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Bramadat & Dawson (eds.), “Religious Radicalization and Securitization in Canada and Beyond”

In August, University of Toronto Press will publish Religious Radicalization and Securitization in Canada and Beyond, edited by Paul Bramadat (University of Victoria) and Lorne Dawson (University of Waterloo). The publisher’s description follows.Religious Radicalization and Securitization in Canada and Beyond:

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, those in
London and Madrid, and the arrest of the “Toronto 18,” Canadians have changed how they think about terrorism and security. As governments respond to the potential threat of homegrown radicalism, many observers have become concerned about the impact of those security measures on the minority groups whose lives are “securitized.”

In Religious Radicalization and Securitization in Canada and Beyond, Paul Bramadat and Lorne Dawson bring together contributors from a wide range of academic disciplines to examine the challenges created by both religious radicalism and the state’s and society’s response to it. This collection takes a critical look at what is known about religious radicalization, how minorities are affected by radicalization from within and securitization from without, and how the public, media, and government are attempting to cope with the dangers of both radicalization and securitization.

Religious Radicalization and Securitization in Canada and Beyond is an ideal guide to the ongoing debates on how best to respond to radicalization without sacrificing the commitments to multiculturalism and social justice that many Canadians hold dear.

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Bose, “Recasting the Region: Language, Culture, and Islam in Colonial Bengal”

In August, Oxford University Press will publish Recasting the Region: Language, Culture, and Islam in Colonial Bengal by Neilesh Bose (University of North Texas). The publisher’s description follows.Cover for<br /><br /><br /> Recasting the Region<br /><br /><br />

Recasting the Region studies the trajectories of Muslim Bengali politics and examines the literary and cultural history of Bengali Muslims from the early twentieth century until the 1952 Language Movement. It argues that Muslim political mobilization in late colonial Bengal did not emanate from north Indian calls for a separatist ‘Muslim’ state of Pakistan, but rather emerged out of a sustained engagement with local Bengali intellectual and literary traditions.

In six chapters, the book features meticulous research on topics like the pursuit of folklore, literary modernism, and intellectual movements in both Dhaka and Kolkata in the late colonial period. Examining language literary texts, the social histories of newspaper and magazine offices, and the writings of Bengali Muslim politicians and intellectuals, the book delves into the meaning of nationalism and decolonization for the Bengali Muslims.

Focusing on the cultural history of the largest Muslim population of the colonial era, the Bengali Muslims, this work utilizes heretofore unexplored Bengali sources as well as offers a new interpretation of the emergence of the state of Pakistan.

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Howell, “Old Islam in Detroit: Rediscovering the Muslim American Past”

In August, Oxford University Press will publish Old Islam in Detroit: Rediscovering the Muslim American Past by Sally Howell (University of Michigan-Dearborn). The publisher’s description follows.

Across North America, Islam is portrayed as a religion of immigrants, converts, and cultural outsiders. Yet Muslims have been part of American society for much longer than most people realize. This book documents the history of Islam in Detroit, a city that is home to several of the nation’s oldest, most diverse Muslim communities. In the early 1900s, there were thousands of Muslims in Detroit. Most came from Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and British India. In 1921, they built the nation’s first mosque in Highland Park. By the 1930s, new Islam-oriented social movements were taking root among African Americans in Detroit. By the 1950s, Albanians, Arabs, African Americans, and South Asians all had mosques and religious associations in the city, and they were confident that Islam could be, and had already become, an American religion. When immigration laws were liberalized in 1965, new immigrants and new African American converts rapidly became the majority of U.S. Muslims. For them, Detroit’s old Muslims and their mosques seemed oddly Americanized, even unorthodox.

Old Islam in Detroit explores the rise of Detroit’s earliest Muslim communities. It documents the culture wars and doctrinal debates that ensued as these populations confronted Muslim newcomers who did not understand their manner of worship or the American identities they had created. Looking closely at this historical encounter, Old Islam in Detroit provides a new interpretation of the possibilities and limits of Muslim incorporation in American life. It shows how Islam has become American in the past and how the anxieties many new Muslim Americans and non-Muslims feel about the place of Islam in American society today are not inevitable, but are part of a dynamic process of political and religious change that is still unfolding.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Constructing Indian Christianities (Bauman & Young, eds.)

Today, Routledge releases Constructing Indian Christianities: Conversion, Culture, and Caste, edited by Chad M. Bauman (Butler University) and Richard Fox Young (Princeton Theological Seminary). The publisher’s description follows:

This volume offers insights into the current ‘public-square’ debates on Indian Christianity. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork as well as rigorous analyses, it discusses the myriad histories of Christianity in India, its everyday practice and contestations and the process of its indigenisation. It addresses complex and pertinent themes such as Dalit Indian Christianity, diasporic nationalism and conversion. The work will interest scholars and researchers of religious studies, Dalit and subaltern studies, modern Indian history, and politics.

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Lewis & Petersen (eds.), “Controversial New Religions”

In July, Oxford University Press will publish the second edition of Controversial New Religions, edited by James Lewis (University of Tromsø) and Jesper Petersen (Norwegian University of Science and Technology). The publisher’s description follows.Cover for<br /><br /> Controversial New Religions<br /><br />

In terms of public opinion, new religious movements are considered controversial for a variety of reasons ranging from how they speak, dress, and eat, to the way they think and their sense of community. Their social organization often runs counter to popular expectations by experimenting with communal living (or strict individualism), alternative leadership roles (or flat network structures), unusual economic dispositions, and new political and ethical values. As a result the general public views new religions with a mixture of curiosity, amusement, and anxiety, sustained by lavish media emphasis on oddness and tragedy rather than familiarity and lived experience. This updated and revised second edition of Controversial New Religions offers a scholarly, dispassionate look at those groups that have generated the most attention, including some very well-known classical groups like The Family, Unification Church, Scientology, and Jim Jones’ People’s Temple; some relative newcomers such as the Kabbalah Centre, the Order of the Solar Temple, Branch Davidians, Heaven’s Gate, and the Falun Gong; and some interesting cases like contemporary Satanism, the Raelians, Black nationalism, and various Pagan groups. Written by established scholars as well as younger experts in the field, each essay combines an overview of the history and beliefs of each organization or movement with original and insightful analysis. By presenting decades of scholarly work on new religious movements in an accessible form, this book will be an invaluable resource for all those who seek a view of new religions that is deeper than what can be found in sensationalistic media stories.

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Viswanath, “The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India”

This July, Columbia University Press will publish The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India by Rupa Viswanath (University of Göttingen). The publisher’s description follows.

Once known as “Pariahs,” Dalits are primarily descendants of unfree agrarian laborers. They belong to India’s lowest castes, face overwhelming poverty and discrimination, and continue to be a source of public anxiety. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, this book follows the conception and evolution of the “Pariah problem” in public consciousness in the 1890s. It shows how high-caste landlords, state officials, and well-intentioned missionaries conceived of Dalit oppression and prevented substantive solutions to the “Pariah Problem”—with consequences that continue to be felt today.

The book begins with a description of the everyday lives of Dalit laborers in the 1890s and highlights the systematic efforts made by the state and Indian elites to protect Indian slavery from public scrutiny. Protestant missionaries were the first non-Dalits to draw attention to their plight. However, their vision of the Pariahs’ suffering as a result of Hindu religious prejudice obscured the fact that the entire agrarian political-economic system depended on Pariah labor. The Indian public as well as colonial officials came to share a view compatible with missionary explanations, which meant all subsequent welfare efforts directed at Dalits focused on religious and social transformation rather than on structural reform. Methodologically, theoretically, and empirically, this book breaks new ground to demonstrate how events in the early decades of state-sponsored welfare directed at Dalits laid the groundwork for the present day, where the postcolonial state and well-meaning social and religious reformers continue to downplay Dalits’ landlessness, violent suppression, and political subordination.

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Espinosa, “Latino Pentecostals in America”

Next month, Harvard University Press will publish Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action by Gastón Espinosa (Claremont McKenna Latino PentecostalsCollege).  The publisher’s description follows.

Every year an estimated 600,000 U.S. Latinos convert from Catholicism to Protestantism. Today, 12.5 million Latinos self-identify as Protestant—a population larger than all U.S. Jews and Muslims combined. Spearheading this spiritual transformation is the Pentecostal movement and Assemblies of God, which is the destination for one out of four converts. In a deeply researched social and cultural history, Gastón Espinosa uncovers the roots of this remarkable turn and the Latino AG’s growing leadership nationwide.

Latino Pentecostals in America traces the Latino AG back to the Azusa Street Revivals in Los Angeles and Apostolic Faith Revivals in Houston from 1906 to 1909. Espinosa describes the uphill struggles for indigenous leadership, racial equality, women in the ministry, social and political activism, and immigration reform. His analysis of their independent political views and voting patterns from 1996 to 2012 challenges the stereotypes that they are all apolitical, right-wing, or politically marginal. Their outspoken commitment to an active faith has led a new generation of leaders to blend righteousness and justice, by which they mean the reconciling message of Billy Graham and the social transformation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Latino AG leaders and their 2,400 churches across the nation represent a new and growing force in denominational, Evangelical, and presidential politics.

This eye-opening study explains why this group of working-class Latinos once called “The Silent Pentecostals” is silent no more. By giving voice to their untold story, Espinosa enriches our understanding of the diversity of Latino religion, Evangelicalism, and American culture.

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Whittaker, “Religion and Society in Middle Bronze Age Greece”

This month, Cambridge University Press will publish Religion and Society in Middle Bronze Age Greece by Helene Whittaker (University of Gothenburg). The publisher’s description follows.Religion and Society in Middle Bronze Age Greece

The Middle Helladic period has received little attention, partially because of scholars’ view of it as merely the prelude to the Mycenaean period and partially because of the dearth of archaeological evidence from the period. In this book, Helène Whittaker demonstrates that Middle Helladic Greece is far more interesting than its material culture might at first suggest. Whittaker comprehensively reviews and discusses the archaeological evidence for religion on the Greek mainland, focusing on the relationship between religious expression and ideology. The book argues that religious beliefs and rituals played a significant role in the social changes that were occurring at the time. The arguments and conclusions of this book will be relevant beyond the Greek Bronze Age and will contribute to the general archaeological debate on prehistoric religion.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Misunderstanding Putin

biophoto_150_1Last Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”–the breakfast salon of the bien pensant–Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Rick Stengel (left) took on Vladimir Putin. Stengel attempted to explain how Putin’s conduct in Ukraine damages Putin’s own interests. Putin, Stengel told his interlocutor Steven Rattner with an air of frustration, “is making fundamental errors” that would get him in trouble with the Russian people. “He’s moving further away from the West,” Stengel said, at a time when “people want to be closer to the West.” Rattner agreed that Putin is being “irrational.” Isn’t it obvious?

In fact, it isn’t at all obvious that Putin is being irrational or that people around the world want to be closer to the West, at least not in the way Stengel seems to think. It is very difficult for Americans to understand this, but on many issues we are cultural outliers. America, especially its professional class, has what psychologists call a WEIRD culture—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. WEIRDs are very secular. They place great emphasis on personal autonomy; indeed, autonomy may be their most important value. That’s one reason why America works so hard to support movements like feminism and gay rights abroad.

By contrast, most of the world’s cultures are not WEIRD. They are not secular and do not see personal autonomy as the most important value. Jonathan Haidt explains this very well in his recent book, The Righteous Mind. Many world cultures, Haidt writes, have an“ethic of community” that sees people principally as members of collectives—families, tribes, and nations—with strong claims to loyalty. Many have an “ethic of divinity,” which holds that people’s principal duty is to God, not themselves. “In such societies,” Haidt writes, “the personal liberty of secular Western nations looks like libertinism, hedonism, and a celebration of humanity’s baser instincts.”

Putin is many things, but he is not a WEIRD. He has been making clear for years that he does not aspire for Russia to become a WEIRD society. The values he promotes are nationalism, authority, loyalty, and religion. Especially religion. As a perceptive post by national security expert John Schindler explains, Putin’s worldview contains a large element of Holy Russia/Third Rome ideology, “a powerful admixture of Orthodoxy, ethnic mysticism, and Slavophile tendencies that has deep resonance in Russian history.” Of course, Putin may be insincere. Like many dictators, he may simply be using religion to his advantage. But, even if his convictions are phony, the challenge he poses to the West is fundamentally a cultural and ideological one.

And many Russians support him. Putin has been extremely good at exploiting the suspicion that many Russians feel about the West and its values–especially America and its values. Notwithstanding Stengel’s assertion, Putin is not acting against the wishes of his own people. Indeed, his popularity at home has been growing since the start of the Ukraine crisis. And, as Schindler explains, it’s not only Russians who think they way Putin does. “There are plenty of people in the world who don’t like Putin or Russia, yet who are happy that someone, somewhere is standing up to American hegemony.” The thuggery in Ukraine will cost him some of this support. But many people will be inclined to dismiss Putin’s conduct as a reassertion of Russia’s traditional interest in its near-abroad.

In other words, our conflict with Russia is not simply about politics, or economics, or even national security. It’s about culture and values. It’s not that Putin insufficiently appreciates what WEIRDness requires. He’s not a WEIRD at all. He doesn’t want to be. The people who run our foreign policy should understand this. If Stengel’s appearance on Friday is any indication, they don’t.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Versluis, “American Gurus”

Today, Oxford University Press releases American Gurus: From Transcendentalism to New Age Religion, by Arthur Versluis (Michigan State University). The publisher’s description follows:

By the early twenty-first century, a phenomenon that once was inconceivable had become nearly commonplace in American society: the public spiritual teacher who neither belongs to, nor is authorized by a major religious tradition. From the Oprah Winfrey-endorsed Eckhart Tolle to figures like Gangaji and Adhyashanti, there are now countless spiritual teachers who claim and teach variants of instant or immediate enlightenment.

American Gurus tells the story of how this phenomenon emerged. Through an examination of the broader literary and religious context of the subject, Arthur Versluis shows that a characteristic feature of the Western esoteric tradition is the claim that every person can achieve “spontaneous, direct, unmediated spiritual insight.” This claim was articulated with special clarity by the New England Transcendentalists Bronson Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Versluis explores Transcendentalism, Walt Whitman, the Beat movement, Timothy Leary, and the New Age movement to shed light on the emergence of the contemporary American guru. 

This insightful study is the first to show how Asian religions and Western mysticism converged to produce the phenomenon of “spontaneously enlightened” American gurus.