Academic religion books—many of which have been in the works for years—on gender, sexuality, and society are meeting the moment, as these topics take center stage in the culture.

“We can never ignore what happens around us,” says Bridgett A. Green, VP of publishing and editorial director for Westminster John Knox Press. WJK’s Trans Biblical: New Approaches to Interpretation and Embodiment in Scripture (Feb. 2025) is a compendium of essays written and edited by Joseph A. Marchal, Melissa Harl Sellew, and Katy E. Valentine, experts in religious studies and the LGBTQ community. According to the publisher, they address questions such as “what makes a biblical reading trans, or a trans reading biblical?” and detail how “biblical texts are more variable than we have been trained to see.”

That’s not how theologian Robert S. Smith sees scripture. In his book, The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory (Lexham, Feb. 2025), he argues that Christian scripture is clear that gender is rooted in biological sex.

Two books deal with sexism: Women in the Orthodox Tradition: Feminism, Theology, and Equality (Notre Dame Univ., Apr. 2025) by religion professor Ashley Marie Purpura offers feminist insights on the messy entanglement between tradition and theology while advocating for women’s voices and diverse humanity within the Orthodox church. And in The Woman Question in Islamic Studies (Princeton Univ., out now), religion professor Kecia Ali tracks how scholarship by Muslim women scholars is shunted aside in publishing, curricula, and media.

And scholar Katherine Kelaidis’s The Fourth Reformation: How Battles Over Women, Gender, and Sexuality Are Shaping the Future of Religion (Rowman & Littlefield, Aug. 2025) details how, according to Richard Brown, senior executive acquisitions editor of religion and spirituality at R&L, “every major faith and philosophy East and West is struggling with definitions and roles for women, men and LGBTQ+ people.”