2025 American Academy of Religion Book Awards

The American Academy of Religion's 2025 Book Awards recognized six books published in 2024, chosen from scholarship across the study of religion. Rajbir Singh Judge won the Best First Book award for Prophetic Maharaja, a study of loss and sovereignty in the Sikh tradition under colonial rule. Anna Lise Seastrand won the Religion and the Arts award for Body, History, Myth, on early modern murals in South India. The awards for excellence went to Rachel Feldman's Messianic Zionism in the Digital Age in analytical-descriptive studies, Rafal K. Stepien's Buddhism between Philosophy and Religion in constructive-reflective studies, Samantha Kelly's Translating Faith in historical studies, and Signe Cohen's I, Yantra in textual studies. The winners were published by university presses including Columbia, Princeton, Harvard, Oxford, Rutgers and SUNY.