This book is an ethnographic account of the emergence of Hindu nationalism in a tribal (adivasi) community in Chhattisgarh, central India. It is argued that the successful spread of Hindu nationalism in this area is due to the involvement of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a militant Hindu nationalist organization, in local affairs. While active engagement in 'civilizing' strategies has enabled the RSS to legitimize its presence and endear itself to the local community, the book argues that participation in more aggressive strategies has made it possible for this organization to fuel and attach local tensions to a broader Hindu nationalist agenda.

An ethnographic account of the emergence of Hindu nationalism in a tribal (adivasi) community in Chattisgarh, Central India.

The story of how Brazilian Catholics and Protestants confronted one of the greatest shocks to the Latin American religious system in its 500-year history This innovative study explores the transition in Brazil from a hegemonically Catholic society to a religiously pluralistic society. With sensitivity, Erika Helgen shows that the rise of religious pluralism was fraught with conflict and violence, as Catholic bishops, priests, and friars organized intense campaigns against Protestantism. These episodes of religious violence were not isolated outbursts of reactionary rage, but rather formed part of a longer process through which religious groups articulated their vision for Brazil’s national future.

Employing a sizeable collection of data on party members, activists, and elites, Geoffrey Layman examines the role of religion in the Democratic and Republican parties, and the ways in which religion has influenced the political process from the early 1960s through the late 1990s.

This book recognizes the problem areas and concerns of each institution or social force. We must recognize, acknowledge, support and encourage the primary function of each institution and will recognize and establish a working relationship with the leaders of each institution and will come to an agreement with them on institutional goals and objectives. The presence of social institutions from ancient times and the universal presence of most of the main types of them in all known societies point to the fact that societies cannot exist without them. This obvious indispensability indicates fundamental causes or impelling reasons for their existence. They must perform functions which are essential to the life of societies. They must be characteristic of human nature as these express themselves in social contacts and situations among associated human behavior which are called social institutions. As a newly formed corporation UNOCOM: Unity of the Community will be engaged in educational activities of the institutions of society.

Since 1979 Southern Baptists have been noisily struggling to agree on symbols, beliefs, and practices as they attempt to make sense of their changing social world. Nancy Ammerman has carefully documented their struggle. She tells the story of the Baptist reversal from a moderate to a fundamentalist outlook and speculates on the future of the denomination. Ammerman places change among the Southern Baptists in the context of the cultural and economic changes that have transformed the South from its rural past into an urbanizing, culturally diverse region. Not only did the South change; Southern Baptists did as well. Reflecting this diversity, the Southern Baptist bureaucracy was relatively progressive. During the 1960s and 1970s, moderate sentiments prevailed, while fundamentalists remained on the margins. These two were, however, becoming increasingly divergent in what they considered important about being a Baptist, in their views about the Bible, in their attitudes on the origination of women, on Christian morals, and on national politics. Late in the 1970s, a fundamentalist coalition emerged, followed by unsuccessful efforts by moderates to oppose it. The battles escalated until 1985, when 45,000 Baptists gathered in Dallas to decide between contending presidential candidates. That dramatic event illustrated the extent to which organized political resources were determining the course of the conflict. Ammerman studies these strategies and resources as well. Examining how this tension affected Baptists, Ammerman begins with case studies of the change it is producing in Baptist agencies. But she also brings us back to the local churches and individual believers who are renegotiating their relationships within their denomination. She asks whether the denomination's polity can accommodate an increasingly diverse group of Baptists, of whether the only way dissidents can have a voice is through schism.

This book studies how religion influences the way people in Colombia remember a massacre of 79 civilians that occurred in a Catholic church in 2002. It analyses how strategies of memorialisation are part of religious peacebuilding initiatives that aim to resist and denounce crimes against human, ethnic, cultural and economic rights.

Religion has become increasingly important in the sociopolitical life of countries in the former Soviet Union. This volume of essays examines how religion affects conflict and stability in the region and provides recommendations to policymakers.

Today we hear renewed calls for a dialogue between science and religion: why has the old question of the relations between science and religion now returned to the public domain and what is at stake in this debate? To answer these questions, historian and sociologist of science Yves Gingras retraces the long history of the troubled relationship between science and religion, from the condemnation of Galileo for heresy in 1633 until his rehabilitation by John Paul II in 1992. He reconstructs the process of the gradual separation of science from theology and religion, showing how God and natural theology became marginalized in the scientific field in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast to the dominant trend among historians of science, Gingras argues that science and religion are social institutions that give rise to incompatible ways of knowing, rooted in different methodologies and forms of knowledge, and that there never was, and cannot be, a genuine dialogue between them. Wide-ranging and authoritative, this new book on one of the fundamental questions of Western thought will be of great interest to students and scholars of the history of science and of religion as well as to general readers who are intrigued by the new and much-publicized conversations about the alleged links between science and religion.

The authors examine popular religion as a vital source of new values and experiences as well as a source of pressure for change in the church, political life, and the social order as a whole and deal with the issues of poverty and the role of the poor wit