Books in the Religion and Spirituality in the Modern World series

Building on The New Age Movement (1996) and The Spiritual Revolution (2005), Spiritualities of Life serves to complete a trilogy of books that Paul Heelas has published with Blackwell. The primary aim of this volume is to explore the three main ways in which spirituality have been experienced, understood and valued in western settings.

Offers a postmodern interpretation of the great mystics and their writing. This title argues that extensive modern literature about mysticism has rested on a mistake - the belief that their can be meaningful experience prior to language.

Addresses the most pressing question in the study of religion today: are new forms of spirituality overtaking traditional forms of religion? This book provides a theoretical perspective which explains both secularization and sacralization. It offers some predictions about the future of religion and spirituality in the west.

* Offers a guide to the rise and spread of Pentecostalism and charismatic Christianity across five continents. * Explains why and how the Pentecostal movement crosses cultural boundaries. * Raises substantive issues for the future of Christianity * Written by a leading sociologist of religion. .

Argues that contemporary ideas and practices concerning nature and technology remain closely bound up with religious ways of thinking and acting. This work reinterprets a range of 'secular' phenomena in terms of their conditioning by a complex series of transformations of the sacred in Western history.

* Presents both modern and postmodern religious debates in one volume. * Includes newly commissioned contributions by recognised experts in this area. * Discusses religion, modernity and postmodernity from an international perspective. .

An examination of Hinduism in the context of modernity. After introducing modern India and reviewing definitions of Hinduism and of modernity, the book presents key aspects of Hinduism, ancient and modern. The last part of the book deals with problems of contemporary Hinduism.

What has happened to religion in modern times? Why has it happened? What might happen next? This volume brings together a comprehensive selection of readings which illustrate and analyse religion's encounters with the forces of modernization - including nationalism, capitalism, colonialism, democracy, gender and identity politics.

In this defence of the secularization paradigm, Bruce elaborates just what Weber, Durkheim, Berger and Wilson thought was happening to religion in the West, and responds to critics of this concept. Topics covered include new age spirituality, and the influence of Eastern religions.

Includes over 300 readings looking at religion's encounter with the forces of modernization. Takes a global approach. Explores the opposing dynamics which characterise religion in our times.

Peter Berger draws on the Christian tradition and a range of other thinkers to explore the nature of belief in the modern world. He discusses the work of numerous figures from Psuedo-Dionysius to Freud, and Luther to Simone Weil.