New Books in Religion

Ritual deposition is not an activity that many people in the Western world would consider themselves participants of. The enigmatic beliefs and magical thinking that led to the deposition of swords in watery places and votive statuettes in temples, for example, may feel irrelevant to the modern day.However, Dr. Ceri Houlbrook shows in ‘Ritual Litter' Redressed (Cambridge University Press, 2023) that ritual deposition is a more widespread feature now than in the past, with folk assemblages – from roadside memorials and love-lock bridges, to wishing fountains and coin-trees – emerging prolifically worldwide. Despite these assemblages being as much the result of ritual activity as historically deposited objects, they are rarely given the same academic attention or heritage status. As well as exploring the nature of ritual deposition in the contemporary West, and the beliefs and symbolisms behind various assemblages, this Element explores the heritage of the modern-day deposit, promoting a renegotiation of the pejorative term 'ritual litter'.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Magic is ubiquitous across the world and throughout history. Yet if witchcraft is acknowledged as a persistent presence in the medieval and early modern eras, practical magic by contrast – performed to a useful end for payment, and actually more common than malign spellcasting – has been overlooked. In Love Spells and Lost Treasure: Service Magic in England from the Later Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Dr. Tabitha Stanmore brings this world to light.Exploring many hundred instances of daily magical usage, and setting these alongside a range of imaginative and didactic literatures, Tabitha Stanmore demonstrates the entrenched nature of 'service' magic in premodern English society. This, she shows, was a type of spellcraft for needs that nothing else could address: one well established by the time of the infamous witch trials. The book explores perceptions of magical practitioners by clients and neighbours, and the way such magic was utilised by everyone: from lowliest labourer to highest lord. Stanmore reveals that – even if technically illicit – magic was for most people an accepted, even welcome, aspect of everyday life. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The mantra known as Gāyatrī or Sāvitrī (Ṛgveda III 62.10) is one of the most frequently recited texts of mankind. Over the course of time it has not only been personified as the mother of the Vedas – the oldest religious literature of South Asia –, but has even come to be venerated as a goddess. Today many consider it the most important, most efficacious, or holiest mantra of all. In Gāyatrī: Mantra and Mother of the Vedas (Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2023), Dominik A. Haas reconstructs the history of the Gāyatrī-Mantra for the first time, tracing it from 1000 BCE to 1000 CE. He shows how an inconspicuous verse became an emblem of Brahminical Hinduism and presents the processes that led to its deification. To this end, he not only subjects passages from more than one hundred source texts in Vedic and Sanskrit to philological-historical analysis, but also draws upon perspectives and insights from religious studies. The Gāyatrī-Mantra plays an important role in contemporary Hinduism as well as in modern yoga and alternative spiritual currents around the globe. This book therefore not only contributes to South Asian studies and religious studies, but is also of interest to a wider readership.This book is available open access here. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

For thousands of years, the Jewish people lacked a political state; yet, what can we say about the Jewish tradition of statesmanship? What makes it distinctive, and what can we learn from it? In Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship (Encounter Books, 2023) , Rabbi Meir Soloveichik investigates ten Jews, from King David all the way to the foundation of Israel, what we can learn from their examples, and how history can provide hope amidst recent events in Israel.Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik is director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. He received his PhD in Religion at Princeton in 2010. Among the world's preeminent Jewish thinkers and educators, Rabbi Soloveichik has lectured across the United States and Europe on topics relating to Jewish theology, bioethics, wartime ethics, and Jewish-Christian relations. He has a monthly column in Commentary magazine, and his writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, First Things, and many other outlets. He is the host of the podcast Bible 365, and you can also listen to him via the Meir Soloveichik podcast.Sources and examples referenced in the interview: Rembrandt's David in Prayer, 1652. John Trumbull's George Washington Resigning His Commission and Declaration of Independence (1826). George Washington's Letter to the Jews of Savannah (1790). Dan Senor and Saul Singer's recent book The Genius of Israel. A secular Israeli broadcaster borrows a kippah and performs a blessing. Annika Nordquist is the Communications Coordinator of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and host of the Program’s podcast, Madison’s Notes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In A Synthesis of Time: Zakat, Islamic Micro-finance and the Question of the Future in 21st-Century Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Konstantinos Retsikas has anthropological investigation into the different forms the economy assumes, and the different purposes it serves, when conceived from the perspective of Islamic micro-finance as a field of everyday practice. The book is based on long-term ethnographic research in Java, Indonesia, with Islamic foundations active in managing zakat and other charitable funds, for purposes of poverty alleviation. Specifically, the book explores the social foundations of contemporary Islamic practices that strive to encompass the economic within an expanded domain of divine worship and elucidates the effects such encompassment has on time, its fissure and synthesis. In order to elaborate on the question of time, the book looks beyond anthropology and Islamic studies, engaging attentively, critically and productively with the post-structuralist work of G. Deleuze, M. Foucault and J. Derrida, three of the most important figures of the temporal turn in contemporary continental philosophy. Through doing so, the book impressively untangles the complex relationship between Islamic economics, divine worship, and time.Konstantinos Retsikas is Reader in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS, University of London, UK. His work focuses on temporality and personhood, and he has written extensively on issues of embodiment, place making, violence, and religion. He is also the author of Becoming: An Anthropological Approach to Understandings of the Person in Java (2012).Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. He conducts ethnography among ufologists in China. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of the paranormal, hope studies, and post-structural philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Exegetes have long relied on the framework of the Acts of the Apostles to understand the behavior and organization of Paul’s various ekklēsiai (assemblies), or church communities, from which Christ-groups have often been conceptualized as extensions from practices of diasporic Jewish synagogues. However, Richard S. Ascough’s work has been at the forefront of a scholarly movement emphasizing the relevance of data from Greco-Roman associations—occupational, cultic, ethnic, and otherwise—not only as a preferable model for understanding the constitution of early Christ-following communities, but also as fruitful comparanda for interpreting Paul’s letters, such as 1 Thessalonians and Philippians. On this episode, Dr. Ascough joined the New Books Network to discuss Early Christ Groups and Greco-Roman Associations: Organizational Models and Social Practices (Cascade Books, 2022), a collection of his articles and essays on associations from the last 25 years detailing the road to the acceptance of association data within scholarship as well as the recruitment, self-promotion, socializing, and memorializing practices that these recoveries from antiquity reveal. Ascough discusses how he carved his own niche within biblical studies, from starting as a master’s student with a small group to translate previously unpublished inscriptions and papyri to ultimately showcasing the applicability of association behavior to early Christ-groups, Pauline and otherwise.Richard S. Ascough (Ph.D., Toronto School of Theology, 1997) is a Professor at the School of Religion at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He has written extensively on the formation of early Christ groups and Greco-Roman religious culture, with particular attention to various types of associations. He has published widely in the field with more than fifty articles or essays and thirteen books, including Christ Groups & Associations: Foundational Essays(Baylor U. Press, 2022), Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook (Baylor U. Press, 2012), and Paul’s Macedonian Associations (Mohr Siebeck, 2003). He has been recognized for his innovative and effective teaching in many ways, including the two top teaching awards at Queen’s University and a 3M National Teaching Fellowship (2018).Rob Heaton (Ph.D., University of Denver, 2019) hosts Biblical Studies conversations for New Books in Religion and teaches New Testament, Christian origins, and early Christianity at Anderson University in Indiana. He recently authored The Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata: From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon (Lexington Books, 2023). For more about Rob and his work, or to offer feedback related to this episode, please visit his website at https://www.robheaton.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Rabbinic Sages of the Tannaitic era were fixated on memory and terrified of forgetfulness. In promulgating their own interpretations of Jewish law, the Tannaim not only took seriously Moses’s admonitions to remember and not forget, they painstakingly constructed a system of laws thar recognized that helped create and enhance a powerful and dynamic memory form. The rabbis also knew, however, that people are fallible and they’re going to forget. To try to ensure communal coherence within the embrace of the covenant in the face of the loss of a cultic center, the rabbis built a system of legal promulgation and interpretation that anticipated forgetting and devised ways for confronting, correcting, and mitigating damage from it.In her latest work, Fractured Tablets: Forgetfulness and Fallibility in Late Ancient Rabbinic Culture (U California Press, 2023), Professor Balberg explores and examines how the Tannaitic sages not only understood and approached the problem of forgetting, but how they in essence created that problem, and position themselves as the specialists who can solve it.Mira Balberg is Professor and David Goodblatt Endowed Chair in Ancient Jewish Civilization at the University of California at San Diego. She joins me today to speak about her latest work. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Keith Cantú's Like a Tree Universally Spread: Sri Sabhapati Swami And Śivarājayoga (Oxford UP, 2023) examines the life of a nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Tamil yogin named Sri Sabhapati Swami (Śrī Sabhāpati Svāmī or Capāpati Cuvāmikaḷ, ca. 1828-1923/4) and his unique English, Tamil, Hindi, and Bengali literature on a Sanskrit-based system of yogic meditation known as the "Rājayoga for Śiva" (Tamil: civarājayōkam, Sanskrit: śivarājayoga), the full experience of which is compared to being like a "tree universally spread." Its practice was based on a unique synthesis of Tamil Vīraśaiva and Siddhar cosmologies in the colonial period, and the yogic literature in which it is found was designed to have universal appeal across boundaries of caste, gender, and sectarian affiliation. His works, all of which are here analyzed together for the first time, are an important record in the history of yoga, print culture, and art history due to his vividly-illustrated and numbered diagrams on the yogic body with its subtle physiology.This book opens with a biographical account of Sabhapati, his editor Shrish Chandra Basu, and his students as gleaned from textual sources and the author's ethnographic field work. Sabhapati's literature in various languages is then analyzed, followed by a comprehensive exposition of his Śaiva cosmology and religious theories. Sabhapati's system of Śivarājayoga and its subtle physiology is then treated in detail, followed by an analysis of Sabhapati's aesthetic integration of aural sound and visual diagrams and an evaluation of the role of "science" in the swami's literature. Sabhapati also appealed to global authors and occultists outside of South Asia, so special attention is additionally given to his encounter with the founders of the Theosophical Society and the integration of his techniques into the thelemic "Magick" of Aleister Crowley, the German translation of Bavarian theosophical novelist Franz Hartmann, and the American publication of New Thought entrepreneur William Estep.To these are appended a never-before-translated Tamil hagiography of Sabhapati's life, a lexicon in table-form that compiles some archaic variants and Roman transliterations of technical terms used in his work, and a critically-edited passage on an innovative technique of Śivarājayoga that included visualizing the yogic central channel as a lithic "pole." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

When one thinks of your typical horror movie and it’s usual imagery, a number of tropes may come forward. Graveyards behind old cathedrals, crucifixes and holy water, possessions and exorcisms. The uniting thread of all of these is that they are all tied to the religious. One might then wonder if there is some underlying thread of meaning beneath the facade.Addressing this topic directly is Jonathan Greenaway in his book Theology, Horror and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century (Bloomsbury, 2022). Surveying a number of well known works from this period, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Bronte sisters all the way up to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Greenaway finds works filled with various references and discussions of religious scripture, imagery and themes. What’s more, he’s able to follow these various occasions down into deeper territory, finding a subterranean conversation in much of this literature on themes of embodiment, createdness, epistemology, political institutions and ethical transgression. What Greenaway comes away with is insight into a dialogue between these two fields that will be richly rewarding to believers of both of them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Cambodian Civil War and genocide of the late 1960s and ’70s left the country and its diaspora with long-lasting trauma that continues to reverberate through the community. In Cambodian Evangelicalism: Cosmological Hope and Diasporic Resilience (Pennsylvania State UP, 2023), Briana L. Wong explores the compelling stories of Cambodian evangelicals, their process of conversion, and how their testimonials to the Christian faith helped them to make sense of and find purpose in their trauma.Based on ethnographic fieldwork with Cambodian communities in the metropolitan areas of Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Paris, and Phnom Penh, Wong examines questions of religious identity and the search for meaning within the context of transnational Cambodian evangelicalism. While the community has grown in recent decades, Christians nevertheless make up a small minority of the predominantly Buddhist diaspora. Wong explores what it is about Christianity that makes these converts willing to risk their social standing, familial bonds, and, in certain cases, physical safety in order to identify with the faith.Contributing to ongoing dialogues on conversion, reverse mission, and multiple religious belonging, this book will appeal to students and scholars of world Christianity, missiology, and the history of Christianity, as well as Southeast Asian studies, secular sociologies, and anthropologists operating within the field of religious studies.Byung Ho Choi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History and Ecumenics, with a concentration in World Christianity and history of religions at Princeton Theological Seminary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion