Suchergebnisse

This article is a critical engagement with political scientist William Connolly's book Christianity and Capitalism: American Style. Connolly's analysis of the ways in which evangelical Christianity and capitalist agendas interrelate in the US context is outlined and critiqued in terms of its tendency to homogenise the US evangelical movement and overstate its incorporation of right wing political interests. Its theoretical framework is also critiqued, but developed in light of its potential to generate insights into the global context of evangelical influence, including as a vehicle for capitalist values. This is explored in terms of US influence upon British evangelicalism and what this reveals about the circulation of evangelical-capitalist ideas within a transatlantic context. A case study is offered of the Willow Creek sponsored Global Leadership Summit by way of illustration.

Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Notes on the Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Religion and Knowledge: The Sociological Agenda -- PART I INSTITUTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE -- 2 Reified Knowledge about 'Religion' in Prisons -- 3 Faith and the Student Experience -- 4 Young People in Mixed Faith Families: A Case of Knowledge and Experience of Two Traditions? -- 5 The Amish in North America: Knowledge, Tradition and Modernity -- PART II THE RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY -- 6 New Atheism as Identity Politics -- 7 Rejection or Accommodation? Trends in Evangelical Christian Responses to Muslims -- 8 Knowledge, Tradition and Authority in British Islamic Theology -- 9 Choosing My Religion: Young People's Personal Christian Knowledge -- 10 Safe and Risky Readings: Women's Spiritual Reading Practices -- 11 Intelligent Design as a Science Enabler: Prolegomena to a Creationist Left -- 12 The Influence of Fundamentalist Beliefs on Evolution Knowledge Retention -- 13 The Sea of Faith: Exemplifying Transformed Retention -- PART III KNOWLEDGE, RELIGION AND ACADEMIC ENDEAVOUR -- 14 On the Materialization of Religious Knowledge and Belief -- 15 Bracketing out the Truth? Managing Bias in the Study of New Religious Movements

"Religions have always been associated with particular forms of knowledge, often knowledge accorded special significance and sometimes knowledge at odds with prevailing understandings of truth and authority in wider society. New religious movements emerge on the basis of reformulated, often controversial, understandings of how the world works and where ultimate meaning can be found. Governments have risen and fallen on the basis of such differences and global conflict has raged around competing claims about the origins and content of religious truth. Such concerns give rise to recurrent questions, faced by academics, governments and the general public. How do we treat statements made by religious groups and on what basis are they made? What authorities lie behind religious claims to truth? How can competing claims about knowledge be resolved? Are there instances when it is appropriate to police religious knowledge claims or restrict their public expression? This book addresses the relationship between religion and knowledge from a sociological perspective, taking both religion and knowledge as phenomena located within ever changing social contexts. It builds on historical foundations, but offers a distinctive focus on the changing status of religious phenomena at the turn of the twenty-first century. Including critical engagement with live debates about intelligent design and the 'new atheism', this collection of essays brings recent research on religious movements into conversation with debates about socialisation, reflexivity and the changing capacity of social institutions to shape human identities. Contributors examine religion as an institutional context for the production of knowledge, as a form of knowledge to be transmitted or conveyed and as a social field in which controversies about knowledge emerge"--Provided by publisher.

Economic uncertainties have unsettled the status of higher education as an assured means to social mobility, raising questions of how students orient themselves to life after graduation. In this context, how does religion (a neglected aspect of student identity) shape students' attitudes and plans? This article examines the future aspirations of Christian students, theorising Christian identity as an inter-subjective resource through which 'alternative' futures are imagined, a resource variously framed by classed assumptions about propriety. It analyses data from 75 interviews with undergraduates at five English universities, and explores emerging aspirational paradigms structured around hetero-normative domesticity, the formation of Christian counter-narratives to contemporary capitalism and positive submission to God.