The last decade has seen an unexpected return of the religious, and with it the creation of new kinds of social forms alongside new fusions of political and religious realms that high modernity kept distinct. For a fuller understanding of what this means for society in the context of globalization, it is necessary to rethink the relationship between the religious and the secular; the contributors - all leading scholars in anthropology - do just that, some even arguing that secularization itself now takes a religious form. Combining theoretical reflection with vivid ethnographic explorations, this essential collection is designed to advance a critical understanding of social and personal religious experience in today's world.

These papers offer us many challenges as we come to consider the sacred and the secular, church and state, and associated moral concerns from new perspectives.”  ·  Anthropological Notebooks

“Pity the reviewer of a collection of eleven articles as stimulating but thematically diverse as this.”  ·  JRAI

“… a wide-ranging collection of studies taking the pulse of modern religion and society. As has become apparent, it is no longer possible to hold religion and politics apart analytically, nor to rest comfortably in the assumptions of secularization…As the state changes (or wanes), other social forces will blend with it or replace it, and the authors here have done a valuable service in demonstrating just a few ways in which this is happening and will continue to happen.”  ·  Anthropology Review Database

Bruce Kapferer is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and is currently Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway. His published books include: A Celebration of Demons (1983), Legends of People, Myths of the State (1988), and The Feast of the Sorcerer (1997). He has edited Beyond Rationalism (2003), and has coedited with Angela Hobart Aesthetics in Performance (2005) and, with Bjørn Bertelsen, Crisis of the State (2009).