A divine season

How Zambian Pentecostal activists worked to transform their country into a self-styled “Christian nation”In 2015, Zambia began an ambitious program to “actualize” the country’s constitutional declaration that it was a “Christian nation.” For Pentecostal Christian nationalist activists, this was a...

A jew in the roman bathhouse

A provocative account of Jewish encounters with the public baths of ancient RomePublic bathhouses embodied the Roman way of life, from food and fashion to sculpture and sports. The most popular institution of the ancient Mediterranean world, the baths drew people of all backgrounds. They were pla...

American shtetl

A compelling account of how a group of Hasidic Jews established its own local government on American soilSettled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish history—but many precedents among religious communities in the ...

Applied spirituality and sustainable development policy

Rooted in both secular spirituality and scientific evidence, this book articulates a new model of sustainable development that is not just based on narrow definitions of GDP and economic growth, but that includes and even forefronts the social, environmental, and internal development of human bei...

Beyond religious freedom

In recent years, North American and European nations have sought to legally remake religion in other countries through an unprecedented array of international initiatives. Policymakers have rallied around the notion that the fostering of religious freedom, interfaith dialogue, religious tolerance...

Born again queer

A groundbreaking history of evangelicalism and homosexuality in the United StatesEvangelicals claim that their opposition to homosexuality is an inherent feature of their faith, rooted in their unchanging beliefs about the Bible. Most scholars, journalists, and observers have accepted this accoun...

Catholicism and democracy

How the Catholic Church redefined its relationship to the state in the wake of the French RevolutionCatholicism and Democracy is a history of Catholic political thinking from the French Revolution to the present day. Emile Perreau-Saussine investigates the church's response to liberal democracy, ...

Christian political ethics

Christian Political Ethics brings together leading Christian scholars of diverse theological and ethical perspectives--Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anabaptist--to address fundamental questions of state and civil society, international law and relations, the role of the nation, and issues of...

Christianity's american fate

Tracing the rise of evangelicalism and the decline of mainline Protestantism in American religious and cultural lifeHow did American Christianity become synonymous with conservative white evangelicalism? This sweeping work by a leading historian of modern America traces the rise of the evangelica...

Coping with defeat

The surprising similarities in the rise and fall of the Sunni Islamic and Roman Catholic empires in the face of the modern stateCoping with Defeat presents a historical panorama of the Islamic and Catholic political-religious empires and exposes striking parallels in their relationship with the m...

Dante's divine comedy

The life and times of Dante’s soaring poetic allegory of the soul’s redemptive journey toward GodWritten during his exile from Florence in the early 1300s, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy describes the poet’s travels through hell, purgatory, and paradise, exploring the state of the human soul aft...

Devotion to the administrative state

Why the pursuit of state recognition by seemingly marginal religious groups in Egypt and elsewhere is a devotional practiceOver the past decade alone, religious communities around the world have demanded state recognition, exemption, accommodation, or protection. They make these appeals both in s...

Faces of muhammad

Heretic and impostor or reformer and statesman? The contradictory Western visions of MuhammadIn European culture, Muhammad has been vilified as a heretic, an impostor, and a pagan idol. But these aren’t the only images of the Prophet of Islam that emerge from Western history. Commentators have al...

Faith communities and the fight for racial justice

The communities, congregations, and faith-based coalitions that have been working for racial justice over the past fifty yearsHave progressive religious organizations been missing in action in recent struggles for racial justice? In Faith Communities and the Fight for Racial Justice, Robert Wuthn...

Judaism’s challenge

This book highlights the challenges that face Judaism, captured by the dual implication of election: divine love and enmity with others. This challenge takes on great urgency in the context of advances in interfaith relations and a contemporary Jewish theology of world religions.

Longing and belonging

This volume explores the history of Jewish life and experience in the modern Islamic worldLonging and Belonging investigates the lives of Jews among Muslims in the modern age, both inside and outside the Ottoman Empire and after its demise. Here, modern Jewish protagonists are revealed as active ...

Meir kahane

The life and politics of an American Jewish activist who preached radical and violent means to Jewish survivalMeir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism. Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968, ...

Nations under god

Why churches in some democratic nations wield enormous political power while churches in other democracies don'tIn some religious countries, churches have drafted constitutions, restricted abortion, and controlled education. In others, church influence on public policy is far weaker. Why? Nations...

Norse revival

Norse Revival offers a thorough investigation of Germanic Neopaganism (Asatru) through an international and comprehensive historical perspective.

Out of many faiths

A timely defense of religious diversity and its centrality to American identityAmerica is the most religiously diverse nation on the planet. In today’s volatile climate of religious conflict and distrust, how do we affirm that the American promise is deeply intertwined with how each of us engages...

Passionate politics

In May 2019, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi won the world’s largest election. This book brings together a stellar team of economists, political scientists, sociologists, historians and geographers to explain why Indians voted the way they did.

Red state religion

What Kansas really tells us about red state AmericaNo state has voted Republican more consistently or widely or for longer than Kansas. To understand red state politics, Kansas is the place. It is also the place to understand red state religion. The Kansas Board of Education has repeatedly challe...

Religion and politics in burma

Religion in american politics

The delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention blocked the establishment of Christianity as a national religion. But they could not keep religion out of American politics. From the election of 1800, when Federalist clergymen charged that deist Thomas Jefferson was unfit to lead a "Christian ...

Resurrecting the jew

An in-depth look at why non-Jewish Poles are trying to bring Jewish culture back to life in Poland todaySince the early 2000s, Poland has experienced a remarkable Jewish revival, largely driven by non-Jewish Poles with a passionate new interest in all things Jewish. Klezmer music, Jewish-style re...

Running in good faith?

Considers the seemingly irreconcilable values and political commitments of Judaism and Libertarianism, stimulating a broad discussion and calling into question what people think they know about both Judaism and Libertarianism.

Sacred foundations

How the medieval church drove state formation in EuropeSacred Foundations argues that the medieval church was a fundamental force in European state formation. Existing accounts focus on early modern warfare or contracts between the rulers and the ruled. In contrast, this major study shows that th...

Slaves of god

A provocative look at the central role of slavery in Augustine’s religious, ethical, and political thoughtAugustine believed that slavery is permissible, but to understand why, we must situate him in his late antique Roman intellectual context. Slaves of God provides a major reassessment of this ...

Spiritual contestations – the violence of peace in south sudan

A fresh perspective on conflict and peace-making that highlights the cosmologies and invisible entities that state, society and religious authorities draw on to claim or reclaim legitimacy and control.Peace-making can be a violent, arbitrary assertion of power. At the same time, the spheres of po...

The church of saint thomas paine

The forgotten story of the nineteenth-century freethinkers and twentieth-century humanists who tried to build their own secular religionIn The Church of Saint Thomas Paine, Leigh Eric Schmidt tells the surprising story of how freethinking liberals in nineteenth-century America promoted a secular ...

The clash of ideas in world politics

Some blame the violence and unrest in the Muslim world on Islam itself, arguing that the religion and its history is inherently bloody. Others blame the United States, arguing that American attempts to spread democracy by force have destabilized the region, and that these efforts are somehow radi...

The divine economy

Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year AwardA novel economic interpretation of how religions have become so powerful in the modern worldReligion in the twenty-first century is alive and well across the world, despite its apparent decline in North America and pa...

The gospel of j. edgar hoover

The shocking untold story of how the FBI partnered with white evangelicals to champion a vision of America as a white Christian nationOn a Sunday morning in 1966, a group of white evangelicals dedicated a stained glass window to J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI director was not an evangelical, but his Ch...

The handless maiden

In 1502, a decade of increasing tension between Muslims and Christians in Spain culminated in a royal decree that Muslims in Castile wanting to remain had to convert to Christianity. Mary Elizabeth Perry uses this event as the starting point for a remarkable exploration of how Moriscos, converted...

The jefferson bible

The life and times of a uniquely American testamentIn his retirement, Thomas Jefferson edited the New Testament with a penknife and glue, removing all mention of miracles and other supernatural events. Inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, Jefferson hoped to reconcile Christian tradition w...

The making of the modern muslim state

An innovative analysis that traces the continuity of the state’s custodianship of Islam as the preferred religion in the Middle East and North Africa In The Making of the Modern Muslim State, Malika Zeghal reframes the role of Islam in modern Middle East governance. Challenging other accounts tha...

The meek and the militant

An invaluable critical analysis of how religion shapes politics, encouraging both submission and, at times, revolution.

The new jewish canon

The New Jewish Canon is both text and textbook of the Jewish intellectual and communal zeitgeist for the contemporary period. With both primary sources and analytical essays by leading scholars, this book offers a conceptual roadmap to make sense of the mass production and proliferation of new Je...

The politics of ritual

An illuminating look at the transformative role that rituals play in our political livesThe Politics of Ritual is a major new account of the political power of rituals. In this incisive and wide-ranging book, Molly Farneth argues that rituals are social practices in which people create, maintain,...