
New Books in Religion
Interviews with Scholars of Religion about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion
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Jan E. M. Houben and Julieta Rotaru, "Vedic Myths and Rituals" (Dev Publishers, 2025)
Vedic Myths and Rituals, edited by Jan E.M. Houben and Julieta Rotaru, is a scholarly volume exploring the deep interplay between mythic narrative and ritual practice in the Vedic tradition. Drawing on diverse case studies—from the myth of Pedu’s horse to the consecration rites of the Soma sacrifice—the book examines h

Brandon Bloch, "Reinventing Protestant Germany: Religious Nationalists and the Contest for Post-Nazi Democracy" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Germany’s Protestant churches, longtime strongholds of nationalism and militarism, largely backed the Nazi dictatorship that took power in 1933. For many Protestant leaders, pastors, and activists, national and religious revival were one and the same. Even those who opposed the regime tended toward antidemocratic attit

Anna Strhan and Rachael Shillitoe, "Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England" (Princeton UP, 2025)
What do children believe in? In Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England (Princeton UP, 2025) Anna Strhan, a Reader in the Department of Sociology at the University of York and Rachael Shillitoe, a senior social scientist in the UK civil service and honorary fellow in the Department of Soci

Leah Hochman and Stanley M. Davids, "Re-forming Judaism: Moments of Disruption in Jewish Thought" (Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2023)
The story of Judaism is the story of change. Throughout Jewish history, revolutionary events and subversive ideas have burst forth, repeatedly transforming Jewish experience. Re-forming Judaism: Moments of Disruption in Jewish Thought (Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2023), edited by Rabbi Stanley M. Davids (z’l

Ruth E. Toulson, "Necropolitics of the Ordinary: Death and Grieving in Contemporary Singapore" (U Washington Press, 2024)
Can a state make its people forget the dead? Cemeteries have become sites of acute political contestation in the city-state of Singapore. Confronted with high population density and rapid economic growth, the government has ordered the destruction of all but one burial ground, forcing people to exhume their family memb

Michel-Yves Bollore and Olivier Bonnassies, "God, the Science, the Evidence" (Palomar, 2025)
For more than four centuries, the scientific discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, and Freud created the impression that we could explain the workings of the Universe without the idea of a creator--God. By the beginning of the twentieth century, materialism had become the dominant theory of the time. And yet, wit