New Books in Religion

Pagan Religions in Five Minutes (Equinox, 2024) provides an accessible set of essays on questions relating to Pagan identities and practices, both historically and in contemporary societies as well as informative essays on different Pagan groups, such as Druidry, Wicca, Heathenry and others. The book includes answers to a range of questions such as: How many Pagans are there? What do Pagans believe? Is Paganism a real religion or is it just made-up? Is Satanism a type of Paganism? Do all Pagans celebrate the solstices? Why is it written "Pagan" and other times "pagan"? Do they have sacred texts? Is Druidry the indigenous religion of Europe? What does the pentagram symbol mean? Can anyone be a witch? Are Pagans anti-Christian?  The book also covers issues with terminology, including the labelling of ancient, non-Western and indigenous groups as 'pagan', common assumptions and misconceptions about Pagans, and more. Each essay is by a leading scholar in the field, offering clear and concise answers along with suggestions for further reading. The book is ideal for both the curious and as an entry book for classroom use and studying Paganism. Because each chapter can be read in about five minutes, the books offer ideal supplementary resources in classrooms or an engaging read for those curious about the world around them. Angela Puca, PhD (2021), is an independent religious studies scholar and university lecturer. She is bridging the gap between academia and the general public with her social media project Angela’s Symposium, where she disseminates peer-reviewed research to a wide audience engagingly. She’s the author of the forthcoming Italian Witchcraft and Shamanism, to be published by Brill, and coeditor of Pagan Religions in Five Minutes for Equinox Publishing Ltd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Today’s book is: Witchcraft: A History in 13 Trials (Scribner, 2024), by Dr. Marion Gibson, which explores the global history of witch trials across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, told through thirteen distinct trials that illuminate a pattern of demonization and conspiratorial thinking that has profoundly shaped human history. Some of them are famous like the Salem witch trials, and some lesser-known, like the 1620s witch trial on Vardø island, Norway, where an indigenous Sami woman was accused of murder; the last witch trial in France in 1731, where a young woman was pitted against her confessor and cult leader; and a trial in Lesotho in 1948, where British colonial authorities executed local leaders. Exploring how witchcraft was feared, then decriminalized, and then reimagined as gendered persecution, Witchcraft takes on the intersections between gender and power, indigenous spirituality and colonial rule, political conspiracy and individual resistance. Offering a striking, dramatic journey unspooling over centuries and across continents, Witchcraft offers insights into some of the cruelest moments in history, reclaims voices that have been silenced, and asks us to seriously consider how we will create a future without further witch trials. Our guest is: Dr. Marion Gibson, who is Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles, and seven academic books on witches in history and literature. She is General Editor of the series Elements in Magic for Cambridge University Press. Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials is her most recent book. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Listeners may enjoy this playlist: Fierce We Refuse You're Doing It Wrong Gender-Creative Parenting Reinventing Her Life The Turnaway Study Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 225+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

An illuminating history of religious and political controversy in nineteenth-century Bengal, where Protestant missionary activity spurred a Christian conversion “panic” that indelibly shaped the trajectory of Hindu and Muslim politics. In 1813, the British Crown adopted a policy officially permitting Protestant missionaries to evangelize among the empire’s Indian subjects. The ramifications proved enormous and long-lasting. While the number of conversions was small—Christian converts never represented more than 1.5 percent of India’s population during the nineteenth century—Bengal’s majority faith communities responded in ways that sharply politicized religious identity, leading to the permanent ejection of religious minorities from Indian ideals of nationhood. Mou Banerjee details what happened as Hindus and Muslims grew increasingly suspicious of converts, missionaries, and evangelically minded British authorities. Fearing that converts would subvert resistance to British imperialism, Hindu and Muslim critics used their influence to define the new Christians as a threatening “other” outside the bounds of authentic Indian selfhood. The meaning of conversion was passionately debated in the burgeoning sphere of print media, and individual converts were accused of betrayal and ostracized by their neighbors. Yet, Banerjee argues, the effects of the panic extended far beyond the lives of those who suffered directly. As Christian converts were erased from the Indian political community, that community itself was reconfigured as one consecrated in faith. While India’s emerging nationalist narratives would have been impossible in the absence of secular Enlightenment thought, the evolution of cohesive communal identity was also deeply entwined with suspicion toward religious minorities. Recovering the perspectives of Indian Christian converts as well as their detractors, The Disinherited: The Politics of Christian Conversion in Colonial India (Harvard UP, 2025) is an eloquent account of religious marginalization that helps to explain the shape of Indian nationalist politics in today’s era of Hindu majoritarianism. Arighna Gupta is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His dissertation attempts to trace early-colonial genealogies of popular sovereignty located at the interstices of monarchical, religious, and colonial sovereignties in India and present-day Bangladesh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In an era where congregations are shrinking and fewer people engage with faith communities, Michael Plekon's book Ministry Matters: Pastors, Their Life and Work Today (Wipf and Stock, 2024) offers a timely exploration of both the challenges and opportunities facing modern Christian ministry. Through detailed analysis, Plekon traces the factors behind congregational decline while also highlighting inspiring stories of parishes that have successfully reimagined themselves for contemporary times. Our conversation today exemplifies what contemporary theological discussions should encompass - a profound dialogue about the relevance of Christian theology in our time, acknowledging both trauma and pain, while exploring the tremendous opportunity Christianity can offer each of us. This is more than just a book discussion - it's a sustained meditation on the vocation, lives, and work of pastors in our changing times. Michael Plekon is a unique voice in contemporary religious scholarship, bridging academic theology and lived spirituality. Born in Yonkers in 1948, he has dedicated his life to exploring what holiness looks like in modern times through both scholarly work and pastoral experience. As a professor at Baruch College (1977-2017) and an ordained priest who has served in both Western and Eastern Churches, Plekon brings a rare dual perspective to religious studies. His dozen-plus books, including the award-winning "Uncommon Prayer," focus on finding the sacred in everyday life and examining how modern saints - from Dorothy Day to Thomas Merton - navigate faith in contemporary society. Plekon's work is particularly relevant today as he explores the intersection of religious identity, social justice, and community building in an increasingly diverse America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In 1980, Charles Wetli---a Miami-based medical examiner and self-proclaimed “cult expert” of Afro-Caribbean religions---identified what he called “excited delirium syndrome.” Soon, medical examiners began using the syndrome regularly to describe the deaths of Black men and women during interactions with police. Police and medical examiners claimed that Black people with so-called excited delirium exhibited superhuman strength induced from narcotics abuse. It was fatal heart failure that killed them, examiners said, not forceful police restraints.  In Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease (Duke University Press, 2024), Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús examines this fabricated medical diagnosis and its use to justify and erase police violence against Black and Brown communities. Exposing excited delirium syndrome’s flawed diagnostic criteria, she outlines its inextricable ties to the criminalization of Afro-Latiné religions. Beliso-De Jesús demonstrates that it is yet a further example of the systemic racism that pervades law enforcement in which the culpability for state violence is shifted from the state onto its victims. In so doing, she furthers understanding of the complex layers of medicalized state-sanctioned violence against people of color in the United States. Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús is Olden Street Professor of American Studies at Princeton University and author of Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Bible shaped nearly every aspect of Jewish life in the ancient world, from activities as obvious as attending synagogue to those which have lost their scriptural resonance in modernity, such as drinking water and uttering one’s last words. And within a scriptural universe, no work exerted more force than the Psalter, the most cherished text among all the books of the Hebrew Bible. A Life of Psalms in Jewish Late Antiquity (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) clarifies the world of late ancient Judaism through the versatile and powerful lens of the Psalter. It asks a simple set of questions: Where did late ancient Jews encounter the Psalms? How did they engage with the work? And what meanings did they produce? A. J. Berkovitz answers these queries by reconstructing and contextualizing a diverse set of religious practices performed with and on the Psalter, such as handling a physical copy, reading from it, interpreting it exegetically, singing it as liturgy, invoking it as magic and reciting it as an act of piety. His book draws from and contributes to the fields of ancient Judaism, biblical reception, book history and the history of reading. New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review. A. J. Berkovitz is Associate Professor of Associate Professor of Liturgy and Ancient Judaism at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Reformations, both Protestant and Catholic, have long been told as stories of men. But women were central to the transformations that took place in Europe and beyond. What was life like for them in this turbulent period? How did their actions and ideas shape Christianity and influence societies around the world? In Women and the Reformations: A Global History (Yale University Press, 2024), renowned scholar Dr. Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks explores the history of women and the Reformations in full for the first time. Dr. Wiesner-Hanks travels the globe, examining well-known figures like Teresa of Avila, Elizabeth I, and Anne Hutchinson, as well as women whose stories are only now emerging. Along the way, we meet converts in Japan, Spanish nuns in the Philippines, and saints in Ethiopia and America. Dr. Wiesner-Hanks explores women’s experiences as monarchs, mothers, migrants, martyrs, mystics, and missionaries, revealing that the story of the Reformations is no longer simply European—and that women played a vital role. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

What does it mean that God hears? Can a God who is "pure act" be affected in such a way? What does this mean for those whom God hears? Who are those people? Join Benjamin Phillips as he asks such questions of Charles Helmer IV, author of The Lord Who Listens: A Dogmatic Inquiry into God as Hearer (Brill, 2024). More about the book: In The Lord Who Listens, Charles C. Helmer IV draws on Holy Scripture and the theology of Karl Barth to offer a theological intepretation of God's hearing. Prioritizing this neglected biblical theme, Helmer develops a theological grammar for speaking of God's hearing that maintains a strong creator-creature distinction and then proceeds to demonstrate the profound implications God's hearing has for the doctrines of anthropology, Christology and, thus, for understandings of the gospel. In contrast to passibilist-liberationist strategies, God's hearing is argued to furnish existentially and theologically superior resources for those who cry out to be heard by God. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Jews of Ptolemaic Egypt: The History of a Diaspora Community in Light of the Papyri (De Gruyter, 2024) offers a comprehensive and nuanced history of the Jews of Egypt, who constituted an important ethnic minority ever since they first appeared in the country. As part of the Greek-speaking ruling class, the Jews played an active role in the political, social and cultural life of Ptolemaic Egypt. Drawing on old and new documentary papyri supplemented by literary and epigraphic evidence, Szántó's book focuses on reconstructing an overall picture of the Egyptian Jewish Diaspora and discusses different aspects of their life: onomastics, military life, social and legal position, religious customs and anti-Judaism. The incorporation of non-Greek (Aramaic and Egyptian) textual evidence into the research is innovative and offers new perspectives on certain topics whose understanding was previously limited. Szántó provides a diverse picture of Jewish life and demonstrates how the Jews integrated into Graeco-Egyptian society and, at the same time, preserved their ethnic identity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

This is my second conversation with Paul Zucarelli who died in 2017 and returned from the dead through the intercessory prayer of Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix and the faith of his family. Since his resurrection, he has been serving God as a lay evangelist. In the earlier interview, we talked about his new book, One Lord, One Faith, One Church: An Inconvenient Truth, in which he made a strong case for the authority of the Roman Catholic church. This time we are talking about his first book, Faith Understood: An Ordinary Man's Journey to the Presence of God. He tells us about his experience of death, purgatory, and the light of the face God; he also describes his return to our breathing world and the power of faith and intercessory prayer. Bishop Olmsted, the doctors, and Paul’s wife, Beth, and his son, Michael, recall his death and return in a short video. Paul’s first book, Faith Understood: An Ordinary Man's Journey to the Presence of God. Paul’s second book, One Lord, One Faith, One Church. Paul’s website, Faith Understood. Here are other videos of Paul telling this story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion