New Books in Religion

Matthew Pehl is an associate professor of history at Augustana University. His book, The Making of Working-Class Religion (University of Illinois Press, 2016), gives us a rich and deep study of working class religion in Detroit beginning with the growth of industrialization in the 1910s. He examines the religious consciousness and attitudes toward work and the workplace in a diverse population of ethnic Catholic immigrants, African American Protestants and southern-born evangelicals that migrated to the city. Across religious affiliation, working class religion featured emotional expressiveness, belief in supernatural forces, and held to the sacred nature of work in the face of dehumanizing industrial conditions. Religion as individual expression and a site of social solidarity was in a dynamic relationship with the rise of labor unions across race, ethnic, and religious lines. Pehl highlights the tensions between clergy, workers, industrialists and union leaders in the meaning of work and religion and the practical application of social justice. The New Deal and the decline of unions replaced class-conscious religion with a race-conscious religious culture. Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is tentatively entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817-1906 (Stanford University Press, 2016), Ellie Schainker, the Arthur Blank Family Foundation Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Emory University, complicates the traditional narrative of Jewish religious insularity within Imperial Russia in her new book on converts from Judaism. By exploring 19th century Russia’s multi-confessional landscape and the spaces in which Jewish men and women encountered those of other religious communities, Schainker uses the lens of conversion to explore Jewish and Russian Orthodox anxieties over group boundaries and the extent to which converts, far from being exiles within their Jewish communities, occupied sustained, liminal positions that attracted the interests of Jews, Christians, and Russian state officials. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

One of the particular markers of the Latin rite of the Catholic Church is priestly celibacy. How did this discipline develop there? Why did it develop? What does it mean? Since it is a discipline that can be changed, should it be made optional? Fr. Gary Selin, in his new book, Priestly Celibacy: Theological Foundations (Catholic University Press, 2016), wrestles with these questions. Following an overview of the development of this discipline and a summation of theological arguments for it, Fr. Selin contends that priestly celibacy should be understood not only as a mandatory discipline but as a gift, and develops a synthesis that ties together its Christological, ecclesiological, and eschatological significance through the Eucharist. This tightly organized, well-written, and theologically rich work is highly recommended for anyone, regardless of level of knowledge, who is interested in the issue of celibacy in Catholicism and the theology and history behind it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

On today’s program we will be speaking with David W. Stowe about his recent book Song of Exile: The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137 (Oxford University Press, 2016). Song of Exile weaves together the 2,500-year history of one of the most famous psalms in the Hebrew Bible; it examines the entire psalm, including the more obscure last stanza; and it draws on historical and interview research with musicians who have used Psalm 137 in their music. David W. Stowe earned his PhD from Yale University in 1993. He is currently interim chair of the English Department at Michigan State University. During the 2012-13 academic year, Stowe held a research fellowship in Music, Worship, and the Arts at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music, where he researched and wrote an initial draft of this book, Song of Exile, which presents the cultural history of Psalm 137. Among his other books, he wrote No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism (UNC Press 2011). He also wrote How Sweet the Sound: Music in the Spiritual Lives of Americans (Harvard UP, 2004), which won the Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. L. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

When and where do African American religions begin? Sylvester Johnson, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Religious Studies at Northwestern University, disrupts the traditional temporal and geographical boundaries in the academic study of black religion in the Americas in his new book, African American Religions, 1500-2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Johnson places the productive forces in African American religion at the intersection of empire and colonialism and within the constructs of notions of democratic freedom. His study requires this analytical reformulation in order to examine how Black religious history unfolds within changing social and political contexts over the longue duree. In our conversation we discussed Afro-European commercialism, European views on Indigenous African religious practices, Black Christianization, violent state regulation, nineteenth century political theologies, Black settler colonialism and the creation of Liberia, Garveyism, African American Muslims, anticolonial movements, the racialization of religion, FBI surveillance and repression of Black religious movements, the connection between the history of African American Religions and Muslims Americans after 9/11, and interdisciplinarity. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. His research and teaching interests include Theory and Methodology in the Study of Religion, Islamic Studies, Chinese Religions, Human Rights, and Media Studies. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kjpetersen@unomaha.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The essays in Jan Kiely and J. Brooks Jessup’s new edited volume, Recovering Buddhism in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2016), collectively make a compelling argument that Buddhism and Buddhists played important roles in the modern transformations of China from the twentieth century through today. Though history scholarship has, relatively speaking, neglected to pay attention to the roles of Buddhism in these transformations part of a more general tendency to marginalize the significance of Chinese religion in China’s modern period Kiely and Jessup’s volume is part of an emerging field of scholars who are beginning to change that. The essays cluster around several key themes. Many pay special attention to revivalist projects of clerics and laity, some of which helped make Buddhism the Chinese religion that was most legible to the modern state. Some explore the broad significance of lay Buddhists and lay Buddhist associations to the making of modern China. Some seek to understand Buddhism and Buddhists as part of larger histories of nationalism and projects of nation-building in modern China. Some focus on the significance of studying Buddhism in modern China in local contexts and from the perspective of local society. Taken together, its a great collection that deserves a wide readership! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Muslims and the Making of America (Baylor University Press, 2016) offers a succinct and gripping account of Muslim presence in the United States. The book gives attention to the contemporary moment and also reaches as far back as the days of Columbus, who commissioned an Arabic translator for his potential encounters with Muslims in the New World. The book is meticulously researched and rife with concrete examples, but at just over 130 pages, Amir Hussain’s emphasis on brevity is clear, and this operates as a key strength of the text. Hussain looks not to present a comprehensive overview of Islam and Muslims in the US but instead guides the reader on a rich journey through some of the most significant ways that Muslims have contributed to the fabric of the United States. He focuses on political history, music, and sports, in order to convey that although Muslims have never made up more than a few percent of the US population, their presence has proven foundational and visible at every step of the nations development. From enslaved Africans, to convert Alexander Webb, to Muhammad Ali and beyond, Hussain demonstrates that despite popular perceptions, Islam was never foreign to the United States. As the mature work of a senior scholar, this monograph shares a personal tone, through a variety of on-point anecdotes and reflections on belonging, from an American Muslim born in Canada, with South Asian roots. Given the user-friendly and timely nature of the publication, Hussain’s book should interest students in a variety of college courses, academics looking for an accessible portrait of Islam and Muslims in the US, and also lay readers seeking to equip themselves against the barrage of misinformation perpetuated by influential politicians and main stream media outlets. Elliott Bazzano is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Le Moyne College. His research and teaching interests include theory and methodology in the study of religion, Islamic studies, Quranic studies, mysticism, religion and media, and religion and drugs. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at (bazzanea@lemoyne.edu). Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In popular discourse today, few concepts are more sensationalized and maliciously caricatured than that of the Islamic State. In his fascinating new book For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State (Princeton University Press, 2016), Noah Salomon, Associate Professor of Religion at Carleton College, arrests the concept of the Islamic State away from its contemporary stereotypical life by offering a rich and dazzling account of state power and formation in the Sudan. Contesting recent arguments about the impossibility of an Islamic State, Salomon explores the social life of an attempted Islamic State in multiple and often unexpected locations of everyday life. What emerges from his brilliant and ferociously multilayered analysis is an account of the political irreducible to the structure of the nation-state, permeating varied discursive, institutional, and affective registers. In our conversation we talked about the idea of doing an ethnography of the state, colonial and NIF projects of civilizing religion in Sudan, fundamentalization of knowledge, affective citizenship, and hagiography as political critique. This sure to become a classic should be read by all. SherAli Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available at https://fandm.academia.edu/SheraliTareen/. He can be reached at stareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Traditionally histories of the Enlightenment era exclude Ireland in the belief that the movement left little impression on developments. In The Irish Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2016), Michael Brown challenges this assumption, demonstrating how the ideas and themes of the Enlightenment had a considerable impact upon the history of the country. He begins by examining how the Enlightenment entered the public discourse confessionally, though the debates taking place within the Presbyterian, Anglican, and Catholic faiths in the aftermath of the decisive War of the Two Kings in the 1690s. From there it spread to the public sphere, where issues of civility took center stage both as a means of addressing problems in Irish life and as a tool for bridging the divide between confessions. By the late 18th century, however, the public discourse became increasingly radicalized, with the divergence of views leading to the 1798 Rising, which Brown terms an “Enlightened Civil War” that represents the failure of civil society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Judaism is often described as a religion that tolerates, even celebrates arguments with God. Unlike Christianity and Islam, it is said, Judaism endorses a tradition of protest as first expressed in the biblical stories of Abraham, Job, and Jeremiah. In Pious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), Dov Weiss has written the first scholarly study of the premodern roots of this distinctively Jewish theology of protest, examining its origins and development in the rabbinic age. Weiss argues that this particular Jewish relationship to the divine is rooted in the most canonical of rabbinic texts even as he demonstrates that in ancient Judaism the idea of debating God was itself a matter of debate. By elucidating competing views and exploring their theological assumptions, the book challenges the scholarly claim that the early rabbis conceived of God as a morally perfect being whose goodness had to be defended in the face of biblical accounts of unethical divine action. Pious Irreverence examines the way in which the rabbis searched the words of the Torah for hidden meanings that could grant them the moral authority to express doubt about, and frustration with, the biblical God. Using characters from the Bible as their mouthpieces, they often challenges God’s behavior, even, in a few remarkable instances, envisioning God as conceding error and declaring to the protestor, “You have taught Me something; I will nullify my decree and accept your word.” Phillip Sherman is Associate Professor of Religion at Maryville College in Maryville, TN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion