns to the White House, this is a sweeping, magisterial book that transforms how we understand our nation's history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Joan Wallach Scott’s contributions to the history of women and gender, and to feminist theory, will be familiar to listeners across multiple disciplines. Her latest book, Sex and Secularism (Princeton University Press, 2017) is a compelling analysis of the discourse of secularism in the modern democratic (imperial) nation-states of “the West”. A profound challenge to assumptions that secularism has come with the assurance of gender equality, the book moves from the processes of secularization of the nineteenth century, through the era of the Cold War, and on to the notion of a “clash of civilizations” that continues to inform and shape the politics of gender and the gendering of politics in our current moment.Revisiting decades of scholarship by historians and theorists of gender, religion, the family, and politics, the first three chapters of the book trace persistent and emergent forms of gender inequality that accompanied the insistence on a separation of Church and state in nineteenth-century sites committed to modernity and forms of liberal democracy. Examining the identification of women with religion; the substitution of biological rationales for religious justifications of gendered hierarchies across multiple domains; and the history of women’s suffrage in secular states, this first section of the book synthesizes as it analyzes in order to reveal the ways and reasons secularism did not bring about women’s equality. Subsequent chapters of the book move from the imbrication of gender and secularism during the Cold War to a critique of a “sexual emancipation” that would eventually fixate on Islam as the “enemy” of a secular “West”. Moving from France to other states in Europe, to the United States, and back again, Sex and Secularism will change the way readers (and listeners!) think about the politically powerful and gendered keywords of the book’s title.Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University. Her current research focuses on the representation of nuclear weapons and testing in France and its empire since 1945. She lives and reads in Vancouver, Canada. If you have a recent title to suggest for New Books in French Studies, please send an email to: panchasi@sfu.ca. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The social history of Turkey across the twentieth century has produced a tension between state governance and religion. This history informs and shapes modern subjects as they try to live out an authentic vision of the present. In Muslim Civil Society and the Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2017), Jeremy F. Walton, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, explores how members of three contemporary Muslim groups, the Nur community, the Gülen movement, and Alevis, articulate religiosity within the Turkish public sphere. His rich ethnographic account takes the reader through Istanbul and Ankara to see how Islam is negotiated through religious classes, public conferences, charitable services, museum spaces, and the recollection of history. In our conversation we discuss twentieth century Turkish history, Muslim non-governmental organizations, religious gatherings, museum exhibits, Rumi, the Turkish state’s relationship to Islam and secularism, interreligious tolerance and pluralism, nostalgia for Ottoman heritage,  the ideal of “religious freedom,” and the recent shift in political and religious practices.Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Popular conceptions of Catholic censorship, symbolized above all by the Index of Forbidden Books, figure prominently in secular definitions of freedom. To be intellectually free is to enjoy access to knowledge unimpeded by any religious authority. But how would the history of freedom change if these conceptions were false? In Reading and Rebellion in Catholic Germany, 1770-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Jeffrey T. Zalar exposes the myth of faith-based intellectual repression. Catholic readers disobeyed the book rules of their church in a vast apostasy that raised personal desire and conscience over communal responsibility and doctrine. This disobedience sparked a dramatic contest between lay readers and their priests over proper book behavior that played out in homes, schools, libraries, parish meeting halls, even church confessionals. The clergy lost this contest in a fundamental reordering of cultural power that helped usher in contemporary Catholicism.Michael E. O’Sullivan is Professor of History at Marist College where he teaches courses about Modern Europe. He published Disruptive Power: Catholic Women, Miracles, and Politics in Modern Germany, 1918-1965 with University of Toronto Press in 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion