Does modernity make religion politically irrelevant? Conventional scholarly and popular wisdom says that it does. The prevailing view assumes that the onset of western modernity--characterized by the rise of nationalism, the dominance of capitalism, and the emergence of powerful state institutions--favors secularism and relegates religion to the purely private realm. This collection of essays on nationalism and religion in Europe and Asia challenges that view. Contributors show that religion and politics are mixed together in complex and vitally important ways not just in the East, but in...

A detailed historical anthropology of Ayodhya, which argues that religious values can reflect political and economic processes.

Peter van der Veer and the contributors to this volume explore the relationship between South Asian nationalism, migration, ethnicity, and the construction of religious identity. Although nationality and diaspora seem to represent opposite ideas and values, the authors argue that nationalism is strengthened, even produced, by migration.

Prayer and politics: unlikely, but intimate bedfellows. This publication explores everything from the Pentecostal religious battle where prayer is both sword and shield against the Satanic Other to the exchange between Islam and Christianity, demonstrating the relationship between prayer and politics in a wide spectrum of religious traditions, from all across the globe. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Religious and Political Practice.