This is the first work to address the legacy of Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916–2000), whose intellectual and institutional contributions helped shape the field of religious studies in the latter half of the twentieth century. As a young scholar, Smith taught Indian and Islamic history in Lahore for several years and witnessed the partition of India. Upon his return to North America, he obtained his PhD at Princeton University before embarking upon a long and distinguished career. He founded the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University and served as director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. Smith emphasized the place of the scholarly study of Islam in the Western academy long before Islam occupied its current position at the center of global politics, challenged the notion of monolithic world religions, and argued for the importance of dialogical processes and a personalist approach to the study of religion. Contributors to this volume, many of whom were Smith's students, provide a wide-ranging exploration of his influence and legacy.

First work to address the legacy of Wilfred Cantwell Smith and his influence on the development of religious studies and Islamic studies in the twentieth century. This is the first work to address the legacy of Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916–2000), whose intellectual and institutional contributions helped shape the field of religious studies in the latter half of the twentieth century. As a young scholar, Smith taught Indian and Islamic history in Lahore for several years and witnessed the partition of India. Upon his return to North America, he obtained his PhD at Princeton University before embarking upon a long and distinguished career. He founded the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University and served as director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. Smith emphasized the place of the scholarly study of Islam in the Western academy long before Islam occupied its current position at the center of global politics, challenged the notion of monolithic world religions, and argued for the importance of dialogical processes and a personalist approach to the study of religion. Contributors to this volume, many of whom were Smith’s students, provide a wide-ranging exploration of his influence and legacy

A new anthology of key writings by one of the most celebrated scholars of comparative religion, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, which makes all his key ideas available at a glance, and features a commentary, cross-referencing, and thematic organization.

Presents the first critical study by a team of scholars of the philosophy of renowned Dutch philosopher and legal theorist, Herman Dooyeweerd. The six contributors interpret the basis of Dooyeweerd's thought which was to view the character of the world from the perspective of Christian religion. This volume examines Dooyeweerd's contributions to the fields of philosophy, religious studies and theology, history, aesthetics, and political and social theory. Co-published with the Institute for Christian Studies.

A renowned Islamicist and historian of religion, Wilfred Cantwell Smith is one of the most important contemporary voices in the study of religion. This book critically examines the idea of faith in Smith's writings and explores the relevance of his conception of faith for the future study of religion. Smith's distinctive notion of faith calls forth a new religious anthropology of homo fidei or the «human as faith-ing.» The idea of faith is, in short, a generative concept that implies a new and potentially revolutionary methodological approach to the study of religion. Special attention is paid to the implications of Smith's ideas for the phenomenology of religion and the postmodern age.

Does religion reinforce the balkanization of cultural attitudes or does it help people transcend their culture? A noted scholar of world Christianity, Lamin Sanneh offers Westerners a perspective on such questions, a way to test the religio-cultural water and air in which they live. He shows how modernity has made of moderns "cultural believers" and "religious agnostics, " and how the stubborn refusal to confront this bias in both secular and religious culture depletes both Christianity and Western culture.