Ascetics and brahmins

This volume brings together papers on Indian ascetical institutions and ideologies published by Patrick Olivelle over a span of about thirty years.

Textuality, culture and scripture

“Textuality, Culture and Scripture,” a study of the necessary and close relations between the three concepts, argues for the necessary role of textuality in culture and the inadequacy of a cultural theory based on materialism. It explores the standing and role of scripture in textual theory and i...

Boundaries, dynamics and construction of traditions in south asia

This collection of essays features a significant selection of the specialized fields of knowledge that have shaped classical South Asian intellectual history, focusing on the different and complex processes employed during the ‘invention’, construction, preservation and renewal of a given tradition.

Śambūka and the rāmāyaṇa tradition

This book details the developmental history of narratives that affirm, condemn, modify, or ignore the controversial execution of Śambūka, a minor Rāmāyaṇa character of low social standing. Changing socio-political sentiments throughout Indian history have forced numerous revisions to the Śambūka ...

The anthropologist and the native

‘The Anthropologist and the Native’ is a multidisciplinary volume of twenty essays by internationally known scholars of different persuasions, honouring the distinguished anthropologist Gananath Obeyesekere.

Christian responses to islam

This is the only book currently on the market that attempts to construct a global perspective of Christian-Muslim interaction in a post-9/11 world.

British women missionaries in bengal, 1793–1861

‘British Women Missionaries in Bengal, 1793-1861’ looks at the role and contributions of the early British women missionaries in Bengal, in eastern India, between 1793 and 1861. It traces the role of and challenges faced by women missionaries from Hannah Marshman to Hannah Mullens in the context ...

Catholic nuns and sisters in a secular age

This is the first in-depth study of post-war female religious life. Rooted in the lived experiences of women religious in Britain, it explores British modernity, the social movements of the long 1960s and the Second Vatican Council, while acknowledging transnational relationships and global inter...

Reformed identity and conformity in england, 1559–1714

This volume is the first collection of essays to focus specifically on how Reformed theology and ecclesiology related to one of the most consequential issues between the Elizabethan Settlement (1559) and the Hanoverian Succession (1714), namely conformity to the Church of England.

The templars

This unique collection of translated sources offers a valuable insight into the lives of those who joined, supported and attacked this most fascinating and enigmatic of institutions. This book charts the origins of the Order through to the circumstances of its suppression and dissolution.

Tracing the cultural legacy of irish catholicism

This book of essays will appeal to anyone interested in the dismantling of Ireland’s cultural attachment to Catholicism over the past four decades.

The later stuart church, 1660–1714

This book features nine essays written by leading scholars in the field to offer new insights into the place of the Church of England within the volatile Restoration era. Sections on ideas and people include essays covering the royal supremacy, the theology of the later Stuart Church and clerical...

Contested identities

This text looks at the identity of English women religious through the lenses of gender, class and ethnicity, offering an insight into women’s religious belief and practice in the nineteenth century in light of the subsequent transformation of English society

Understanding political islam

Looks at how the rise of political Islam has been expressed: first in the Arab world, then in its interactions with French and Western societies, and finally in its interactions with other European and Western societies.

Chosen peoples

This innovative interdisciplinary volume explores the politics of biblical translation and interpretation in a global context, demonstrating how biblical ideas and metaphors shaped narratives of racial, national and identity in the long nineteenth century.

The paddington prophet

First full length academic work to situate the theology of Richard Brothers into its larger political and cultural context.

The pope and the pill

This book uses original oral history material and secretive Vatican papers to explore the sexual and religious experiences of Catholic women in post-war England. It offers a fresh perspective on the idea that ‘sex killed God’, reframing dominant approaches to the histories of sex, religion and so...

Irish protestant identities

A major multi-disciplinary portrayal and analysis of the often overlooked Protestant tradition in Ireland.

Creating god

This book uses history and archaeology to examine the origins of major monotheistic religions: describing the contexts of times, places and societies where Mormonism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism began. It strips away myths and later traditions to provide a secular account of h...

Insular christianity

This focused collection of essays on the alternative establishments which both Presbyterians and Catholics attempted to create in Britain and Ireland offers a dynamic new perspective on the evolution of post-reformation religious communities within Britain and Ireland.

Divine love

Religious themes have permeated Luce Irigary’s thought from the beginning, but this book is the only major study of this dimension of her work -- both her rejection of traditional western religions, and her recent explorations of eastern religions.

Women and the shaping of british methodism

A response to the prominent Methodist historian David Hempton’s call to analyse women’s experience within Methodism, this book is the first to deal with British Methodist women preachers over the entire nineteenth century.

Infidel feminism

The first in-depth study of a distinctive brand of women’s rights that emerged out of the Victorian Secularist movement. It looks at the lives and work of a number of female activists, whose renunciation of religion shaped their struggle for emancipation. Anti-religious or secular ideas were fund...

Faith stories

Faith stories is an investigation of faith and belief systems in Australia and England. Drawing on ethnography, interviews, focus groups for adults and arts-based workshops for their children, Hickey-Moody takes a community-based approach to examining belonging, attachment, faith and belief.

Fighting like the devil for the sake of god

This fascinating book about Belfast in the middle of the nineteenth century looks at how and why Ireland’s most prosperous and industrialized town began to tear itself apart. This study provides a vivid example of how a society can come apart at the seams – and how it can stay that way for genera...

Religious enlightenment in the eighteenth-century nordic countries

This book explores the theme of religious Enlightenment in the Nordic countries during the long eighteenth century. The volume’s fourteen chapters investigate how Lutheran confessional culture became intertwined with Enlightenment ideas and practices.

Literature, theology and feminism

Newly available in paperback, this book offers an authoritative overview of the broad and complex terrain of feminist theorising concerning the relationship between literature and theology as it has developed over the past several decades. It provides the first comprehensive evaluation of the sig...

Chinese religion in contemporary singapore, malaysia and taiwan

Embracing an ontological approach to religious phenomena, this study traces the origins and development of Chinese Hell deity worship now prevalent in Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. Written for academics and the interested public, it challenges assumptions vis-à-vis the diversity of present-day ...

Death, life, and religious change in scottish towns c. 1350–1560

This book examines lay religious culture in Scottish towns between the Black Death and the Protestant Reformation: what the living did to influence the dead and vice versa; considers both continuities and changes, highlighting the Catholic Reform movement that reached Scottish towns before the Pr...

After jews

The book is an attempt to describe and critically interpret the condition of man living in the shadow of the Shoah, in the world “after Jews”. 

Religion and identity in south asia and beyond

This volume brings together sixteen articles on the religions, literatures and histories of South and Central Asia in tribute to Patrick Olivelle, one of North America's leading Sanskritists and historians of early India.

The ocean of god

‘The Ocean of God’ proposes that the future of religions will become transreligious. Its polyphilic pluralism, entertaining religious pluralism and the unity of religions mediated by process and Baha’i thought, assumes the spiritual impulse of humanity, despite secularizations, naturalizations an...

Imagining antiquity in islamic societies

Long before the Taliban, ISIS and other iconoclasts, Muslims imagined localities of antiquity as places imbued with didactic, historical and moral power. In thirteen articles by leading scholars covering the eighth century to the present, this book explores diverse ways Muslims have valued the ma...

Crossing the street in hanoi

Crossing the Street in Hanoi is a study of media and cultural artifacts that constitute the remembrance of a tragic war as reflected in the stories of eight people who lived it. Using memoir, history and criticism, this book is based on scholarly research, teaching and writing, as well as persona...

The hidden words of baha'u'llah

The gate

Entering transmasculinity

Entering Transmasculinity is a holistic study of the intersecting and overlapping discourses that shape transgender identities. In the book, matthew heinz offers an examination of mediated and experienced transmasculine subjectivities and aims to capture the apparent contradictions that structure...

The eternal soul

Create in me a pure heart