Religion Is Not Done with You

October 1, 2024
Keeping It 101 podcast hosts Goodwin and Morgenstein Fuerst offer a straightforward, lighthearted introduction to the many ways in which religion--particularly white European Christianity--shapes the world around us. Even if we believe that we're "done with religion," Religion Is Not Done with You reminds us that we're still interfacing with religious traditions in a myriad of ways. As professors of religion and religious history, the authors have a deep understanding of the research that underlies their subjects, but they're careful not to slip into academic jargon, even when exploring complex issues. Instead, they use accessible prose and simple language to recount the religious thought underlying colonialism and white supremacy; they also share lists for further reading (and podcast listening) at the end of every chapter for readers who want to dive deeper into the issues explored in that section. Drawing on everyday examples like airport travel, baseball, and world maps, Religion Is Not Done with You shines a light on the total permeation of religion into every aspect of our lives.

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November 1, 2024
A critical examination of the pervasive influence of religion in daily life. Though both Goodwin and Morgenstein Fuerst are scholars of religion, they denounce "bullshit takes on religion...that insist religion is always and everywhere good." At the same time, they dispute the view that religion is retrograde and irrational: there's a place for it, they insist, if perhaps not so all-encroaching as it is in American society. On that note, they observe, for instance, that Christianity effectively dictates the calendar, not just because it's a Christian invention, courtesy of Pope Gregory XIII, but also because it deprecates holidays that are not Christian in nature. "Even working in liberal Massachusetts is not a guarantee your employer will be cool with you calling out of work as witchy," they write of Goodwin's Wiccan views. The authors go further still in their critique of religion-fueled patriarchy: if you privilege white male Christian worldviews over any other, they hold, you get Jan. 6, 2021. Religion shapes health care, as arguments over abortion highlight, and it shapes politics and policing. Noting that "nominally secular systems like laws and courts codify white Christian nationalism" even in the face of the Constitution's establishment clause, they rightly observe too that no one is really free to opt out of the system: A Sikh with a turban cannot opt out of being looked at with fear and suspicion at the airport any more than someone named Ahmed can remove himself from candidacy for the no-fly list even were he to move to South Dakota and convert to Lutheranism. In all these ways, then, religion truly is not done with us, no matter how much we might want to be done with it. A provocative, fresh way to look at the reach of religious belief in a supposedly secular society.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 2, 2024
Religion shapes virtually all “systems and structures” underpinning society, from the courts to foodways to medical rights, contend Keeping It 101 podcasters Goodwin (Abusing Religion) and Fuerst (Words of Experience) in this stimulating treatise. Unpacking “how certain ways of being in the world came to be called ‘religious,’” they trace how constellations of “ideologies, rituals, customs, cultures, languages, even ethnicities and races” solidified into discrete “religions” in the early modern period, as imperialist forces spread Christianity to “uncivilized” nations and began to more clearly classify what counted as faith to consolidate influence, reach, and resources. The authors then explore how white Christianity helps to enshrine America’s “imperial agenda” (one can have “absolutely zero interest in religion and still not have sovereignty over your own body because of white Christian nationalist sexual ethics”) and discriminatory laws (they point to “decades of religio-racist policies” targeting Muslim Americans at airports, later “justified” by 9/11). Astutely drawing out religion’s intimate links to power without painting it as inherently harmful—it’s also been used by adherents to “resist and survive”—the authors perceptively reveal the way morals and norms gain credence when codified as faith, influencing even the most private choices. This is sure to spark debate.