New Books in Religion

Humans are quite a bit like chimpanzees, genetically speaking. Of course humans are quite a bit like fruit flies, genetically speaking. But when it comes to behavior, humans are much more like chimpanzees than fruit flies. And so the question arrises: what can we learn about ourselves from chimpanzees? According to the veteran ethologist Frans De Waal, the answer is this: we are not the only species that lives in a moral universe. De Waal should know, because he’s been studying humans and chimpanzees for decades. In his new book  The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among Primates (Norton, 2013), De Waal points out that chimpanzees (and bonobos) show nearly the full range of “human” attachments, affects, and emotions. They love, feel loss, sulk, get angry, have fights, and make up. Just as important, they abide by conventional rules that give their groups order and assist cooperation. To De Waal, there is no doubt that all of these primate behavioral traits were evolved. Just so, he says, were they evolved in humans. In the interview we discuss the implications of this viewpoint for human life, and religious faith in particular. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Robert Kevin Jaques‘ work, Ibn Hajar: Makers of Islamic Civilization (I. B. Tauris, 2013), focuses on the life of one of the most eminent Muslim scholars, Ibn Ḥajar al-‘AsqalānÄ« (d. 852/1449). Jaques provides his readers with a concise yet intimate biography of this great scholar based on the accounts of his students, chiefly the al-Jawāhir of al-SakhāwÄ«, and works penned by Ibn Ḥajar himself. Beginning life as an orphan, Ibn Ḥajar rose to the most prominent academic position as the chief Shāfi‛ī judge of the Egyptian MamlÅ«k system. His accomplishment made all the more remarkable as he had to contest with countless political machinations and personal tragedies including the death of many of his children. While many of Ibn Ḥajar’s contemporary’s rose and fell due to their inability to successfully navigate the ever changing political landscape, Jaques ascribes Ibn Ḥajar’s longevity and lasting legacy to his enchanting personality, religious devotion, and inimitable acumen; qualities often ignored or downplayed by social historians studying the political intrigues of MamlÅ«k society. Jaques discusses the significance of Ibn Ḥajar’s historical and biographical texts, such as the Inbā’ al-ghumr bi-anbā’ al-‘umr and al-Durar al-kāmina, but he devotes much time to Ibn Ḥajar’s massive commentary on al-BukhārÄ«’s Ṣāḥīḥ, Fatḥ al-bārÄ«. The study of ḥadÄ«th became Ibn Ḥajar’s way to combat personal losses and the constant threat of plague; phenomena which he believed were not occasions of Divine retribution for the transgressions of the community. Excellent in its composition and structure, Makers of Islamic Civilization: Ibn Ḥajar is a book which will benefit both the novice and expert in the study of Islam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Christopher Browning is one of the giants in the field of Holocaust Studies. He has contributed vitally to at least two of the basic debates in the field: the intentionalist/functionalist discussion about when, why and how the Germans decided to annihilate the Jews of Europe, and the question of why individual perpetrators killed. His new book, then, seems like something of a departure. Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp (W. W. Norton, 2010), examines the labor camp at Starachowice, Poland. Starting before the Nazi invasion, Browning tracks the members of the Jewish community in the region throughout the war, from their initial encounters with Nazi presence through their deportation to Auschwitz to their eventual return (or not) to their homes after the war. The book engages deeply questions of survival, resistance and community and family in the life of the Jewish captives. But, as Browning suggests during the interview, the book is really a continuation of his previous strategy of using case studies to shed light on questions of broad significance. This time, by studying a labor camp, Browning is able to examine both the captives and those who held them prisoner. The result is every bit as rich as his previous work. Browning speaks as carefully and thoughtfully as he writes. We talked both about the story he tells in the book and some of the methodological issues he confronted in writing it. There’s more in the book than we could get to in an hour. I hope you’ll listen to the interview and then go out and read the book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In his book Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life (Basic Books, 2013), Peter Gray proposes the following big idea: we shouldn’t force children to learn, rather we should allow them to play and learn by themselves. This, of course, is a radical proposal. But Peter points out that the play-and-learn-along-the-way style of education was practiced by humans for over 99% our history: hunter-gatherers did not have schools, but children in them somehow managed to learn everything they needed to be good members of their bands. Peter says we should take a page out of their book and points to a school that has done just that: The Sudbury Valley School. (BTW: Peter has some very thoughtful things to say about the way standard schools actually promote bullying and are powerless to prevent it or remedy it once it’s happened. Listen in.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

“Paula Huston wrote literary fiction for more than twenty years before shifting her focus to spirituality. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Daughters of Song (Random House, 1995), which the Baltimore Sun called “far and away the best book yet” about life in the classical piano world at Peabody Conservatory. Nominated for the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco’s Gold Medal for Best First Novel, it was also chosen by the Christian Science Monitor for its first “Novelist’s Debut” review and selected by the Music Book Society and Performing Arts Book Club. Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary quarterlies, including American Short Fiction, North American Review, Missouri Review, Massachusetts Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Story, MSS, and Image, and were twice selected for the Best American Short Stories list.” I had the pleasure of interviewing Huston for over an hour about her new book A Season of Mystery: 10 Spiritual Practices for Embracing a Happier Second Half of Life (Loyola Press, 2012). We discussed the importance of purpose vs. the never-ending search for happiness, the importance of spiritual practices for deepening into the second half of life, and what monastics have to teach us about living a fulfilling life. Huston’s words are filled with gratitude and hope. You’ll fund Huston’s honesty and humility to be very touching and very inspiring. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The relationship between music and religion is a site of increasing interest to scholars within Religious Studies. Monica Miller, Assistant Professor of Religion and Africana Studies at Lehigh University, explores the social processes and human activity related to Hip Hop music and its accompanying cultural expressions. In Religion and Hip Hop (Routledge, 2012) she introduces us to the various methods that have been used to examine Hip Hop culture and the descriptive terrain of previous scholarship. What is possibly the most laudable aspect of Miller’s efforts are her continued and repeated explorations into the purposes, effects, and operations of theory and method in the study of religion. In this regard, she does not perform a theological or religious analysis of music or lyrics as a search for meaning but rather examines the material productions of Hip Hop culture and the manufactured zones of significance within various discourses. Miller looks at the public context of Hip Hop culture and its relationship to larger social pathologies, the religious rhetoric and style of Hip-Hop knowledge productions or books written by Hip Hop artists, and a visual ethnography of the dance culture of Krumping where the body is examined as a site of significance through aesthetics, style, taste, and dispositions. Very often these interrogations challenge the category of religion in new ways and leave us asking what counts as religion and what is left out. Altogether, Miller does a lot in this book, much of which we did not get to discuss in detail. In our conversation we discussed authorial authority, social constructionism, youth religious participation, the Black Church, KRS One, morality, intentionality and habitus, complex subjectivity, postmodernism, classification, and many other interesting things. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Americans are simultaneously one of the most religious people on earth and prone to conflict and war. Ray Haberski is interested in how this paradox has shaped the nation’s civil religion. His book, God and War: American Civil Religion Since 1945 (Rutgers University Press, 2012), examines how three contemporary wars have shaped Americans understanding of God and their relationship to the Almighty. This is a book that asks big questions and listens to the ideas of big thinkers. Listen to the interview, buy the book, and then read it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The perception of the United States as a Christian nation is one that is prevalent and persistent. It is difficult to conceive of a time when the term Christian America was not bandied about in the media, but as David Niose argues in his book Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans(Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), the last thing the founding fathers wished for America was for it to be a space where religion and politics were intertwined. In fact, it’s time the myth of a Christian America be challenged, as nonbelievers are coming out of the shadows to proclaim their nontheism and their place in American society. Niose chronicles the history of the Religious Right and the many covert and overt ways in which they have appropriated the public discourse in the past 30 years. Despite their astounding success, secular Americans can, and should, fight back. Niose helps us to learn how. AUDIO INTERVIEW BELOW Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Justin Jones‘ book, Shi’a Islam in Colonial India: Religion, Community and Sectarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2012) is all about Lucknow, and colonial India, and Shia Islam – and the links and interlinks between these and the outer world. Jones’ is a fascinating study, that draws upon English, Persian and Urdu sources, official and otherwise, to detail a narrative of Shi’ism in Lucknow after the deposition of its nawabs – who had done more than most to foster a Shi’ite ‘culture of governance’ – down to today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The famous Abu’l-Qasim al-Qushayri (d. 465/1072) is well known as one of the most influential figures in the formative period of Sufism. He was part of a network of prominent Sufis in Nishapur that were shaping the competing forms of spirituality during the eleventh century. Due to this noteworthy role in Sufism al-Qushayri’s work has rarely been examined within the contexts of the concurrent and intimately connected traditions with which he was also engaged. Martin Nguyen, Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies Department at Fairfield University and founder of the great site Islamicana, has meticulously reconstructed the nexus of al-Qushayri’s intellectual field through a close examination of his Qur’an commentary, Lata’if al-isharat (Subtleties of the Signs). In Sufi Master and Qur’an Scholar: Abu’l-Qasim al-Qushayri and the Lata’if al-isharat (Oxford University Press, 2012), part of the Oxford Qur’an series in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, Nguyen draws al-Qushayri’s legal training in the Shafi’i madhhab and his theological positioning the Ash’ari school to the surface. He also demonstrates that al-Qushayri had a continuing exegetical corpus and was long committed to Qur’anic commentary. As the final iteration of his tafsir, the Lata’if points to al-Qushayri’s alignment with a Nishapuri collective of exegetical hermeneutics. Some of the various issues Nguyen’s close reading explores include muhkam and mutashabih (clear and ambiguous) Qur’an verses, naskh (abrogation), the ascension narrative (Q. 53.1-18) comparing al-Qushayri’s Kitab al-Mi’raj and the Lata’if, the disconnected letters in the Qur’an (al-huruf al-muqatta’a), the narrative of Job, anthropomorphism, and the Master and aspirant (Shaykh and murid) relationship. In our conversation we also discussed the notion of tradition, exploring archives and manuscripts, composition and audience, attribution, exoteric versus esoteric commentaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion