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Rituals play a prominent role in Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest religious traditions of mankind. In this book, scholars from a broad range of disciplines make the first ever collective effort to discuss Zoroastrian rituals in different historical contexts and geographical settings.

The contemporary search for the feminine face of God requires a re- examination of the relationship of Christianity to the pagan world in which it was born. This study inquires into extra-biblical sources of Marian piety, belief and doctrine. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

Prepared in honor of E. Thomas Lawson, the essays in "Religion as a Human Capacity" offer a broad range of cognitivist theoretical explorations of religion, as well as cutting-edge applications of cognitive and other contemporary theories to religious data.

This book brings together studies by seventeen specialists in the science of religions in which they relate the changes in their discipline to the changes which have occurred in a select number of modern(ising) societies worldwide. It attempts to study these developments in their relation to and as conditioned and constrained by cultural change, changes in educational systems, technology, population (for example migration), economic patterns, politics, and, last but not least, religious systems. The essays focus on resp. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the USA, Turkey, Israel, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Indonesia, Japan, and China. Written in honour of Dr. Lammert Leertouwer, professor of History of Religions and the Comparative Study of Religions at Leiden University from 1979 until his retirement in 1997, the book is particularly important for all those who are interested in the religious, social and political contexts of the academic Study of Religions in general and in the various countries dealt with in particular.

This book investigates the problem of esoteric traditions in early Christianity, their origin and their transformation in Patristic hermeneutics, in the West as well as in the East. It argues that these traditions eventually formed the basis of nascent Christian mysticism in Late Antiquity. This publication is a revised edition of the original hardback publication, please click here for details.

Garry Winston Trompf (b.1940) in his outstanding academic career has inspired scholars in the fields of Stduies in Religion and the History of Ideals. In this volume his collegues and students critique and expand upon the world of this outstanding academic. The book is divided into four parts, Melanesia, Ancient World Studies, Philosophical and Methodological Considerations and Historiography. Authors address Trompf's research in works such as "The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought," "Early Christian Historiography" and themes of Melanesian religion that Trompf address in "Payback." No study in the religions of oceania or ideals of millenialism should ignore this critical assessment of Garry Trompf's work.

Drawing on ethnographic and archival research conducted on the Indonesian island of Bali, this book demonstrates that more nuanced attention to problems of media will have serious implications for how we think about the study of religions, past and present.

Although religious education is a crucial topic in present-day History of Religions, its study focuses on contemporary phenomena and is still undertheorised. The present volume proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework based on interdisciplinary case studies of religious education in pre-modern Europe.

Re-imagining South Asian Religions is a collection of essays offering new ways of understanding aspects of Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, Theosophical, and Indian Christian experiences.

Sikh Diaspora: Theory, Agency, and Experience is a collection of essays offering new insights into the diverse experiences of Sikhs beyond the Punjab. The essays in this volume engage with diaspora theory, agency, space, social relations, and aesthetics.

The correspondence between Raffaele Pettazzoni and Herbert Jennings Rose (1927-1958) sheds light on the behind-the-scenes activity of two great modern scholars and provides an interesting perspective on the history of religions in the first half of the twentieth century.

Religious Transformation in Modern Asia offers phenomenological glimpses of the religious transition in 18th to 20th centuries. The colonial experience of indigenous Asian people, as case studies, will be expounded in relation to the emergence of a new religion, Christianity.

In An Arena for Higher Powers Olof Sundqvist offers an account of the role played by religion in political undertakings among the pre-Christian ruling elites at ceremonial buildings in in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (i.e. AD 550-1050/1100).

Cosmopolitan Dharma, through an analysis of the diverse voices of racial, sexual and gender minority Buddhists, explores how cultural politics from the ground up can offer a more inclusive philosophy and lived experience of spirituality for Western Buddhism.