Religion and Globalization

What role does religion play in a globalized society? Religion and Globalization explores the interaction between religion and worldwide social and cultural change. The author examines major theories of global change and discusses ways in which such change impinges on contemporary religious practice, meaning, and influence. He explores some of the key issues confronting religion today, including religion as culture, pure and applied religion, privatized and publicly influential religion, and liberal versus conservative religion. He then applies these themes to five illustrative cases of contemporary importance: the American Christian Right, Liberation Theology movements in Latin America, the Islamic Revolution in Iran, religious Zionists in Israel, and religious environmentalism-the response of religions to the degradation of the natural environment. Religion and Globalization is a vital resource for understanding the place of religion in global culture, and the relation between religion and globalization. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of sociology and religious studies as well as all those interested in the nature and direction of global cultural change. "The book would be useful in a graduate course in which globalization theory is an explicit focus, given the extended and informed review of the literature, as well as the case studies." -Contemporary Sociology "This is an innovative, important, and timely book that offers much to social scientists with an interest in the role of religion in the contemporary world. On the one hand, the book challenges the social scientist with an exceptionally wide-ranging theoretical argument, but equally, on the other, it confronts the practitioner with a powerful and suggestive explanation of the function and potential of contemporary religion-and therefore with an opportunity that must not be overlooked." --Richard Roberts, University of St. Andrews