In 2004, the traditionally Polish-Catholic community of Hamtramck Michigan became the site of a debate over the Muslim call to prayer.  Members of…

Religious ritual has been a staple of anthropological study. In his latest monograph, Ritual Textuality: Pattern and Motion in Performance (Oxford University Press 2014), cultural…

[Cross-posted from New Books in Christian Studies] I love picking up a historical monograph in which the footnotes count for a quarter or more of…

Very often evaluative questions about cultural phenomena are avoided for more descriptive or explanatory goals when approaching religions. Traditionally, this set of concerns…

Where can the the boundaries of science, philosophy, and religion be drawn? Questioning the nature of the universe is an excellent place to…

What gets to count as Islam? In the current political climate this question is being repeated in a variety of contexts. The tapestry…

[Cross-posted from New Books in Islamic Studies] Many people have described Muslims modernities as being fundamentally disrupted by individual and civilizational encounters with western…

[Cross-posted from New Books in Global Conflict] Michael Cook, a widely-respected historian and scholar of Islam begins his book with a question that everyone seems…

[Cross-posted from New Books in Christian Studies] Often when we think of missions to Native Americans or people of African descent, we think of white…

[Cross-posted from New Books in Intellectual History] Matthew Avery Sutton is the author of three books:  Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (2007), Jerry Falwell…