Christopher Partridge - Religions in the Modern World: Traditions and Transformations

RELIGIONS IN THE MODERN WORLD

This is an unrivalled guide to contemporary religions and spiritualities. It brings together the methods of both the humanities and the social sciences to offer a cutting-edge introduction to the latest work in the study of religion. Carefully designed to ensure overall coherence in its integrative approach, each chapter offers a historical introduction to the religion under consideration followed by a comprehensive review of its interactions with the social, political, cultural and economic revolutions of the modern world. Topics covered include religion, colonialism and postcolonialism; religious nationalism; women and religion; religion and globalization; religion and cultural change; religion and the turn to the self.

The first two parts look at the major religious traditions of Asia and the West and explore the more recent phenomena of New Age religions and New Religious Movements. The third part considers more general topics and themes which cut across these traditions and movements, such as secularization and de-secularization, globalization, politics, gender, and a shift from religion to spirituality.

The contributors to this book are not only specialists in their fields, but are practising teachers, ensuring that this book is as accessible and user-friendly as possible. A special text design and format deliver case studies and anecdotes, extracts from primary sources, chapter summaries, a glossary and annotated further reading sections. These text features are supported by a wealth of photographs, engravings and maps.

Religions in the Modern World is fully international in its coverage and considers developments in North, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australasia and Asia. It is designed to be accessible to first- and second-year undergraduate students as well as to more advanced students who wish to update their knowledge with the latest perspectives in the study of religion.

The editors: Linda Woodhead, Paul Fletcher, Hiroko Kawanami and David Smith are all members of the Religious Studies Department at Lancaster University, one of the leading international institutions for the study of religion.

RELIGIONS IN THE MODERN
WORLD

Traditions and transformations

EDITED BY LINDA WOODHEAD

Paul Fletcher

Hiroko Kawanami

David Smith

First published 2002

byRoutledge

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

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2002 Linda Woodhead, Paul Fletcher, Hiroko Kawanami and David Smith, selection and editorial matter; the contributors, their contributions.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Religions in the modern world: traditions and transformations/edited by Linda
Woodhead[et al.].
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Religions. I. Woodhead, Linda.

BL80.2 .R417 2001

200dc21 2001019142

ISBN 0-203-39849-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-39940-4 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-21783-0 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-21784-9 (pbk)

In Memoriam
Ninian Smart 19272001

CONTENTS

Linda Woodhead

David Smith

Cathy Cantwell and Hiroko Kawanami

Christopher Shackle

Stephan Feuchtwang

Robert J.Kisala

Seth D.Kunin

Linda Woodhead

David Waines

Charles Gore

Howard L.Harrod

Wouter J.Hanegraaff

Elisabeth Arweck

Peter L.Berger

David Lehmann

Jeffrey Haynes

Linda Woodhead

Paul Heelas

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The following were reproduced with kind permission. While every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain permission, this has not been possible in all cases. Any omissions brought to our attention will be remedied in future editions.

LIST OF TABLES

Notes on Contributors

Elisabeth Arweck completed her PhD in 1999 on the responses to New Religious Movements in Britain and Germany at Kings College London, University of London. She is the co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary Religion and co-author (with Peter B.Clarke) of New Religious Movements in Western Europe: An Annotated Bibliography (Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1997). She has contributed to Dialog und Unterscheidung: Religionen und neue religise Bewegungen im Gesprch (Berlin: EZW, 2000) and a jointly edited volume on Theorising Faith is forthcoming (with Martin Stringer). In April 2000 she became the Convenor of the BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group.

Peter Berger has been Director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, Boston University, since 1985. He is the author of numerous books and articles in sociology and the sociology of religion. Recent publications include A Far Glory. The Questfor Faith in an Age of Credulity (New York, NY: Free Press, 1992), Redeeming Laughter (New York and Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997) and (as editor) The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999).

Cathy Cantwell is presently a Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kent at Canterbury (UKC). She has a PhD and publications in the field of Tibetan Buddhism, and her research interests include Tibetan ritual symbolism, tantric scriptures, Buddhist ethics, Tibetan ethnicity, Buddhism and ecology, and contemporary developments in Tibetan Buddhism.

She combines Buddhist and Tibetan textual studies with an anthropological training. She has taught widely in higher education, including (besides UKC) the University of Wales, Lampeter, the Open University (where she has been a consultant for new course materials on Buddhism), Roehampton Institute, London, Chichester Institute of Higher Education, and SOAS, London. She is a member of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, the UK Association for Buddhist Studies, the International Association for Buddhist Studies, the Association of Social Anthropologists, and she is on the editorial board of the Buddhist Studies Review.

Stephan Feuchtwang is a Senior Research Associate of the Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics. His area specialism is China and Taiwan. Together with a close colleague, Wang Mingming, who is in Beijing University, he has recently completed a book,