Religion Reading List

My Episcopalian aunt (she is married to my wife's step-uncle) works in her church's Sunday school and is interested in improving her religious education so she asked me for a suggested reading list. Here are my recommendations. My criteria were books that are intellectually sophisticated that avoided the obvious polemics from either an orthodox or anti-religious positions. I also made a point of including books dealing with Church attitudes towards Jews and women. I would be curious as to what other suggestions blog readers would make. 


Bible:

Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book by Timothy Beal.

Prophets by Abraham Heschel.  

The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs. 

In God's Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible by Michael Walzer. 


Judaism:

Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism by Sarah Bunin Benor. 

American Judaism: A History by Jonathan Sarna. 

The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles Reappraised by Marc B. Shapiro. 

This is My God by Herman Wouk. 


Jewish and Christian Relations:

Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism by Daniel Boyarin 

Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism, 1500-1750 by Elisheva Carlebach.

Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages by Mark Cohen. 

Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Jewish Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times by Jacob Katz.

Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages by Hyam Maccoby.  

Early Christianity:

Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium by Bart D. Ehrman. 

When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger. 


Medieval Christianity:

Holy Feast and Holy Fast: the Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women by Caroline Walker Bynum. 

The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements by Norman Cohn.  

Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages by Dyan Elliott.

Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 by R. I. Moore. 


Modernity:

Theological Origins of Modernity by Michael Allen Gillespie. 

God is Back How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. 

Secular Age by Charles Taylor.

United States:

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat. 

Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction by Kathryn Gin Lum.

Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll.  

Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - And Doesn't by Stephen Prothero.

American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell. 

The Unlikely Disciple: a Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University by Kevin Roose. 

Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back by Frank Schaeffer.


Psychology:

Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt.

Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion by Rodney Stark and Roger Finke. 

The Settler Movement, the Temple Mount and Leon Festinger

Yesterday Dr. Mordechai Inbari of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke spoke at Ohio State about the attitude of religious Zionists to the Temple Mount. This lecture caught my attention for two reasons. First, it was about religious apocalypticism and politics, my dissertation topic even if Dr. Inbari deals with modern movements while I focus on medieval and early modern ones. Second, he discussed Leon Festinger and his model of religious cognitive dissonance. (See "Leon Festinger's UFO Group and the Spreading of Whedon's Gospel.") Here are my notes for the lecture. As always all mistakes are mine.



The Temple Mount is the holiest site to Judaism and the third holiest site for Islam. For Judaism, the Temple Mount is the house of God. One can think of it as a heart with many layers. The deeper you go the holier it gets. Muslims also see this site as holy based on a story in the hadith where Mohammad journeys at night to a place called Al-Aqsa. Thus the Temple Mount became a major center of conflict in the Israeli-Arab war.

As a scholar, Dr. Inbari is interested in the notion of “when prophecy fails.” For this, you have to start with Leon Festinger’s book. This book was based on the study of a group of people who believed that aliens would come and take them away. As these expectations failed a certain dynamic developed within the group. Festinger called this process “cognitive dissonance. Rather than abandon their beliefs as its claims failed, members of the group became more convinced as to the truth of the claims and made a greater effort to proselytize outsiders. From studying the religious Zionists and the settler movement one can make a case for modifying Festinger's claims. Instead of trying to bring in more believers in response to failed messianic expectations, we see an intensifying of messianic zeal in order to prevent a complete collapse.

From the beginning of Zionism as a major political power within Judaism, Orthodoxy had a mixed relationship with it. Traditional Jews see themselves in exile both physically and spiritually ever since the destruction of the Second Temple. Since God destroyed his house only God can restore it. Therefore Zionism was looked at with suspicion. An example of this was the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe who argued that Zionism was forcing the end and therefore must stop short of perfection.

Other voices were Rav Abraham Kook, a traditional European rabbi who joined the Zionist movement. According to Rav Kook, one should not judge Zionists based on their actions but on their intentions and even their hidden intentions. God started a human process with Zionism even if the Zionists seem to have rejected rabbinic authority. Once secular Zionists return to their faith the movement will move to a second phase with the restoration of the monarchy and the Temple. Rav Kook even started a yeshiva in 1921 to prepare students for Temple service. This did not mean that Rav Kook and his students were going on the Temple Mount. That would still require a red heifer. Also, it is not clear where the Temple was located.

Rav Kook was preparing for the Messiah, but he was not trying to force issues. The Six Day War changed the status quo in that for the first time in two thousand years Jews controlled the Temple Mount. Gen. Moshe Dayan decided to maintain Muslim authority. Non-Muslims can go as tourists, but only Muslims can pray, thus making the Temple Mount possibly the only place in the world in which Jews are not allowed to pray.

1973 saw the formation of Gush Emunim under the leadership of the son of Rav Kook, Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook (1891-1982). He believed that living in post-1967 meant that this was no longer preparing for redemption but now in the actual beginning of the redemption. That being said, the Chief rabbinate declared that one could not go on the Temple Mount until the Temple was built. Obviously, if Jews cannot go onto the Temple Mount until there is a Temple they cannot build one to allow them to go on in the first place. Rabbi Goren, the chief army chaplain, dissented; he went on the Temple Mount and ordered the engineering corps to map the Temple Mount.

The Oslo Accords brought a major crisis to religious Zionism. How do you explain Israeli withdrawal? If Jews controlling more land in Israel brings us closer to redemption does the fact that they now control less mean that we are further away from redemption? This is where cognitive dissonance comes in. Immediately after the signing of Oslo, there was a major shift among the settlers. You have Rabbi Dov Lior saying that the peace process was a punishment from God from delaying the building of the Temple. The conclusion, therefore, was that Jews should go on the Temple Mount. The Council of Yesha rabbis began to encourage Jews to go on the Temple Mount in 1996. The logic being that since Jews do not go on the site the Israeli government became convinced that it could be given away. Thus going on the Temple Mount, even if it violates Jewish law, is permitted due to the emergency nature of the situation.

From November 2003 – October 2004 70,000 Jews visited the mount. The site had been closed with the starting of the Second Intifada. Thus we see a major shift within religious Zionists with them doing something that had before been seen as a major prohibition. This is not religion influencing politics but politics influencing religion. This also serves as a case study of how flexible religion can be.

Muslim doctrine has also been evolving with an acceptance of a Hamas doctrine. Since Mohammad left Mecca on his journey to Jerusalem these two cities are two sides of the same coin; Jerusalem and Mecca are thus the same place and non-Muslims should be forbidden to enter at all.

Leon Festinger's UFO Group and the Spreading of Whedon's Gospel

Leon Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails is the classic study on cognitive dissonance and its role in religious and apocalyptic thinking. The book is built around the study of a UFO group. The leader of the group claimed to be receiving revelations from aliens. According to these aliens, the Earth would soon be struck with a series of cataclysmic disasters. The aliens promised, though, that, before these cataclysms occurred, they would send a ship to save the members of the group, the true believers. Festinger had his students infiltrate the group to study the people involved. In particular, he was interested in seeing how these people would react as the predictions made by the group’s leadership failed to come to pass; which people would maintain their faith? What Festinger found was that, while those who were only marginally attached to the group abandoned their beliefs as they were refuted by the reality on the ground, the inner circle, those who had actually made serious sacrifices because of their beliefs, not only maintained their faith but became even more convinced in their beliefs.

Another thing that Festinger observed was that, while initially, the group had no interest in spreading their message to the outside world, once the final date for the group to be taken up in the alien spaceship had come and gone the remaining believers suddenly became very interested in spreading their message. While before they would not talk to reporters, now they eagerly sought the media to tell people that, while it might seem that they had been proven wrong by events, in truth what had happened was that earth had been given a second chance due, in large part to the group’s intercession with the aliens.

Based on his study, Festinger drew up a list of conditions for a person to believe in something despite it being refuted by empirical reality. This would have to be a belief built around the prediction of a clear-cut event in time, such a date upon which the alien spacecraft would appear. The person needed to have made real-life changes and sacrifices based on this belief such as losing a job. When the big event fails to happen, the person needs to be surrounded by a group of like-minded believers. The larger the group of likeminded believers the easier it is to maintain belief. This would explain the need to gain proselytes after the fact. If lots of people become believers after the fact then it would demonstrate that the belief really was true.

Festinger connected the actions of his UFO group to two groups in history, the original followers of Jesus and the Sabbatian movement. In theory, Jesus getting crucified should have been the end of Christianity. On the contrary, though, Jesus’ crucifixion inspired his apostles to preach the message to the entire world and created the world’s largest religion. Similarly, the conversion of Sabbatai Sevi to Islam should have been the end of the Sabbatian movement. Chased underground by the Jewish establishment, the Sabbatians continued in their belief, convinced that their messiah’s apostasy was a necessary act in the unfolding drama of redemption. Elisheva Carlebach, in fact, uses Festinger in her course on Sabbatai Sevi to explain why the movement failed to die even when its messiah converted to Islam.

I would connect Festinger’s theory of proselytizing to Joss Whedon’s Firefly and the dedication of its followers, known as Browncoats. The television show Firefly lasted a grand total of eleven episodes (fourteen were actually made) before Fox canceled it. Rather than take this as a defeat, Browncoats made it their mission to spread Firefly to whomever they could. Aided by the internet and DVDs they managed to make Firefly a major cultural phenomenon. They even succeeded in getting a Firefly movie made, though, like the television show, it failed to be a financial success. Earlier this month, cooped up in a hotel in Chicago for several days with my cousins, I brought along my Firefly DVDs and did my best to recruit new followers. Why would I be so loyal to this show, particularly as it was a failure? It is precisely because it failed. It is galling to watch a show as good as Firefly as it builds up its fantastic storyline only for it to end suddenly. It is like reading a good book only to find out that half of the book is missing and the book is out of print so you can never get a hold of another copy. One cannot just stand by and do nothing, one must act. The only thing that one can do is to spread the message wherever one can. The point is not even to bring Firefly back, highly unlikely at this point, but simply to show that Joss Whedon did not make a mistake. In decades to come when Firefly is listed as one of the greatest shows of the early twenty-first century no one is going to doubt Whedon’s vision.

On a side note, Firefly is now available to watch, legally, on Hulu. So now there is no excuse for anyone who claims to be a fan of science-fiction or to having a sense of humor not to have seen this show.