Is it true that Christianity is being marginalised by the secular media, at the expense of Islam? Are the mass media Islamophobic? Is atheism on the rise in media coverage? Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred explores such questions and argues that television and newspapers remain key sources of popular information about religion. They are particularly significant at a time when religious participation in Europe is declining yet the public visibility and influence of religions seems to be increasing. Based on analysis of mainstream media, the book is set in the context of wider debates about the sociology of religion and media representation. The authors draw on research conducted in the 1980s and 2008-10 to examine British media coverage and representation of religion and contemporary secular values, and to consider what has changed in the last 25 years. Exploring the portrayal of Christianity and public life, Islam and religious diversity, atheism and secularism, and popular beliefs and practices, several media events are also examined in detail: the Papal visit to the UK in 2010 and the ban of the controversial Dutch MP, Geert Wilders, in 2009. Religion is shown to be deeply embedded in the language and images of the press and television, and present in all types of coverage from news and documentaries to entertainment, sports reporting and advertising. A final chapter engages with global debates about religion and media.

Has the death of God paved the way for a new kind of religious project, a more responsible way to seek, sound, and love the things we call divine? This book explores this question and argues how by accepting that we know nothing about God, we can rediscover an absent holiness in our lives and reclaim an everyday divinity.

Violence has always played a part in the religious imagination, from symbols and myths to legendary battles, from colossal wars to the theater of terrorism. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence surveys intersections between religion and violence throughout history and around the world. The forty original essays in this volume include overviews of major religious traditions, showing how violence is justified within the literary and theological foundations of the tradition, how it is used symbolically and in ritual practice, and how social acts of violence and warfare have been justified by religious ideas. The essays also examine patterns and themes relating to religious violence, such as sacrifice and martyrdom, which are explored in cross-disciplinary or regional analyses; and offer major analytic approaches, from literary to social scientific studies. The contributors to this volume--innovative thinkers who are forging new directions in theory and analysis related to religion and violence--provide novel insights into this important field of studies. By mapping out the whole field of religion and violence, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence will prove an authoritative source for students and scholars for years to come.

This volume explores the contradiction between the news coverage given to issues of religion, particularly since 2001 in relation to issues such as terrorism, politics, security and gender, and the fact of its apparent decline according to Census data. Based on media research in Australia, and offering comparisons with the UK, the author demonstrates that media discussions overlook the diversity that exists within religions, particularly the country’s main religion, Christianity, and presents religion according to specific interpretations shaped by race, class and gender, which in turn result in very limited understandings of religion itself. Drawing on understandings of the sacred as a non-negotiable value present in religious and secular form, Media Perceptions of Religious Changes in Australia calls for a broader sociological perspective on religion and will appeal to scholars of sociology and media studies with interests in religion and public life.

"About time! Two key experts in the field remind us of the significance and power of religion as bio-political and bio-economic." - Beverley Skeggs, Goldsmiths, University of London "A welcome addition to a continuing body of work by two distinguished theorists of religion." - Grace Davie, University of Exeter "Mellor and Shilling cement their place at the pinnacle of the contemporary sociological theorisation of religion and the sacred. If sociological work is going to have any future it is to be found in the inspiration and excitement of this sophisticated and intelligent book." - Keith Tester, University of Hull "This book is ambitious, refreshing and rewarding. It offers the best available analysis of the complex interlacing of the sacred, religion, secularization and embodied experience." - James A. Beckford, University of Warwick Drawing on classical and contemporary social theory, Sociology of the Sacred presents a bold and original account of how interactions between religious and secular forms of the sacred underpin major conflicts in the world today, and illuminate broader patterns of social and cultural change inherent to global modernity. It demonstrates: How the bodily capacities help religions adapt to social change but also facilitate their internal transformation That the ‘sacred’ includes a diverse range of phenomena, with variable implications for questions of social order and change How proponents of a ‘post-secular’ age have failed to grasp the ways in which sacralization can advance secularization Why the sociology of the sacred needs to be a key part of attempts to make sense of the nature and directionality of social change in global modernity today. This book is key reading for the sociology of religion, the body and modern culture.

Providing a bridge between research in healthcare and spirituality and practitioner perspectives, these essays on chaplaincy in healthcare continue dialogue around constructing, negotiating and researching spiritual care and discuss the critical issues in chaplaincy work, including assisted suicide and care in children's hospices. Each section of the book is introduced by an academic theologian, giving the book a strong theoretical base, before serving healthcare chaplains offer their perspectives and experiences with material drawn from practice in a broad spectrum of healthcare contexts. The integration of theory and practical application in these essays will be of interest to chaplains, healthcare practitioners, and students of theology and healthcare.

Liminality: the state of being ‘betwixt and between’ is one of anthropology’s most influential concepts. This volume reconsiders Victor Turner’s innovative extension of Arnold Van Gennep’s concept of liminality from within the Manchester tradition of Social Anthropology established by Max Gluckman. Turner’s work was grounded in ethnography and engaged with philosophical perspectives in varied socio-historical contexts, extending well-beyond the confines of the anthropology that initially inspired much of his work. Liminality has therefore become a concept with broad interdisciplinary reach. Engaging with topical issues across the globe – from neuroscience to open access publishing and refugee experiences in Europe – this volume launches Turner’s fundamental work into the future.

This book confronts the key questions surrounding comparative secularism in historical perspective. The contributions critically consider the normative ideas and alternative political arrangements that govern religion’s relation to politics and to the public and private spheres. Containing contributions by world-renowned scholars such as Michael Walzer, Asma Afsaruddin and Sudipta Kaviraj, this book recounts the arguments, debates, and disputations regarding secular arguments for accommodating religion. It does so in both critical and appreciative ways and describes some of the outcomes in actually existing institutions, policies, and practical arrangements. With the addition of many non-Western experiences and viewpoints on how secularism is theorized and lived, politically and historically and from Europe and Asia to Africa and the Americas, this volume is of great value political philosophers across the globe.

Orhan Pamuk, Secularism and Blasphemy is the first critical study of all of Pamuk’s novels, including the early untranslated work. In 2005 Orhan Pamuk was charged with "insulting Turkishness" under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code. Eighteen months later he was awarded the Nobel Prize. After decades of criticism for wielding a depoliticized pen, Pamuk was cast as a dissident through his trial, an event that underscored his transformation from national literateur to global author. By contextualizing Pamuk’s fiction into the Turkish tradition and by defining the literary and political intersections of his work, Orhan Pamuk, Secularism and Blasphemy rereads Pamuk's dissidence as a factor of the form of his novels. This is not a traditional study of literature, but a book that turns to literature to ask larger questions about recent transformations in Turkish history, identity, modernity, and collective memory. As a corrective to common misreadings of Pamuk’s work in its international reception, Orhan Pamuk, Secularism and Blasphemy applies various analytical lenses to the politics of the Turkish novel, including gender studies, cultural translation, historiography, and Islam. The book argues that modern literature that confronts representations of the nation-state, or devlet, with those of Ottoman, Islamic, and Sufi contexts, or din, constitute "secular blasphemies" that redefine the politics of the Turkish novel. Concluding with a meditation on conditions of "untranslatability" in Turkish literature, this study provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of Pamuk’s novels to date.