Religious pluralism has become a powerful ideal in contemporary life, defining the landscape of religious diversity while prescribing modes of acting across difference. Taking this ideal as a starting place, the contributors to this volume treat pluralism as historically and ideologically produced and as a doctrine that is embedded within a range of political, civic, and cultural institutions. Their critique interrogates the possibility that religious...

While Turkey has grown as a world power, promoting the image of a progressive and stable nation, several choices in policy have strained its relationship with the East and the West. Providing historical, social, and religious context for this behavior, the essays in Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey examine issues relevant to Turkish debates and global concerns, from the state's position on religion to its involvement with the European Union....

For more than two decades, the study of motherhood has focused on three main categories: motherhood as institution, motherhood as experience, and motherhood as identity or subjectivity. While this work has been groundbreaking, it fails to account for motherhood in the twenty-first century, which has been transformed by increasing agency, along with immense social, scientific, and technological changes. A pioneer of modern motherhood studies, Andrea...

Global struggles over women's roles, rights, and dress have taken center stage in a drama that casts the secular and the religious in tense if not violent opposition. Advocates for equality speak of the issue in terms of rights and modern progress while reactionaries ground their authority in religious and scriptural appeals. Both sides presume women's emancipation is tied to secularization. This volume upsets these certainties by blending diverse...

This collection critically examines "tolerance," "secularism," and respect for religious "diversity" within a social and political system dominated by Sufi brotherhoods. Through a detailed analysis of Senegal's political economy, essays trace the genealogy and dynamic exchange among these concepts while investigating public spaces and political processes and their reciprocal engagement with the state, Sunni reformist and radical groups, and non-religious...

How can people of diverse religious, historical, ethnic, and linguistic allegiances and identities live together without committing violence, inflicting suffering, or oppressing each other? Western civilization has long understood this dilemma as a question of toleration, yet the logic of toleration and the logic of multicultural rights entrenchment are two very different things. In this volume, contributors suggest we also think beyond toleration...

In many places around the globe, relations between ethnic and religious groups that once coexisted more or less amicably are now fraught with aggression and violence. This troubling trend has profound international implications, threatening efforts to protect the Earth's ecosystem and narrow the gap between rich and poor. Underscoring the need for immediate action, George Rupp urges the secular West to reckon with the continuing power of religious...

When Joseph Smith ran for president as a radical protest candidate in 1844, Mormons were a deeply distrusted group in American society, and their efforts to enter public life were met with derision. When Mitt Romney ran for president as a Republican in 2008 and 2012, the public had come to regard Mormons as consummate Americans: patriotic, family-oriented, and conservative. How did this shift occur? In this collection, prominent scholars of Mormonism,...

The Russian revolution, collapse of the Soviet Union, and Russia's ensuing transformation belong to the greatest dramas of our time. Revolutions are usually messy and emotional affairs, challenging much of the conventional wisdom, and Russia's experience is no exception. This book focuses on the transformation from Soviet Russia to Russia as a market economy, and explores why the country has failed to transform into a democracy. It examines the period...

Religions are creeping back into the social, political, and economic spheres previously occupied by secular institutions and ideologies. Disillusioned with industrial progress and cut off from opportunity and wealth, many are looking to Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity to restore a sense of purpose not found in daily life. Since the 1970's, the Catholic Church has sought a "holy alliance" among the world's religions to recentralize religious...