New Books in Religion

There are lots of introductory books to the study of religion. Craig Martin, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College, has added his own contribution to this ever-growing canon, A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion (Acumen Publishing, 2012). But why? What does this new intro offer? Well, if you are interested in learning how to penetrate the deep true meaning of the sacred or how we can understand the nature of religious belief or experience then keep looking. Martin offers an alternative to most introductions by presenting a socio-functional approach to cultural traditions and generally attempts to demystify religion as a natural category. In A Critical Introduction, Martin offers an explanation of various elements of society by exploring notions of classification, structure, and habitus. He also walks readers through the social components of religious traditions, touching upon the concepts of legitimation, authority, and authenticity. Martin is very much influenced by authors such as Karl Marx, Peter Berger, Pierre Bourdieu, and Bruce Lincoln, among many others. Overall, this new introduction presents a critical approach to religious phenomena, which provides methods to determine the historical contexts, material consequences, and beneficiaries of particular cultural practices. In our conversation we discussed functionalism, social boundaries, classification, social constructionism, the relationship between words and things, animism, stereotypes, essentialism, the naturalization of the social order, class difference, the supernaturalization of claims, cultural toolboxes, absent authority, projection, and the difference between religions and other cultural practices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Are science and religion compatible, or are they fundamentally different ways of viewing the world? In the book,God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion(Prometheus, 2012), physicist Victor Stenger uses his knowledge of science to argue that the latter option is the case. Though acknowledging that some (though not many) prominent scientists are theists, Stenger argues that, fundamentally, science and religion not only clash, but that religion has historically impeded the progress of science. Stenger argues that despite the common apologistic argument that science cannot prove the non-existence of God, we can take the absence of evidence as evidence of absence – particularly when the evidence should be there. Distinguishing faith from trust, conflict from incompatibility, and religion from unreason, Dr. Stenger firmly stands science’s ground in attempting to explain both our outer and inner worlds. He also emphasizes the efficiency of the scientific method, and the importance of realizing that “the plural of anecdote is not data.” Dr. Stenger’s newest book, which just came out in April 2013, is called God and the Atom (Prometheus, 2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

You may have heard of a fellow named Ivan or John Demjanuik. He made the news–repeatedly over a 30 year period– because he was, as many people probably remember, a Nazi war criminal nick-named “Ivan the Terrible” for his brutal treatment of Jews (and others) in the Sobibor death camp. The trouble is, as Richard Rashke points out in his new book Useful Enemies: John Demjanjuk and America’s Open-Door Policy for Nazi War Criminals (Delphinium, 2013), Demjanuik was not a Nazi, was not “Ivan the Terrible,” and, though he was certainly a guard at Sobibor, it’s not entirely clear what he did (though it was likely very bad). Again and again he was brought to trial for his alleged crimes. Again and again the courts failed to agree on what he had done. Demjaniuk was and remains something of a mystery, a vital mystery that we badly want to solve but cannot. After all, we need to know who is a war criminal and who is not. What’s most interesting about Demjaniuk–at least to this reader–is the moral complexity of his story. As Rashke shows, he was repeatedly compelled to make life and death choices as he tried to stay survive in Stalinist Russia, in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, and even after the war. He had options, but they were almost always bad ones, and often deadly ones. He was a “collaborator” to be sure. But, Rashke asks, what exactly is a “collaborator”? Could he have chosen differently and hoped to survive? Could he have acted “morally” in the context within which he found himself? Rashke says “yes.” Listen in and find out why. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Modern liberalism is built on the principle of equality and its corollary, the principle of fairness (treating equals equally). But have we taken the one and the other too far? Are we deceiving ourselves about our ability to treat each others equally, that is, to be “fair?” In his provocative new book Against Fairness (University of Chicago, 2013), Stephen T. Asma makes the case that we have indeed become kind of fairness-mad, and that this madness has led us all to be (at best) hypocrites and (at worst) harmful to ourselves and others. Asma says we should temper our (Western) notion of fairness with one that looks at the causes and benefits of favoritism realistically, and even sympathetically. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Many people have probably heard of Betty Friedan, Bela Abzug, Gloria Steinem, and Andrea Dworkin, all stars of Second Wave Feminism. They were also all Jewish (by heritage if not faith). As Melissa R. Klapper shows in her new book Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890-1940 (New York University Press, 2013), this was no accident. Freidan et al. inherited a rich tradition Jewish women’s activism in the U.S. These women did not burn their bras (it’s not clear that any feminists did, actually), but they did fight for the vote, for birth control, and for peace. In this interview, Melissa explains why, how, and to what extent they succeeded. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

As one of Time Magazine‘s “100 Most Influential People in the World” Rob Bell is a name that is now known well beyond the confines of his megachurch in Grandville, Michigan or within evangelical circles. Bell has been at the forefront of contemporary Christian movements in America and is situated in a unique liminal space where he refuses to be defined. In a new book, Rob Bell and A New American Christianity (Abingdon Press, 2012), James Wellman, Jr.,  Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Washington, probes Bell’s life and examines how he can serve as a lens for understanding the shifting boundaries of the American religious landscape. For Wellman, the enthusiasm and success of congregations like Bell’s Mars Hill Church is indicative of the failure of fundamentalism in American Christianity. The refusal to be labeled by a particular interpretive framework reflects the growing American population’s self-identity as “nones.” This might be why many from the “Spiritual but not Religious” persuasion are attracted to Bell. In fact, after the publication of Bell’s most recent book, Love Wins (2011), he has been charged with being a universalist who is amending the gospel. So what does Rob Bell reveal about American religious culture? How is it changing? And where is it headed? In my conversation with Wellman, we discuss the role of performance, charisma, media, the artistry of the sermon, the relationship between the secular and sacred, gender inclusion, experience over belief, discipleship for here and now, and the importance of media competency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing (Atria, 2012), Lawrence M. Krauss presents this big idea: something can–and perhaps must–come from nothing. That something is, well, everything–you, me, and the entire universe. If that doesn’t get your attention, nothing will. Of course, as Lawrence explains, nothing usually turns out on close inspection to be something. Listen in and find out how. Lawrence and I also discussed the relationship between science (especially physics) and religion, and in particular the question “What came before that?” and whether said question has any meaning at all. No matter what you believe, I’m sure you’ll find what Lawrence has to say of great interest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The end of the Cold War dramatically changed research into the Holocaust. The gradual opening up of archives across Eastern Europe allowed a flood of local and regional studies that transformed our understanding of the Final Solution. We now know much more about the mechanics of destruction in the East, about the interaction between center and periphery in planning and carrying out mass killings, and about the interaction between Germans, local inhabitants and Jews. Twenty years later, historians have begun to integrate these new studies into broad reexaminations of the Holocaust. Donald Bloxham has written one of the best of these. His book, The Final Solution: A Genocide (Oxford UP, 2009), is a remarkable attempt to put the Holocaust into the broader context of global history. It’s analytical rather than narrative. Its arguments are careful and always attentive to nuance and complexity. And Bloxham demonstrates a deep understanding of research on the Holocaust and in the broader field of Genocide Studies. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, you will come out of this book having reconsidered what you thought you knew about the Holocaust and about European history in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Kevin Gray Carr‘s beautiful new book explores the figure of Prince Shotoku (573? – 622?) the focus of one of the most widespread visual cults in Japanese history. Introducing us to a range of stories materialized in both verbal and visual narratives, Plotting the Prince: Shotoku Cults and the Mapping of Medieval Japanese Buddhism (University of Hawai’i Press, 2012) frames Shotoku as a symbolic vessel. Part I of the book looks at the changing identities of the prince as objects of devotion and veneration, tracing his visual cult through the fourteenth century. In this context, the figure of Shotoku, across multiple lives and associations with other religious figures, grounded a new sacred topography whose center had shifted away from India and China and toward the spaces of Japan. Part II of the book focuses on the visual culture that mapped the various identities of the prince onto the Japanese sacral landscape. Carr introduces the notion of “cognitive maps” that integrated the elements of time, space, and personhood into the many renderings of Shotoku’s life that were simultaneously cartographic, narrative, and iconic. In addition to this fine-grained and innovative analysis of the time and space of visual materials, Carr also shows readers the centrality of stories and storytelling in helping us make sense of the world around us, and of our own place in it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

It opens with a parakeet named Homer, and it closes with a dog named Hachiko. In the intervening pages, Barbara Ambros explores the deaths, afterlives, and necrogeographies of pets in contemporary Japan. Bones of Contention:Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2012) takes readers through the urban spaces of pet memorialization, from zoos and aquaria to pet cemeteries and household altars. The story begins with an introduction and two chapters that offer a broad grounding in the mythical and religious accounts of animals in premodern Japanese texts, as well as a modern history of animal mortuary rites in Japan. Modern animal memorial rituals, Ambros argues, emerged out of a context of the increasing commodification and consumption of animals, and she describes fascinating accounts of the memorializing of animals by whalers and fishers, in the food industry, and in the context of research laboratories and zoos. From the third chapter on, the book focuses specifically on pets and their hybrid status between animal and human, describing responses to some of the key questions that have animated attitudes toward and practices surrounding the death of pets in modern Japan. Are pet memorial rituals religious activities (and thus tax-exempt)? Are pet remains more like the bones of family members or the broken bodies of dolls, or are they simply trash? Should people be allowed to have their pets interred with them after death? Are the spirits of deceased animal companions angry and vengeful, or are they protective and loving? Across interviews, necro-landscapes, chat rooms, and books by a wide range of interlocutors from historians to psychics, Bones of Contention expertly traces the very different ways that these questions have been engaged and debated in contemporary Japan. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion