Reading Religion is an open book review website published by the American Academy of Religion. The site provides up-to-date coverage of scholarly publishing in religious studies, reviewed by scholars with special interest and/or expertise in the relevant subfields. Reviews aim to be concise, comprehensive, and timely. Below, the editors of Reading Religion have selected some notable reviews from the site, published last year. If you’re interested in reviewing books for Reading Religion, take a look at the guidelines. If there are any books missing from the Reading Religion site that you think should be there, email [email protected].
By Larry Eugene Rivers
Excerpt: “Rivers’ impeccably written biography is an impressive undertaking that required years of archival digging and a careful examination . . . [this book] models the practice of vivifying overlooked historical figures on the page, making formative contributions to the fields of Baptist denominational history and African American religious history.” - Mélena Laudig
By Tony Keddie
Excerpt: “Republican Jesus is a book with an attitude. . . . Keddie’s book makes an accessible, well-written, witty, and utterly convincing case for scholarship on the (often dangerous) politics of biblical citation in the US.” - Jay Twomey
By Sarah Justina Eyerly
Excerpt: “This is a remarkable book that is a testimony to the possibilities of multimedia and multimodal methodologies for historical research. It is also richly interdisciplinary, and will be of value to historians of music, religion, and American culture.” - Martin V. Clarke
By Chanequa Walker-Barnes
Excerpt: “Walker-Barnes' writing, research, and conclusions are impeccable and powerful. Rather than bifurcating human reality and denying the connectedness between religions and politics, she engages all aspects of life in the United States. . . . [This book] is a must-read for anyone committed to pastoral care, to racial reconciliation, to the practice of justice, to exposing gendered racism, and to working for a beloved community.” – Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan
By Ashon T. Crawley
Excerpt: “You give in. You’re caught up. You’re invested. You know it now: the entire book—everything, even the vulnerable discussions of loneliness—all of it is in service of cultivating joy and intimacy and noncoercive relation.” - Biko Gray
By Katrin A. Jomaa
Excerpt: “At its core, Jomaa’s scholarship innovatively re-imagines what it means to be a member of the ummah in the contemporary, ultimately offering a new global paradigm for performing community in in the twenty-first century.” - Marcus Timothy Haworth
By Niloofar Haeri
Excerpt: “. . . [A] brilliant and meticulous volume, Niloofar Haeri offers both specialists and a more general audience a view into the experiences of Shi’a Muslim women in Iran who negotiate their complex relationships with God using prayer, poetry, and companionship in a nuanced fashion.” - Candace Mixon
By Charlotte Walker-Said
Excerpt: “[The] stories—often of married couples struggling to meet all the pressures upon their lives—are what make the book hold together; it’s what makes this study so moving.” - Paul Glen Grant
By Leah DeVun
Excerpt: “This book is, to put it simply, a revelation. In our current moment, when the rights of those of us who do not fit societal bodily, gender, and sexual norms are dwindling, this book feels frighteningly relevant . . .” - Jeannie Sellick
By Janet R. Jakobsen
Excerpt: “Feminist and queer scholarship in religious studies will undoubtedly benefit immensely from Jakobsen’s kaleidoscopic approach to what sex and religion have to contribute to the project of imagining and materializing alternative worlds.” – Wendy Mallette
By Simon Young
Excerpt: “[This book] is well written, with light touches of humor that make this a compelling and enjoyable read. Given both this and the quality of the research underlying it, the book represents a stellar study of British popular belief that should be seen as an exemplar for future works on similar topics.” - Ethan Doyle White
By Daniel P. Horan
Excerpt: [Horan’s] attempt to offer an alternative mode of theological reflection is commendable for more than just its synthesis of diverse interlocutors and inclusive perspective, however—it pushes the discipline not to make the human person a ‘theological abstraction’ but instead to reflect actual human experience, as this study itself exemplifies.” - Dante J. Clementi