100 books like Beyond Religious Freedom

Growing up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, Marji is outspoken and brave and one of several strong female characters in this book who challenges stereotypes and kicks ass. I loved following her political, spiritual, and personal growth.

Persepolis is a much-needed history lesson in the form of a comic book. It deals with heavy themes, but not without a generous dose of humor and heart. My students and I often spent several minutes dissecting one panel—and the last panel made some of us weep. 

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.

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.

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.

Like President Biden, whenever I want an eloquent, historically grounded analysis of the liberal American project, I turn to Jon Meacham.

In the midst of an ever-growing culture war between extremists who claim the United States was founded as a Christian Nation and those claiming an impermeable wall of separation between all religion and the state, Meacham offers a calmly argued defense of the much more nuanced American approach to religious freedom.

I love the way he teases out the religious influences that helped shape the thinking of American leaders and how they are melded with the guiding principles of liberty, justice, and respect for individual freedom as set forth in the Declaration of Independence.  

In this book, Pankaj Mishraj describes how the failures of secular modernity led to the rise of revanchist movements seeking to provide those left behind with a common sense of purpose.

I greatly appreciated the international scope of Mishraj’s analysis, with which he reveals how the growth of reactionary, theocratic, and xenophobic populist politics across the globe are manifestations of the same sense of malaise.

He convincingly argues that these tensions are as old as modernity itself. Rather than engaging strictly with the same old historical and sociological sources to make his case, the author refreshingly engages the poets and novelists of the era he describes.

In this absolutely fascinating read, Thomas deftly explodes the myth that the United States brought religious freedom to Japan during the post-World War II occupation. The first part of the book explores pre-war notions of religious freedom in both countries and the second part looks at the various misunderstandings that ensued as the United States sought to impose its conception of religious freedom on Japan. Thomas offers a skilled reading of religious culture in both countries and ably explains the outcomes of U.S. occupation policies.

This is a brilliant textbook. Digging into my studies, I found a philosophy of law, in regards to the respect due to the nature of the human being, within the Bible, and sensing the same philosophy within the U.S. Constitution, I purchased this book. Much like the other books, these authors do a good job, through their presenting and reviewing of various cases, and of other documents, of setting the Constitution in the right light. I am recommending this book because it is a good read for anyone wanting to better understand the context of the Constitution’s ideology. I found this book to be not only educational but personally edifying. 

Much of Ireland’s history involves the struggle for freedom of religion—a subject of real interest to me. 

James Michener reveals England’s mistreatment of Catholics through strict laws and brute enforcement in an era known as the Protestant Ascendancy. This continued in the American colonies. 

When I read about the New World colony of Maryland, I could instantly draw comparisons—the plantation owners very much resembled the lords of English and Irish manor houses; slaves and indentured servants were treated much like the Catholic underclass in the Old World.

I am a historian, and this book opened a new window into the past.

If I were talking about this book over coffee with a friend, I would say this: you cannot understand the ancient Maya without reading it. The Popol Vuh is the written version of an oral, indigenous creation myth more than two thousand years old. There are many English and Spanish translations of the Popol Vuh; but this one is my favorite because it is approachable and precise at the same time. For example, you can choose to ignore the footnotes and their implications. However, if you decide you want to go down the rabbit hole (as I always do), you will not be disappointed. I learn something new every time I pick up this book—it is that good.