A Sociology of Religious Emotion

Linda Woodhead, MBE author Ole Riis author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:24th Jun '10

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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A Sociology of Religious Emotion cover

This timely book aims to change the way we think about religion by putting emotion back onto the agenda. It challenges a tendency to over-emphasise rational aspects of religion, and rehabilitates its embodied, visceral and affective dimensions. Against the view that religious emotion is a purely private matter, it offers a new framework which shows how religious emotions arise in the varied interactions between human agents and religious communities, human agents and objects of devotion, and communities and sacred symbols. It presents parallels and contrasts between religious emotions in European and American history, in other cultures, and in contemporary western societies. By taking emotions seriously, A Sociology of Religious Emotion sheds new light on the power of religion to shape fundamental human orientations and motivations: hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, loves and hatreds.

A Sociology of Religious Emotion is exactly the kind of specialist academic book that is usually overlooked by the celebrity combatants in the secular commentariat. If the book's arguments and its proposals for research are heeded, it might ground the wrangles about the proper place of religion. * Bernice Martin, Times Literary Supplement *
I came away from this book better informed, and richer in understanding. My respect for these authors is considerable, because there is a real art to making academic research accessible; and this book did a good job of interesting me, a lay person, in a discipline I didn't know ... I felt wiser when I had finished A Sociology of Religious Emotion. * Gwen Adshead, Church Times *
Riis and Woodhead's efforts here are essential for a field of study which has all too often trivialised the role of emotions in religious belief in an effort to understand society without the reflexivity and depth due unto persons. ... Riis and Woodhead stake out an important and highly recommended path for what will hopefully be a renewed interest in 'A Sociology of Religious Emotion'. * Grant Brooke, Scottish Journal of Theology *

ISBN: 9780199567607

Dimensions: 222mm x 148mm x 21mm

Weight: 522g

286 pages