Nongbri, Brent. 2013. Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept

Reviewed by Jon Bialecki (University of Edinburgh). On its face, Brent Nongbri’s book, Before Religion, is seemingly not about Christianity, but about religion more generally – or more specifically, about the category of religion more generally. Nongbri’s argument is that religion is not a human universal, but rather construction that has both a history and a genealogy