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Nathan McGovern, "Seeing Through Religion: An Introduction to the Study of Religion and Religions" (Routledge, 2025)
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- [00:00]
Marshall Poe
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- [01:59]
Shataj Jain
Hello and welcome to another episode of New Books Network Channel New Books in South Asian Studies. I am your host, Shataj Jain, a PhD student at the University of Oxford. And for this episode we have with us Dr. Nathan McGovern, who will be talking about his 2025 book, Seeing Through Religion, published by Rutledge. Thank you very much, Dr. McGovern, for inviting, accepting my invite and being here on New Books Network. If you can please introduce yourself to the audience.
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Dr. Nathan McGovern
Sure. Well, thank you for inviting me. I always appreciate being on this podcast. My name is Nathan McGovern. I'm a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater. And yeah, I received my PhD in religious studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. And my research is on early Indian religion and also Thai religion. So I've published a couple of books. One is the Snake and the Mongoose, which is about early Indian religion, religion, and more recently, Holy Things, which is about Thai. Thai, Buddhism.
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Shataj Jain
Sure. Thank you very much, Dr. McGowan. And let us cast. Let us start a discussion now. So before we actually go into the contents of your book, which I found very interesting, I would like to know from you that how did this idea of writing a book on religion studies for the students germinate? What kind of, what kind of research gaps you found while teaching these survey courses that led you to write this book?
- [03:29]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Sure. I mean, well, there are two ways to answer that question, and I think they're both relevant from the pedagogical standpoint. You know, I think you go through grad school if you're studying religion and, you know, the state of the field there is at, you know, a particular point, um, and. And then you get into, you know, the job market and, you know, all the jobs and everything, and, and you realize, like, the expectations there are, are often determined by curricular forces and just sort of inertia from an earlier time. And so there's a lot of survey classes that, that you're expected to teach. You know, typically things like Intro to World Religions, or in my case, I don't teach Intro to World Religions. We don't offer that at my school. But because they split it into Intro to Western Religions and Intro to Asian Religions. So I teach Intro to Asian Religions, but frankly, Intro to Asian Religions is almost the same as Intro to World Religions. It's like Intro to World Religions minus a couple. And mainly like, you know, I mean, the way I teach it, it's basically minus Christianity and Judaism. And so the problem you're faced with then is that, like, how are you going to teach these classes? Because you, you know, in grad school, you're presented with all these, like, you know, cutting edge sort of like, approaches and everything. And the very idea of world religions is really, really problematic. But on top of that, the, the survey classes is. Is based on kind of an older pedagogical model where you're trying to cover things like, okay, there are these facts, and I want to cover them and make sure the students, like, you know, download that from my brain or whatever. And. And so it's like, what are you supposed to do with this without it just becoming. I think Jay Z. Smith said one damn thing after another. So I had, in my own teaching, been looking for ways. To teach that class, in my case, Intro to Asian Religions, in a way that was not stultifyingly boring or just methodologically dumb. And. And so I had come up with an approach, and I originally, actually, I did not plan on writing a textbook because I didn't actually use a textbook in the class. What I planned to do was to write a popular book, kind of like Huston Smith's the World. It was sort of the models being like, Huston Smith's the World Religions and Stephen Prothero's God is Not One. And. And I quickly found. So I actually wrote it stupidly, not realizing that. That it was not marketable. And. And then I, you know, tried to. Tried to find, you know, a publisher and quickly realized that trade publications, first of all, you can't talk to editors. You have to. You have to get an agent. I couldn't figure out how to get an agent. And. And finally, my. My editor at Oxford told me, like, you know, I had a conversation with him, was like, why is this so impossible? And he's like, well, the. The. The reality is that this is not a marketable book as a positive book. And the reason is that everybody thinks that they know what religion is. Nobody's gonna buy a book about what is religion because they think they know what it is. They don't, but they think they do, so they'll never buy the book. Like, books on, like, specific religions can work, you know, but not like religion in general. And I. And I was like, well, what about Hudson Smith and Stephen Prothero? And he's like, well, those are special case. And he had reasons why, like, Stephen Prothero, I guess, had gotten famous with another book before that and so forth. So he's like, yeah, this will not work, but you could do textbook. And I was like, oh, okay. And so I modified it into a textbook. I ended up going with Rutledge to publish, but that was the route. And basically I had this thing, and then I wanted to publish it, and this was the route that I ended up taking.
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Shataj Jain
Right, that's interesting. And also it tells us about how challenging it is to teach a survey course on various traditions because that must be unique experience. One thing which I immediately got interested was the title of your book, Seeing True Religion. And you mentioned that you want to shift the approach to study religion from seeing religion, religions as an object to seeing them as lenses through which we see the world. So what is this change in approach and how does it differ from the existing view of seeing at religions as objects?
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Dr. Nathan McGovern
Right, so I don't, I mean, I don't think that, I mean the particular metaphor I've devised is maybe somewhat unique, but I don't think like the basic approach is, is, is particularly new to religious studies, but it's going to be new to students and really, I mean it would be to a broader public if, if this had been a popular book. You know, I just think that there's this, there's this, you know, tendency to assume like when we use a word for something that, like that, that's a thing out there in the world. Like, like we have the world, the word religion, we call certain things religions. So therefore religion must be some sort of objective reality. Like, you know, that. But, but, you know, as many scholars have, have have shown, you know, in the past two, three decades, religion is not a universal human category at all. It's, it's a category that, I mean the word comes from Latin. It has a certain genealogy in Western discourse. The way that we use the word religion today is not, is relatively new actually. Like the idea that there are these things that we call religions. You know, that's really a 19th century invention, like as Masuzawa has shown. And so, and then that category was universalized during the colonial period. You know, under colonialism, basically all languages started adopting certain words, you know, from, you know, Western vocabulary. And one of those words was religion. And, and, and it did so often in like really idiosyncratic ways. Like, I mean, across southern Asia, usually the prestige language you use to create neologisms is Sanskrit. And, and so in, in, you know, in India, you know, most, I think all but most languages use the word dharma to mean religion. That's not used in other countries. Like in Sri Lanka they use the word agama. Same in Malaysia and I think Indonesia in Thailand and Laos and I believe Cambodia, they use the word shasana for religion. In Burma they use the word bhasha. Interestingly, even though I hear that I think language. But yeah, so lots of different words ended up getting appropriated across southern Asia from Sanskrit to translate religion. So I mean that just shows you that there's a certain arbitrary nature to this, that this is not a native category in most human languages and most human cultures throughout most of human history. That there's a, you know, that this is a Western category, and because it's a Western category, that it's tied up with Christianity and that, that. And this is where the metaphor comes in and why, you know. Well, I can show you. I don't think this is on the podcast, but like on the COVID you know, these red tinted glasses that. The reason that is that the metaphor is that, that, you know, just like when you have rented tinted glasses, everything looks like a different shade of red. So the claim is, when we look at the world through the category religion, like, all the things that we look at and call religions end up looking like different shades of Christianity. So, so the way my class is set up and the way the book is set up is that every chapter that introduces another religion or something about some theme about religions is set up about, okay, here's the popular perception and here's the reality and how they differ. And then in the end, what you find out is that those popular perceptions, they're not random. They're like that red tinting. They're all influenced by certain Christian assumptions, and in particular, Protestant Christian assumptions that color literally tint the way in which we see that religion. And then I sort of add another aspect to this metaphor, which is to say that that image is refracted in one way or the other. I just got reading glasses, like, the other day. I've had contacts for distance for a long time, but now I'm having trouble with seeing close up. And the diopters are the opposite for distance. It's a negative diopter, it's a positive diopter reading. And so, like, that refraction, I say, is like the type of Orientalism that's taking place. So Orientalism can either be overtly negative or it can be exotifying, superficially positive. So, for example, Islamophobia would be an example of overtly negative Orientalism. And the idea that Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion, this Buddhist modernist sort of image of Buddhism is. Is. Is exotifying and overtly, superficially positive, but still Orientalist. So. So the point is, like, you imagine, like, there's the reality out there, right? That could be Buddhism, it could be Islam, it could be Hinduism, whatever. And then. And then, you know, the light comes through the lens. First of all, it gets tinted Christian, right? Everything's tinted through these Christian assumptions. But then it gets refracted by One of. One of the two types of Orientalism, either overtly negative or superficially positive. And of course, all religions at some point have one or the other have both types of Orientalism.
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Shataj Jain
Yeah, so. And yeah, I mean, do you think it's also because of the colonial legacy of Orientalism through which there were ideas like real religion developed, like this is the real religion or this is the textual base of religion and everything that is being practiced as all false. So do we need to problematize the concept of religion itself?
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Dr. Nathan McGovern
Yes, absolutely. And real religion is what I deal with in chapter eight. So chapter eight is sort of a unique chapter in that it's about a specific. It's about a sub sect of a religion. It's about Tibetan Buddhism or Vajrayana Buddhism. The title of the chapter is Tibetan Buddhism. Is it Still Buddhism? So it's sort of addressing like, the colonial idea that. That Tibetan Buddhism isn't real Buddhism because it comes later then. Then, you know, it's like a thousand years later. The, the, the. The oldest tantras are. Are quite a bit later than the time of the Buddha. And so it addresses exactly that idea that, like, religion, religion and which. Which of course comes from this is a legacy of the Protestant Reformation because Luther rejected the authority of church tradition. And so, like, the Protestant mindset is like, well, we always go back to the Bible, we always go back to the origins scripture. And, and that gets reproduced in the study of other religions, including, I mean, Tibetan Buddhism. Like, you know, when Jen Bilneuf, who was like the father of Buddhist studies in Europe, you know, when he confronted the Tantras, he was very dismissive of them because he was like, well, these are not the original scriptures. And then he had all kinds of things that he didn't like about them, but like, that, like, they were all rooted in this idea. Like. Well, I don't have to. I don't have to take this seriously because these aren't original. Original, yeah. So this is one of the many ways in which we see this sort of Christian tinting of the glasses. Yeah.
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Shataj Jain
Right. Well, also, while I was reading your description of concepts like Orientalism, I really liked your simple yet clear way to explain them to these students. So I, I would want to know more about your method to develop critical abilities in students to study religion in a simple yet accessible way.
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Dr. Nathan McGovern
Right, Yeah. I mean, with Orientalism, I think some of this is motivated, like the method, methodological aspect by my own experience as an undergrad and a grad student. And I remember early on in grad school I thought, you know what, when I was an undergrad I was taught too many facts and not enough methodology, not enough theory. And now I, I'm in grad school and I feel like I'm getting taught too much theory and not enough facts. And so I, I, I, I really lurk. You know, I teach undergraduates now and, and I've always looked for ways to sneak some theory in without it being too much. Because the, the, the fact is, you know, I, I teach in a non selective school so I have, you know, fairly typical undergraduates who are not, they're, you know, rarely if ever are they going to go on to grad school in religious studies. I mean frankly, rarely are they going to take another religious studies class. So I want to have opportunity to, to do some theory with them in a, in a way that will, will, won't be overwhelming and, and still allow for them to learn the facts they need to learn because they don't know them. It's not like they took, they all took a world religions class in high school. So, so I usually like pick something and you know, one or two key ideas to structure the class. And what's great about that is that it allows the theory to be there, it allows it to not be overwhelming and it also allows the class to not just be one damn thing after another because the class ends up having a thesis, right? Which is whatever the theory is. So, you know, I mean, for the Intro to Asian Religions class, I mean the theory is sort of like the metaphor of the glasses. But Orientalism is a big part of that. And depending on how much time I have this semester, I either go into more or less detail about this. My semesters are beginning shorter, so I've been doing a little bit less detail. But when I do have more time, what I've done is just, I have like a PDF that's a selection of, from the intro to Saeed's Orientalism. And I don't assign it outside of class. I actually read it with them together because it's hard. It's very hard, definitely. And so my approach there is to just sort of break down like, okay, what does he mean by Orientalism? Where does this word come from? What are the three types or modes of Orientalism that he discusses and how do they fit together? And I mean it's such a rich, it's just like five or six pages, but they're so rich in terms of the ideas that are found there and the history that they cover. So yeah, I think that's been. My approach is to take something that is rich and very powerful because once you get Orientalism, you can apply it everywhere. And. Yeah, to just break it down as simply as possible so that they can actually make use of it. And usually in the final exam, I ask them to find an example of an Orientalist portrayal of Asian religion. So they apply it. They get to apply it there.
- [19:03]
Shataj Jain
Right. That's interesting. And I think that also allows the students to study particular traditions, particular religions, while also understanding how to study religion in a. In a sophisticated way as a methodology. Like religion is a category itself, and then to study particular religions within that category or methodology.
- [19:25]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And that gets like, the best of both worlds. Like, they need. They kind of need the survey because they don't. They don't know anything about these. These religions and then. But they also. It's also a college class, so it's like, I don't want to teach it like it's kindergarten. You know, I want them to get that. That theory to be able to, like, apply bigger ideas more broadly.
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Shataj Jain
And what are the metacognitive skills you mentioned in the beginning that you want the students to develop?
- [19:52]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
The methodological skills? Is that what you have? Cognitive skills, Metacognitive skills? Oh, sorry, Yeah. I think the metacognitive skills that I want them to develop are in particular this ability to evaluate the information that they're getting. And I think this is particularly important, actually. When I pitched to Deutlidge, it's part of what I said is like, the world of AI getting information and even analyses of information is not going to be that hard. It's like it's. It's at your fingertips now. They. What they're going to need is the ability to evaluate, like, is this. Is this a good source or is this even a good AI summary? Right. Like, what, you know, what's going on here? Like, should I be suspicious of what's being said here? So, you know, that's why I think the theory is particularly important. You know, if. If you don't have the ability to recognize Orientalism when you see it, you can get very easily suckered into it. You know, I mean, it might be easy enough to be. To see, you know, the overtly negative Orientalism and recognize that it's. It's a little bit harder to see when something is being exotifying.
- [21:01]
Marshall Poe
Right.
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Dr. Nathan McGovern
You know, I. I think having that ability to see what's going on there and to discriminate, you know, between, you know, like, descriptions of reality you know, and then simplistic sort of like stereotypes about a religion, you know, and. And to realize, like, the degree to which people, you know, I think, fall into the ladder, you know, it's. It's just so common. I mean, you know, I had a good friend in grad school who's since passed away, but he, Michael Jerrison, he, you know, he studied violence in. In Buddhism. And, you know, it was, you know, it's. It's amazing when you talk about that work, like, how many people are like, wow, I never, I never imagined that Buddhists could be violent. And it's like, well, it's. In a normal human culture. Like, have you ever met a human culture that doesn't have any violence in it? Like, that's, that's absurd. Like, like, when you start thinking about it, it's like, well, well, yeah, obviously, like, there's. We have these sort of, like, these sort of assumptions in our head that, that we don't even think about. So, like, that. Those are the sorts of things that I'm. That I'm trying to like, my hope is that future when. When they read anything, you know, that they'll be able to be like, wait a second. Like, I. I see what's going. This is the Orientalism talking.
- [22:18]
Shataj Jain
Yeah, right. Well, that's true. And that has been my experience as well, because people assume that if you are a Jain, you live in a certain way, but that's not always true, but.
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Dr. Nathan McGovern
Right, right.
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Shataj Jain
I think that's how stereotypes work. And I think that is the. That is what you discuss in the second part of your book, where you introduce the students to various religious traditions and men discuss how their understanding has been distorted by Christian tinted glasses. So can you give us some examples of how does that happen? What is your approach to different religions and how do you depict this distortion which happens through a particular way of imprinting them.
- [22:59]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Yeah, exactly. Let me. Let me look at the. So I'm going to put those reading glasses on.
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Shataj Jain
All right.
- [23:05]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Just so you know, these are. These are to help me read. Looking at my. My table of contents here. Okay. So in part two, right. You know, each chapter is introducing either a new religion or set of religions or sort of theme and then is talking about, like, well, what. Yes, I'm introducing facts about it, but I'm also introducing or talking about like, a common misperception of that religion in popular discourse. And, you know, I have to make choices here. You know, usually I go either in the overtly negative Orientalism direction or the superficially Positive, the exotifying. But I try to find ones that I think are useful for the pedagogy and just are more prevalent in discourse today. So for Islam, we talk about Islamophobia, Buddhism, we talk about Buddhist modernism. So the question is, is it a philosophy or religion? Because there is this common claim that it's not a religion, it's more of a philosophy or way of life. Hinduism, the question is, is it a polytheistic or a monotheistic religion? So I'm addressing the very category of polytheism, Chinese religion, that kind of goes back into the same sort of things with Buddhism, but also the issue of mutual exclusivity. Indian religions talk about inclusivity, inclusivism, excuse me. Tibetan Buddhism is that idea that is original religion, real religion. Judaism, we talk about religion and ethnicity, indigenous religions or traditions. You know, what gets counted as a religion. Secularism, kind of interrogates the very idea that religion can be set off from the rest of life. And then, and then three, right. You know, chapter 12 is, is kind of introducing specific ideas from the Protestant reformation. And 13, is, is, is showing how the glasses work. So what I do is, is, is, is I take each of those misperceptions of specific religions that we found in part two and map them to. Because I generate a list of like, okay, here are specific ideas that come from Christianity, like Orthodoxy, monotheism, specific ideas from Protestant theology. So that would be like scripture alone and faith alone, and then a bunch of legacies of the Protestant Reformation, which include individualism, anti ritualism, emphasis on belief, emphasis on origins, iconoclasm even, and show like, okay, well now we can show like, you know, how, how are all the misperceptions of these religions rooted in those specific Christian and often Protestant Christian ideas? Yeah, so I actually kind of like generated, I was actually doing this with my, with my class yesterday is like, we generated a table on the board where we do that mapping so you can see like how, you know, again, how the, the Christian tinting of the glasses works.
- [26:08]
Shataj Jain
Right. Also, while we have, we will definitely discuss more about how you take examples from different traditions. I, I also think, I also wanted to ask that while the students need to be taught about secularism, is it also important to give them an introduction to how secularism is based on a certain idea of modernity, which itself is a very Western idea of moderating. How that, how can they develop a more inclusive approach towards secularism?
- [26:34]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Yeah, you know, that's a good question, to be honest. This is a topic that I used to teach in my class and have since taken out because I just don't have time and I have other priorities. It's a difficult topic to teach. I think it would depend on, you know, the quality of the school that you're teaching at. You know, how selective it is. I found, you know, I teach in a non selective university and students don't know what the hell secularism is. Right. And this is the United States of America. Like, like civics education in America is frighteningly bad. It's shocking the degree to which students don't understand how our system of government works. Secularism is so central to the American system of government. And yet, I mean, you know, I like your students, like they don't, they don't understand what it is. So I ended up spending a lot of my time just teaching what it is and why it's important. Like maybe we shouldn't kill each other over religion. Like maybe that's a thing. Like there's, there's a history in Europe of that and you know, like we were kind of pioneers and like not doing that anymore. I mean we kill each other for other reasons. But, but over religion, you know, like there's, there's a way of creating a religiously pluralistic society. However, I mean the critique of secularism is, is, is important. And what I end up doing that chapter is, is showing that the, the very idea of the secular is rooted in, in Christian thought. So you know, and in particular like this idea that you can, you know, segregate religion from the rest of life by putting in the privacy sphere. I mean that's rooted in the Protestant idea of having an individual personal relationship with God, which is a very unique and unusual idea certainly within the history of Christianity, but, but also within the history of religion in general. And so I, you know, I sort of presented as this, this paradox, you know, this is sort of the best system we've come up with for dealing with religious pluralism. But also it has problems because it's rooted in and very Christian ideas. And this doesn't even get into the, you know, the, the, the critiques presented by say Saba Mahmoud about how like in non Christian secular societies there's also, there can be other religious sort of norms that, that, that end up coloring the secular. I, I, I think that this is just an amazing and important topic. I, you know, I don't teach it anymore in my class, but I, you know, I wanted to include in the book because I think it, it rounds out the book in a good way, especially since this is a book about not just specific religions, but religion in general. And I wanted the book to be something that instructors could, could draw from for different purposes and, and, and to be as as wide as possible so that they could select, okay, this is what's going to work in my class. Whatever my survey or whatever class that I've been assigned, I can pick, you know, different things to, to use from it for, for my own purposes.
- [29:37]
Shataj Jain
Right, right. So also in the final section of the book, you discuss how the glasses actually work as you mentioned. So can you guide us through a few examples? A few examples from maybe from Islam or from Hinduism that how these Christian tinted glasses work and how they are so influenced by not only Christianity but Protestant Reformation within Christianity.
- [29:59]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Okay, well, let's see. Okay, I'll use two examples. One is Hinduism. Okay, great, Hinduism. The chapter is, you know, every chapter title on Part 2 is set up with a question. So like the name religion and then like there's a question about it. And so the, the question here is, is it polytheistic or monotheistic? And it's, you know, it's funny, I got a lot of pushback from reviewers on this because, because I didn't end up saying that it was polytheistic in the end and that bothered a lot of people. But that's actually, I, that's exactly what I wanted to problematize. So the way I set it up is like, okay, often in the west people assume that Hinduism is polytheistic. And then as a counterpoint I say, well, if you look at the surveys, most Hindus will say it's monotheistic or something along those lines. I've not used that specific word, but you know, one God in many forms or there's just one God, or, you know, it's monotheistic. There's of course, Vivekananda, whom, whom I quote, who specifically denies that Hinduism is polytheistic. And so, so I present this. I was like, okay, well what's that about? And, and, and then I, I, I, you know, one could, the easy response one could say is like, well, we're just going to go with the self identification. And, and I think that for the critical study of religion, like that's not adequate in this case. And I think most, you know, you know, Western scholars of, and Western trained scholars of, of Hinduism would, would find that inadequate in this case. Right. And, and so, so then I go into a section where we talk about like the many different, you know, gods and goddesses of Hinduism and show like they all have Individual personalities and mythologies and so forth. And it's like, well, I mean, if this isn't polytheism, well, what is? And so, so then, so then I explain, well, what do Hindus mean when they say that it's monotheistic or that. Or if they deny that it's polytheism. And so we talk about the Gita is just, you know, I think the most important example, the idea that, you know, there can be one God who is who in one way or the other, you know, sort of encompasses the other gods and goddesses, who's them in some way. I also talk, you know, briefly. I don't want to get into too much detail about like, the different sectarian movements in Hinduism and the different philosophical approaches to understand the relationship of God to the, to. To the world.
- [32:39]
Shataj Jain
Just to just.
- [32:40]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
So like. Well, this is all actually quite complicated because it's like, yes, many, perhaps most Hindus would say that there is one supreme deity, but they don't agree, first of all on who it is. They don't agree on the, like, the, the nature of that deity and the relationship of that deity to the world. They don't agree on the gender of that deity. Right. I mean, it is clearly quite different from, from say, Abrahamic monotheism, but it's not crazy to call it monotheism. Right. But there's also historical reasons why modern Hindus would feel pressured to say this is monotheism, considering the history of, you know, I mean, well, certainly the hegemony of Christianity today, the history of British rule, the history of Islamic rule prior to that. Right. There are lots of reasons why there would be pressure to do that. And what I come down as sort of like a critical scholar is like, well, maybe these words just don't make any sense. Right? Like, people don't usually go around and you know, I mean, there are modern, say, pagans who do this. But like, like polytheism is not a word that polytheists came out and say, well, I'm a polytheist. No, this is like, this is a word that monotheists came up with to, to other. Other religions.
- [33:47]
Shataj Jain
An othering term, basically.
- [33:49]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
To what?
- [33:49]
Shataj Jain
It's an othering term.
- [33:51]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Exactly. It's an othering term. So, so, so my point is like, you know, I don't think that these words are really that useful either one of them. You know, I like, you know, like from an Islamic perspective, one can and of people have said that Christianity is polytheism. Like, you know, like different religions conceive of divinity in different ways. And it's really difficult, I think it's really simplistic to just put them into these binary terms of polytheistic and monotheistic. So then when we get into part three, you know, I'm like, okay, well you know, where does the, you know, the preconceptions about Hinduism come from? And it's fairly straightforward. In this case it comes from Christian monotheism and Protestant iconoclasm. Right. We can also refer to the anti ritualism of post Protestant modernity. Right. These are all, you know, when we see negative portrayals of Hinduism in the media, usually it's rooted in these, you know, two or three things, frankly. Also exotifying portraits of Hinduism typically are going to be of the Neo Vedanta type and will sort of efface the ritualism, the iconography of Hinduism. So it's doing the same thing but in reverse. If I could give quickly one other example. Tell you what, I'll talk about Tibetan Buddhism since I, since I already brought that up, you know, so in that case the issue is this is an original Buddhism and you know, it's, it's. I, I have my students read Ozem Bill New's the intro to his chapter on the Tantras and he uses all this negative, all these negative words. He basically calls it like a dumbed down form of Buddhism for stupid people. And, and I, and you know, I get my students to, to say like, you know, how do you feel about that? Like imagine like there are millions of people practice form of Buddhism. Like do you think an entire civilization full of stupid people is like. Well no, yeah, that's, that's a really condescending thing to say. I'm like, yeah, it's Orientalist. Right? So, so I mean in the book what I do is like, you know, in part three in when, when we're mapping like the Christian preconceptions. So the emphasis on scripture, the emphasis on origins, the anti ritualism in particular, these are all relevant to the, the orientalist conceptions about Tibetan Buddhism.
- [36:16]
Shataj Jain
Well, yeah, that's interesting because again as you mentioned that, because a lot of Hindus today feel pressurized to say that, that they are monotheist because of the colonial legacy in India which created these categories in the first place. It's both Christian tinted lenses as well as Orientalism at play at the same time.
- [36:35]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Right, exactly, exactly. And I mean I feel like, and this is where I might differ from, from some others. Like I think it's important also to make clear like if a Hindu self identifies as monotheism, they're allowed to say that. And what they're saying is not crazy. It's not, it's not like they're lying. It's not like Vivekananda was lying when he spoke in Chicago and said, like, there's no polytheism in India. I mean, that. I don't know that. I mean, that. That is a provocative statement. You know, I think it's. It's not a statement that cannot be problematized, but you can understand the logic of it. And so, you know, the way I come down the chapters is to just say, like, these terms are not actually that helpful, right? Like, it's the terms itself. Like, the binary between polytheism and monotheism is not really a very, a very helpful binary. And I do think, you know, if one, just as I think in popular culture, assume, like, well, Hinduism's polytheistic full stop, like, you're not going to be aware of things like what happens in the Gita or the conception of divinity that's found in the Mahabharata as a whole or that informs, you know, the major sectarian groups, Shaivas, Vaishnavas and Shaktas. Like, you're just not going to be aware of that. And so, you know, I do think, you know, it's not, it's not that the term polytheism is right or wrong per se. It's that behind it, I think, lies a major misconception about what the reality, not just of Hinduism is, but really of what, what people modern, like, people call polytheism is in general. Because this is, I mean, this is true even of like, ancient European polytheisms, you know, like, like Plato, Plato and Aristotle, they talked about one God. Like, this is something that predates Christianity and European thought, you know, o. The God, right? And so, I mean, this is part of what created sympathetic resonance, I think, between ancient Judaism and Greek thought, you know, as Christianity was gaining ground in the Roman Empire. Like, this is the, you know, this is not an uncommon idea in the religious systems that we refer to as polytheism. I mean, it's also found, you know, in the, in the, like the, you know, like the Kahim. You know, there's. There's this idea of, like, there's a particular God who is, who is the most important in some sense. Now, I'm not saying that any of these things, monotheism as Christians mean it or as Muslims mean it today, but they're the, the point is that, like, it's not really a binary. There's. There's there's so much going on in so many different religions that's not easily reducible to a monotheistic, polytheistic binary.
- [39:29]
Shataj Jain
Thank you very much for your detailed answer, Dr. McGowan. In relation with the influence of Protestant Reformation of Protestant Christianity. As someone who's not very familiar with the tradition and very familiar with its history, I would like to know in more details the way it influences our understanding of religion today and how it dominates the Christian discourse on religion or secularism even now.
- [39:55]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Right, so this is chapter. Let's see, this is in part three, chapter 12, was it? Let me. Yeah, chapter 12. You were Martin Luther. So the idea is that, you know, whether one is Protestant or not, Christian or not, even religious or not, like in the modern world, we were profoundly influenced by certain ideas. Okay. And so what I talk, you know, I give a little bit about the, the story of Martin Luther. He was the 16th century German monk who, at a time when, you know, the so called sale of indulgences would be being criticized in the Catholic Church. He wrote the 95 theses. Just to back up, you know, he was a theologian, so he was quite erudite. He was not a common Christian at this time.
- [40:47]
Shataj Jain
Right.
- [40:48]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
But he wrote the 95 theses criticizing the sale of indulgences, but from a deeper perspective that really went far beyond just the idea that this is taking advantage of the poor or something like that. And he criticizes the very idea that you can earn your way into heaven by any sort of good deeds, whether that's giving money to the church or even helping a little old lady across the street.
- [41:14]
Shataj Jain
Right.
- [41:15]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
So based in particular on his reading of St. Paul's letter to the Romans, he argues that human beings are intrinsically sinful because of original sin, because Adam ate the apple and we all inherit that sin. And there's nothing you can do to make yourself good enough to deserve heaven. None of us do. We're all complete reprobates. We don't. We all deserve eternal damnation. And the only way that someone could be saved is as a freely given gift from God. Okay? That's the idea of sola grazia by grace alone. It's only by the grace of God that one can be saved. And, and this is access through faith. And that's the principle of sola fide, which is faith alone. So, so it is only, it's not by anything we do, but by having faith in the redeeming death of Jesus Christ that we can be saved. And because the Catholic Church is Not teaching this properly, that means that the church, in his estimation, was not the representative of Christ on earth, but rather of Satan. It was the biblically defined Antichrist. And so he rejects the church and its traditions as authoritative and relies on Scripture alone, sola scriptura, as a guide for the faithful. Now, this has lots of implications because, I mean, some of them are very practical. I always like to tell my students, like, look, you all are literate and going to college, right? And I don't know about you, but I'm not from some sort of rich, noble family or anything like that. I come from nothing, right. In terms of, like, you know, the. My deep family history, and I'm sure most of you, too, right? Look, the fact that ordinary people like us, you know, read is in part the legacy of Protestants, you know, early Protestants encouraging ordinary people to. To. To read so that they could read the Bible for themselves.
- [43:20]
Shataj Jain
Right.
- [43:20]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Right. Now, this ends up having lots of implications which, you know, include, you know, the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution. I mean, this is what, you know, leads in part to the. To the modern world. But there are particular, like, assumptions about religion that are sort of baked into that, right? And that includes hyper individualism, because Protestants rejected the mediating power of the church and they encouraged ordinary Christians to develop a personal relationship with God. This is a very new and unique idea. Again, not just in Christianity, but in religion in general. That also because, you know, Luther rejected the idea that you can earn your way into heaven. You know, this is why he ended up getting married. He was like, I don't need to be a celibate monk anymore. Like, what's the point of that? Like, I don't need to do that. You know, I have faith in the redeeming power of Jesus Christ. And so, you know, that's. That's what really matters. And so there's this real emphasis on belief. Like, the way that people, you know, think about religion today is often rooted in or focuses on belief to the exclusion what people actually do, which. Which is a legacy of Protestant thinking. There's. There's the emphasis on origins, which we've already talked about. Like, if. If, you know, I have to bring up with my students the WWJD bracelets, you know, what would Jesus do? And I was like, this is a very Protestant way of thinking about Christianity. He's the. The bracelet says, what would Jesus do? Not what would. What would the Pope do? Or what would my pastor do? Or what would St. Francis do? Or, you know, it ignores, like, all Christian history and always referring Back to the Bible, back to the Christian origins. Right. So we often, you know, in the modern world think about all religions in that way. There's the anti ritualism. And so like Luther himself was not particularly anti ritualistic, but the, the more radical reformers were increasingly so and so. Right. You know, people in the modern world just don't often don't think ritual is particularly interesting or efficacious. It's often seen as meaningless. This is a legacy of like 500 years of Protestant polemics against Catholic ritual. Right. It's. It didn't come out of nowhere, but like, to actually understand most religions, you have to be open to ritual because ritual is everywhere. Right. Claims that Buddhism doesn't have ritual, not true for all types of Buddhism other than Buddhist modernism. Even more laughable acclaims that Daoism is all about going with the flow and it has nothing to do with ritual. That's just ridiculous. Dallas Priests are literally hired to perform rituals. That's all they do. Yeah. So, I mean, so many examples of this. The older antipathy to Tibetan Buddhism, same thing, because it's rooted in ritual. The idea of mutually exclusive denominations, like, so, you know, it can be easy to assume, you know, I think in the modern Western world that religions are mutually exclusive. You're one or the other. You know, I mean, we have exceptions to that nowadays because they're like mixed marriages or whatever and they might raise their kids by going to one church, but still there's this idea that, well, they're supposed to be separate. You know, we just, we're just breaking the rules or something. Like here we're mixing things up. Whereas in a lot of cultures, like, this is not the case. There are lots of ways in which different religions overlap in ways that are not what you would expect based on Western religious history. The probably the most prominent example being Chinese religion where, you know, ordinary community temples involve Confucian, Taoist and, and Buddhist elements. And last but not least, there's the iconoclasm that came out of the Protestant Reformation. This I think is particularly interesting because, like, again, Luther was not so much of an iconoclast, but later more radical reformers were. And so, you know, I mean, there were like, you know, as the Reformation progressed, I mean, there were like bands of Protestants who go into old cathedrals and rip down all the murals and smash the statues of the saints and so forth. I've been to a few cathedrals in Europe that are in Protestant countries where, you know, there's nothing on the walls except in like, One spot, because it was, like, covered up by a piece of furniture or something. And so there's an old medieval mural that's still there from the old Catholic days. Right, right. And so, I mean, this really influences the way. Honestly, I think this goes way beyond religion. You know, I, you know, I live in the United States, and, you know, you look around the United States, all the aesthetics of this country are very much informed by Protestant iconoclasm. It just, it just looks different from, say, traditionally Catholic countries like Mexico, but also, you know, countries of, you know, of other religions that just did not ever have that iconoclastic aesthetic. So, yeah, I mean, I honestly, I see this even. I was at AAR last week and, you know, somebody was asking about, like, you know, it was a Jainism panel. Somebody was asking, you know, why. Why are there all these murals on the wall that people can't actually see the details of, like, what purpose do they serve? And I was thinking to myself, only a Protestant would ask a question like that. That's the norm, like temple or a place of worship. You're going to decorate it? You know, Muslims decorate their mosques. You know, I'm sure, like, not all of the verses from the Quran are actually legible from the ground. Like, like. Like you still want to decorate. Like, I just, I mean, that's just such a. Like, there's. There's so many unique things about Protestant Christianity that you end up asking, like, the weirdest questions if you, if you don't start thinking your way out of that. Yeah.
- [49:02]
Shataj Jain
I mean, no one is going to count the murals on a wall if they go to go to the temple.
- [49:07]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
No, no, but it's, but it's pretty. You know, it's just. It's, it's. It's. It's overwhelming. And it's like, what will. You know, I, I think a good, A good, you know, comparison actually is like a Christmas tree. So, like, if you put up a Christmas tree, right, like, you're going to have ornaments all over the tree, and some of them will not actually be visible. All those ornaments will be. Will have something on them that is quite meaningful. Right. It might refer to some memory you have in your life, or it might just be some sort of pop culture. I mean, there are all kinds of ornaments you can put on a Christmas tree, right? Are they all going to be visible? No. Like, so what? That's the way to decorate a tree? Like, I don't know what, Like, I don't know how better to explain this, but, yeah, Protestant iconoclasm has really, I think, influenced in a very deep way the way in which people think about aesthetics in general, but also in particular, religious aesthetics. That can lead to, I think, maybe odd and not fruitful questions. So.
- [50:05]
Shataj Jain
Yeah, and also you also discussed the downstreams of this Protestant Reformation through a number of points. So what are some of the downstreams of this influence in the study of religions we have discussed earlier? Yeah, so those are the last ones.
- [50:24]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
That I was referring to. Let me see if I can find the actual. I think I have a table that lists them. I can't remember. Oh, okay. Maybe not. Yeah, the downstream ones are the last ones that we're mentioning. So individualism. Wait, I think I do have it in a discussion question. Give me one second. I just want to make sure I don't miss any of them. Oh, yeah, okay. So, yeah, the downstream effects would be. Yeah, emphasis on belief, emphasis on scripture, emphasis on origins, disdain for ritual, mutual exclusivity, iconoclasm, and emphasis on the individual. Those are the main. So as I was discussing a minute ago, some of these are, I think, relevant to, you know, sort of culture in general. Some of them are a little bit more specific to the ways in which people will reflexively think about religion. I meant to say a minute ago, actually, like, the first thing that I do in my. My intro class is, is have students come up with a. A definition of religion. It's cool, you know, I don't read anything. I just like, you know, try to define religion, you know, mainly to get them to see that it's hard to the point of being practically impossible. But inevitably, you know, like 90% of them, one of the first words in their definition will be belief.
- [51:44]
Shataj Jain
Right.
- [51:45]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
And I think, you know, that's. That's a very clear legacy of the Protestant Reformation. Is this. This I. The hyper focus on what's going on in your head or your heart even, rather than things that are happening with your body, what you're doing with your hands and. And your full body, the things that you do. And in a really deep way, I mean, obviously this is something that we as scholars are still working through, but something that I want students to recognize. Right.
- [52:17]
Shataj Jain
And when you teach such classes like Intro to Asian Religions to your students, do you observe the same lenses working in their understanding? Like, when they come to the class for the first time, do you see that these lenses are working in their social experiences or their understanding of how things work?
- [52:37]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. It's certainly in that respect that I just mentioned. So the emphasis on belief like this, this obviously shows up first in their, in their definitions. And I think that that's the, probably the most profound way in which you see that with students, or at least the students that I teach, is just, just assuming that religion is mostly about belief. Beyond that, I find with my students. So my students often come from rural Wisconsin. They're not particularly cosmopolitan. And so I'm sort of in the weird situation where they don't necessarily know a lot about religions other than their own. Right. In any sense. Right. So there are these. I'm in a sense trying to inoculate them against sort of like quote unquote, liberal misconceptions about religions. You know, the idea like Buddhism's, you know, Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion, or Daoism is a philosophy, not a religion, these sorts of ideas which they maybe have not encountered. So I do end up. I'm sort of teaching them both the misconceptions and the realities at the same time. The idea being that I don't want to be the case that they're like, okay, they take the class, they learn a little bit about Buddhism or Daoism or something like that, and then they're like, wow, this is super cool. And then they just spend the rest of their lives thinking that Buddhism doesn't have gods or rituals and it's like all super rational and like, you know, like, and then, and then if they ever encounter like real life Buddhists either in the news or in real life, and then they see like, oh, they're doing this differently, then they're going to be like, wow, I guess they're doing it wrong because the theoreticalist move is to say, like, I understand the religion, it's super cool because I've read its original scriptures or, or somebody has and claims that this is what they say. And, and then, and then I meet like an actual Asian Buddhist or whatever religion and, and like, wow, what? What are they doing? Like, they're clearly not doing it right. You know, that's not, that's not helpful. Like, I, I don't, I don't want my classes to be a springboard for them to be to, to, to, to, to light a fire in them that makes them into little Orientalist sort of consumers of Asian religions. Like, that's not, that's just not what I want to happen. Yeah, so. So, yeah, so I do think, like, the general sense, the students that I have will be influenced by the, the Protestant idea that religion is mostly about belief, specific things about more Specific things about particular religions are. I, I often do have to tell them about, because they don't necessarily have that cultural background. But I mean, if I taught at a different type of school, I don't. I don't think it would be the same, you know, if it were more selective, like liberal arts college or something like that, they would be more attuned to those things than you would. I mean, I have taught at other institutions, and I would have more students who come in who are like, they're super gung ho about Buddhism, but they don't really know what Buddhism's about. They think they do, you know, that kind of thing.
- [55:45]
Shataj Jain
You would not want what Assad says as the disillusionment of the Orientalist. When he actually sees the oriental countries, quote, unquote, Oriental countries. He feels disillusioned because the practice does not meet the text.
- [55:57]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Right, right, exactly. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing wrong with. With, with being critical of. Of any society, but like, yeah, that sort of blithe dismissal, like, well, well, I know what this religion is about, and they're clearly doing it wrong. Like, like that. That's not. That's definitely not good and not helpful and not what I want students to be taking out of the class. I mean, I do want them to, you know, I mean, it's, It's a. It's a catch 22. Because, like, obviously when you're a teacher, you want to spark a fire in your students, right? Again, that's an easy fire to spark, right? They're like, oh, wow, this is super cool. And I, you know, I want to study this more, but it's like, but if it's based on this sort of Orientalist misunderstanding of the tradition, like, that's not really, like, what's the point of doing that? I mean, I guess it makes you seem cool as a teacher, but it's not really helping society, I don't think. I, you know, I want students to. To, you know, even if it, If. Even if it means that they're a little bit less, you know, sort of like passionate and juvenile sense, if that's the right word. Like, I want them to be coming out, like, able to think critically about the world around them and, you know, the wider world around them and including religions that are just, you know, who have traditions that are just fundamentally different from what they know, but also what they might value in a sense. Like, you know, I mean, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna convince, you know, the vast majority of people that they should Think ritual is cool, but, but like you should be able to, to appreciate that most human beings in most of human history have like, like you should be able to appreciate that and maybe be like, okay, maybe I need to take this a little bit more seriously than I. It's sort of reflexively like, you know, I mean, yeah, I, you know, and.
- [57:45]
Shataj Jain
And that makes sense and I don't.
- [57:47]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Know what directions that will take, you know, necessarily in my students lives, but I, I'm certainly more happy about it taking that direction than the direction of. I'm going to pretend that Buddhism or Taoism or whatever is this thing in my mind and I'm going to be super excited about it, but I'm not really going to engage with the human tradition that's involved.
- [58:08]
Shataj Jain
Right. Also you mentioned something about religion society, which, which leads me to my next question which might not be very relevant, but I wanted to nevertheless ask that, that how is the field or the discipline of religion studies going forward and how can it stay relevant in this time? How these, all these courses about world religions or Asian religions. How can students to contribute something.
- [58:34]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
That's a great question. This is a question that I've grappled with. So we face now I'm speaking a little bit about my particular situation and the type of school that I teach at. It's a, you know, public university focused on teaching. It's not selective. So like 80% or so students who apply are admitted. I mean the United States. But I think that this, you know, there might be some particularities here, but it's still relevant more generally. So I mean the issue is, I think first of all that the, the humanities in particular and really the, the, the liberal arts in general are, are highly devalued in university education today, really across the board. Because in the United States at least, I think it's been similar. In other countries like the UK there's been this effort to really, on a political level to tie university education to access to the middle class and to the jobs that will get you into the middle class. And that's been really a problem because students come in with the idea that well, I'm getting this degree to get a job and this doesn't play out the same at all types of institutions, but an institution like mine, it means that most students are like they want a major that will have their future job title. Now I think this is a terrible idea, but this is what they, they think. And so that, that means that it's very difficult to get students into classes like a Religious studies class. And so, so there's that sort of institutional pressure is that we're always. A lot of religious studies departments have been closed down or been threatened with program closure because they just don't have their numbers up. But it's like it's been engineered that way. It's not their fault, it's not our fault. It's the society at large really. I think selling a false narrative to students about what, you know, university education should be about. Which means that especially the less elite institutions, students end up, you know, basically following a vocational path, which I think is, is misguided because the liberal arts are called that for, for a reason. I mean, in, in ancient times, these were the, these were the disciplines that were only taught to free men. Right? It was clearly like this is the ticket to the elite, not, not the vocational stuff. Like that's the stuff that was taught to slaves in the ancient world. So I, you know, I, I mean everything is very backwards in this whole model. But so there's that, there's also the fact that people don't know what religious studies is. Right. Like it's very difficult for people to understand that religious studies is the critical study of religion in general. It's non confessional. God. Just over Thanksgiving, I was staying with my cousin and we went to one of their friend's house for Thanksgiving dinner. And the young folks, they wanted to play cards against humanity. So my cousin's wife said no, no, she wanted to discourage them from doing that. I was like, oh, you can't do that because we have a religion scholar here. And I'm like, clear. I was like, your mom told me that clearly don't understand what, what I, what I am as a religious scholar. So, so I mean, you face this all the time as a religious studies scholar. Like this idea like, oh yeah, yeah. So there's this basic understanding of what religious studies is. And I think on top of that, even when you get the students in the classroom, like I, I find like I'm in a philosophy religious studies department and the philosophers, they, they, they have a leg up on us. And. Well, first of all, because people do know what philosophy is. I mean, they've at least heard of it, but, but on top of that they get to do like normative stuff in philosophy, like let's talk about what the good is or let's talk about ethics and, and, and, and not, you know, brackening. The normative in religious studies is certainly in the way I teach and the way I was trained so central that there's really very little time for that. And, and, and, and I think, you know, at least for the students, I have, like, you know, they have a thirst for the normative. And, and I can't blame them for that. And I tried to address that in the book towards the end. Right, right at the end where I explain, like, okay, I, I just want to explain what we've been doing here, what religious studies about, like, you think about religion normatively, but that's not what we're doing here. We're thinking about it in a descriptive sense. And these are the benefits of that. And, and I, you know, I say at the end, there's nothing wrong with being normative. Obviously. Like, if you're not a sociopath, you have to make normative judgments at some point. The benefit of the descriptive approach is it helps you to make normative judgments in the end. Right. Like, you can't make normative judgments if you're not even aware of like, what's actually going on. If you're not able to describe what's happening, like an entire civilization, like, you're not going to be able to make valid normative judgments about it or about yourself or about the world around you.
- [63:36]
Shataj Jain
Right.
- [63:38]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
And, and I just, you know, I mean, I stand by that, but I also find it a little bit dissatisfying because it just doesn't, I don't know, it's like, it's like, it's like telling people, you know, don't eat this chocolate in front of you for the next two hours and then I'll give you ten pieces of chocolate.
- [63:56]
Shataj Jain
Right.
- [63:56]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Like, like that, that, that's an actual, like, experiment that people, it's very hard, right? It's, it's, it's not really, you know, it's like, I want you to shut up the normative for now so that you can make normative judgments better later. And, and, and it's not really my job to even help you to do that. My job is to teach you how to shut off the normative so you can describe religion better. So, yeah, I mean, you know, finding a way to make that compelling is, I think, difficult. And one of the, I think it's one of the central existential problems that we face in the, in this field of religious studies, at least non normative religious studies, you know, on confessional, I should say religious studies is how do we, how do we, you know, market ourselves, for lack of a better word to people when we're explicitly telling them that we're not giving them the Chocolate, you know that, yes, they will get a lot more chocolate in the end, but we're not giving them the chocolate now. And yeah, I'm still searching for a good way to do that. I. I've been watching this. This YouTuber named Dan McClellan, right. He's a. He's a Bible scholar. I don't know if you're aware of his work. He. He's himself Mormon, but I mean, he trade in the critical study of the Bible. And he sounds just like I would if I were a critical scholar of the Bible or. Insofar as I talk about the Bible. Right. You know, it's not really any different, you know, but what's amazing about his. His YouTube channel is that he's able to speak to. He's being able to like, speak in a normative register that's based on his. On his descriptive approach that I find really compelling and that I wish I could emulate. But I have to say it's very particular to the study of the Bible because the rhetorical move he takes is, you know, often he takes stitches and he responds to them. And he's just responding to, you know, like a, say, an evangelical Christian who is, you know, claiming to take the literal meaning of the Bible. And he's saying, well, actually you're not. You're reading your own dogma into it. So he's sort of taking Protestant rhetoric and using it against people who, who have often very odious ideas about, say, homosexuality or women in the church or anything like that, and then showing like. Well, actually, if you're taking the Bible seriously on its own terms, like, this is what is probably actually going on in the text. And what you're doing is trying to reconcile lots of different voices in the Bible with whatever your dogma is. And so you're actually reading into it. So.
- [66:27]
Shataj Jain
Right.
- [66:28]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
So that. That works against like a Protestant rhetoric, but it's. I don't know that it's like scalable, like, like transferable to the. To the. To the teaching of religion more generally. I guess the closest I could say is that, that, you know, if one thinks of oneself as, you know, an open, liberal, tolerant thinker. Right. You're probably not like. Because. Because you're probably exotifying, you know, in lots of ways that you're not even aware of. And so I think that's probably the. The best angle to take, at least for what. The stuff that I teach. But yeah, I do think that this is. This is a problem. I mean, this is a problem that we face because of our non normative approach, you know, and the fact that nobody knows what religious studies is, and the fact that universities so, so highly devalue the liberal arts in general, humanities in particular, you know, we face these difficulties in attracting students.
- [67:25]
Shataj Jain
Right, well, that, that is very potent and very relevant in today's time when we are witnessing closure of departments shutting on of courses, whether in the US or here in the uk. So it's a common problem and there's a general devaluation of humanities happening all around the world. I observed that back in my home country, India as well, as well as in other places. So I hope that we are able to find a solution to that. But yeah, I think I've already taken a lot of your time, so I would just end this conversation by asking you what are your current projects and what are you working on right now?
- [68:03]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Right now I'm working on a new academic book tentatively called Brahmanism in the Shadow of Buddhism. The basic argument is that ancient India, from about the time of the Mauryas to the Guptas, was a, a, I call this the Shakya age, kind of copying the idea of the Shaiva Age that follows. This was a time when Buddhism was dominant in India and that we need to recognize that fact. And, and, and moreover understand the Mahabharata as a historical agent, not just as reflecting changes in Hinduism. We understand like the development, the early development of Hinduism better if we see ancient India as a dominantly Buddhist country, which the Mahabharata was responding to, and it was only over the course of several centuries where it starts, in a sense, generating the changes that led to classical Hinduism. So. Yep, that's what, that's the big project I'm working on now.
- [69:02]
Shataj Jain
That's, that's fascinating. And I think you have, you have reworked broncist idea of Buddhism under the shadow of Hinduism, something like that.
- [69:10]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a reversal of his title. Yes, I actually love that book. I think that's his best book. And anybody, no disrespect to it, but I just, you know, I think like flipping. It creates a really interesting new way of looking at the data, basically.
- [69:27]
Shataj Jain
Oh, that's fascinating. And all the best for that book. And I hope to host you again on for, for discussing that book.
- [69:35]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Yes, thanks, thanks. It's gonna be a few years, but yeah, yeah, I'm working on it. It's about half done. Yeah.
- [69:40]
Shataj Jain
Well, thank you very much, Dr. McGovan, for this fantastic podcast. It was a pleasure talking to you and thank you very much for being here.
- [69:47]
Dr. Nathan McGovern
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you as well. I really appreciate it. Thanks.
- [69:50]
Shataj Jain
Yeah. Sa.