New Books in Religion

Is traditional American religion doomed?Traditional religion in the United States has suffered huge losses in recent decades. The number of Americans identifying as "not religious" has increased remarkably. Religious affiliation, service attendance, and belief in God have declined. More and more people claim to be "spiritual but not religious." Religious organizations have been reeling from revelations of sexual and financial scandals and cover-ups. Public trust in "organized religion" has declined significantly. Crucially, these religious losses are concentrated among younger generations. This means that, barring unlikely religious revivals among youth, the losses will continue and accelerate in time, as less-religious younger Americans replace older more-religious ones and increasingly fewer American children are raised by religious parents. All this is clear. But what is less clear is exactly why this is happening. We know a lot more about the fact that traditional American religion has declined than we do about why this is so.Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America (Oxford UP, 2025) aims to change that. Drawing on survey data and hundreds of interviews, Christian Smith offers a sweeping, multifaceted account of why many Americans have lost faith in traditional religion. An array of large-scale social forces-everything from the end of the Cold War to the rise of the internet to shifting ideas about gender and sexuality-came together to render traditional religion culturally obsolete. For growing numbers of Americans, traditional religion no longer seems useful or relevant. Using quantitative empirical measures of big-picture changes over time as well as exploring the larger cultural environment—the cultural "zeitgeist"—Smith explains why this is the case and what it means for the future. Crucially, he argues, it does not mean a strictly secular future. Rather, Americans' spiritual impulses are being channelled in new and interesting directions. Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. Smith is well known for his research focused on religion, adolescents and emerging adults, and social theory. He has written many books, including Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (with Michael O. Emerson), as well as Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (with Melinda Lundquist Denton). Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Is it possible to read the Balaam narrative of Numbers 22-24 cohesively? Ben Wiggershaus says, “Yes,” and part of his solution is in reading the Balaam Cycle in light of its ancient Near Eastern context. Tune in as we speak with Ben Wiggershaus about his recent monograph, The Man of Opened Eye: Ancient Near Eastern Revelatory Convention and the Balaam Cycle (Gorgias Press, 2025). Ben Wiggershaus holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from Asbury Theological Seminary, and is Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies and Ministry at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

From the end of the American Civil War to the start of World War II, the Protestant missionary movement unintentionally tilled the soil in which American Islamophobia would eventually take root. What ideas did missionaries in Islamic contexts pass on to later generations? How were these ideas connected to centuries-old Protestant discourses about Muslims and gender beginning in the Reformation? And what bearing does this history have on the birth of Islamophobia and on Christian-Muslim dialogue efforts in the US today? In answering these questions, Re-inventing Islam traces the gender constructs that have informed historical Protestant perceptions of Islam, especially in the far-reaching textual, visual, and material influences of the American and British movement for missions to Muslims. This book first considers Protestant discourse about Muslim women and men from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. Then it turns to the colossal archive of literature, images, and cultural objects that missionaries--and particularly missionary women--collected from Islamic contexts and used to inform and motivate their constituents.Anglo-Protestants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries perpetually re-invented stereotypes about Muslims and used these negative images to achieve particular Protestant theological and political purposes, including missionary aims. They did so when disseminating gender critiques widely to Protestant men, women, and children. Why did they re-invent Islam? Deanna Ferree Womack argues that they did so to reinforce Protestant theological claims, to justify their evangelistic endeavors, to express both humanitarian concern and Eurocentric views of the world, and to support British and American cultural, economic, and military expansion. Simultaneously, however, this same missionary movement educated its constituents about diverse Islamic cultures, in part by providing humanizing images of Islam. Missionaries also formed personal relationships with Muslims that would open pathways toward formal efforts of Christian-Muslim dialogue after the mid-twentieth century. Americans have inherited all of these legacies. In revisiting this history readers will find new possibilities for building a more open and just future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Seeing Through Religion is a cutting-edge textbook that gives students the tools to learn this valuable subject theoretically, McGovern argues that religion isn't a thing out there in the world; it's the glasses on your face through which you see the world, shaped by Western history and, in particular, Christianity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Prayer in the Ancient World is the resource on prayer in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. With over 350 entries it showcases a robust selection of the range of different types of prayers attested from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, early Judaism and Christianity, Greece, Rome, Arabia, and Iran, enhanced by critical commentary.The Prayer in the Ancient World will also be available online.Preview of the 'Prayer in the Ancient World’ Daniel K. Falk is Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Chaiken Family Chair in Jewish Studies at Penn State University. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion