What is political theology?

This field-changing interdisciplinary book brings together three of the leading voices in political theology—a Christian theologian, a critical theorist, and an anthropologist—to offer new entry points to understand religion and politics.

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.

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...

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...

Rediscovering the islamic classics

The story of how Arab editors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries revolutionized Islamic literatureIslamic book culture dates back to late antiquity, when Muslim scholars began to write down their doctrines on parchment, papyrus, and paper and then to compose increasingly elabora...

Wahhābism

An essential history of Wahhābism from its founding to the Islamic StateIn the mid-eighteenth century, a controversial Islamic movement arose in the central Arabian region of Najd that forever changed the political landscape of the Arabian Peninsula and the history of Islamic thought. Its founder...

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 ...

Unvaccinated under god

How vaccine hesitancy can be understood as religious expressionVaccine hesitancy in America didn’t begin with the uproar over the mRNA vaccines for Covid-19. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw resistance to a wide variety of vaccines. In Unvaccinated Under God, Kira Ganga Kie...

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...

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...

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...

Perilous intimacies

SherAli Tareen explores how leading South Asian Muslim thinkers imagined and contested the boundaries of Hindu-Muslim friendship from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.

Who really wrote the bible

A groundbreaking new account of the writing of the Hebrew BibleWho wrote the Bible? Its books have no bylines. Tradition long identified Moses as the author of the Pentateuch, with Ezra as editor. Ancient readers also suggested that David wrote the psalms and Solomon wrote Proverbs and Qohelet. A...

The making of the medieval middle east

A bold new religious history of the late antique and medieval Middle East that places ordinary Christians at the center of the storyIn the second half of the first millennium CE, the Christian Middle East fractured irreparably into competing churches and Arabs conquered the region, setting in mot...

Christianity in the twentieth century

A history of unparalleled scope that charts the global transformation of Christianity during an age of profound political and cultural changeChristianity in the Twentieth Century charts the transformation of one of the world's great religions during an age marked by world wars, genocide, national...

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 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...

Sufism

A pathbreaking history of Sufism, from the earliest centuries of Islam to the presentAfter centuries as the most important ascetic-mystical strand of Islam, Sufism saw a sharp decline in the twentieth century, only to experience a stunning revival in recent decades. In this comprehensive new hist...

Hasidism

A must-read book for understanding this vibrant and influential modern Jewish movementHasidism originated in southeastern Poland, in mystical circles centered on the figure of Israel Ba’al Shem Tov, but it was only after his death in 1760 that a movement began to spread. Today, Hasidism is witnes...

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...

Longing for the lost caliphate

In the United States and Europe, the word "caliphate" has conjured historically romantic and increasingly pernicious associations. Yet the caliphate's significance in Islamic history and Muslim culture remains poorly understood. This book explores the myriad meanings of the caliphate for Muslims ...

The fruitful darkness

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...

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...

Inheriting abraham

How Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have reimagined Abraham in their own imagesJews, Christians, and Muslims supposedly share a common religious heritage in the patriarch Abraham, and the idea that he should serve only as a source of unity among the three traditions has become widespread in both...

Princeton readings in religion and violence

An anthology that examines the historical and contemporary relationship between religion and violenceThis groundbreaking anthology provides the most comprehensive overview for understanding the fascinating relationship between religion and violence—historically, culturally, and in the contemporar...

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...