Following the heyday of Lévi-Straussian structuralism in the 1970s-80s, little attention has been paid by scholars of religion to semiotics. Semiotics of Religion reassesses key semiotic theories in the light of religious data. Yelle examines the semiotics of religion from structural and historical perspectives, drawing on Peircean linguistic anthropology, Jakobsonian poetics, comparative religion and several theological traditions. This book pays particular attention to the transformation of religious symbolism under modernization and the rise of a culture of the printed book. Among the topics addressed are: - ritual repetition and the poetics of ritual performance - magic and the belief in a natural (iconic) language - Protestant literalism and iconoclasm - disenchantment and secularization - Holiness, arbitrariness, and agency Building from the legacy of structuralism while interrogating several key doctrines of that movement, Semiotics of Religion both introduces the field to a new generation and charts a course for future research.

Crystal Downing brings the postmodern theory of semiotics within reach for today's evangelists. Following the idea of the sign through Scripture, church history and the academy, Downing shows you how signs work and how sensitivity to their dynamics can make or break an attempt to communicate truth.

While the academic study of religion has increased almost exponentially in the past fifty years, general theories of religion have been in significant decline. In his new book, Carl Raschke offers the first systematic exploration of how the postmodern philosophical theories of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Zizek have contributed significantly to the development of a theory of religion as a whole. The bold paradigm he uses to articulate the framework for a revolution in religious theory comes from semiotics--namely, the problem of the sign and the "singularity" or "event horizon" from which a sign is generated.

To what extent can semiotics illuminate key problems in religious studies, given the centrality of symbols, language, and other modes of signification in religion and theology? The volume explores semiotic methodologies for the study of religion, with an emphasis on their critical and creative reconfigurations. The contributors come from different specialties, such as cognitive science, ethnography, linguistics, communication studies, art studies, religious studies, philosophy of religion, and theology. Part One consists of chapters focusing on theoretical perspectives. Part two focuses on applications in texts and case studies while still considering methodological issues. Many specific traditions and perspectives are taken up, such as C. S. Peirce, A. J. Greimas and the Paris School, Juri Lotman’s semiotics of culture, Bruno Latour and material semiotics, linguistic anthropology, social semiotics, cognitive semiotics, embodied and enactive perspectives on language and mind, semiotics of the image and iconicity, multimodality, intertextuality, and semiotics of colors. The book provides readers with a succinct overview of how contemporary semiotics can be useful in understanding a broad array of topics in the study of religion.

As the title suggests, Political Religion, Everyday Religion: Sociological Trends reflects upon two important trends that have recently emerged in the sociology of religion. Firstly, there is an increasing interest in the interplay between religion and politics. Religion has moved from being almost ignored by sociologists to being acknowledged – some would even say overrated – as an important political factor. Secondly, ordinary people’s everyday religion has likewise become an important topic for many researchers. In this book, James Beckford, Inger Furseth and other prominent scholars present critical discussions and empirical studies of both political and everyday religion, and the editor, Pål Repstad, shows how these two trends should enter into a closer dialogue. The book is essential for both students and experienced researchers in the sociology of religion. Contributors are: James A. Beckford, Inger Furseth, Kristina Grundetjern, Jan-Olav Henriksen, Ida Marie Høeg, Nils Martinius Justvik, Bjarte Leer-Helgesen, Paul Leer-Salvesen, Anne Løvland, Tomas Rasmussen, Pål Repstad, Tale Steen-Johnsen, and Irene Trysnes

The way in which people change and represent their spiritual evolution is often determined by recurrent language structures. Through the analysis of ancient and modern stories and their words and images, this book describes the nature of conversion through explorations of the encounter with the religious message, the discomfort of spiritual uncertainty, the loss of personal and social identity, the anxiety of destabilization, the reconstitution of the self and the discovery of a new language of the soul.

To what extent can semiotics illuminate key problems in religious studies, given the centrality of symbols, language, and other modes of signification in religion and theology? The volume explores semiotic methodologies for the study of religion, with an emphasis on their critical and creative reconfigurations. The contributors come from different specialties, such as cognitive science, ethnography, linguistics, communication studies, art studies, religious studies, philosophy of religion, and theology. Part One consists of chapters focusing on theoretical perspectives. Part two focuses on applications in texts and case studies while still considering methodological issues. Many specific traditions and perspectives are taken up, such as C. S. Peirce, A. J. Greimas and the Paris School, Juri Lotman’s semiotics of culture, Bruno Latour and material semiotics, linguistic anthropology, social semiotics, cognitive semiotics, embodied and enactive perspectives on language and mind, semiotics of the image and iconicity, multimodality, intertextuality, and semiotics of colors. The book provides readers with a succinct overview of how contemporary semiotics can be useful in understanding a broad array of topics in the study of religion.

Religion, like any other domain of culture, is mediated through symbolic forms and communicative behaviors, which allow the coordination of group conduct in ritual and the representation of the divine or of tradition as an intersubjective reality. While many traditions hold out the promise of immediate access to the divine, or to some transcendent dimension of experience, such promises depend for their realization as well on the possibility of mediation, which is necessarily conducted through channels of communication and exchange, such as prayers or sacrifices. An understanding of such modes of semiosis is therefore necessary even and especially when mediation is denied by a tradition in the name of the 'ineffability" of the deity or of mystical experience. This volume models and promotes an interdisciplinary dialogue and cross-cultural perspective on these issues by asking prominent semioticians, historians of religion and of art, linguists, sociologists of religion, and philosophers of law to reflect from a semiotic perspective on the topic of mediation and immediacy in religious traditions.

The concern of this work is with developing an alternative to standard categories in theology and philosophy, especially in terms of how they deal with nature. Avoiding the polemics of much contemporary reflection on nature, it shows how we are connected to nature through the unconscious and its unique way of reading and processing signs. Spinoza's key distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata serves as the governing framework for the treatise. Suggestions are made for a post-Christian way of understanding religion. Robert S. Corrington's work represents the first sustained attempt to bring together the fields of semiotics, depth-psychology, pragmaticism, and a post-Monotheistic theology of nature. Its focus is on how signification functions in human and non-human orders of infinite nature. Our connection with the infinite is described in detail, especially as it relates to the use of sign systems.

This volume draws on an interdisciplinary team of authors to advance the study of the religious dimensions of communication and the linguistic aspects of religion. Contributions cover: poetry, iconicity, and iconoclasm in religious language; semiotic ideologies in traditional religions and in secularism; and the role of materiality and writing in religious communication. This volume will provoke new approaches to language and religion.