Philosophy and Religion Book List ·

African Apocalypse

The Story of Nontetha Nkwenkwe, a Twentieth-Century South African Prophet

The devastating influenza epidemic of 1918 ripped through southern Africa. In its aftermath, revivalist and millenarian movements sprouted. Prophets appeared bearing messages of resistance, redemption, and renewal.…

African Gifts of the Spirit

Pentecostalism & the Rise of a Zimbabwean Transnational Religious Movement

This book considers the rise of born-again Christianity in Africa through a study of one of the most dynamic Pentecostal movements. David Maxwell traces the transformation of the prophet Ezekiel Guti and his prayer band from small beginnings in the townships of the 1950s into the present-day transnational business enterprise, which is now the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God.…

African Islam and Islam in Africa

Encounters between Sufis and Islamists

This interdisciplinary book focuses primarily on Sufism (“African Islam”), Islamism (“Islam in Africa”) and, in particular, on the interaction between these different forms of Islam. Previously, much interest has been concentrated on the critical Islamist views of Western or Western–influenced ideas and patterns of life, while the intra–Muslim relationship between Sufis and Islamists has attracted less attention.…

African Philosophy, Culture, and Traditional Medicine

For over two centuries, Western scholars have discussed African philosophy and culture, often in disparaging, condescending terms, and always from an alien European perspective. Many Africans now share this perspective, having been trained in the western, empirical tradition.…

Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits

War in Northern Uganda, 1985-97

In August 1986, Alice Auma, a young Acholi woman in northern Uganda, proclaiming herself under the orders of a Christian spirit named Lakwena, raised an army called the “Holy Spirit Mobile Forces.” With it she waged a war against perceived evil, not only an external enemy represented by the National Resistance Army of the government, but internal enemies in the form of “impure” soldiers, witches, and sorcerers.…

American Moralist

On Law, Ethics, and Government

The essays collected here, somewhat autobiographical in their effect, range from a discussion of the despair of the Cold War and Vietnam in 1966 to reflections on the euphoria over the ending of the Cold War in Eastern Europe in 1990.…

Ancient Sisterhood

The Lost Traditions of Hagar and Sarah

In this fascinating piece of scholarly detective work, biblical scholar Savina J. Teubal peels away millenia of patriarchal distortion to reveal the lost tradition of biblical matriarchs. In Ancient Sisterhood: The Lost Traditions of Hagar and Sarah (originally published as Hagar the Egyptian), she shows that Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, was actually lady-in-waiting to the priestess Sarah and participated in an ancient Near Eastern custom of surrogate motherhood.…

Anthropology and Historiography of Science

Whether history or anthropology is the most fundamental social science remains still a controversial and undecided issue. For a proper understanding of this instructive controversy, the presuppositions of these two disciplines need to be critically and philosophically reviewed.…

Between the Brown and the Red

Nationalism, Catholicism, and Communism in Twentieth-Century Poland

In this study of the relationship of nationalism, communism, authoritarianism, and religion in twentieth-century Poland, Mikołaj Kunicki shows how the country’s communist rulers tried to adapt communism to local traditions, particularly ethnocentric nationalism and Catholicism.…

Available July 2012 (est.)

Between You and I

Dialogical Phenomenology

Classical phenomenology has suffered from an individualist bias and a neglect of the communicative structure of experience, especially the phenomenological importance of the addressee, the inseparability of I and You, and the nature of the alternation between them.…

Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement

Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power

Burma's Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power describes a transformation in Buddhist practice in contemporary Burma. This revitalization movement has had real consequences for how the oppressive military junta, in power since the early 1960s, governs the country.…

Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World

The fact that many of the leaders in the Third World were educated by Christian missionaries is a decisive factor in world politics today. Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World provides examples of how these missionaries contributed to the construction, destruction, and reconstruction of state structures in Africa and the Caribbean, through educational activity and attempts at healing and trade, as well as by preaching, prayer, and other sacramental endeavors.…

Christianity and Public Culture in Africa

Christianity and Public Culture in Africa takes readers beyond familiar images of religious politicians and populations steeped in spirituality. It shows how critical reason and Christian convictions have combined in surprising ways as African Christians confront issues such as national constitutions, gender relations, and the continuing struggle with HIV/AIDS.…

The Church and Revolution in Nicaragua

This volume addresses the complex issue of the Christian response to the Nicaraguan revolution from a perspective generally sympathetic to the Sandinista’s goals. Luis Serra, himself a Latin American who has worked with the peasantry, argues that the institutional Church has now become a major autonomous source of opposition to the revolution.…

Communism, Religion, and Revolt in Banten in the Early Twentieth Century

Twice in this century popular revolts against colonial rule have occured in the Banten district of West Java. These revolts, conducted largely under an Islamic leadership, also proclaimed themselves Communist.…

The Context of Self

A Phenomenological Inquiry Using Medicine as a Clue

This study takes up the challenge presented to philosophy in a dramatic and urgent way by contemporary medicine: the phenomenon of human life. Initiated by a critical appreciation of the work of Hans Jonas, who poses that issue as well, the inquiry is brought to focus on the phenomenon of embodiment, using relevant medical writing to help elicit its concrete dimensions.…

Creating a Perfect World

Religious and Secular Utopias in Nineteenth-Century Ohio

Powerful currents of religious revival and political and social reform swept nineteenth-century America. Many people expressed their radical religious and social ideals by creating or joining self-contained utopian communities.…

Cuchama and Sacred Mountains

W. Y. Evans–Wentz, great Buddhist scholar and translator of such now familiar works as the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, spent his final years in California.…

Dead Letters to Nietzsche, or the Necromantic Art of Reading Philosophy

Dead Letters to Nietzsche examines how writing shapes subjectivity through the example of Nietzsche’s reception by his readers, including Stanley Rosen, David Farrell Krell, Georges Bataille, Laurence Lampert, Pierre Klossowski, and Sarah Kofman.…

Dictionary of Indonesian Islam

Drawing from an extensive list of writings about Indonesian Islam that have appeared over the past fifteen years, Federspiel defines approximately 1,800 terms, phrases, historical figures, religious books, and place names that relate to Islam and gives their Arabic sources.…