Powers: Religion As a Social and Spiritual Force(The Future of the Religious Past)

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.

About the Author :
MEERTEN B. TER BORG is Professor of Sociology of Religion and Noninstitutional Religion in the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University. JAN WILLEM VAN HENTEN is Professor of New Testament and Director of the Graduate School for the Humanities at the University of Amsterdam. His most recent book is Martyrdom and Noble Death (with Friedrich Avemarie).

Review :
"An inspired guide for understanding the comeback of religion in a world that appeared to be secularizing. This seminal mix of texts on different parts of the world critically addresses both the often all too easy suppositions that made ever further secularization seem inevitable and the dangers of equally simplistic analysis of the revival of religion as an effect of changing power relations. The various authors show the way for increasingly sophisticated interpretations of the complex links between religion and power." -- -Peter Geschiere University of Amsterdam "Essays on power as a central aspect of religion, including its intersections with politics, art, and other realms; topics include Catholicism and secessionist warfare in Papua New Guinea." -The Chronicle of Higher Education