Ancient Religions, Modern Politics

Ancient Religions, Modern Politics PDF Author: Michael Cook
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691173346
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description
Why Islam is more political and fundamentalist than other religions Why does Islam play a larger role in contemporary politics than other religions? Is there something about the Islamic heritage that makes Muslims more likely than adherents of other faiths to invoke it in their political life? If so, what is it? Ancient Religions, Modern Politics seeks to answer these questions by examining the roles of Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity in modern political life, placing special emphasis on the relevance—or irrelevance—of their heritages to today's social and political concerns. Michael Cook takes an in-depth, comparative look at political identity, social values, attitudes to warfare, views about the role of religion in various cultural domains, and conceptions of the polity. In all these fields he finds that the Islamic heritage offers richer resources for those engaged in current politics than either the Hindu or the Christian heritages. He uses this finding to explain the fact that, despite the existence of Hindu and Christian counterparts to some aspects of Islamism, the phenomenon as a whole is unique in the world today. The book also shows that fundamentalism—in the sense of a determination to return to the original sources of the religion—is politically more adaptive for Muslims than it is for Hindus or Christians. A sweeping comparative analysis by one of the world's leading scholars of premodern Islam, Ancient Religions, Modern Politics sheds important light on the relationship between the foundational texts of these three great religious traditions and the politics of their followers today.

Ancient Religions, Modern Politics

Ancient Religions, Modern Politics PDF Author: Michael Cook
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691173346
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 562

Get Book

Book Description
Why Islam is more political and fundamentalist than other religions Why does Islam play a larger role in contemporary politics than other religions? Is there something about the Islamic heritage that makes Muslims more likely than adherents of other faiths to invoke it in their political life? If so, what is it? Ancient Religions, Modern Politics seeks to answer these questions by examining the roles of Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity in modern political life, placing special emphasis on the relevance—or irrelevance—of their heritages to today's social and political concerns. Michael Cook takes an in-depth, comparative look at political identity, social values, attitudes to warfare, views about the role of religion in various cultural domains, and conceptions of the polity. In all these fields he finds that the Islamic heritage offers richer resources for those engaged in current politics than either the Hindu or the Christian heritages. He uses this finding to explain the fact that, despite the existence of Hindu and Christian counterparts to some aspects of Islamism, the phenomenon as a whole is unique in the world today. The book also shows that fundamentalism—in the sense of a determination to return to the original sources of the religion—is politically more adaptive for Muslims than it is for Hindus or Christians. A sweeping comparative analysis by one of the world's leading scholars of premodern Islam, Ancient Religions, Modern Politics sheds important light on the relationship between the foundational texts of these three great religious traditions and the politics of their followers today.

Political Religions in the Greco-Roman World

Political Religions in the Greco-Roman World PDF Author: Charlotte Dunn
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527535401
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Until the 1980s, historical treatments of ancient religion focused mainly on myth, cult and ritual as a way to interpret the mental structures or primary emotions of ancient peoples, but, in the last few decades, a “political turn” in the study of religion has taken hold. This volume serves to diversify our understanding of the political conceptualizations and implementations of religious practice in the ancient Mediterranean region from the 7th Century BCE to the 4th Century CE, in both Greek and Roman contexts. The underlying question taken up here is: in what situations was Greco-Roman religious practice articulated, communicated, and perceived in political contexts, both real and imagined? Written by experts in the fields of archaeology, linguistics, art history, historiography, political science and religion, the chapters of this volume engage the plurality and the diversity of the Greco-Roman religious experience as it receives and negotiates power relations.

The Stillborn God

The Stillborn God PDF Author: Mark Lilla
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030747271X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
A brilliant account of religion's role in the political thinking of the West, from the Enlightenment to the close of World War II.The wish to bring political life under God's authority is nothing new, and it's clear that today religious passions are again driving world politics, confounding expectations of a secular future. In this major book, Mark Lilla reveals the sources of this age-old quest-and its surprising role in shaping Western thought. Making us look deeper into our beliefs about religion, politics, and the fate of civilizations, Lilla reminds us of the modern West's unique trajectory and how to remain on it. Illuminating and challenging, The Stillborn God is a watershed in the history of ideas.

Religions of the Ancient World

Religions of the Ancient World PDF Author: Sarah Iles Johnston
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674015173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 750

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Book Description
This groundbreaking, first basic reference work on ancient religious beliefs collects and organizes available information on ten ancient cultures and traditions, including Greece, Rome, and Mesopotamia, and offers an expansive, comparative perspective on each one.

A History of the Muslim World

A History of the Muslim World PDF Author: Michael A. Cook
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691236585
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 960

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Book Description
A panoramic history of the Muslim world from the age of the Prophet Muḥammad to the birth of the modern era This book describes and explains the major events, personalities, conflicts, and convergences that have shaped the history of the Muslim world. The body of the book takes readers from the origins of Islam to the eve of the nineteenth century, and an epilogue continues the story to the present day. Michael Cook thus provides a broad history of a civilization remarkable for both its unity and diversity. After setting the scene in the Middle East of late antiquity, the book depicts the rise of Islam as one of the great black swan events of history. It continues with the spectacular rise of the Caliphate, an empire that by the time it broke up had nurtured the formation of a new civilization. It then goes on to cover the diverse histories of all the major regions of the Muslim world, providing a wide-ranging account of the key military, political, and cultural developments that accompanied the eastward and westward spread of Islam from the Middle East to the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific. At the same time, A History of the Muslim World contains numerous primary-source quotations that expose the reader to a variety of acutely insightful voices from the Muslim past.

The Invention of Religion

The Invention of Religion PDF Author: Derek R. Peterson
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813530932
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Is religion an obstacle to the values of modernity? Popular and scholarly opinion says that it is. In a world gripped in a clash of civilizations, religious absolutism seems to threaten the modern virtues of tolerance, reason, and freedom. This collection of historical essays argues that this popular view--religion versus modernity--is used by the politically powerful to construct the religious as irrational and antimodern. The authors study how nationalists, state officials, missionaries, and scholars in the West and in the colonized world defined and redefined the relationship between the political and the religious --From publisher's description.

Constantine and the Bishops

Constantine and the Bishops PDF Author: H. A. Drake
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801871047
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 636

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Book Description
Historians who viewed imperial Rome in terms of a conflict between pagans and Christians have often regarded Constantine's conversion as the triumph of Christianity over paganism. Here Drake offers a fresh understanding of Constantine's rule.

The Stillborn God

The Stillborn God PDF Author: Mark Lilla
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The quest to bring political life under Gods authority has been revived, confounding expectations of a secular future. In this major book, Mark Lilla reveals the sources of this age-old quest--and its surprising role in shaping Western thought.

Making Religion, Making the State

Making Religion, Making the State PDF Author: Yoshiko Ashiwa
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804771138
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Making Religion, Making the State combines cutting-edge perspectives on religion with rich empirical data to offer a challenging new argument about the politics of religion in modern China. The volume goes beyond extant portrayals of the opposition of state and religion to emphasize their mutual constitution. It examines how the modern category of "religion" is enacted and implemented in specific locales and contexts by a variety of actors from the late nineteenth century until the present. With chapters written by experts on Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and more, this volume will appeal across the social sciences and humanities to those interested in politics, religion, and modernity in China.

Imagine No Religion

Imagine No Religion PDF Author: Carlin A. Barton
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823271226
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
What do we fail to see when we force other, earlier cultures into the Procrustean bed of concepts that organize our contemporary world? In Imagine No Religion, Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin map the myriad meanings of the Latin and Greek words religio and thrēskeia, frequently and reductively mistranslated as “religion,” in order to explore the manifold nuances of their uses within ancient Roman and Greek societies. In doing so, they reveal how we can conceptualize anew and speak of these cultures without invoking the anachronistic concept of religion. From Plautus to Tertullian, Herodotus to Josephus, Imagine No Religion illuminates cultural complexities otherwise obscured by our modern-day categories.