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We think we know cultural appropriation when we see it Blackface or Native American headdresses as Halloween costumesthese clearly give offense But what about Cardi B posing as the Hindu goddess Durga in a Reebok ad AAs twelvestep invocation of God or the earnest namaste you utter at the end of yoga class

Liz Bucar unpacks the ethical dilemmas of a messy form of cultural appropriation the borrowing of religious doctrines rituals and dress for political economic and therapeutic reasons Does borrowing from anothers religion harm believers Bucar sees religion as an especially vexing arena for appropriation debates because faiths overlap and imitate each other and because diversity within religious groups scrambles our sense of who is an insider and who is not

Stealing My Religion guides us through three revealing case studiesthe hijab as a feminist signal of Muslim allyship a study abroad pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago and the commodification of yoga in the West Reflecting on her own missteps Bucar comes to a surprising conclusion the way to avoid religious appropriation isnt to borrow less but to borrow moreto become deeply invested in learning the roots and diverse meanings of our enthusiasms