This book explores devotional Hinduism in a modern context of high consumerism and revolutionised communications. It focuses on a fast-growing and high-profile contemporary Hindu guru faith originating in India and attracting a transnational following. The organisation is led by a vastly popular female guru, Mata Amritanandamayi, whom devotees worship as an avatar and a healer of the ills of the contemporary world. By drawing upon multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork among the mata's primarily urban, educated 'middle class' Indian devotees, the author provides crucial insights into new trends in popular Hinduism in a post-colonial and rapidly modernising Indian setting.

This is a crucial volume exploring the relationship between the disciplines of Religious Studies and Theology."Theology and Religious Studies" seeks to explore the relationship between the disciplines of Religious Studies and Theology. In particular, it aims to examine whether the two disciplines are strange bedfellows sharing little in common but bedding together out of sheer habit, or whether there is something that the two share in an organic sense, which sustains the link between them.These questions have important implications not just for how the respective disciplines define themselves and their boundaries, but also for their place in the secular context of higher education in modern universities. The question of how the two are related is one that concerns all scholars of religion, since it has important implications for approach and method in the study of religions. Particularly relevant are questions to do with subjectivity, objectivity, and reflexivity in the study of religion; 'insider' and 'outsider' approaches; 'scientific' and 'theological' methodologies; and 'public'/'private' dichotomies in defining the 'secular' and the 'religious'.This volume is based on a seminar series conducted over 2005-06 in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, at the University of Wales, Lampeter, UK. It brings together papers presented by leading scholars of Theology and Religious Studies on various aspects of their respective disciplines. These include origins; history; founding premises; orientations; methodology; engagement with feminist and post-colonial critiques; and shifts in theoretical paradigms over time. The intended result is the generation of dialogue between the two disciplines, and a self-reflexive examination of what each is about. There is very little available literature attempting such a dialogue between Theology and Religious Studies, and this book will fill a crucial gap in this area.