The Political Dimensions of Religion

Edited by Saïd Amir Arjomand

Subjects: Sociology Of Religion
Series: SUNY series in Near Eastern Studies
Paperback : 9780791415580, 293 pages, August 1993
Hardcover : 9780791415573, 293 pages, August 1993

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Table of contents

Contributors

Preface

Introduction

Part I. Religion and the Institution of Order

1. Religion and the Civilizational Dimensions of Politics
S. N. Eisenstadt

2. Religion and the Diversity of Normative Orders
Said Amir Arjomand

3. Religion and Constitutionalism in Western History and in Modern Iran and Pakistan
Said Amir Arjomand

4. Church, State, Nation, and Civil Society in Spain and Poland
José Casanova

Part II. Utopian Religious Beliefs and Political Action

5. Lost Primeval Bliss as Re-volutionary Expectation: Millennialism of Crisis In Peru and the Philippines
Manuel Sarkisyanz

6. Note on the Shining Path and Modernized Millennialism in Peru
Javier Diaz-Albertini

7. Antinomian Conduct at the Millennium: Metaphorical Conceptions of Time in Social Science and Social Life
Karen E. Fields

8. Culture and Politics in Vietnamese Caodaism
Manuel Sarkisyanz

9. Millennial Beliefs, Hierocratic Authority, and Revolution in Shi'ite Iran
Said Amir Arjomand

Part III. Normative Contentions and Current Issues

10. Fundamentalism and the Political Mobilization of Women
Martin Riesebrodt

11. An American Paradox: The Place of Religion in an Ambiguous Polity
Steven M. Tipton

Index

Description

This volume explores the relationship between religion and politics. It brings a varied sample of richly detailed comparative and case studies together with a set of analytical paradigms in an integrated framework. It is a major statement on a timely subject, and a plea for the acknowledgment of normative pluralism as firmly rooted in the history of religion. The editor shows that the fact of political diversity in the history of world religions compels the acceptance of pluralism as a normative principle.

Said Amir Arjomand is Professor of Sociology at State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of a number of books, including Authority and Culture in Shi'ism, published by SUNY Press, and the editor of the SUNY Press Series in Near Eastern Studies.

Reviews

"The only other book that deals with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim fundamentalism is the book by Bruce Lawrence. It does not have the range of Arjomand's book." — Hamid Algar, University of California, Berkeley

"In this book, Said Amir Arjomand has brought together a number of brilliant essays, each addressing a particular aspect of that beguiling force of attraction that relentlessly keeps religion and politics in close proximity—in a wavering space where the sacred and the violent vie for power with implacable ferocity." — Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University