Critical Concepts in Religious Studies – serie

The historical study of the Jesus stories and the transmission of these stories through time has been of seminal importance to historians of religion. Critical historical examination allows scholars an escape from the confines of dogma, belief, and the theological interpretation. In recent years, historical Jesus studies have also opened up an important discussion concerning anti-Semitism and early Christianity and the political and ideological filtering of the Jesus story of early Christianity through the Roman Empire and beyond.This comprehensive collection brings together the vast array of historical research into the reality of the man, the teachings, and the acts and events ascribed to him that have served as the foundational story of one of the world's central religions.Forthcoming titles from the same series include Sects, Cults and New Religious Movements (2005, 4 volumes, c.£525) and Buddhism (2005, 8 volumes, c.£995).

Contemporary Paganism emerged in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s as a new religious movement, although practitioners understood themselves to be participating in a witchcraft tradition extending back into medieval—if not prehistoric—times.In recent decades, Pagan Studies has emerged through a plethora of sophisticated anthropological, sociological, and historical studies, and this new three-volume collection from Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Religious Studies series brings together the best foundational and cutting-edge scholarship in one ‘mini library’.Volume I addresses the emergence of Paganism as a religion. It collects scholarly analyses of the historical evolution of Paganism, and is organized under topics including debates of historical accuracy, influences on the development of Paganism, and the process of routinization in the religion. The second volume addresses the importance of environmentalism in contemporary Paganism, including work on how Pagans think about the natural world, environmental ethics, and related political activism. The final volume addresses the importance of gender issues and feminism in contemporary Paganism, and collects the best research on topics including immanence, embodiment, self-image, and sexuality.Paganism is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

This collection is an essential research tool for all students specializing in religion and women’s studies, and will be equally useful to those working in related fields such as anthropology, cultural studies, history, literary studies, philosophy, political science, psychology, and theology. By tracing the evolution of the topic, from the beginnings of feminist research on religion to more contemporary debates about categorizations of gender in the study of religion, this four-volume collection serves the needs of both specialist and generalist users.Women and Religion includes essays treating a broad range of religious traditions, while focusing on particular methodological and theoretical concerns common to the study of women and religion. Organized thematically, each volume includes the most formative theoretical contributions to the field, grouped together with articles that explore a particular set of issues from a range of traditions, with the use of methodologies drawn from anthropology, history, sociology, textual criticism, and religious studies. Each volume’s introductory essay explicitly problematizes the central categories of analysis operating in the study of women and religion while also setting the articles in historical context.

Two-thirds of the world's Christians live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and this new interdisciplinary Routledge Major Work brings together specialist contributions from around the world, from Europe and North America as well as from the developing world, to present a collection that truly represents World Christianity. It includes Pentecostal and various Reform churches, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, and independent churches.The materials have been arranged around the core themes of contextualization, external and internal power, theological and ethnic marginalization, civic and ancestral identity, mission and conversion, and cover Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South America, Oceania, and Australasia.The collection draws on the latest work from theology, anthropology, the sociology of religion, missiology, and religious studies, enabling users to grasp the very varied presentation of the Christian faith, the socio-cultural negotiation, accommodation, renovation, and the challenges to what the collection editor calls a 'Euro-American Christian taken-for-granted' understanding of theology and praxis from 'the world within and beyond'.Fully indexed, and containing comprehensive introductions newly written by the editor, World Christianity is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital one-stop research resource.

This new four-volume collection from Routledge brings together the best and most influential scholarship on women and Christianity. It presents an up-to-date, multidisciplinary, and comprehensive compilation of women’s reflection on the Bible and Christian doctrines; women’s religious roles and movements; and contemporary issues facing Christian women around the world.

Hardly a week goes by without some world event relating to the burgeoning field of religion and human rights. Whether attacks carried out in the name of religion by individuals or states, violations of the rights of individuals or communities due to their religious or other beliefs, or clashes between religious and other competing rights (most notably, freedom of speech), matters relating to religion and human rights are not only an area of expert and academic interest, but also of increasing interest to policy-makers, governments, international organizations, and NGOs.This new four-volume Major Work collection from Routledge examines the background, history, and nature of human rights—both individual and collective—as well as economic, social, and cultural rights; and also civil and political rights. Standards, mechanisms, and jurisprudence at international and national levels are included, and form part of the discussion of the conflict of rights and freedom of religion or belief. Religions featured include Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and African religions, and the persecution or discrimination of religious or belief communities are discussed. Relevant human rights documents are also included.The range of subject areas that contribute to discussions on religion and human rights are many, and include: political science; law; international relations; anthropology; philosophy; religious studies; sociology of religion; and theology. Students, scholars, teachers, and practitioners from these and other disciplines will welcome this collection as a vital one-stop compendium of the very best canonical and cutting-edge research.

Psychology of religion is essentially as old as psychology itself, with over a hundred years of history and claiming some of psychology’s most notable characters as contributors, including William James, Sigmund Freud, Gordon Allport, and Jean Piaget. In recent years, this subfield of psychology has risen in prominence. Sectarian violence, secularization, the ‘culture wars’, and increase in cross-cultural and cross-religious contact through migration, urbanization, and globalization have all contributed to heightened interest in questions such as: where do religious beliefs come from? Why do they seem to motivate behaviour so powerfully? Is religious belief and practice good or bad for us? Does religious belief assist or hinder morality? Increasingly discussed by journalists and science-popularisers such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, A.C. Grayling, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Lewis Wolpert, these sorts of questions are psychological questions with psychological answers emerging through the work of psychologists of religion. Social and cultural factors have provided some motivation for renewed interest in psychology of religion, and additional impetus has been provided by new advances in psychological subfields, particularly cognitive, developmental, and evolutionary psychology. These three areas, previously only marginal contributors to psychology of religion, have begun making more substantial contributions concerning how and why human minds come to represent certain religious ideas and beliefs. Not surprisingly, psychology of religion is becoming a more prominent focus of psychological research and teaching. This collection presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive presentation of the psychology of religion available. The first volume focuses on psychological explanations of religion (that is, religion as something to be explained), the second concerning religious psychology, the third representing the impact of religion on thought, feelings, and behaviour, and the final volume considering implications of religious perspectives and findings for the practice of psychology, both scientific and applied. Historical and contemporary perspectives are integrated into thematically arranged sections. An extended introduction surveying the field begins the collection and an index increases the collection’s utility as a reference resource.Available at a special introductory price. This price is applicable until 3 months after publication. For more information, please contact us (reference@routledge.com).

The early twenty-first century has witnessed a global resurgence of religious activity and identification. In particular, numerous examples of the growing political influence of religion can be cited, not least in Europe, once thought to be an inexorably secularizing continent. In India, meanwhile, officially a secular state, the Bharatiya Janata Party has served in several coalition governments and, until 2004, was the leading party in government. In the USA, religion continues to have a major impact on both domestic politics and the country’s international relations. More obviously perhaps, in the Middle East, religion plays an enormous part in political life, both domestically and internationally, while the Roman Catholic Church has played a leading role in the turn to democracy in Spain, Poland, and several Latin American countries.Volume I (‘The World Religions and Politics’) of this new four-volume collection from Routledge focuses on the major world religions and the roles they play in politics. Volume II (‘Religion and Governance’) brings together key work on: religion and secularization; religious fundamentalism; the relationship between church and state; religion and democracy; and religion and civil society. Volume III (‘Religion and International Relations’), meanwhile, assembles vital scholarship on religion and foreign policy, globalization, and terrorism. Finally, Volume IV collects work on ‘Religion, Development, and Security’ to examine religion and conflict; religion, gender, and politics; faith-based development aid; religion and science; and religion and human rights.With a full index and a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, that places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Religion and Politics is an essential one-stop reference resource.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that during the last century, most especially during and since the 1960s, the language of spirituality has become one of the most significant ways in which the sacred has come to be understood and judged in the West, and, increasingly, elsewhere. Whether it is true that ‘spirituality’ has eclipsed ‘religion’ in Western settings remains debatable. What is incontestable is that the language of spirituality, together with practices (most noticeably spiritual, complementary, and alternative medicine), has become a major feature of the sacred dimensions of contemporary modernity. Equally incontestably, spirituality is a growing force in all those developing countries where its presence is increasingly felt among the cosmopolitan elite, and where spiritual forms of traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine are thriving.This new four-volume Major Work collection from Routledge provides a coherent compilation of landmark texts which cannot be ignored by those intent on making sense of what is happening to the sacred as spirituality—more exactly what is taken to be spirituality—develops as an increasingly important lingua franca, series of practices, and as a humanistic ethicality.

Religious belief is an extremely powerful motivator of human behaviour. Religious considerations permeate and influence all parts of a culture. Religious systems are universal in human cultures, around the world and through all stages of human history and prehistory. Of all academic approaches to religion, the anthropological approach is the most comprehensive and the most useful to students of human belief and behaviour, because it examines religion as a cultural system that cannot fully be understood separated from the other systems with which it interacts.This new four-volume collection from Routledge assembles exemplary scholarship in the field from its Victorian beginnings to the present, and represents all generally accepted categories of religious belief and ritual, plus some new ones. Topics covered include: ‘Early Explorations’; ‘Symbols’; ‘Supernatural Beings’; ‘Magical Power and Forces’; ‘Human Agents of Supernatural Danger’; ‘Myth’; ‘Ritual’; ‘Religious Practitioners’; ‘Women and Gender’; ‘Belief’; ‘Ecology’; ‘Mind and Body—Neurobiological Bases’; and ‘Religion in Socio-Cultural Change’.The first volume is prefaced with a general introduction newly written by the editor which outlines the history and salient aspects of the anthropological concern for religion, and introduces the specific sections of the work. Each thematic part also includes a short introduction to set the gathered materials in context. Anthropology of Religion is destined to be valued by scholars, students, researchers, and practitioners as an essential one-stop reference.

'A major publishing event, not only in Buddhist studies but also for those working in the area of interfaith encounter and theology of religions.' Japanese Journal of Religious StudiesIn today’s globalized world, religious diversity has become one of the strongest challenges to the self-understanding of any major religious tradition, provoking two interdependent questions. How does it see itself in the light of others? And, how does it see others in the light of its own teachings? While the Abrahamic religions are often accused of a predominantly intolerant and exclusivistic attitude to the religious ‘other’, Eastern religions—and Buddhism in particular—enjoy the reputation of being naturally tolerant, absorbing, and even pluralistic towards competing faiths. Some thinkers (from David Hume to Jan Assmann) understood religious intolerance as an inevitable property of monotheism, supposedly absent in the case of non-theistic or polytheistic religions. More recent research, however, has suggested that this impression, part of a whole cluster of Western clichés, is false. Buddhism is—and has been—as much convinced of its own superiority as any other faith, and has also been involved in various inter-religious tensions and violent conflicts. The ways, however, in which Buddhists have thought about the religious ‘other’, and practically dealt with it, display peculiar features, which do indeed differ profoundly from what we find in the Abrahamic faiths. Yet today, Buddhism must address the question whether it can arrive at a genuine appreciation of religious diversity, and recognize other religions as different but nevertheless equally valid.This new four-volume collection from Routledge’s acclaimed Critical Concepts in Religious Studies series enables users to make sense of this and other dizzying questions. It brings together the best thinking on Buddhism’s relationship with other faiths and provides a one-stop collection of classic and contemporary contributions to facilitate ready access to the most influential and important scholarship.Fully indexed and with a general and volume introductions, newly written by the editor, which carefully locate the collected materials in their historical and intellectual context, Buddhism and Religious Diversity is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by specialists and scholars working in related areas as a vital research tool.

Integral to human nature is the need to seek understanding of the world in which we live, to discover how it works and why. We find our answers to these fundamental questions through different methods; empirical science justifies our observations of the natural world, but religion offers explanations to its meaning and purpose. On the surface of it the encounter between reason and faith, the mind and spirit, have the appearance of polarity, in reality there is fluidity between the two. It is a dynamic and constantly changing relationship, and for that reason it is an important and thriving academic area that needs careful and intentional study. This new collection answers that need with scholarship brought together in four volumes. Taking the combined experience of Sara Fletcher Harding and Nancy Morvillo, experts in religion and science respectively, this new Routledge Major Work presents an abundance of the very best cutting-edge scholarship that has been written about this fragile relationship. Volume I of this collection is focused on ‘Histories and Methodologies in Science and Religion’ and Volume II on ‘Cosmological Considerations in Science and Religion’. Volume III is entitled ‘The Imperative of Evolution in Science’ and finally Volume IV brings together the best scholarship on ‘Religion Human Actions at the Intersection of Science and Religion’. With individual introductions for each volume placing the collected material into its relevant intellectual and historical context and a full index, this is an accessible and thorough reference resource.

In the last two decades a new form of religiously motivated social action and a virtually new field of academic study—each based in recognition of the connections between religion and humanity’s treatment of the environment—have developed. Interactions between religion and environmental concern have been manifest in the explosive growth of ecotheological writings, institutional commitment by organized religions, and environmental activism explicitly oriented to religious ideals. Clergy throughout the world in virtually every denomination have received word from leaders of their religion that the environment—no less than sexuality, poverty, or war and peace—is now a basic and compelling religious matter.Out of this confrontation have been born vital new theologies based in the recovery of marginalized elements of tradition, profound criticisms of the past, and ecologically oriented visions of God, the Sacred, the Earth, and human beings. Theologians from every religious tradition—along with dozens of non-denominational spiritual writers—have confronted world religions’ past attitudes towards nature. In the realm of institutional commitment, public statements and actions by organized religions have grown dramatically. In the context of political action, throughout the U.S. and the world religiously oriented groups take part in environmentally oriented political action: from lobbying and consciousness raising to activist demonstrations and civil disobedience.This collection serves as a comprehensive introduction, overview, and in-depth account of these exciting new developments. The four volumes cover virtually every aspect of the field—from theological change and institutional commitment to innovation in liturgy, from new ecumenical connections among different religions and between religion, science and environmental movements, from religious participation in environmental politics to an account of the global social and political contexts in which religious environmentalism has unfolded.

The term ‘fundamentalism’ carries a wide range of meanings, some of them pejorative. Here it is used to refer to what the French call ‘integrism’, meaning a religious code which encompasses and governs with its prescriptions the entire private and public life of individuals and the collectivity. The prime examples in the contemporary world are Muslim renewal; Christian evangelical and charismatic churches, sects, and tendencies; and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism.These three varieties of movement represent radical departures from the traditions out of which they have grown. These new forms can be characterized in terms of their ability to plug into local cultural practices and incorporate them without theorizing; ability to provide a framework for coping with serious social ills among the marginalized; ability to create transcultural communities of individuals without regard to prior political, linguistic, or ethnic frontiers; obsessive attention to the control of sexuality, especially female; belief in the literal truth of every word in the holy text; and their emphasis on conversion as a crisis and rupture in the life of individuals.Even in its early days, Pentecostalism was a multicultural, multi-ethnic movement, drawing on black Americans, and the Mexican, European, and Asian migrant communities in America for its following. Today, in some countries (such as Nigeria and Ghana) the appeal seems to be more to the middle-class groups, while in others, such as in Latin America and the Philippines, it is most successful among the urban poor and among indigenous peoples, and represents a profound change after five centuries of a virtual Catholic monopoly.In Islam and Judaism an erudite strand of learning has co-existed with a proliferation of healers and seers. Modern Jewish fundamentalists are however overwhelmingly focused on texts, and although their heritage in Eastern Europe has a strong element of ecstatic prayer, that has tended to take second place in the post-Holocaust era to an institutionalization of learning. In Islam, likewise, the renewal movements, led usually by lay people rather than clergy (except in Iran), focus on the text of the Qur’an and are hostile to mystical heritage embodied by Sufism.This new, four-volume collection from Routledge makes available a range of materials which represent: (a) the most important recent analytical and descriptive contributions to the subject; (b) some doctrinal and historical texts; and (c) a representative coverage of the subject by theme and geographical area. It is sure to be welcomed by scholars and students as an indispensable resource for reference and research.

SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE!(Valid until 3 months after publication)No collection of this sort has yet been conceived of, let alone accomplished, in this field. In part that may well be due to the extraordinarily nascent character of the field of comparative religious ethics, described as that (as opposed to Christian ethics, for example). Yet the aim is not simply to gather together a number of pieces, but -- with the appropriate modesty and tentativeness -- to offer one picture of how the field ought to understand itself: its past, present, and perhaps its future. A critical mass of scholars has now emerged in this area, and the institutional dynamics of religious studies departments, which are increasingly seeing the attractions of classes in "comparative ethics," are favorable as well. By gathering together both "classic" statements, exemplifying paradigmatic approaches in the field, and recent, ground-breaking and innovative works, the ambition is to make this collection the gold standard for anyone working on the field of comparative religious ethics in coming decades.

The study of Hinduism is fragmented among many disciplines. Early academic study of Hinduism was overwhelmingly a study of texts, and while a strong philological tradition continues to characterise much work on Hinduism (in particular in Indology), very different materials and questions animate debates among anthropologists, sociologists, historians, philosophers, and others. The result is that Hindu institutions such as temples are understood quite differently by those who focus on their political, economic, religious, or aesthetic dimensions. Valuable contributions are also beginning to appear in emergent fields as diverse as cognitive science and constructive Hindu theology. While many works in these fields are published in Europe or North America, significant work appears in journals and books published in India which remain hard to access elsewhere. The collection is fully indexed and supplemented with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the gathered materials in their historical and intellectual context.

These fifty-nine pioneering articles by scholars from around the world (17 women / 22 men) showcase recent advances in Taoist Studies. Instead of upholding conventional paradigms, these innovative studies expand our very concepts of Taoism by probing social and historical dimensions unimagined by twentieth-century minds. Overturning virtually all customary premises, they demonstrate Taoist activities by centuries of emperors, officials, literati, and women; Taoist involvement in medicine, the sciences, and the very origins of printing; Taoist art, architecture, music; even Taoists as healthcare providers. Rather than decaying in late-imperial or modern China, Taoism has continued to evolve and reach new audiences (for instance marketing age-old self-cultivation practices to educated men and women in today’s urban settings). A critical Introduction by Russell Kirkland (author of Taoism: The Enduring Tradition and co-editor of Routledge Studies in Taoism) analyzes the Present Generation compared to earlier scholars. This collection offers today’s freshest, most stimulating insights into Taoism’s durability and rich diversity. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and advanced students as a vital research tool.

For as long as human beings have existed they have been interested in travel. Their homelands and cultural norms have always been constructed with reference to, or contrasted with, the lands and habits of ‘the Other’. Implicit in this statement is the notion that some places are more special (perhaps sacred) than others, and this is the core of the intimate relationship between human beings, place and travel, and religion.

The field encompassed by ‘Religion, the Occult, and the Paranormal’ is both fascinating and frustrating. The fascination stems from the contested nature of the content, and the multi-disciplinary nature of the existing scholarly literature. The frustration stems chiefly from the misunderstood and much-maligned nature of the content, and the way in which specific elements are taken out of context, or treated in a frivolous manner as is often the case with tabloid journalism.This new collection from Routledge addresses these and other urgent questions by bringing together the best foundational and cutting-edge scholarship on religion, the occult, and the paranormal.

Religion and the Internet will present a range of scholarly articles that offer a critical overview of the interdisciplinary study of new media, religion and digital culture. Scholars have documented individuals using computer networks for religious discussions and enagagment since the early 1980s. In the mid 1990s, when the Internet became publicly accessible, scholars began to study how users were translating and transporting their religious practices onto this new digital platform. This collection will cover the development of the study of Religion and the Internet over the past three decades, highlighting the core research topics, approaches and questions that have been explored by key international scholars at the intersection of new media and religion. The collection seeks to present how new forms of religious practices have emerged and been interrogated by scholars. It will also present how religious communities have negotiated their engagement with digital techologies and the online and offline implications this has had for religious practioners and individuals.

Scholarly attention to Indigenous religions has grown massively in the last twenty years. Within varied forms of Indigenous Studies (e.g. Native American Studies, Maori Studies), as a field itself, and within ethnological disciplines such as Anthropology and Religious Studies, issues related to Indigenous peoples have become increasingly important. Indigenous Religions brings together significant journal articles from the last fifteen years to provoke further discussion and to underpin improved teaching and up-to-date research. Some of the selected articles have already played significant roles in shaping debates in diverse areas, but bringing them together, combined with lesser known yet equally significant ones, enhances their significance and gives them a greater value to researchers and students. This collection is intended to provide an unrivalled resource for future developments in the disciplines that touch on Indigenous religions and current issues as they unfold in the twenty-first century.

Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, is undoubtebly one of the most influential persons in history. He is not only the founder of one of the world religions, but has served as a role model for Muslims throughout history. The records of his deeds and sayings are among the most important sources in various fields of Islamic learning, such as Islamic law, ritual, piety, Sufism, or political theory. Muhammad has been a main object of research in Western scholarship on Islam, and there is a huge amount of articles and books devoted to various aspects of his life, the sources of his life and his role in Islamic tradition. These articles, however, are widely dispersed; some can be found in more popular journals and books, others in smaller, less readily available publications. It is therefore reasonable to bring together the most important articles and book chapters on Muhammad in a four volume set.

The field encompassed by this collection on ‘Religion, Sexuality, and Spirituality’ is a vast and controversial one. It encompasses both normative and non-normative sexual identities and behaviours in the so-called ‘world religions’ (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism) and also such modes of being and conduct in the multitudinous indigenous religions, new religions and spiritualities, and smaller long-established traditions (for example, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Shinto, and so on).

While the subject of Christian-Muslim or Muslim-Christian interaction is still not a traditional or systematic discipline, interest in the encounter of these two religions has grown considerably over the last decade. Historians, including historians of Islam and Christianity have always been interested in the civilizational meeting of the two religions, in conflict or in times of peace. This includes aspects of post-colonial studies, which incorporate cultural, literary and political writings which consider the intellectual and social ruptures in so much of the Islamic world in the 19th and 20th centuries.Theologians however have only recently begin to appreciate the amount of material which illustrates the extent to which Christians and Muslims wrote about one another’s faith and spoke of each other in a variety of contexts in both polemical and eirenic terms. These resources serve to enrich the understanding of one’s own faith and the changing historical relationship with the other. Today, Muslim-Christian is often understood as Islam/West where the Christianity and secularism are either conflated or Christianity subsumed within the larger cultural framework of the west. Either way, Islam is a foreign presence and its points of reference not easily assimilated in the narrative of a Judaeo-Christian West. Nevertheless this has created an interesting intellectual and scholarly dynamic in a wide range of disciplines. This includes ethics, politics, gender studies and the emergence of an `interfaith’ literature which is increasingly used in scholarly as well as grass roots settings.The collection will comprise around sixty pre-published journal articles and some book chapters. Each volume will contain around 15 articles/chapters. The articles will be secondary sources analysing the works of individual Christian and Muslim scholars, so will not be extracts of primary material thought it is hoped that the majority will contain some primary material. Volume One will contain an Introduction to the whole collection.The volumes will provide a unique and rich reflection of Muslim-Christian encounter. This work will introduce the scholar and the student to the variety of approaches people of faith/no faith have taken to thinking about the two religions. The volumes will cover doctrine, interfaith practice as theory and lived realities and philosophical and literary themes and approaches.