Religious History Books

New and Published Books

1. William James's Hidden Religious Imagination

   A Universe of Relations

   By Jeremy Carrette

   Series: Routledge Studies in Religion

   This book offers a radical new reading of William James’s work on the idea of ‘religion.’ Moving beyond previous psychological and philosophical interpretations, it uncovers a dynamic, imaginative, and critical use of the category of religion. This work argues that we can only fully understand...

   Published March 26th 2013 by Routledge
2. Religions in Movement

   The Local and the Global in Contemporary Faith Traditions

   Edited by Robert Hefner, John Hutchinson, Sara Mels, Christiane Timmerman

   Series: Routledge Studies in Religion

   There has long been a debate about implications of globalization for the survival of the world of sovereign nation-states, and the role of nationalism as both an agent of and a response to globalization. In contrast, until recently there has been much less debate about the fate of religion. ‘...

   Published March 13th 2013 by Routledge
3. Patrons and Patron Saints in Early Modern English Literature

   By Alison Chapman

   Series: Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture

   This book visits the fact that, in the pre-modern world, saints and lords served structurally similar roles, acting as patrons to those beneath them on the spiritual or social ladder with the word "patron" used to designate both types of elite sponsor. Chapman argues that this elision of patron...

   Published December 4th 2012 by Routledge
4. Making Sense of the Secular

   Critical Perspectives from Europe to Asia

   Edited by Ranjan Ghosh

   Series: Routledge Studies in Religion

   This book offers a wide range of critical perspectives on how secularism unfolds and has been made sense of across Europe and Asia. The book evaluates secularism as it exists today – its formations and discontents within contemporary discourses of power, terror, religion and cosmopolitanism – and...

   Published November 5th 2012 by Routledge
5. Buddhism and Violence

   Militarism and Buddhism in Modern Asia

   Edited by Vladimir Tikhonov, Torkel Brekke

   Series: Routledge Studies in Religion

   It is generally accepted in the West that Buddhism is a ‘peaceful’ religion. The Western public tends to assume that the doctrinal rejection of violence in Buddhism would make Buddhist pacifists, and often expects Buddhist societies or individual Asian Buddhists to conform to the modern Western...

   Published August 7th 2012 by Routledge
6. The Origin of Heresy

   A History of Discourse in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity

   By Robert M. Royalty

   Series: Routledge Studies in Religion

   Heresy is a central concept in the formation of Orthodox Christianity. Where does this notion come from? This book traces the construction of the idea of ‘heresy’ in the rhetoric of ideological disagreements in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian texts and in the development of the polemical...

   Published August 7th 2012 by Routledge