Ancient and Modern Religion and Politics

Author Carolyn M. Jones Medine: Carolyn M. Jones Medine is Professor of Religion and the Institute of African American Studies in the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia, USA.

"In Ancient and Modern Religion and Politics, John Randolph LeBlanc and Carolyn M. Jones Medine present a breathtaking transdisciplinary account of religion and politics by exploring and articulating the dynamics and transitive nature of conceptual spaces, perspectives, shifting discourses, and practices that are important to identity formation in a changing world. This rich discourse analysis is a feast on historic and contemporary ideas on religion and politics that invites the reader into a dialogue with classic philosophical, literary texts, philosophers, scholars of religion, and literary artists. In doing so it also provides perspectives on concrete themes like home/lessness, liberal nationalism, suffering, conflict, peace, culture and community. This book is highly recommended for courses on religion and politics as well as transdisciplinary studies." - Elias Kifon Bongmba, author of The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa, Rice University "This volume speaks to the interface of religion and political thought in past and contemporary cultures and society. It embarks on an interdisciplinary approach which scholars, students and and the general readers will find useful in engaging our post enlightenment world today where new meanings and interpretation are very much needed to make sense of ambiguities which cultural contacts bring. Whether one engages the questions of immigration and identity, religious revivalism and social revolution popularized by social media, the book through its focus on narratives of otherness and dislocation takes us through many ways of seeking meaning. By focusing on the common quest for meaning which underlies most of the inquiries in the humanities and social sciences, the authors provide a brilliantly written and accessible and must have text for every library." - Jacob K. Olupona, professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard Divinity School, author of The City of 201 Gods: Ile Ife in Time Space and the Imagination (2011)

• PART I: HOME AND HOMELESSNESS Culture, Location, and the Problem of Transitive Identity Going Home in the Work of Charles H. Long and Ashis Nandy The Politics of Statelessness: Edward Said and the Ambiguities of Liberal Nationalism PART II: MEDIATIONS OF RELIGION AND POLITICS Self-Cultivation and the Practices of Peace: Foucault on the Stoics and Peacemaking in the Modern World 'The Better Angels of Our Nature:' Sophocles' Antigone and the Crisis of Union Oedipus at Colonus and The Gospel at Colonus: African American Experience and the Classical Text The Power of Horror: Variations and Reframings of The Bacchae PART III: THE POSSIBILITY OF PEACE AND THE BELOVED COMMUNITY The Transitive 'In-Between': Culture, Meaning and the Political in Voegelin and Bhabha Negotiating Space(s): Reframing Political Conflict in Walzer and Lyotard Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Beyond: Suffering and the Task of the Revolutionary Artist The Limits of Reconstruction: Reconstituting Community in Martin Luther King, Jr. Conclusions from a Transitive Space