Conversations About Religion

This compendium includes the following 5 complete books featuring David J. Goldberg, Nile Green, David Hollinger, Eleanor Nesbitt and Mir Rubin providing fully accessible insights into cutting-edge academic research while revealing the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research.

I. Rabbi With A Cause: Israel and Identity - A conversation with David J. Goldberg (1939-2019), former Senior Rabbi Emeritus of London's Liberal Jewish Synagogue, author and columnist. This conversation is based on Goldberg's book, This Is Not The Way: Jews, Judaism and Israel, which boldly explores a number of themes that interweave religion, politics, culture and identity in a way that is relevant to all of us, regardless of our cultural background or religious orientation.

II. Religious Entrepreneurs? - A conversation with Nile Green who holds the Ibn Khaldn Endowed Chair in World History at UCLA. Nile Green is an expert on Islamic history and religion in the world. He has traveled extensively throughout Asia to get a deep sense of the reality of situations on the ground. This conversation examines how the Christian missionary movement affected the development of Islam in the 19th and 20th centuries and offers a bold new paradigm for understanding the expansion of Islam in the modern world through the model of religious economy.

III. Battling Protestants - A conversation with David Hollinger, Preston Hotchkis Professor of History Emeritus, UC Berkeley. This conversation explores the unique role that different strands of religion have played in 20th-century American culture and examines intriguing aspects of the distinction between Ecumenical and Evangelical Protestantism, the often overlooked role of Ecumenical Protestantism in the history of the USA, secularization theory, the development of the two-party system, the role of missionaries, and more.

IV. Exploring the Sikh Tradition - A conversation with Eleanor Nesbitt, Professor Emeritus of Education Studies, University of Warwick. Eleanor Nesbitt is an expert on Hindu and Sikh culture and her interdisciplinary approach straddles religious studies, educational theory, ethnography and poetry. After inspiring insights about the time Nesbitt spent in India and her academic path, this conversation provides a detailed exploration of the Sikh tradition: the history, religious tenets, other people's misconceptions about it and more.

V. Religion and Culture: A Historian's Tale - A conversation with Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History, QMUL. After behind-the-scenes insights into Miri Rubin's unusual career path which provided her with a "cultural anthropologist" persuasion to the subject of medieval Christianity, Rubin shares scholarly insights directly related to several of her books, including The Life and Passion of William of Norwich; Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary; Emotion and Devotion: The Meaning of Mary in Medieval Religious Cultures.