Books in the SpringerBriefs in Religious Studies series

Extending into popular culture, it then makes the case that sport-particularly American football-is a cultural phenomenon in the South with close ties with religion and violence, and that American football has come to play a central role in the civil religion of the South, fueled in part by its violent nature.

Bringing together leading scholars in the fields of Religion and Sport, this book examines the prophetic dimension of sport, to arrive at a better understanding of the nature of sports in the United States.

This book provides a comprehensive account on the doctrines of the Andhakas, an early Buddhist sect. Divided into four chapters, the book offers broad coverage of the Andhakas, making it of interest to researchers focusing on early Buddhism, as well as general readers who want to learn more about Buddhist philosophy and studies on Andhra.

This book explores the deeper meaning of sports. Taking this a step farther, she considers how gene editing, robotics, and other biomedical technological enhancements affect not only sports performances but experiences of sport as sacred.

This open access book presents religious literacy as the main explanatory factor when dealing with certain ethnic groups that attract stereotypes which gloss over other personal factors such as age, class, gender and cultural differences.

This book takes a theoretical enterprise in Christian philosophy of religion and applies it to Buddhism, thus defending Buddhism and presenting it favorably in comparison. The book examines mysticism and ways to understand what goes on in religious experiences, helping us to understand whether it is good grounds for religious belief.

At the present time, when so-called Islamic radicalism, terrorism and Jihadism occupy major media space, with Islam often depicted as the main culprit, the book attempts a tour de force. It proposes that Islam is as much victim as culprit in the history that has led to the current hostility. This is because the common claims of both mainstream and radical Islam that Islam represents the high point of the Abrahamic tradition, and therefore a purification of Judaism and Christianity, have been largely ignored, misunderstood or blatantly rejected by these faiths and therefore by ¿the West¿ in general. This rejection has effectively rendered Islam as the poor cousin, if not the illegitimate sibling, of the tradition. In turn, this has created long-term resentment and hostility within Islam as well as robbed the ¿Judaeo-Christian West¿ of a rich, inter-faith understanding of the wider Abrahamic tradition. The book explores these claims through textual, historical and theological analyses, proposing that many of them stand up better to critical scrutiny than has been commonly acknowledged. It further proposes that seeing Islam in this way has potential to re-awaken its self-understanding as a leader of accord among the Abrahamic faiths, of the kind that characterized the era of Convivencia when, in medieval Spain, Islam constructed and contributed to advanced civilizations characterized by relatively harmonious co-existence between Muslims, Christians and Jews. The book focuses on the role that a more respected and self-confident Islam could play in forging enhanced inter-faith relations in a world that desperately needs them as it struggles to understand and deal with modern and particularly vicious forms of radical Islamism.

This book in religious studies uses a Malaysian apostasy case study as a platform to investigate and discuss the broader radicalisation of apostates on social networking sites.