This edited collection harnesses a diversity of interpretivist perspectives to provide a panoramic view of the production, experiences, contexts, and meanings of religion.
Experts from the US, UK, India, and China explore religious phenomena using ethnographic, comparative historical, psychosocial, and critical theoretical approaches. Each chapter addresses foundational themes in the study of religion - from identity and discourse to ritual, emotion, and embodiment. Authors examine dynamic intersections of race, gender, history, and the present within the religious traditions of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
Cutting boldly across religious traditions and paradigms, the book investigates areas of harmony and contradiction across different interpretive lenses and achieves a richer understanding of the meanings of religion.
Introduction: Interpretive Approaches in the Study of Religion ~ Erin F. Johnston 1. Making Sense of Queer Christian Lives ~ Jodi O'Brien 2. Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma: Religion, Spirituality and Ritual among Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors ~ Janet Jacobs 3. Doing It: Ethnography, Embodiment, and the Interpretation of Religion ~ Daniel Winchester 4. Mind the Gap: What Ethnographic Silences Can Teach Us ~ Rebecca Kneale Gould 5. The Public Sphere and Presentations of the Collective Self: Being Shia in Modern India ~ Aseem Hasnain 6. Meaning and Power: Toward a Critical Discursive Sociology of Religion ~ Titus Hjelm 7. The Religion of White Male Ethnonationalism in a Multicultural Reality ~ George Lundskow 8. Totalitarianism as Religion ~ Yong Wang 9. The Heritage Spectrum: A More Inclusive Typology for the Age of Global Buddhism ~ Jessica Marie Falcone 10. Interpreting Nonreligion ~ Evan Stewart Afterword: Approaching Religions – Some Refl ections on Meaning, Identity, and Power ~ Vikash Singh
Erin F. Johnston is Associate in Research with the Clergy Health Initiative at Duke University. Vikash Singh is Associate Professor of Sociology at Montclair State University.
Reviews for Interpreting Religion: Making Sense of Religious Lives
Scholars of religion too often speak only to narrow academic circles. But this valuable collection of essays shows that good scholarship is also attentive to how people in the real world interpret their faith. Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University
