“This cogent work provides a promising platform for interreligious engagement, particularly for interfaith academics.”
- Publishers Weekly
“This illuminating book will change the way you think about religious ideas.”
- Eboo Patel, author of Interfaith Leadership: A Primer
“Theologically informed, politically aware, and ultimately encouraging, the volume honestly names problematic texts and tendencies within the three monotheistic traditions and then provides the resources within those same traditions for self-correction and interreligious engagement. Given the role of religion in the public square, Mikva’s voice is not only helpful; it is also needed.”
- Amy-Jill Levine, author of The Misunderstood Jew
“Religion has been responsible for profound acts of compassion and unspeakable acts of violence. It has birthed great civilizations and destroyed entire societies. It has fostered the expansion of universal human rights and fomented hatred and bigotry of the other. In Rachel Mikva’s telling, the very things that make religion a force for good are also what makes it so dangerous. As both a scholar and a rabbi, Mikva is unblinking in her self-critical examination of these dangerous religious ideas, offering believers and nonbelievers alike a new way to think about the enduring the power of faith.”
- Reza Aslan, author of Zealot: The Life of and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
“A crucial contribution to the current struggle over the political uses and abuses of religion, Rachel Mikva’s nuanced and compelling case for self-critical faith examines the paradox of religious ideas that both inspire humility and human flourishing and mandate certainty and oppression. She invites those betrayed by faith and those nourished by faith to engage ultimate questions of meaning and morality as we consider public theologies that lead to a more just society for us all.”
- Rita Nakashima Brock, PhD, coauthor of Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire and a senior vice president at Volunteers of America
“Dangerous Religious Ideas is engaging, vulnerable, honest, and powerful. If you are not bothered by this book in some way, you have probably not taken it seriously. Mikva’s work is provocative, and you will be a better person - whether of faith or not - for having read it.”
- Joel N. Lohr, PhD, president of Hartford Seminary and coauthor of The Hebrew Bible for Beginners