Formations of belief : historical approaches to religion and the secular / edited by Philip Nord, Katja Guenther, & Max Weiss.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Nord, Philip G., 1950- editor.

Guenther, Katja, editor.

Weiss, Max, 1977- editor.

Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, associated with work.

Series:

Publication in partnership with the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University.

Publications in Partnership with the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University ; 6

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religion--History--21st century.

Religion.

Secularism--History--21st century.

Secularism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 328 pages).

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

For decades, scholars and public intellectuals have been predicting the demise of religion in the face of secularization. Yet religion is undergoing an unprecedented resurgence in modern life-and secularization no longer appears so inevitable. Formations of Belief brings together many of today's leading historians to shed critical light on secularism's origins, its present crisis, and whether it is as antithetical to religion as it is so often made out to be.Formations of Belief offers a more nuanced understanding of the origins of secularist thought, demonstrating how Reformed Christianity and the Enlightenment were not the sole vessels of a worldview based on rationalism and individual autonomy. Taking readers from late antiquity to the contemporary era, the contributors show how secularism itself can be a form of belief and yet how its crisis today has been brought on by its apparent incapacity to satisfy people's spiritual needs. They explore the rise of the humanistic study of religion in Europe, Jewish messianism, atheism and last rites in the Soviet Union, the cult of the saints in colonial Mexico, religious minorities and Islamic identity in Pakistan, the neuroscience of religion, and more.Based on the Shelby Cullom Davis Center Seminars at Princeton University, this incisive book features illuminating essays by Peter Brown, Yaacob Dweck, Peter E. Gordon, Anthony Grafton, Brad S. Gregory, Stefania Pastore, Caterina Pizzigoni, Victoria Smolkin, Max Weiss, and Muhammad Qasim Zaman.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Past Belief

2. Jacob Sasportas and Jewish Messianism

3. Doubt and Unbelief in the Early Modern Era

4. Exeuntes de corpore qui sumus? "Out of the Body, Who Are We?"

5. In the Church and at Home

6. An Ordinary Soviet Death

7. True Believers in the Modern Middle East

8. The Reformation Era and the Secularization of Knowledge

9. Contesting Secularization

10. Religious Minorities and the Anxieties of an Islamic Identity in Pakistan

Afterword. Belief in Science? On the Neuroscience of Religion

Notes

List of Contributors

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2019.

Publications in partnership with the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

0-691-19416-5

OCLC:

1110108855