Contemporary Paganism emerged in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s as a new religious movement, although practitioners understood themselves to be participating in a witchcraft tradition extending back into medieval if not prehistoric times.

In recent decades, Pagan Studies has emerged through a plethora of sophisticated anthropological, sociological, and historical studies, and this new three-volume collection from Routledge s Critical Concepts in Religious Studies series brings together the best foundational and cutting-edge scholarship in one mini library .

Volume I addresses...

This new four-volume collection from Routledge brings together the best and most influential scholarship on women and Christianity. It presents an up-to-date, multidisciplinary, and comprehensive compilation of women s reflection on the Bible and Christian doctrines; women s religious roles and movements; and contemporary issues facing Christian women around the world."

The early twenty-first century has witnessed a global resurgence of religious activity and identification. In particular, numerous examples of the growing political influence of religion can be cited, not least in Europe, once thought to be an inexorably secularizing continent. In India, meanwhile, officially a secular state, the Bharatiya Janata Party has served in several coalition governments and, until 2004, was the leading party in government. In the USA, religion continues to have a major impact on both domestic politics and the country s international relations. More obviously...

Two-thirds of the world’s Christians live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and this new interdisciplinary collection of articles on World Christianity from Routledge brings together specialist contributions from around the world, including Pentecostal and various Reform churches, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran and independent churches.

The materials have been arranged around the core themes of contextualization, external and internal power, theological and ethnic marginalization, civic and ancestral identity, mission and conversion, and cover Africa, Asia, the...

In the last two decades a new form of religiously motivated social action and a virtually new field of academic study--each based in recognition of the connections between religion and humanity's treatment of the environment--have developed. Interactions between religion and environmental concern have been manifest in the explosive growth of ecotheological writings, institutional commitment by organized religions, and environmental activism explicitly oriented to religious ideals. Clergy throughout the world in virtually every denomination have received word from leaders of their religion...

It would not be an exaggeration to say that during the last century, most especially during and since the 1960s, the language of spirituality has become one of the most significant ways in which the sacred has come to be understood and judged in the West, and, increasingly, elsewhere. Whether it is true that 'spirituality' has eclipsed 'religion' in Western settings remains debatable. What is incontestable is that the language of spirituality, together with practices (most noticeably spiritual, complementary, and alternative medicine), has become a major feature of the sacred dimensions of...