Bloomsbury Religious Studies

Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the New Terrain in the US - Interview with Editors Monica R. Miller and Anthony B. Pinn

Publishing on the 23rd of April in the US and the 18th of June in the UK, Religion in Hip Hop, edited by Monica R. Miller, Anthony B. Pinn and Bernard "Bun B" Freeman, spans a host of topics, questions and debates around the intersection of religion and hip hop, and its relationship with American culture. We talked briefly with two of the editors about their new book:

1. What particular areas of religious studies interest you and why?

Over the years, we (Drs. Anthony B. Pinn and Monica R. Miller) have involved ourselves in the study of African American Religions; Black Theology; theory and method in the study of religion; constructive theologies; religion in/and culture; religious humanisms; religion and embodiment, youth cultures and new black religious movements. In many ways, attention to religion and hip hop require interdisciplinary approaches, so our efforts cut in many directions across the humanities and social sciences.

Shifting from methodologies to content, a couple things about religious studies come to mind, and they’re connected. In our individual work and in our continued collaborative efforts, we’re interested in complicating discourses of meaning and expanding data, the everyday practices for the study of religion in culture in black life. Our larger intellectual efforts at this, however, extend beyond any one particular group. That is to say, we have an ongoing scholarly fascination with the ways that people transform their various contexts (social, economic, racial, etc.) into their doorway for understanding and exploring the larger world. Of course, framing it that way is a bit misleading, as if people have much of a choice regarding their contexts, but doing so helps to explain that we have a mutual curiosity about the relationships between the particular and the universal, and how various tensions between the two seemingly “construct” meaning.

At the same time, thanks largely to Pinn’s earlier methodological interventions in the study of African American Religions, in combination with the larger trends in theory and method in the study of religion, building from this and with Miller’s more recent efforts, we also have a growing interest in critically methodologically interrogating even this assumption that the things people are doing when they make music, dance, write, act “religiously” is about meaning at all. Maybe it is more simple than that. Perhaps these things of culture are simply the stuff people do. So we’ve been interested to rigorously evaluate not just people “out there”—the scholar’s traditional “data—but ourselves as well, as scholars, looking at the ways scholars and scholarship are part of these same processes that we write about.

Our collaboration with prolific recording artist Bun B is a testament to this back and forth between our “data” (hip hop) and ourselves (as scholars). The collaboration was a natural fit, in that Bun B has been a long-standing cultural leader in hip hop for many years now, and Bun has a concern to safeguard and preserve the rich cultural material of hip hop, but also a desire to look back, and reflect critically on what hip hop has been for so many, and what it might be now.

2. How would you describe your book in one sentence?

A fast-paced, but incredibly substantive, exploration of cutting-edge scholarship at the intersection of the academic study of religion and hip hop culture.

3. When did you start researching for this book?

We started working on this book roughly 16 months ago, but Pinn and Miller have co-authored or co-edited a number of projects, and our efforts to expand what we know about hip hop culture goes back years. Pinn, in particular, is one of the first scholars in religion to give attention to hip hop culture.

Pinn’s first book Why Lord (Continuum, 1995), was one of the very first in the academic study of religion to take seriously hip hop culture and rap music, in particular. Thanks to his vision and leadership, younger scholars have been supported and compelled to double-down on his efforts. Studies in hip hop and religion have brought with them the need to do the work exploring hip hop, but also undergird the necessity of that work in the larger field of religious studies. Pinn’s been instrumental on both fronts. And we’re just now, really, in a space where the topic of hip hop is no longer in need of a marketing campaign, and all of our efforts are directed at doing the actual work of fully unpacking the rich material that hip hop offers.

So to answer your question, this particular volume has been in process about a year and a half; the research going into it years before that. But in some very real ways as well as some figurative ways, we’ve been working on this book for a very long time!

4. What’s the meaning behind the title?

As hinted towards in the second part of the first question, the most important words in the title of this book are “in” and “mapping.” That is, religion in hip hop speaks to the co-constitutive nature of religion in culture, rather than a competition model between the sacred/profane that would suggest something like religion and hip hop. This part of the title is a methodological invitation to consider, more seriously, what sorts of social, cultural and political interests are part and parcel of classification/categorization in the academic study of religion more broadly. That is not to say that all of the contributions in this volume follow such a “neat and tidy” approach. Rather, readers will be confronted by the back-and-forth play with and between such constructed designators of in/and throughout.

Additionally, the word “mapping” speaks to the manner in which we see this volume connecting the dots of religion and/in hip hop scholarship, not only in terms of expansion of data, but also, highlighting and charting the coordinates of such a map (for the field), while remaining self-conscious about reminding ourselves that while we seek to construct such representations, we are also, actively constituting the field, as such. Hence the “ing” in mapping. And Bun B’s participation brings a voice internal to hip hop as to remind the field, ourselves, and so on that this map belongs as much to hip hop as it does to the academic study of it. This mapping begins in the Preface with the inimitable words of one we consider among the most formative and prolific in carving out a space this area of study in religion, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson. His foregrounding presence in the volume nicely provides historical context for a new generation of readers who have new-fangled and varying starting points for the study of religion and/in hip hop culture. We are ever grateful that it is here, discursively and historically, we begin the work of this volume.

5. Which part of writing a book have you enjoyed most?

The interactions with the contributors who come from a wide variety of fields and areas of study—the opportunity to gain greater perspective on how various disciplines and contexts are brought to bear on this shared concern with the synergy between two significant cultural developments.

It has also been a joy to bring Bun B into this project. The collaboration has allowed for a rich exchange of ideas that would not have been possible otherwise. Bun B’s critical feedback on the volume, as well as a lengthy and robust interview and Afterword that we’ve included in the book, help to add layers to the project. The final product, we feel, has one foot firmly in hip hop culture, and another in the academy. And this is a very good thing. Breaking down the walls of the “ivory tower” in this way has been challenging, but rewarding, and we hope the efforts speak for themselves.

6. Any tips for people reading the book?

Social media has forever changed the way we interact. We’d encourage readers to tweet about, give status updates, and otherwise read “actively” with the use of social media tools. Tweet back to the authors with questions, and we’ll do our best to respond. The book is very much a conversation, so with new means of interaction, we hope the book isn’t the last word on the topic, but only some of the first words. So find us on Twitter @religionhiphop, @anthony_pinn, and @BunBTrillOG.

Other than that, Enjoy!

7. Where will your research go from here?

[Pinn] There still things I want to investigate concerning the intersections of religion and hip hop.  Regarding this, I’m turning my attention to the ways in which death and dying are described and explored within hip hop, with a primary focus on how hip hop has altered the grammar of demise within popular culture.

[Miller] I have a number of different pots on the stove, so to speak. I have an ever-expanding interest in hip hop culture, so I’ll keep on with that. I have some forthcoming volumes that work to situate religion and/as identity formation and studies in identity with the Culture on the Edge scholarly collective of which I’m a part; aside from some edited volumes, my next monograph is tentatively titled New Black Godz, an outgrowth of my current major research project that explores contemporary black legibility and illegibility—that is, in what ways do we today “see” black humanity, and who do we see it in, and why them?

8. If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would it be?

[Pinn] I can’t narrow it to one person.

[Miller] Wow, this is a fun but weighty question. Okay, let me think…Derrida or Tupac, Derrida or Tupac…okay, Tupac Shakur. Without question. I’m a deconstructionist at heart, and although Derrida may have given us the vocabulary to deconstruct, for me Tupac holds within himself and his memory not only an intense deconstructive edge, but also a constant reminder of why deconstruction is so necessary for intellectual as much as social engagement. 

If you would like anymore information on this title or any of our others, please visit our website here

The Composition of the Qur'an: Rhetorical Analysis - Interview with Author Michel Cuypers

Recently published in the UK and still to come in the US, The Composition of the Qur'an, by Michel Cuypers, is the first volume to argue that the Qur'an should be interpreted rhetorically, providing numerous examples and a methodology for future researchers to apply. We talked briefly with the author about his new book:

1. What particular areas of religious studies interest you and why?

I am especially interested in the exegesis of sacred writings and particularly in the Qur’an since I live in Cairo, in a Moslem country, and I wanted to understand Moslems better through the study of their sacred book.

2. How would you describe your book in one sentence?

My book helps to understand how an apparently composite text is, in reality, very  skillfully constructed by using the techniques of Semitic rhetoric which is very different from the Greek rhetoric to which we are accustomed.

3. When did you start researching for this book?

In 1993, I became aware of the method of rhetorical analysis of the Bible and I began to apply this method to the text of the Qur’an. After having dedicated myself to this task in about a dozen articles on thirty suras (or chapters) of the Qur’an and a book on a long sura (The Banquet. A Reading of the Fifth Sura of the Qur’an, 2009) it seemed to me that it was necessary to write this more theoretical book explaining the method systematically, first in French (2012) and now in English.

4.What’s the meaning behind the title?

I explained the title in my reply to the second question. The sub-title requires additional explanation. Rhetorical analysis consists in discovering the different literary procedures the author or editor has used to give a specific structure to a text. These structures are always variants of parallelism (AB/A’B’), of mirror composition (AB//B’A’) or ring composition (AB/C/B’A’).

5. Which part of writing a book have you enjoyed most?

The chapter on ring composition was particularly fascinating because this structure is very frequent in the Qur’an and often difficult to detect. But it is very important to discover the center of a ring composition since, most of the time, it shows the way to the interpretation of the whole structure and, therefore, of the text.

6. Any tips for people reading the book?

This book is intended for all those, Moslems or not, who are interested in the Qur’an and who are often confused by the apparent disorder of the text. They will discover that, in reality, it is very exquisitely composed according to a complex ensemble of the procedures explained in this book, which is a sort of grammar of the text or of the discourse.

7. Where will your research go from here?

Since most of the Qur’an still has to be analyzed through this system, I still have plenty of work ahead for me. But I am also counting on dedicating myself more to forming students who will be able to continue my work. Leave room for the next generations!

8. If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would it be?

That would be Fakhr-al-Dīn al-Rāzī, the greatest among the classical commentators of the Qur’an (12^th century),  because he was very attentive to all the subtleties of the text. I think he would be interested by my book. And I would ask him how it was that, in spite of his keen attention to the text, he did not discover the rhetorical system of the Qur’an!  

If you would like anymore information on this title or any of our others, please visit our website here

Religion, Postcolonialism, and Globalization: A Sourcebook - now available in the US!

We are delighted to announce that Religion, Postcolonialism, and Globalization: A Sourcebook is now available in the US as well as the UK. Jennifer Reid provides a much-needed sourcebook on globalization and colonialism from a history of religions perspective, tracing back to the voyages of Columbus.

'Religion, Postcolonialism, and Globalization is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants a better understanding of relationships between religion and the development of the modern world. For teachers this sourcebook clearly directs students attention to the 'Doctrine of Christian Discovery' as the basis of globalization. The consequences of this Doctrine to communities around the world after 1492 gives students a deeper and more profound appreciation of the world that they currently inhabit.  It is already a required textbook in my religion and colonialism classes.'

Philip P. Arnold, Associate Professor of Religion, Syracuse University, USA

'While books about globalization are abundant, one that considers the dynamics of trans-cultural interactions and global relationships of exchange as “a fundamentally religious phenomenon” cuts new ground. In that sense—and others—Jennifer Reid’s sourcebook both alerts us of a gap in conventional ways of thinking about the reciprocal if invariably asymmetrical relations among persons and communities from different parts of the world, and then works to fill that gap. Providing a long and wide view of globalization and religion, both of which are broadly but very carefully conceived, the reading selections are ample and strategically made; and the associated commentary on those readings is provocative and well formulated in ways that holds open a range of different conclusions. To be sure, this sourcebook is a very welcome addition to the landscape of both globalization studies and, even more, religious studies.'

Lindsay Jones, Professor, Department of Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University, USA

For more information on this book, or to request an inspection copy, please visit our website here

Happy New Year from the Bloomsbury Religious Studies Team!

We were greeted with a lovely array of advance copies when we got into the office after Christmas, all publishing over January and February in the UK and March and April in the US. Here is a roundup:

 

Silver Screen Buddha, Sharon Suh

(publishing 29th January in the UK and 26th March in the US)

 
Sharon Suh presents an exploration of the representation and mis-representation of Buddhism and Buddhists in both Western and Asian contemporary films.

Silver Screen Buddha is a gem of a book. And Sharon Suh is a cultural critic of the highest order. With this book, Suh has emerged at the forefront of cultural studies of religion. Through lucid prose and provocative insights, Suh provides vivid access to the embodied spiritual economies of lay Buddhist lives. Her deep dive into film widens our engagement with the cultural imaginary of Buddhism well beyond the rarefied and stubbornly Orientalist accounts of ascetic meditation practices. By rightfully demanding that we draw our attention to the funk and mess of ordinary Buddhist practice, Suh reveals paths that are singular and utterly invaluable for understanding the mutual world making of film and everyday religious life. What an achievement!

David Kyuman Kim, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies, Connecticut College, USA and author of 'Melancholic Freedom: Agency and the Spirit of Politics' (2007)

 

Jainism: A Guide for the Perplexed, Sherry Fohr

(publishing 29th January in the UK and 26th March in the US)

 

The latest book in Bloomsbury Academic’s popular Guides for the Perplexed series. Jainism: A Guide for the Perplexed is a clear and thorough account of Jainism, providing a guide to its important beliefs and practices.

Jains have long learned the principles and history of Jainism through narratives. Stories are at the heart of the sermons that mendicants regularly deliver to laypeople. Mothers and grand-mothers recount narratives to young Jains. In the home of most Jains are one or more bookshelves full of volumes of edifying tales. Sherry Fohr has followed this time-honored example, and provided an accessible introduction to the Jain tradition through narratives. The reader will encounter memorable characters and memorable tales, and in the process come to see why Jainism has been one of the world's enduring religious systems that has provided insights to generations of seekers for three-thousand years.

John E. Cort, Professor of Asian and Comparative Religions & Chair, Department of Religion, Denison University, USA

 

 The Attraction of Religion, edited by D. Jason Slone and James A. Van Slyke

(publishing 26th February in the UK and 23rd April in the US)

The second book in our Scientific Studies of Religion: Inquiry and Explanation series. The editors explore the ever-persistent attraction of religion from an evolutionary psychological perspective.

Slone and Van Slyke have put together a treasure-trove, a much needed compendium that is not only a valuable source book for some of the most cogent hypotheses for the biological evolution of religion, but also the first coherent attempt to empirically assess the legitimacy of each.  The Attraction of Religion delivers on its promise, and part of its attraction to serious researchers is that it marks the beginning of serious inquiry into an important human trait, bespeaking the degree to which even something so delicate and culture-bound as religion is also susceptible to the long reach of natural selection.  An admirable and noteworthy achievement!

David Barash, Professor of Psychology, University of Washington, USA and author of 'Buddhist Biology: Ancient Eastern Wisdom meets Modern Western Science' (2013)

 

Christian Metal, Marcus Moberg

(publishing 26th February in the UK and 23rd April in the US)

 

The second book in our Bloomsbury Studies in Popular Music series, Christian Metal is a comprehensive guide to the phenomenon of Christian metal music, its history, development, and main ideological traits, from its formative years in the early 1980s to the present day.

An invaluable guide to a thriving yet frequently misunderstood subgenre, Moberg's authoritative, insightful work on Christian metal is essential reading for metal scholars.

Jeremy Wallach, Associate Professor, Bowling Green State University, USA

For more information on these books and more, please visit our website here

Bloomsbury Studies in Religion and Popular Music

We are eagerly anticipating the release of the first title in our exciting new series Bloomsbury Studies in Religion and Popular Music, edited by Christopher Partridge (Lancaster University, UK) and Sara Cohen (University of Liverpool, UK). Sacred and Secular Musics, by Virinder S. Kalra, publishes in November in the UK, and January in the US.

How does the sacred/secular opposition explain itself in the context of musical production? This volume traces this binary as it frames Western Classical music and Indian Classical music in the 18th and 19th centuries, laying the ground for a contemporary exploration of what is ostensibly sacred music in South Asia. Offering a potent critique of musicological knowledge-making, Virinder S. Kalra explores examples of South Asian musics in various domains and traverses a new cartography of music in which the sacred and the secular overlap. 

Drawing on examples which include Qawwali, kirtan and popular devotional genres, Sacred and Secular Musics offers new empirical material, as well as new insights into conceptualising religion and music, and the ways in which music performs sacredness and secularity across the contested India-Pakistan border in the region of Punjab.

Peter Manual, Professor from the Music Department of the Graduate Center at City University, New York praises Kalra on the use of a 'remarkable abundance of original data on Sikh music, qawwali, and other genres in Pakistani and Indian Punjab' which results in 'astute interpretive perspectives on these understudied genres and regional dynamics'.

Look out for further forthcoming titles in the series including Christian Metal, by Marcus Moberg, and Religion in Hip Hop, edited by Monica R. Miller, Anthony B. Pinn and Bernard "Bun B" Freeman.

'Metal, a genre suffused with Christian imagery albeit with a blasphemous twist, spawned its own renegade, Christian metal. Metalhead religious scholar Marcus Moberg presents a detailed and analytically elegant definitive account of this counter-movement, a worthy addition to metal studies.' Deena Weinstein, Professor, Department of Sociology, DePaul University, USA

'An invaluable guide to a thriving yet frequently misunderstood subgenre, Moberg's authoritative, insightful work on Christian metal is essential reading for metal scholars.' Jeremy Wallach, Associate Professor, Bowling Green State University, USA

Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the Terrain provides an important step in advancing and mapping this new field of Religion and Hip Hop Studies. The volume features 14 original contributions representative of this new terrain within three sections representing major thematic issues over the past two decades. The Preface is written by one of the most prolific and founding scholars of this area of study, Michael Eric Dyson, and the inclusion of and collaboration with Bernard 'Bun B' Freeman fosters a perspective internal to Hip Hop and encourages conversation between artists and academics.

For more information on this series, and our other titles, please take a look at our website here.

Capitalizing Religion: Ideology and the Opiate of the Bourgeoisie - Interview with Author Craig Martin

Recently published in the UK and still to come in the US, Capitalizing Religion, by Craig Martin, is a critical account of 'spirituality' or 'individual religion', arguing that much of what is labelled as 'spirituality' can be understood as consumerist ideology. We talked briefly with the author about his new book:

1.What particular areas of religious studies interest you and why?

For some reason I’ve been captivated by abstract, theoretical questions and concerns. I’m almost always less interested in the content of a particular religious tradition than the vocabulary that practitioners and scholars use to talk about those traditions. Why is it that, despite the fact that those forms of culture we call religion are not systematic and are not just about “beliefs,” practitioners and scholars continue to refer to them as “belief systems”? When what we call religion is so clearly public, why do people call it a “private” matter? When people opposed to “organized religion” organize themselves into communities devoted to “spirituality,” what’s going on there? I generally find that one doesn’t have to dig too deep into it to find that these are loaded terms—tied to varying social interests—and the social work they accomplish fascinates me.

2. How would you describe your book in one sentence?

That’s a hard question! Since I think the book ties together several theoretical concerns, how I would summarize it would depend on which theoretical strand I was thinking of at the moment.

First, Capitalizing Religion addresses the discourse of individualism in religious studies: Individuals, upon inspection, always turn out to be conforming to social codes; however, it appears that the rhetoric of individualism—an overtly normative rhetoric used both by scholars and religious practitioners—masks how subjects are constituted by their social worlds.

Second, this book addresses how discourses assign agency and responsibility to subjects: Individualism displaces all responsibility for social ills to individuals as opposed to social structures, protecting the latter from criticism or revision.

Third: Many “spirituality” and related “self-help” discourses recommend quietism, consumerism, and worker productivity in a way seemingly designed to reproduce the status quo within neoliberal capitalism.

3. When did you start researching for this book?

I would say that this book has, in a sense, three points of origin. First, I read Jeremy Carrette and Richard King’s Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion when it first came out in 2005. The book’s thesis—that our ways of talking about “religion” and “spirituality” are both implicitly and explicitly tied to capitalism—made a huge impact on me and I’ve never stopped thinking through the critical implications of their work.

Second, when I was working on my Ph.D. I spent quite a bit of time studying Christian discourses on theodicy and free will, according to which because individual humans had “free will,” the Christian god was not to be held responsible for evil or suffering in the world. I couldn’t help but notice the parallel between Christian theodicy and the common claim today that “poor people are poor because they are lazy.” Since then I’ve wanted to publish something drawing attention to this parallel.

Third, as I note in the “Introduction” to the book, before my father’s death he dealt with being laid off during an economic downturn by reading self-help literature that encouraged positive thinking yet blamed him for his inability to find a job. According to this literature, all of us have it within our power to improve our life’s station, if only we think positively; the necessary corollary is that we have only ourselves to blame for our failures. It broke my heart to see my father blame himself for his underemployment and financial woes, and that heartbreak lies behind much of my analysis in Capitalizing Religion.

4. Which part of writing a book have you enjoyed most?

While I hated reading “spirituality” and “self-help” literature for my research—as it seemed so frustratingly naïve and superficial to me—I did enjoy writing about that literature. For the second half of the book, where I offer an ideology critique of “spirituality,” I found I could write a chapter in just a few days because I knew exactly what I wanted to say. There was something cathartic in taking these authors to task.

5. Any tips for people reading the book?

If you’re not interested in the theoretical questions of part 1, jump to part 2 for the fun stuff!

6. If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would it be?

Easy: Mark Twain. I read a lot of Twain in high school and college, and his work has made an indelible impact on who I am today.

If you would like anymore information on this title or any of our others, please visit our website here

Sex, Death and Witchcraft: A Contemporary Pagan Festival - Interview with Author Douglas Ezzy

Published this year in the UK and US, Sex, Death and Witchcraft, by Douglas Ezzy, explores a controversial Pagan festival Faunalia and develops a new relational theory of culture. We talked briefly with the author about his new book:

1. What particular areas of religious studies interest you and why?

The book is both a rich ethnographic account of controversial Pagan festival and a provocative reflection on the role of emotions, symbols, and ritual in theories of religion.  The festival involves “a recreation of the Witches' sabbat … It's R-rated, it contains adult themes, nudity and sex references”, according to Harrison – one of the festival participants I interviewed.  The theory develops what Graham Harvey and I are calling “relational theory” in the study of religion.

I’m interested in studies of religion that expose the way we find meaning and purpose in life.  I’m particularly interested in religious responses to difficult and confronting life situations.  These expose aspects of being human that are harder to see in everyday situations are a sort of “breaching experiment” to use Harold Garfinkel’s term.  The religious breaching experiments expose the centrality of relationships, emotions, practices and symbols.  These are central to both religion, and to what it is to be human. 

2. How would you describe your book in one sentence?

In one sentence: The book develops a theory of the role of symbols, emotions, and performance in religious practice, illustrated through an ethnographic account of a Pagan festival involving theatrically elaborate rituals that explore sex and death.

3. When did you start researching for this book?

The project was conceived in 2003. I conducted the research in 2005.  I then spent a long time working out how to theorise the data.  My initial attempts focused on the shock value: “Oh wow! 80 people dancing naked around a bonfire!”  I soon realised that behind the confronting nature of the rituals were some very mundane, but profoundly challenging issues about how we understand what it is to be human: we fear and desire sex; we are deeply ambivalent about loss, death, and dying.  These aspects of the rituals always fascinated me, but it took a long time to work out how to write about them in a way that focused on the theoretical issues that they point to.

4. What’s the meaning behind the title?

The title of the book references the two main rituals at the festival.  The first is a death rite, in which participants role play their own death.  The ritual is a re-enactment of the Greek myth of Persephone’s descent into the Underworld.  The second rite is highly erotic.  Participants dance naked around a bonfire and interact with an hermaphroditic deity called “Baphomet”.

5. Which part of writing a book have you enjoyed most?

The book moves between description and theory.  Some sections are largely narrative, based on participant accounts.  I find these sections very emotionally engaging – they provide a rich sense of the experience of the rituals.  Other sections are very theoretical.  It is these theoretical sections that I found most satisfying intellectually.  I have come to understand religious ritual and its purpose in a much more sophisticated way.

6. Any tips for people reading the book?

The Introduction is deceptively descriptive.  The book becomes quite theoretically sophisticated in the later chapters.  The book is best read in the order that it is written.  It is tempting to flick forward to the description of the sex rite, and if people choose to do this, then that is OK. Theoretically, these sections will take on greater significance if they are contextualised by the earlier chapters.

7. Where will your research go from here?

My current research builds on the relational approach to religion developed in this book.  I’m particularly interested in the role of emotions and ritual in shaping our response to climate change.  I expect the next decades to be particularly challenging for the world as the economic impacts of climate change begin to have an impact.  I hope that we can work out creative and compassionate responses to the grief and loss that this will create.

8. If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would it be?

Paul Ricoeur and Jessica Benjamin are two of the most significant influences on my thought.  Ricoeur’s hermeneutics helped me see beyond the narrow methodological atheism that constrains much of academia.  Benjamin’s concept of mutual recognition still challenges me, both intellectually and practically.  I’d love to talk through some of their ideas with both of them over a beer and an evening meal.

If you would like anymore information on this title or any of our others, please visit our website here

Post-Materialist Religion

We are eagerly awaiting the release of our title, Post-Materalist Religion by Mika T. Lassander, which is due to publish in late August in the UK and in October in the US. 

Graham Harvey, Head of the Department of Religious Studies at The Open University, states:

'So much of the contemporary world (including religion, values, modernity and Europe) makes so much more sense when Lassander’s expert conjoining of approaches and data meld into a powerful, discipline-changing argument. Far more exciting than a mere application or critique of previous theorisation, Post-Materialist Religion offers important advances in understanding how people’s value priorities and hence their religiosities change with changing societies from generation to generation.'

Post-Materialist Religion discusses the transformations of the individual's worldview in contemporary modern societies, and the role general societal value change plays in these. In doing so, Mika T. Lassander brings into conversation sociological theories of secularisation and social-psychological theories of interpersonal relations, the development of morality, and the nature of basic human values. The long-term decline of traditional religiosity in Europe and the emerging ethos that can be described as post-secular have brought religion and values back into popular discussion. One important theme in these discussions is about the links between religion and values, with the most common assumption being that religions are the source of individuals’ values. This book argues for the opposite view, suggesting that religions, or people’s worldviews in general, reflect the individual’s priorities. 

Mika T. Lassander argues that the transformation of the individual's worldview is a direct consequence of the social and economical changes in European societies since the Second World War. He suggests that the decline of traditional religiosity is not an indication of linear secularisation or of forgetting traditions, but an indication of the loss of relevance of some aspects of the traditional institutional religions. Furthermore, he argues that this is not an indication of the loss of ethical value base, but, rather, a change in the value base and consequently the transformation of the legitimating framework of this value base.

More information on this title, and others, can be found on our website here

Sex, Death and Witchcraft

This month we publish Sex, Death and Witchcraft: A Contemporary Pagan Festival by Douglas Ezzy in the UK, and it will be available in the US in July.

In his pre-publication endorsement Graham Harvey (Reader in Religious Studies and Head of Department, The Open University, UK) describes the book as 'a potent brew of embodiment, performance, liminality, sexuality, myth-making, and much more.' He goes on to say that Douglas Ezzy's 'clear analysis should inspire us to think again about ritual and religion from relational perspectives.'

Shawn Arthur (Assistant Professor of Asian Religions, Appalachian State University, USA) also outlines in his pre-publication endorsement that 'Douglas Ezzy offers an intriguing and rich ethnographic study of rituals that confront sex and death in a Contemporary Pagan temporary community setting.' He continues with:

'In the first in-depth study of its kind, he discusses and analyzes these important yet contentious themes in Pagan ritual in a respectful manner that provides much insight into the practitioners’ mindsets. It is exciting to see a scholar of Ezzy’s calibre grapple with these difficult issues.'

Faunalia is a controversial Pagan festival with a reputation for being wild and emotionally intense. It lasts five days, eighty people attend, and the two main rituals run most of the night. In the tantalisingly erotic Baphomet rite, participants encounter a hermaphroditic deity, enter a state of trance and dance naked around a bonfire. In the Underworld rite participants role play their own death, confronting grief and suffering. These rituals are understood as "shadow work" - a Jungian term that refers to practices that creatively engage repressed or hidden aspects of the self. 

Sex, Death and Witchcraft is a powerful application of relational theory to the study of religion and contemporary culture. It analyses Faunalia’s rituals in terms of recent innovations in the sociology of religion and religious studies that focus on relational etiquette, lived religion, embodiment and performance. The sensuous and emotionally intense ritual performances at Faunalia transform both moral orientations and self-understandings. Participants develop an ethical practice that is individualistic, but also relational, and aesthetically mediated. Extensive extracts from interviews describe the rituals in participants’ own words. The book combines rich and evocative description of the rituals with careful analysis of the social processes that shape people’s experiences at this controversial Pagan festival.

This book, and others, can be found on our website here

Secularism, Theology and Islam - Interview with Author Jennifer Elisa Veninga

Just out in the UK and still to come in the US, Secularism, Theology and Islam: The Danish Social Imaginary and the Cartoon Crisis of 2005 - 2006, by Jennifer Elisa Veninga, is a new analysis of the Danish cartoon which ultimately discusses the nature and place of religion in the public sphere at local and global levels. We talked briefly with the author about her new book

1. What particular areas of religious studies interest you and why?

My Ph.D. is in Christian Systematic Theology, but I am interested in a range of topics within religious and theological studies. Geographically, I’m very interested in Scandinavia and particularly Denmark, which became one of my loves as an undergraduate studying Søren Kierkegaard. In Scandinavia and beyond, I’m intrigued by the evolving meanings of secularism and religion, particularly as they intersect with issues of politics and increasing religious pluralism. Thus one of my interests includes contemporary Islam and its relationship to Christianity, especially in Europe and North America. Finally, I’m always fascinated by the impact of media and imagination on how we define our identity as individuals and as communities.

2. How would you describe your book in one sentence?

The book is a new analysis of the historic Danish cartoon crisis of 2005-2006, which examines theological elements of the Danish social imaginary that contributed to the publication of twelve images of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.

 3. When did you start researching for this book?

My research for the book began right after the worldwide protests over the Danish cartoons erupted in January of 2006. I immediately became interested in what was happening and why the cartoons were published in Denmark in September of 2005.

4. Which part of writing a book have you enjoyed most?

I don’t think I can choose between two elements of writing the book. The first includes my travels to Denmark for research, during which I met many amazing people and gained so much insight into the cartoon crisis. The second would be writing the conclusion, when I got to sit back and look at all of my research and really pull the thesis together. In the end, the book probably raised more questions than answers, but I hope the questions can challenge us all to keep thinking about important questions of how to love the neighbour in an increasingly pluralistic world.

5. Any tips for people reading the book?

The book includes a great deal of reflection on the specific history and identity of Denmark. While these reflections do focus on Denmark, I would encourage the reader to enter into this particular concrete context with the idea that the bigger questions it raises about pluralism are applicable to a variety of settings beyond Denmark or even Europe. I would also say that while the book is about the Danish cartoon crisis, it is helpful to remember that the cartoons themselves are not the focus. The book gives context and background for the event and analyses it through a theological lens.

6. Where will your research go from here?

I have a number of projects in mind, but I plan to continue my focus on Scandinavia and Kierkegaard. In particular, I will be researching intersections between trauma theory and Kierkegaard’s understanding of the self, healing and wholeness, areas that haven’t been explored much yet. I’m interested in individual experiences of trauma, but also communal trauma, so I intend to examine several contemporary cases studies, including the tragic 2011 mass shooting in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik. This case study provides some continuity with Secularism, Theology and Islam, as it also brings questions of immigration, Islam and religious pluralism back into play.

7. If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would it be?

Given my long-time interest in him, I would have to say Søren Kierkegaard.

If you would like anymore information on this title or any of our others, please visit our website here