Becoming Religious

"Religion is commonly imagined as a timeless component of human inheritance, but in the Western Himalayas the community of Himachal Pradesh discovered their religion only after India became an independent secular state. Based on extensive ethnographic and archival work, Becoming Religious in a Secular Age narrates their discovery and the ways it transformed their relations to their pasts, to themselves, and to others. And as Mark Elmore demonstrates, Himachali religion offers a unique opportunity to reimagine relations between religion and secularity more generally. Tracing the emergence of religion as a widely accepted category, Elmore shows that modern secularity is not so much the eradication of religion as the very condition for its emergence. To become modern ethical subjects is to become religious, and this book creatively augments our understanding of both religion and modernity"--Provided by publisher.

Religion is often viewed as a universally ancient element of the human inheritance, but in the Western Himalayas the community of Himachal Pradesh discovered its religion only after India became an independent secular state. Based on extensive ethnographic and archival work, Becoming Religious in a Secular Age tells the story of this discovery and how it transformed a community’s relations to its past and to its members, as well as to those outside the community. And, as Mark Elmore demonstrates, Himachali religion offers a unique opportunity to reimagine relations between religion and secularity. Elmore shows that modern secularity is not so much the eradication of religion as the very condition for its development. Showing us that to become a modern, ethical subject is to become religious, this book creatively augments our understanding of both religion and modernity.

'Religion's Sudden Decline' provides evidence of a major decline in religion in most of the world, based on surveys of over 100 countries containing 90 percent of the world's population, carried out from 1981 to 2020 - the largest base of empirical evidence ever assembled to analyse mass acceptance or rejection of religion.--

Shaped by a unique organizational framework, the text's readings on past, present, and emerging forms of religious behavior give meanings to the editors' definition of religion as "a means toward ultimate transmation."

Since the days of the early church, Christians have struggled to find a way to be "good"--to please God by their own efforts. They end up carrying a burden God never intended them to bear. And what's more, their brand of Christianity ends up looking like any other religion of the world--bound by joyless rules and rituals. Fritz Ridenour's study of the book of Romans provides an antidote to the pharisaical spirit and shows that Christianity is not a religion but a relationship. It is not people reaching up, but God reaching down. All Christians can enjoy their birthright when they realize who they are in Christ. The result is a life full of hope, joy, power, and potential.

We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.

Becoming Religious is a contemporary investigation of a classical question in the scientific study of religion -- why religion? Why do people devote themselves to unseen, mysterious powers and goals? An answer is proposed from the religious biographies of contemporary South Georgians from all walks of life. Relevant theories from across the subdisciplines of religious studies are marshaled to explain how personal religious commitment emerges and grows.

"It's widely acknowledged that American parents from different class backgrounds take different approaches to raising their children. Upper and middle-class parents invest considerable time facilitating their children's activities, while working class and poor families take a more hands-off approach. These different strategies influence how children approach school. But missing from the discussion is the fact that millions of parents on both sides of the class divide are raising their children to listen to God. What impact does a religious upbringing have on their academic trajectories? Drawing on 10 years of survey data with over 3,000 teenagers and over 200 interviews, God, Grades, and Graduation (GGG) offers a revealing and at times surprising account of how teenagers' religious upbringing influences their educational pathways from high school to college. GGG introduces readers to a childrearing logic that cuts across social class groups and accounts for Americans' deep relationship with God: religious restraint. This book takes us inside the lives of these teenagers to discover why they achieve higher grades than their peers, why they are more likely to graduate from college, and why boys from lower middle-class families particularly benefit from religious restraint. But readers also learn how for middle-upper class kids--and for girls especially--religious restraint recalibrates their academic ambitions after graduation, leading them to question the value of attending a selective college despite their stellar grades in high school. By illuminating the far-reaching effects of the childrearing logic of religious restraint, GGG offers a compelling new narrative about the role of religion in academic outcomes and educational inequality"--