When I learned in college that the Roman Emperor Constantine was largely responsible for determining the shape of the New Testament, it shook my outlook on religion and how it worked. Since then, I’ve studied the interplay of religion and politics for over 2 decades and taught the subject at universities on both coasts. These books aren’t just ones I find useful in teaching, but each has fanned the flames of my fascination and broadened my awareness and perspective. I hope you enjoy and find yourself thinking differently after reading them!
I wrote...
God in the Tumult of the Global Square: Religion in Global Civil Society
In this book, we explore the changing nature of religion in the global age. Based on conversations with scholars, activists, and religious leaders worldwide, we illuminate how religion interacts with globalization around identity, community, and security in the twenty-first century.
We highlight challenges to traditional religious belonging accompanying increased interconnectivity and the diverse ways religion anchors identity in the global world. While religious observance appears to be declining in the global North, people increasingly turn to religion as an anchor in a turbulent world. We ultimately—and optimistically—posit an emerging cosmopolitan religious ethic taking hold globally, in contrast to the more conservative and isolationist trends that dominate media reports.
I don’t think I really understood the relationship between religious faith, constructions of race, and the law before reading this book.
Darian-Smith walks the reader through several essential cases from the 16th to the 21st centuries, all grounded in thorough analysis and accessible prose. Reading her chapter on the Dawes Act and the way the law was weaponized against Native communities in the U.S. knocked me on my heels, while her final chapters on the Nuremberg war trials and the challenges of neoliberalism in an age of globalization redefined my understanding of our modern world.
With illustrations throughout and an ability to paint a clear picture of the topic, this is a book I return to regularly.
The book highlights the interconnections between three framing concepts in the development of modern western law: religion, race, and rights. The author challenges the assumption that law is an objective, rational and secular enterprise by showing that the rule of law is historically grounded and linked to the particularities of Christian morality, the forces of capitalism dependent upon exploitation of minorities, and specific conceptions of individualism that surfaced with the Reformation in the sixteenth century, and rapidly developed in the Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing upon landmark legal decisions and historical events, the book emphasizes that justice…
It can be hard to see how religion impacts the world, but this book opened a world of perspectives for me. Written by some of the biggest names in the academic world—and including recorded conversations between them—I found this book to be essential for understanding religion’s interactions with gender, race, power, and the shifting nature of secular societies.
I always like reading the most important modern thinkers, and what I appreciate about this book is it is manageable and digestible, so it serves as a great introduction to topics that fill numerous library shelves. It caps off with a brilliant discussion by Craig Calhoun, who rounds out an eye-opening set of discussions.
The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does--or should--religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while Jurgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "the political" in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience…
Rarely has a book blown my mind like this one. Kahn lays bare the foundations of our modern political structures and how we adapt religious conceptions to imbue our states with a sacred aura. I’m fascinated by sacrifice and its place within our civic life, and this book highlights how nearly every aspect of our sovereign international system relies to some extent upon the concept.
It’s like a conceptual history of our modern nation-states that reveals them as ‘religious’ undertakings. While the other books on the list lay out the historical and sociological aspects of religion and politics, this book showed me how religion IS politics—and politics, religion—in unexpected and important ways.
In this strikingly original work, Paul W. Kahn rethinks the meaning of political theology. In a text innovative in both form and substance, he describes an American political theology as a secular inquiry into ultimate meanings sustaining our faith in the popular sovereign. Kahn works out his view through an engagement with Carl Schmitt's 1922 classic, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. He forces an engagement with Schmitt's four chapters, offering a new version of each that is responsive to the American political imaginary. The result is a contemporary political theology. As in Schmitt's work, sovereignty remains…
This book is another that radically changed my perspective, and I use it routinely to help illustrate how complex the topics of religion and politics are.
What benefited me most is how Hurd challenges the very category of religion and how that category is (mis)applied in several countries. I love how she takes to task the simplistic narratives around religion and shows that they are not only insufficient but downright dangerous.
This book clearly outlines those dangers, their origins, and some noteworthy suggestions for how we can better deal with religion around the world. I find something new in each reread, both in terms of the contexts she analyzes and her approach.
In recent years, North American and European nations have sought to legally remake religion in other countries through an unprecedented array of international initiatives. Policymakers have rallied around the notion that the fostering of religious freedom, interfaith dialogue, religious tolerance, and protections for religious minorities are the keys to combating persecution and discrimination. Beyond Religious Freedom persuasively argues that these initiatives create the very social tensions and divisions they are meant to overcome. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd looks at three critical channels of state-sponsored intervention: international religious freedom advocacy, development assistance and nation building, and international law. She shows how these…
This graphic novel recounting the author’s childhood during the 1979 Revolution in Iran captures complexity in simplicity.
From the first panel, showing a young girl unhappily wearing a hijab, I was hooked, but the insights Satrapi evokes about living in those complicated times held me even more than my attachment to the protagonist. I’ve always found Iran to be a misunderstood country, but the visual exploration of Persepolis left me with a greater appreciation for just how misunderstood and just how diverse the country is.
Fun might not be the right word, but the lightness that she uses to discuss heavy topics makes for an easy read whose impact sticks around well after the last page.
Wise, often funny, sometimes heart-breaking, Persepolis tells the story of Marjane Satrapi's life in Tehran from the ages of six to fourteen, growing up during the Iranian Revolution.
The intelligent and outspoken child of radical Marxists, and the great-grandaughter of Iran's last emperor, Satrapi bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life.
Amidst the tragedy, Marjane's child's eye view adds immediacy and humour, and her story of a childhood at once outrageous and ordinary,…
Noam Chomsky has been praised by the likes of Bono and Hugo Chávez and attacked by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Alan Dershowitz. Groundbreaking linguist and outspoken political dissenter—voted “most important public intellectual in the world today” in a 2005 magazine poll—Chomsky inspires fanatical devotion and fierce vituperation.
In The Chomsky Effect, Chomsky biographer Robert Barsky examines Chomsky's positions on a number of highly charged issues—including Vietnam, Israel, East Timor, and his work in linguistics—that illustrate not only “the Chomsky effect” but also “the Chomsky approach.”
Chomsky, writes Barsky, is an inspiration and a catalyst. Not just an analyst…
The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower
"People are dangerous. If they're able to involve themselves in issues that matter, they may change the distribution of power, to the detriment of those who are rich and privileged."--Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky has been praised by the likes of Bono and Hugo Chávez and attacked by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Alan Dershowitz. Groundbreaking linguist and outspoken political dissenter--voted "most important public intellectual in the world today" in a 2005 magazine poll--Chomsky inspires fanatical devotion and fierce vituperation. In The Chomsky Effect, Chomsky biographer Robert Barsky examines Chomsky's positions on a number of highly charged issues--Chomsky's signature issues,…
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