How god becomes real

The hard work required to make God real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faithHow do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people—as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cogn...

Ecologies of ecstasy

Ecologies of Ecstasy recasts religious contemplation as a form of vegetal being, arguing that spiritual practice is rooted in the generation of life on earth.

Imagining the past, remembering the future

Imagining the Past, Remembering the Future investigates the interlinked art, history, religion, philosophy, and cosmology of oral traditions across the Afro-Brazilian diaspora, arguing that these varied cultural expressions together constitute distinctive forms of knowledge.

The complete works of zhuangzi

Now using pinyin romanization, this classic translation captures the visionary thought and stylistic brilliance of a seminal Daoist text.

The millennial sovereign

At the end of the sixteenth century and the turn of the first Islamic millennium, the powerful Mughal emperor Akbar declared himself the most sacred being on earth. The holiest of all saints and above the distinctions of religion, he styled himself as the messiah reborn. Yet the Mughal emperor wa...

Acute melancholia and other essays

Showcases the best in modern medieval and religious scholarship, deploying spirited and progressive approaches to the study of Christian mysticism and the philosophy of religion.

Religions of early india

The extraordinary multiplicity of religions and religious cultures in India, chronicled over two thousand yearsFrom its earliest recorded history, India was a place of remarkable and varied religious activity, ranging from elaborate sacrificial rituals and rigorous regimes of personal austerity t...

Ancient christian magic

This thought-provoking collection of magical texts from ancient Egypt shows the exotic rituals, esoteric healing practices, and incantatory and supernatural dimensions that flowered in early Christianity. These remarkable Christian magical texts include curses, spells of protection from "headless...

Islamic thought in early modern india

A wide-ranging new history of Islamic thought and practice in India from the early eighteenth century to the presentFocusing on one of the most influential families in Indian Islam, this history provides a broad yet intimate view of Islamic thought and practice in India from the early eighteenth ...

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...

Zeus and hera

A landmark study of the archetypal father, husband, and wife in Greek religion and mythWhat did Zeus mean to the Greeks of antiquity? Who was Hera, archetypally united with Zeus as if they were a human couple? Examining the word Zeus and its Greek synonyms theos and daimon, acclaimed mythologist ...

Take back what the devil stole

Ms. Donna Haskins is an African American woman who wrestles with structural inequity in the streets of Boston by inhabiting an alternate dimension she refers to as the “spirit realm.” Both ethnographic and personal, Onaje X. O. Woodbine’s portrait of her spiritual life sheds new light on the live...

Ancient christianities

How, over the course of five centuries, one particular god and one particular Christianity came to dominate late Roman imperial politics and piety The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. For centuries, a practical religious pluralism prevailed. How, then, did one particular god come to domina...

When god was a bird

2019 NAUTILUS GOLD WINNERIn a time of rapid climate change and species extinction, what role have the world’s religions played in ameliorating—or causing—the crisis we now face? Religion in general, and Christianity in particular, appears to bear a disproportionate burden for creating humankind’s...

Material mystery

Material Mystery analyzes three anthropomorphic figures from religious myths: the bodies of Adam and Christ and the resurrected or “glorious” body. Using Jewish and Christian Wisdom traditions, the book argues that these myths help us to understand the interaction, interdependence, and divine cha...

Machines for making gods

An engrossing account of the way religion and the technological imagination come together in the world’s largest religious transhumanist organization.

Religion and film

Religion and Film introduces readers to both religious studies and film studies by focusing on the formal similarities between cinema and religious practices and on the ways they each re-create the world. S. Brent Plate shows that by paying attention to the ways films are constructed, we can shed...

Muslim environmentalisms

Anna M. Gade explores the religious and cultural foundations of Islamic environmentalisms. She blends textual and ethnographic study to offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary account of the legal, ethical, social, and political principles underlying Muslim commitments to the earth.

Roman catholicism in america

Chester Gillis chronicles the history of American Catholics from the colonial era to the present, with an emphasis on changes and challenges in the contemporary church. This second edition of Roman Catholicism in America pays particular attention to the tumultuous past twenty years.

Critical theories of anti-semitism

This book is at once a philosophical reflection on key problems in the analysis of anti-Semitism and a history of its leading theories and theorists.

Being human in a buddhist world

A definitive account of the efforts by Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and other conservatives to remake American politics, the American economy, and America’s approach to the world in a pivotal decade.

Sufi bodies

Between 1300 and 1500 C.E. a new form of Sufi Islam took hold among central Islamic peoples, joining individuals through widespread networks resembling today's prominent paths and orders. Understanding contemporary Sufism requires a sophisticated analysis of these formative years. Moving beyond a...

Beyond the secular west

Nine major scholars of philosophy, religion, law, ethics, history, anthropology, and politics consider the fate of Western secularism in modern global societies. Extending Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, this anthology explores the transformation of Western secularism beyond Europe, and the colle...

Blood

Blood, according to Gil Anidjar, maps the singular history of Christianity. As a category for historical analysis, blood can be seen through its literal and metaphorical uses as determining, sometimes even defining Western culture, politics, and social practices and their wide-ranging incarnation...

Sinning in the hebrew bible

Stories of rape, murder, adultery, and conquest raise crucial issues in the Hebrew Bible, and their interpretation helps societies form their religious and moral beliefs. From the sacrifice of Isaac to the adultery of David, narratives of sin engender vivid analysis and debate, powering the myths...

The buddha's wizards

Belief in wizard-saints who protect their devotees and intervene in the world is widespread among Burmese Buddhists. The Buddha’s Wizards is a historically informed, ethnographic study that explores the supernatural landscape of Buddhism in Myanmar to explain the persistence of wizardry as a form...

The church confronts modernity

As the twentieth century opened, American intellectuals grew increasingly sympathetic to Pragmatism and empirical methods in the social sciences. The Progressive program as a whole—in the form of Pragmatism, education, modern sociology, and nationalism—seemed to be in agreement on one thing: ever...

Shintō in the history and culture of japan

This book is a concise overview of Shintō through a survey of its key concepts, related archeological finds, central mythology, significant cultural sites, political dimensions, and historical developments. Its goal is to promote an understanding of Shintō as an enduring cultural phenomenon centr...

The bible, the talmud, and the new testament

Born in Slutzk, Russia, in 1805, Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik is a largely forgotten member of the prestigious Soloveitchik rabbinic dynasty. Before Hayyim Soloveitchik developed the standard Brisker method of Talmudic study, or Joseph Dov Soloveitchik helped to found American Modern Orthodox Judaism,...

The children of abraham

F. E. Peters, a scholar without peer in the comparative study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, revisits his pioneering work. Peters has rethought and thoroughly rewritten his classic The Children of Abraham for a new generation of readers-at a time when the understanding of these three religi...

The talmud

The life and times of an enduring work of Jewish spiritualityThe Babylonian Talmud, a postbiblical Jewish text that is part scripture and part commentary, is an unlikely bestseller. Written in a hybrid of Hebrew and Aramaic, it is often ambiguous to the point of incomprehension, and its subject m...

The imam of the christians

How Christian leaders adapted the governmental practices and political thought of their Muslim rulers in the Abbasid caliphateThe Imam of the Christians examines how Christian leaders adopted and adapted the political practices and ideas of their Muslim rulers between 750 and 850 in the Abbasid c...

Ulum al qur'an

Learn everything about the sciences of the Qur'an.

The fruitful darkness

The aryan jesus

Was Jesus a Nazi? During the Third Reich, German Protestant theologians, motivated by racism and tapping into traditional Christian anti-Semitism, redefined Jesus as an Aryan and Christianity as a religion at war with Judaism. In 1939, these theologians established the Institute for the Study and...

The golden legend

Depicting the lives of the saints in an array of factual and fictional stories, The Golden Legend was perhaps the most widely read book, after the Bible, during the late Middle Ages. It was compiled around 1260 by Jacobus de Voragine, a scholarly friar and later archbishop of Genoa, whose purpose...

The bhagavad gita

The Bhagavad Gita has been called India’s greatest contribution to the world. For more than five thousand years, this great scripture has shown millions in the East how to fill their lives with serenity and love. In these pages, Jack Hawley brings these ancient secrets to Western seekers in a bea...

The evolution of religions

This extraordinarily ambitious and comprehensive book demonstrates how evolutionary theory can yield new insight into the development of organized religion. Lance Grande examines the growth and diversification of hundreds of religions over time, highlighting their historical interrelationships.

After jews

The book is an attempt to describe and critically interpret the condition of man living in the shadow of the Shoah, in the world “after Jews”. 

The gospel of john

The contentious life and times of the most widely cited book of the New TestamentWritten some two thousand years ago, the Gospel of John is the only Christian Gospel to place Jesus at the creation of the world, and the only one where we find the stories of the raising of Lazarus, the woman taken ...

Dionysos

A landmark account of the Dionysos myth as an archetypal expression of indestructible lifeNo other god of the Greeks is as widely present in the monuments and ritual practices of antiquity as Dionysos. In this book, acclaimed mythologist and historian of religion Carl Kerényi presents an engaging...

Prometheus

A landmark account of the Prometheus story as myth and archetypeThe god Prometheus stole fire from heaven and bestowed it on humans. In punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock, where an eagle clawed unceasingly at his liver until Herakles freed him. For the Greeks, the myth of Prometheus’s release...