A dharma reader

A Dharma Reader traces the definition, epistemology, procedure, and process of Indian law from the third century B.C.E. to the middle ages. Its breadth captures the centuries-long struggle by Indian thinkers to theorize law in a multiethnic and pluralist society.

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 god-shaped nation

A kaleidoscopic history that shows how the quest to worship freely became one of the nation’s most vexing tensions, shaping life for believers and nonbelievers alike Ever since conquistadores claimed Taino land in the name of their Catholic God and New England Puritans formed their strictly Prot...

A short history of medieval philosophy

After pluralism

The contributors to this volume treat pluralism as a concept that is historically and ideologically produced or, put another way, as a doctrine that is embedded within a range of political, civic, and cultural institutions. Their critique considers how religious difference is framed as a problem ...

After the baby boomers

Much has been written about the profound impact the post-World War II baby boomers had on American religion. But the lifestyles and beliefs of the generation that has followed--and the influence these younger Americans in their twenties and thirties are having on the face of religion--are not so ...

Ali shariati and the future of social theory

An exploration into the lasting influence of the Iranian sociologist and revolutionary, Ali Shariati, who is thought to be the most important intellectual behind the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

America and the challenges of religious diversity

Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and adherents of other non-Western religions have become a significant presence in the United States in recent years. Yet many Americans continue to regard the United States as a Christian society. How are we adapting to the new diversity? Do we casually announce that ...

American jewbu

A revealing look at the Jewish American encounter with BuddhismToday, many Jewish Americans are embracing a dual religious identity, practicing Buddhism while also staying connected to their Jewish roots. This book tells the story of Judaism's encounter with Buddhism in the United States, showing...

American parishes

Between individual Catholics and a global institution, thousands of local parishes remake Catholicism each day. With fresh data and sociological methods, this book shows how parishes are shaped by community, geography, and authority; how parishes respond to diversity and change; and how parishes ...

American religion

The most authoritative resource on religious trends in America—now fully updatedMost Americans say they believe in God, and more than a third say they attend religious services every week. Yet studies show that people do not really go to church as often as they claim, and it is not always clear w...

American religion

A completely updated and expanded third edition of the most authoritative resource on religious trends in AmericaSince it was first published, American Religion has established itself as the essential source on key developments in American religion. Now fully revised, it provides the best and mos...

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 ...

An ethos of blackness

This book is a groundbreaking account of Rastafari, demonstrating that it provides a normative conception of Blackness for people of African descent that resists Eurocentric and colonial ideas.

Atheists in america

An intimate psychological study of a largely invisible minority navigating life in a religious world.

Being german, becoming muslim

Every year more and more Europeans, including Germans, are embracing Islam. It is estimated that there are now up to one hundred thousand German converts—a number similar to that in France and the United Kingdom. What stands out about recent conversions is that they take place at a time when Isla...

Believing history

The eminent historian Richard Bushman here reflects on his faith and the history of his religion. By describing his own struggle to find a basis for belief in a skeptical world, Bushman poses the question of how scholars are to write about subjects in which they are personally invested. Does pers...

Beyond the altar

Sheds light on how Ontario-based Canadian women religious overcome sexist subjugation by side-stepping the patriarchal power of the Roman Catholic Church and engendering women-led spiritual, governance and activist practices in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Black visions of the holy land

This book examines African American Christian involvement in Israel and Palestine to show how competing visions of “the Black Church” are changing through transnational political engagement.

Bringing back the social into the sociology of religion

Based on original empirical research, the contributions collected here make possible a fuller sociological understanding of power, emotions, the self, and ethnic relations in religious life.

Can islam be french?

Can Islam Be French? is an anthropological examination of how Muslims are responding to the conditions of life in France. Following up on his book Why the French Don't Like Headscarves, John Bowen turns his attention away from the perspectives of French non-Muslims to focus on those of the countr...

Challenging modernity

In three final essays, Robert N. Bellah grapples with the contradictions of modernity, and seven leading thinkers respond with profound new perspectives on our present predicament.

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...

City of gods

City of Gods is a history and ethnography of Flushing, Queens in New York City. An important site in colonial America for its place in the history of religious freedom, Flushing is now perhaps the most striking case of religious and ethnic pluralism in the world—and an ideal place to explore how ...

Conviviality in contexts of religious plurality

How do individuals and communities navigate religious diversity?

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...

Cosmic missions

Cosmic Missions reveals the deep yet unacknowledged relationships between religion and the exploration of outer space.

Criticism of heaven

This volume consists of a critical commentary on the interactions between Marxism and theology.

Days of death, days of life

Kristin Norget explores the practice and meanings of death rituals in poor urban neighborhoods on the outskirts of the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Oaxaca City, Norget provides vivid descriptions of the Day of the Dead and other popular religious practice...

Digital theology

Digital theology is an emerging and evolving field of research in academia. It is gaining traction with scholars across a variety of subjects including; Computer Science, Theology, Sociology of Religion and the wider Humanities.

Displacing the divine

As religious leaders, ministers are often assumed to embody the faith of the institution they represent. As cultural symbols, they reflect subtle changes in society and belief-specifically people's perception of God and the evolving role of the church. For more than forty years, Douglas Alan Walr...

Dogs save

Katharine Mershon examines the unacknowledged religious underpinnings of stories about dogs, revealing deeply rooted cultural assumptions about who can be saved and how redemption ought to occur.

Electric santería

Drawing on eight years of ethnographic research, Beliso-De Jesús traces the phenomenon of copresence in the lives of Santería practitioners

Elusive togetherness

Many scholars and citizens alike have counted on civic groups to create broad ties that bind society. Some hope that faith-based civic groups will spread their reach as government retreats. Yet few studies ask how, if at all, civic groups reach out to their wider community. Can religious groups--...

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...

Faith in development

This book presents the changes of worldview and meaning-making that people associate with their religious, spiritual, agnostic and atheist identifications.

Faith in space

A cultural history of the American faith in alien life, from the Puritans to Heaven’s GateOver the past three centuries, belief in extraterrestrial life has had a profound influence on American religion. Faith in Space examines the key thinkers and religious leaders throughout American history wh...

Faith on trial

“Anyone who has ever been confused by a Supreme Court decision or unsure of how to embody religious freedom in their own life now has a lawyer, and a pastor, they can trust.” —Dan McKanan, author of Prophetic Encounters Books about religion and the law tend to be highly technical or aimed primar...

Gestures

This concluding volume of the Future of the Religious Past series approaches contemporary religion through the lens of practice: the rituals, performances, devotions, and everyday acts through which humans do religion. In spite of predictions about the inevitability of secularism, religion in the...

Growing up godless

How children’s non-belief and non-religion are formed in everyday lifeThe number of those identifying as “non-religious” has risen rapidly in Britain and many other parts of Europe and North America. Although non-religion and non-belief are especially prevalent among younger people, we know littl...

Guru english

Guru English is a bold reconceptualization of the scope and meaning of cosmopolitanism, examining the language of South Asian religiosity as it has flourished both inside and outside of its original context for the past two hundred years. The book surveys a specific set of religious vocabularies ...

Heavenly merchandize

Heavenly Merchandize offers a critical reexamination of religion's role in the creation of a market economy in early America. Focusing on the economic culture of New England, it views commerce through the eyes of four generations of Boston merchants, drawing upon their personal letters, diaries, ...

Hidden heretics

A revealing look at Jewish men and women who secretly explore the outside world, in person and online, while remaining in their ultra-Orthodox religious communities What would you do if you questioned your religious faith, but revealing that would cause you to lose your family and the only way of...

Hip hop's hostile gospel

Hip Hop’s Hostile Gospel is a wide-ranging and highly enjoyable attempt to unearth the theology of Hip Hop