Product Description: This innovative book, newly available in paper, examines the global significance of religion, and the different and complex ways in which the role of religion has changed - and is changing - in different societies. Has a process of separating religion from politics been reversed by recent developments? To what extent do the central values and concepts of traditional religion remain embedded in a society in which substantial numbers no longer formally follow the faith? How has the balance of religious influence between mainline denominations and `cults′ changed, and what is the significance of such change...read more

Product Description: A comprehensive interpretation of controversies in terms of a sociological theory about the location of various types of new religious movements in supposedly secular societies.

Product Description: The complex and changing relationship between religion and migration is central to many urgent questions about diversity, inequality and pluralism. This wide-ranging collection of articles explores these questions in different periods of history, regions of the world and traditions of faith...read more

Product Description: The growth of Islam in Europe is reflected in the increasing numbers of Muslims in British and French prisons, but authorities have responded differently to the challenges presented by Muslim prisoners in each country. The findings of three years of intensive research in a variety of prisons show that British prisons facilitate and control the practice d of Islam, whereas French prisons discourage it and thereby sow the seeds of extremism...read more

Product Description: RENNER Studies on New Religions is an initiative supported by the Danish Research Council for the Humanities. The series was established to publish books on alternative spiritual movements from a wide range of perspectives. The books will appeal to an international readership of scholars, students, and professionals in the study of religion, theology, the arts, and the social sciences...read more

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Product Description: The twentieth century has seen a considerable and unexpected proliferation of new religious movements in many parts of the world, often associated with periods of rapid social change. This volume - now available in paper - explains the development and characteristics of these movements comparatively and analyzes their outstanding features...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This book aims to demonstrate that sociologists have much to gain from a strengthening of the connections between general theories about the changing character of modern Western societies and specific studies of religion. The weakness of such connections is indeed one of the most curious features of contemporary sociology...read more

Product Description: This is the first in-depth study of relations between the Anglican Church and other faiths in the Prison Service Chaplaincy. It examines the increasingly controversial role of Anglican chaplains in facilitating the religious and pastoral care of the increasing population of prisoners from non-Christian backgrounds...read more

Product Description: How secular is contemporary society? Are pockets of sectarianism embedded in societies of developed countries? This timely book examines the interweaving of politics and religion, and of tradition and innovation in a variety of cultural settings...read more

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Product Description: Religion is controversial and challenging. Whilst religious forces are powerful in numerous societies, they have little or no significance for wide swaths of public or private life in other places. The task of theoretical work in the sociology of religion is, therefore, to make sense of this apparently paradoxical situation in which religion is simultaneously significant and insignificant...read more