"This flagship volume of a projected five-volume series sets the intellectual agenda for one of the most comprehensive projects ever undertaken to chart the course of religion's past and future. The interesting, intriguing, and vexing set of essays in this impressive volume explores all of the major issues surrounding the contemporary reemergence of religion as a vital force in public affairs. Hent de Vries has led an intellectually dazzling charge over the terrain of global culture and shown that the challenge of religion in the contemporary world is deeply tied to the crisis of modernity and identity in a post-secular age."-MARK JUERGENSMEYER, University of California, Santa Barbara, author of Terror in the Mind of God and Global Religions, and president-elect of the American Academy of Religion
"How should we define religion? As Friedrich Nietzsche famously remarked, we can only define something which has no history. Fully aware of the difficulty or impossibility of defining ‘religion,' this ambitious collection offers a look at the phenomena conventionally called ‘religious' from such a variety of perspectives that every reader will emerge transformed."-HANS JOAS, University of Chicago, Dean of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Social and Cultural Studies, Erfurt
"A monumental excursion through the alphabet of the religious. Edited by an eminent thinker and philosopher, this comprehensive and generous collection brilliantly illuminates what is at stake in the encounter between theology and politics in a secular age."-ACHILLE MBEMBE, Witwatersrand University, author of On the Postcolony
"Another grand symposium hosted by de Vries on the subject of ‘religion': at a moment strangely compounded of spiritual famines and religions aplenty, of conceptual aporias and performative intensities, this volume spreads out for the reader a subtle, variegated feast of questions, differences, meditations, and media. Even a theologian finds nourishment."-CATHERINE KELLER, Drew University, author of Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming
"Hent de Vries's magisterial work once again energizes a field that requires our urgent attention.With utmost discretion, intelligence, and verve, this work summons up the thoughts of vibrant scholars who act as first responders to the religious crisis besetting us today." -AVITAL RONELL, New York University
"Although for some, scholars as well as political elites, the persisting-private as well as public-role of religion came as a surprise, this first volume in a promising series shows why even they had better take religion, and its role in the public domain, seriously. Casanova rightfully speaks of a significant shift in the Zeitgeist. In this pathbreaking collection of essays, with contributions by many who have played key roles in putting religion back on the agenda both for scholarly research and in public debate, an important first step has been taken toward a new, 'post-secular' understanding of religion. Four more books will follow in this series, but in this impressive volume, a decisive step has been taken toward what we will need to understand concerning the future of religion." -WIM VAN DE DONK, Tilburg University, Chair of the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), The Hague
"With its appetizing mix of contributions from contemporary classics and cutting-edge work by young scholars, this volume presents a rich variation and interesting dynamics between various disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological approaches that address the burning question of the definition of religion in our time."-GALIT HASAN-ROKEM, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
