Religious History Books

New and Published Books

1. Imagining the Pagan Past

   Gods and Goddesses in Literature and History since the Dark Ages

   By Marion Gibson

   Imagining the Pagan Past explores stories of Britain’s pagan history. These tales have been characterised by gods and fairies, folklore and magic. They have had an uncomfortable relationship with the scholarly world; often being seen as historically dubious, self-indulgent romance and, worse,...

   Published January 22nd 2013 by Routledge
2. Believing in Russia - Religious Policy after Communism

   By Geraldine Fagan

   Series: Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series

   This book presents a comprehensive overview of religious policy in Russia since the end of the communist regime, exposing many of the ambiguities and uncertainties about the position of religion in Russian life. It reveals how religious freedom in Russia has, contrary to the widely held view, a...

   Published January 20th 2013 by Routledge
3. Engaging with a Legacy: Nehemia Levtzion (1935-2003)

   Edited by E. Ann McDougall

   Engaging with a Legacy shows how Nehemia Levtzion shaped our understanding of Islam in Africa and influenced successive scholarly generations in their approach to Islamization, conversion and fundamentalism. The book illuminates his work, career and family life – including his own ‘life vision’ on...

   Published December 17th 2012 by Routledge
4. Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa

   By Chima J. Korieh, Raphael Chijioke Njoku

   Series: African Studies

   Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa aims to explore the ways Christianity and colonialism acted as hegemonic or counter hegemonic forces in the making of African societies. As Western interventionist forces, Christianity and colonialism were crucial in establishing and maintaining...

   Published December 14th 2012 by Routledge
5. Orthodox Christians in the Late Ottoman Empire

   A Study of Communal Relations in Anatolia

   By Ayse Ozil

   Series: SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East

   Orthodox Christians, as well as other non-Muslims of the Ottoman Empire, have long been treated as insular and homogenous entities, distinctly different and separate from the rest of the Ottoman world. Despite this view prevailing in mainstream historiography, some scholars have suggested recently...

   Published December 11th 2012 by Routledge
6. The Rise of Modern Jewish Politics

   Extraordinary Movement

   By C.S. Monaco

   Series: Routledge Studies in Religion

   The path toward modern Jewish politics, a process that required a dramatic reconstruction of Jewish life, may have emerged during a far earlier time frame and in a different geographic and cultural context than has previously been thought. Drawing upon current sociological understanding of social...

   Published November 26th 2012 by Routledge
7. Mapping China and Managing the World

   Culture, Cartography and Cosmology in Late Imperial Times

   By Richard J. Smith

   Series: Asia's Transformations/Critical Asian Scholarship

   From the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE to the present, the Chinese have been preoccupied with the concept of order (zhi). This cultural preoccupation has found expression not only in China’s highly refined bureaucratic institutions and methods of social and economic organization but also...

   Published October 18th 2012 by Routledge
8. Women and Belief, 1852–1928

   Edited by Jessica Cox, Mark Llewellyn, Nadine Muller

   Series: History of Feminism

   Co-published by Routledge and Edition Synapse Over recent years, research into religious belief during the Victorian period and the early twentieth century has grown in diversity and importance. The centrality of faith-based discourses to women of the period has long been recognized by scholars in...

   Published October 15th 2012 by Routledge
9. Protestant Missionaries, Asian Immigrants, and Ideologies of Race in America, 1850–1924

   By Jennifer Snow

   Series: Studies in Asian Americans

   This book examines how in defending Asian rights and their own version of Christian idealism against scientific racism, missionaries developed a complex theology of race that prefigured modern ideologies of multiculturalism and reached its final, belated culmination in the liberal Protestant...

   Published October 9th 2012 by Routledge
10. Gunpowder and Incense

    The Catholic Church and the Spanish Civil War

    By Hilari Raguer

    Series: Routledge/Canada Blanch Studies on Contemporary Spain

    Now available in English for the first time, Gunpowder and Incense (translated from the Spanish La Pólvora y el Incienso) chronicles the role of the Church in Spanish politics, looking in particular at the Spanish Civil War. Unlike most books on the subject, Hilari Raguer looks beyond the...

    Published October 7th 2012 by Routledge