New Books in Secularism

By New Books Network

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Category: Religion & Spirituality

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Episodes: 170

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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/secularism

Episode Date
Will Gervais, "Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species" (Prometheus Books, 2024)
Sep 13, 2026
An Honest Death: Life's End and Humanist Funerals with Matthew Engelke
Aug 28, 2026
Steven K. Green, "American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Jul 29, 2026
Steven Nadler, "Spinoza, Atheist" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Jun 02, 2026
Drew M. Dalton, "The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism" (Northwestern UP, 2024)
May 17, 2026
Elliot B. Hanowski, "Towards a Godless Dominion: Unbelief in Interwar Canada" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2023)
Mar 09, 2026
Todd H. Weir and Lieke Wijnia, eds., "The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Feb 23, 2026
Zalman Newfield, "Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey Out of Hasidism" (Temple UP, 2026)
Feb 23, 2026
Charles Alistair McCrary, "Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Feb 09, 2026
J. L. Schellenberg, "What God Would Have Known: How Human Intellectual and Moral Development Undermines Christian Doctrine" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Feb 05, 2026
Thomas Albert Howard, "Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History" (Yale UP, 2025)
Jan 07, 2026
David Newheiser et al., "Art-Making as Spiritual Practice: Rituals of Embodied Understanding" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Dec 27, 2025
Margaret C. Jacob, "The Secular Enlightenment" (Princeton UP, 2019)
Aug 03, 2025
Brook Ziporyn, "Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Jun 16, 2025
Abdul Wohab, "Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence" (Routledge, 2025)
May 22, 2025
"I have not Finished...": Rokahya Diallo on being Black, Muslim, and frequently interrupted (Emilie Diouf, JP)
May 02, 2025
Ting Guo, "Religion, Secularism, and Love As a Political Discourse in Modern China" (Amsterdam UP, 2025)
Feb 24, 2025
Peter J. Bowler, "Evolution for the People: Shaping Popular Ideas from Darwin to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Feb 09, 2025
Amélie Barras, "Faith in Rights: Christian-Inspired NGOs at Work in the United Nations" (Stanford UP, 2024)
Dec 24, 2024
Leslie Beth Ribovich, "Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools" (NYU Press, 2024)
Dec 13, 2024
Sasikumar Harikrishnan, "Social Spaces and the Public Sphere:: A Spatial-history of Modernity in Kerala" (Routledge, 2023)
Nov 20, 2024
A Normative Sociological Approach to Secularism and Multiculturalism
Nov 13, 2024
Peter Harrison, "Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Oct 29, 2024
Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav, "Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood" (India Viking, 2024)
Sep 29, 2024
Jason A. Josephson Storm, "The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
Sep 23, 2024
Neil Van Leeuwen, "Religion As Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity" (Harvard UP, 2023)
Sep 17, 2024
Victoria Smolkin, "A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism" (Princeton UP, 2018)
Aug 18, 2024
Rachel M. Scott, "Recasting Islamic Law: Religion and the Nation State in Egyptian Constitution Making" (Cornell UP, 2021)
Aug 03, 2024
Secularism, the State, and Islam
Jul 10, 2024
Todd H. Weir, "Red Secularism: Socialism and Secularist Culture in Germany 1890 to 1933" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Jun 16, 2024
Nivedita Menon, "Secularism As Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South" (Duke UP, 2024)
Jun 13, 2024
Christopher Cameron, "Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism" (Northwestern UP, 2019)
Apr 29, 2024
Stephen Bales, "Serapis: The Sacred Library and Its Declericalization" (Library Juice Press, 2021)
Oct 12, 2023
Rik Peels, "Life without God: An Outsider's Look at Atheism" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Oct 02, 2023
A Better Way to Buy Books
Sep 12, 2023
The Future of Secularization: A Discussion with Ryan Cragun
Sep 11, 2023
Sharada Sugirtharajah, "Religious and Non-Religious Perspectives on Happiness and Wellbeing" (Routledge, 2022)
Aug 17, 2023
Renny Thomas, "Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment" (Routledge, 2022)
Aug 10, 2023
Michael Muhammad Knight, "Sufi Deleuze: Secretions of Islamic Atheism" (Fordham UP, 2023)
Jun 28, 2023
Anna Della Subin, "Accidental Gods: On Race, Empire, and Men Unwittingly Turned Divine" (Metropolitan Books, 2021)
Jun 23, 2023
J. Barton Scott, "Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Jun 22, 2023
Socialist Cultures and Politics of Secularism and Atheism
Jun 13, 2023
Patrick J. Corbeil, "Empire and Progress in the Victorian Secularist Movement: Imagining a Secular World" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
May 26, 2023
Justine Ellis, "The Politics of Religious Literacy: Education and Emotion in a Secular Age" (Brill, 2022)
May 14, 2023
Elaine H. Ecklund and David R. Johnson, "Varieties of Atheism in Science" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Apr 27, 2023
David Edmonds, "Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Apr 15, 2023
Stephen Bullivant, "Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Feb 26, 2023
David Newheiser, "The Varieties of Atheism: Connecting Religion and Its Critics" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Jan 31, 2023
Vincent Phillip Muñoz, "Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Jan 11, 2023
Secular Salvations: Can Atheists be 'Saved?'
Jan 09, 2023
Joel Robbins, "Theology and the Anthropology of Christian Life" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Jan 03, 2023
Donovan O. Schaefer, "Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin" (Duke UP, 2022)
Jan 02, 2023
David Newheiser, "The Varieties of Atheism: Connecting Religion and Its Critics" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Dec 13, 2022
Teemu Taira, "Atheism in Five Minutes" (Equinox Publishing, 2022)
Dec 03, 2022
Karli Shimizu, "Overseas Shinto Shrines: Religion, Secularity and the Japanese Empire" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Nov 30, 2022
Sushmita Nath, "The Secular Imaginary: Gandhi, Nehru and the Idea(s) of India" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Nov 23, 2022
On Religion, Public Health, and the Media
Nov 17, 2022
Lowell Gustafson, "Religion, Space and Deep Time" (Routledge, 2022)
Nov 08, 2022
Peter Coviello, "Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
Oct 12, 2022
Joseph Blankholm, "The Secular Paradox: On the Religiosity of the Not Religious" (NYU Press, 2022)
Oct 07, 2022
Charles Devellenes, "Positive Atheism: Bayle, Meslier, D'Holbach, Diderot" (Edinburgh UP, 2021)
Sep 23, 2022
Maxwell Kennel, "Postsecular History: Political Theology and the Politics of Time" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
Jul 20, 2022
Robin Dunbar, "How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Jul 07, 2022
Andrew Sneddon, "Representing Magic in Modern Ireland: Belief, History, Culture" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Jun 21, 2022
Thomas Dixon and Adam Shapiro, "Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction" Second Edition. (Oxford UP, 2022)
Jun 16, 2022
Steven K. Green, "Separating Church and State: A History" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Jun 14, 2022
Ray Argyle, "Inventing Secularism: The Radical Life of George Jacob Holyoake" (McFarland, 2021)
May 31, 2022
Simon Critchley, "The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology" (Verso, 2014)
May 05, 2022
Tomer Persico, "In God’s Image: The Making of the Modern World" (Yediot Aharonot, 2021)
Apr 25, 2022
Matt Sheedy, "Owning the Secular: Religious Symbols, Culture Wars, Western Fragility " (Routledge, 2021)
Apr 15, 2022
James C. Ungureanu, "Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019)
Apr 12, 2022
Karl Kitching, "Childhood, Religion and School Injustice" (Cork UP, 2020)
Apr 05, 2022
Elayne Oliphant, "The Privilege of Being Banal: Art, Secularism, and Catholicism in Paris" (UChicago Press, 2021)
Mar 25, 2022
Richard Payne, ed., "Secularizing Buddhism: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Tradition" (Shambhala, 2021)
Feb 10, 2022
85 Secular Buddhism, Part 1: Winton Higgins
Jan 28, 2022
Leigh Eric Schmidt, "The Church of Saint Thomas Paine: A Religious History of American Secularism" (Princeton UP, 2021)
Dec 08, 2021
83 Stephen Batchelor on Secularizing Buddhism
Dec 02, 2021
Rani Jaeger, "Abraham the Hebrew Believer: Secularism and Religion in the Work of Avraham Shlonsky (1900-1973)"
Dec 01, 2021
Willi Braun, "Jesus and Addiction to Origins: Toward an Anthropocentric Study of Religion" (Equinox, 2020)
Oct 22, 2021
Charles C. Camosy, "Losing Our Dignity: How Secularized Medicine is Undermining Fundamental Human Equality" (New City Press, 2021)
Sep 06, 2021
David E Campbell et al., "Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics" (Cambridge UP. 2020)
Aug 18, 2021
Mark Farha, "Lebanon: The Rise and Fall of a Secular State under Siege" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Aug 11, 2021
Robin Derricourt, "Creating God: The Birth and Growth of Major Religions" ( Manchester UP, 2021)
Jul 29, 2021
Joseph P. Laycock, "Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds" (U California Press, 2015)
Jul 26, 2021
James Reeves, "Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century: A Literary History of Atheism" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Jun 28, 2021
Hugh McLeod and Todd Weir, "Defending the Faith: Global Histories of Apologetics and Politics in the Twentieth Century" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Jun 10, 2021
Andrei Znamenski, "Socialism As a Secular Creed" (Lexington Books, 2021)
Jun 03, 2021
Ana Honnacker, "Pragmatic Humanism Revisited: An Essay on Making the World a Home" (Palgrave, 2019)
May 26, 2021
Michelle Chaplin Sanchez, "Calvin and the Resignification of the World: Creation, Incarnation, and the Problem of Political Theology in the 1559 'Institutes'" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
May 21, 2021
Corey Anton, "How Non-Being Haunts Being: On Possibilities, Morality, and Death Acceptance" (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2020)
May 04, 2021
Melvin Konner, "Believers: Faith in Human Nature" (Norton, 2019)
Apr 26, 2021
Joseph P. Laycock, "Speak of the Devil: How the Satanic Temple Is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Apr 20, 2021
Phil Zuckerman, "Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment" (New York UP, 2020)
Mar 25, 2021
Peter E. Gordon, "Migrants in the Profane: Critical Theory and the Question of Secularization" (Yale UP, 2020)
Jan 26, 2021
J. A. Gosetti-Ferencei, "On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Dec 29, 2020
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, "Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living" (U Notre Dame Press, 2020)
Dec 28, 2020
Glenn Sauer, "Points of Contact: Science, Religion, and the Search for Truth" (Orbis Books, 2020)
Dec 02, 2020
Tabassum Fahim Ruby, "Muslim Women's Rights: Contesting Liberal-Secular Sensibilities in Canada" (Routledge, 2019)
Nov 27, 2020
David Newheiser, "Hope in a Secular Age: Deconstruction, Negative Theology and the Future of Faith" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Nov 25, 2020
Danielle Haque, “Interrogating Secularism: Race and Religion in Arab Transnational Art and Literature” (Syracuse UP, 2019)
Oct 30, 2020
Philip Jenkins, "Fertility and Faith: The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions" (Baylor UP, 2020)
Oct 27, 2020
David Haig, "From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves, and the Meanings of Life" (MIT Press, 2020)
Sep 10, 2020
T. Campolo and B. Campolo, "Why I Left, Why I Stayed" (HarperOne, 2017)
Aug 19, 2020
Schneur Zalman Newfield, "Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism" (Temple UP, 2020)
Jul 22, 2020
Alec Ryrie, "Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt" (Harvard UP, 2019)
Jun 22, 2020
Nathan G. Alexander, "Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 1850–1914" (NYU Press, 2019)
Jun 17, 2020
Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020)
Jun 02, 2020
Joel Thiessen and Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, "None of the Above: Nonreligious Identity in the US and Canada" (NYU Press, 2020)
May 27, 2020
John D. Caputo, "Hoping Against Hope" (Fortress Press, 2015)
May 15, 2020
Adrian Johnston, "Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism: The Outcome of Contemporary French Philosophy " (Northwestern UP, 2013)
May 11, 2020
Ayala Fader, "Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age" (Princeton UP, 2020)
May 05, 2020
Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019)
Apr 28, 2020
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
Mar 30, 2020
Steven D. Smith, "Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac" (Eerdmans, 2018)
Mar 05, 2020
Olivier Roy, "Is Europe Christian?" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Mar 03, 2020
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
Feb 25, 2020
Jay Wexler, "Our Non-Christian Nation" (Redwood Press, 2019)
Feb 11, 2020
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
Jan 30, 2020
Christopher Cameron, "Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism" (Northwestern UP, 2019)
Jan 13, 2020
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)
Dec 03, 2019
Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing
Nov 03, 2019
J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
Oct 24, 2019
Yael Almog, "Secularism and Hermeneutics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
Oct 16, 2019
Candy Gunther Brown, "Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion?" (UNC Press, 2019)
Sep 26, 2019
Ronald E. Purser, "McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality" (Repeater Books, 2019)
Sep 18, 2019
E. H. Ecklund and D. R. Johnson, "Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think of Religion" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Sep 05, 2019
Diana Pasulka, "American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Jul 08, 2019
Joan Wallach Scott, "Sex and Secularism" (Princeton UP, 2017)
Jul 02, 2019
Michael Ruse, "A Meaning to Life" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Jun 10, 2019
Brad Stoddard and Craig Martin, “Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés” (Bloomsbury, 2017)
Apr 03, 2019
Jules Evans, "The Art of Losing Control: A Philosopher's Search for Ecstatic Experience" (Canongate Books, 2017)
Mar 28, 2019
Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing
Mar 19, 2019
Gregory Dawes, "Galileo and the Conflict between Religion and Science" (Routledge, 2016)
Mar 18, 2019
Michael Ruse, "The Problem of War: Darwinism, Christianity, and Their Battle to Understand Human Conflict" (Oxford UP, 2018)
Mar 05, 2019
Martin Demant Frederiksen, "An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular" (Zero Books, 2018)
Feb 28, 2019
Alexandre Kojève, "Atheism," trans by Jeff Love (Columbia UP, 2018)
Feb 25, 2019
Elliott Sober, "The Design Argument" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
Jan 28, 2019
Victoria Smolkin, "A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism" (Princeton UP, 2018)
Dec 11, 2018
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017)
Dec 06, 2018
David P. Barash, “Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are” (Oxford UP, 2018)
Nov 13, 2018
Stephen Batchelor, “Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World” (Yale UP, 2017)
Oct 22, 2018
Larry Shapiro, “The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural Is Unjustified” (Columbia UP, 2016)
Sep 26, 2018
Leigh Eric Schmidt, “Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in A Godly Nation” (Princeton UP, 2016)
Sep 07, 2018
Steven and Ben Nadler, “Heretics!: The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy” (Princeton UP, 2017)
Jul 23, 2018
Elizabeth M. Sanders, “Genres of Doubt: Science Fiction, Fantasy and the Crisis of Victorian Faith” (McFarland, 2017)
Jul 12, 2018
Duncan Pritchard, “Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing” (Princeton UP, 2015)
Jun 18, 2018
Joseph O. Baker and Buster G. Smith, “American Secularism: Cultural Contours of Nonreligious Belief” (NYU Press, 2015)
May 23, 2018
Bonnie Anderson, “The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer” (Oxford UP, 2017)
Mar 26, 2018
Michael Shermer, “Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia” (Henry Holt, 2018)
Feb 20, 2018
Michael Ruse, “On Purpose” (Princeton UP, 2017)
Feb 12, 2018
Dan Barker, “God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction” (Sterling, 2016)
Dec 30, 2017
Abby Hafer, “The Not-So-Intelligent Designer: Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not” (Cascade Books, 2015)
Nov 25, 2017
Andrew Copson, “Secularism: Politics, Religion, and Freedom” (Oxford UP, 2017)
Nov 03, 2017
Raymond D. Bradley, “God’s Gravediggers: Why No Deity Exists” (Ockham Publishing, 2016)
Oct 12, 2017
Christopher R. Cotter and David G. Robertson, eds., “After World Religions: Reconstructing Religious Studies” (Routledge, 2016)
Sep 25, 2017
Ronald A. Lindsay, “The Necessity of Secularism: Why God Can’t Tell Us What to Do” (Pitchstone Publishing, 2014)
Jun 23, 2017
Jon Mills, “Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality” (Routledge, 2016)
May 21, 2017
Greta Christina, “Coming out Atheist: How to do it, How to Help Each Other, and Why” (Pitchstone Publishing, 2014)
Apr 23, 2014
James A. Lindsay, “Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly” (Onus Books, 2013)
Jan 05, 2014
Raphael Lataster, “There was no Jesus, There is no God” (Amazon Digital Services, 2013)
Dec 06, 2013
Aaron Adair, “The Star of Bethlehem: A Skeptical View” (Onus Books, 2013)
Oct 27, 2013
John W. Loftus, “The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True” (Prometheus Books, 2013)
Aug 26, 2013
Sikivu Hutchinson, “Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels” (Infidel Books, 2013)
Aug 12, 2013
David Niose, “Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
May 20, 2013
Victor Stenger, “God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion” (Prometheus, 2012)
May 07, 2013
Adam Lee, “Daylight Atheism” (Think Big, 2012)
Dec 19, 2012
Mary Johnson, “An Unquenchable Thirst: Following Mother Teresa in Search of Love, Service and an Authentic Life” (Spiegel & Grau, 2011)
Nov 04, 2012
Alison Miers, “Charlinder’s Walk” (CreateSpace, 2011)
Jul 31, 2012
Katherine Stewart, “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children” (PublicAffairs, 2012)
Jul 11, 2012
Greta Christina, “Why Are you Atheists so Angry?: 99 Things that Piss off the Godless” (Dirty Heathen, 2012)
Jun 11, 2012