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The discursive study of religion is a growing field that attracts increasing numbers of students and researchers from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds. This volume is the first systematic presentation of the research into religion and discourse. Written by experts from various disciplines, each chapter offers an integrative overview of theory, method, and contextual studies by focusing on a specific approach, interdisciplinary relationship, controversy, or theme in the field. Taking the discursive dimension in the production of knowledge seriously, the book also provides a critical analysis of academic practice and explores new forms of scholarly communication, including open peer-review. The collected volume will appeal to scholars and postgraduate students across a variety of disciplines, including religious studies, history of religion, sociology of religion, discourse studies, cultural studies, and area studies.

The enigmatic relation between religion and science still presents a challenge to European societies and to ideas about what it means to be 'modern.' This book argues that European secularism, rather than pushing back religious truth claims, in fact has been religiously productive itself. The institutional establishment of new disciplines in the nineteenth century, such as religious studies, anthropology, psychology, classical studies, and the study of various religious traditions, led to a professionalization of knowledge about religion that in turn attributed new meanings to religion. This attribution of meaning resulted in the emergence of new religious identities and practices. In a dynamic that is closely linked to this discursive change, the natural sciences adopted religious and metaphysical claims and integrated them in their framework of meaning, resulting in a special form of scientific religiosity that has gained much influence in the twentieth century. Applying methods that come from historical discourse analysis, the book demonstrates that religious semantics have been reconfigured in the secular sciences. Ultimately, the scientification of religion perpetuated religious truth claims under conditions of secularism.

The enigmatic relation between religion and science still presents a challenge to European societies and to ideas about what it means to be 'modern.' With a historical analysis, this book demonstrates that religious discourses have been reconfigured in the secular sciences, thus prolonging the relevance of religion in new constellations.

This book uncovers the history of the concept of the soul in twentieth-century Europe and North America. Beginning in fin de siecle Germany, Kocku von Stuckrad examines an astonishingly wide range of figures and movements.

In late 1911, Piet Mondrian was about to move to Paris and leave his native country of the Netherlands behind. During this period of artistic and personal transformation he turned to theosophist Adriaan van de Vijsel for an astrological reading. Mondrian was born under the sign of Pisces on 7 March 1872, and according to his horoscope was "very susceptible and [had] psychic tendencies." He was "able to feel things without being able to give an explanation of how this knowledge was obtained, [with] a mind that can express itself diplomatically, calmly, and systematically." Character Is Fate: Piet Mondrian's Horoscope, an artist's book by Willem de Rooij (born 1969), contains the facsimile, its transcription and its English translation alongside texts by Wietse Coppes and Kocku von Stuckrad.

In this book, Kocku von Stuckrad describes the impact of esoteric currents from antiquity to the present and pursues the continuities and breaks in a tradition that significantly influenced the formation of modernity.