This book, the first themed volume in the series The Future of the
Religious Past, elaborates the manifold and fascinating
interconnections between power and religion. It carries forward the
work of the series in bringing together scholars from many
disciplines and countries to research forms of religion in a way
unfettered by the idea that religion is solely or even primarily a
matter of belief in specific tenets or intellectual systems-it is
also a matter of multiple particulars in individual and social
life, such as powers, things, gestures, and words. Dealing with the
nexus of religion and power, the present volume radically
undermines the idea that the political relevance of religion is a
thing of the past. Its essays treat power as a central aspect of
religion on many levels, from that of macro-politics through the
links between religion and nationhood to the level of personal
empowerment or its obverse, disempowerment. Power and religion are
both omnipresent in human action and interaction. There is no human
act that does not include some kind of faith in a positive outcome
and no deed in which power does not play some role. People
obviously can attempt to use religion as an instrument to enhance
their power or improve their status, whether personally or at the
level of the nationstate. Yet religion is in principle ambiguous in
relation to power: It can disempower as well as empower, and it can
even function as a critique of existing power relations. Moreover,
there is the consolatory function of religion, offering ways of
compensation, of healing, and of enduring feelings of
powerlessness. Like the first volume in the series, Religion:
Beyond a Concept, the essays in this volume strike a balance
between broad analyses of the nature of religion and power in their
modes of emergence today and specific case studies from
anthropology, sociology, and the arts. It is noteworthy for the
breadth of the material it treats and its reach outside the
Christian West, while not taking anything in that Western tradition
for granted, given the astonishing changes of supposedly familiar
religious phenomena we are viewing in the contemporary world.
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