Religion and Innovation: Antagonists or Partners?

by Donald A. Yerxa (Editor)

Overview

It is often assumed that religion is the backward-looking servant of tradition and the status quo, utterly opposed to the new. This refrain in so much of recent polemical writing has permeated the public mind and can even be found in academic publications. But recent scholarship increasingly shows that this view is a gross simplification - that, in fact, religious beliefs and practices have contributed to significant changes in human affairs: political and legal, social and artistic, scientific and commercial. This is certainly not to say that religion is always innovative. But the relationship between religion and innovation is much more complex and instructive than is generally assumed.

Religion and Innovation includes contributions from leading historians, archaeologists, and social scientists, who offer findings about the relationship between religion and innovation. The essays collected in this volume range from discussions of the transformative power of religion in early societies; to re-examinations of our notions of naturalism, secularization, and progress; to explorations of cutting-edge contemporary issues.

Combining scholarly rigor with clear, accessible writing, Religion and Innovation: Antagonists or Partners? is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of religion and the ongoing debates about its role in the modern world and into the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472591005
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	12/17/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Donald A. Yerxa is Professor of History Emeritus at Eastern Nazarene College, USA. He was Senior Editor of Historically Speaking and is Editor of Fides et Historia.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part 1: Religion and Innovation in Pre-Columbian Societies
1. Innovation, Religion and Authority at the Formative Period Andean Cult Center of Chavin de Huantar, John W. Rick (Stanford University, USA)
2. Religion and Political Innovation in Ancient Mesoamerica, Arthur Joyce (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA) and Sarah Barber (University of Central Florida, USA)
3. Religion and Innovation at the Emerald Acropolis: Something New under the Moon, Timothy Pauketat (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA) and Susan Alt (Indiana University, USA)
Part 2: Religion and Innovation: Naturalism, Scientific Progress, Enlightenment, and Secularization
4. The First Enlightenment: The Patristic Roots of Religious Freedom, Timothy Samuel Shah (Georgetown University, USA)
5. Religion, Innivation, and Secular Modernity, Peter Harrison (University of Queensland, Australia)
6. Religion, Scientific Naturalism, and Historical Progress, Peter Harrison (University of Queensland, Australia)
7. Religion, Enlightenment, and the Paradox of Innovation, William J. Bulman (Lehigh University, USA) and Robert G. Ingram (Ohio University, USA)
8. Remembering the Reformation, 1817 and 1883: Commemorating the Past as Agent and Mirror of Social Change, Thomas Albert Howard (Gordon College, USA)
9. Secularization and Religious Innovation: A Transatlantic Comparison, David Hempton (Harvard Divinity School, USA) and Hugh McLeod (University of Birmingham, UK)
10. Christian Transnationalists, Nationhood, and the Construction of Civil Society, Dana L. Robert (Boston University, USA)
Part 3: Religion, Progress and Innovation in the Contemporary World
11. Sin, Guilt and the Future of Progress, Wilfred M. McClay (University of Oklahoma, USA)
12. Religious Innovation and Economic Empowerment in India: An Empirical Exploration, Rebecca Samuel Shah (Georgetown University, USA)
13. Century of Progress? Chicago after Daniel Burnham, Philip H. Bess (University of Notre Dame, USA)
14. Technologies of Imagination: Secularism, Transhumanism, and the Idiom of Progress, J. Benjamin Hurlbut (Arizona State University, USA)
Afterword: Innovation and Religion, Today and Tomorrow, Adam Keiper (The New Atlantis)
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

The individual case studies in this edited volume add to the already rich discussion of instances where religious ideas and practices have fostered innovation in culture at large.” —Reading Religion

From the Publisher