The 19th century was a period of intense religious conflict across Europe, as people confronted the major changes brought out by modernity. In Zurich, one phase of this religious conflict was played out in a struggle over revisions to the ritual of baptism. In its analysis of the Zurich conflict, Liturgy Wars offers a strategy for understanding the links between theology, ritual and socio-politics. Theodore M. Vial offers a fresh perspective on contemporary ritual studies - and critiques the cognitivist approaches of Lawson and McCauley, as well as Catherine Bell's analysis of power and the...

Religion is a racialized category, even when race is not explicitly mentioned. In Modern Religion, Modern Race Theodore Vial argues that because the categories of religion and race are rooted in the post-Enlightenment project of reimagining what it means to be human, we cannot simply will ourselves to stop using them. Only by acknowledging that religion is already racialized can we begin to understand how the two concepts are intertwined and how they operate in our modern world.
It has become common to argue that the category religion is not universal, or even very old, but is a...