The Body in Religion

Greenberg skillfully draws out the central place of the body in shaping religious and social identities, as well as how various traditions interpret the body as a physical phenomenon and as a site of social and symbolic meaning. Furthermore, the reader is introduced to the problems of essentialism and dualist frameworks that permeate many traditions, especially in terms of asymmetrical hierarchies between mind and body, subject and object, reason and emotion, spirit and matter, transcendence and immanence, and male and female. * Reading Religion *
Yudith Kornberg Greenberg’s The Body in Religion: Cross-cultural Perspectives is a timely and an excellent resource for classroom articulating what is the body providing examples from various cultural and religious traditions including themes of creation, rituals, performances, gender and sexuality, and death and afterlife. The volume presents the centrality of the body and the importance of understanding the body from different multicultural and multi-disciplinary perspectives. * George Pati, Associate Professor of Theology and International Studies, Valparaiso University, USA *
In this wide-ranging study, Yudit Greenberg has brought together an enormous wealth of material into a single volume. Sacrificing neither clarity nor depth, The Body in Religion: Cross-Cultural Perspectives is a gold mine of information and insight. Examining multiple dimensions of how the body is conceptualized and represented in a variety of religious traditions, Greenberg has crafted a work to which scholars will no doubt refer for years to come. * Jeffery D. Long, Professor of Religion and Asian Studies, Elizabethtown College, USA *
In the last generation, the study of religion has made a material turn that seeks to grasp not just creeds and philosophies but also the embodied ways that religious communities live their teachings. Those looking for an accessible and rich tour of how bodies have been celebrated, disciplined, and modified in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and elsewhere will find an able guide in this book. * Kevin Schilbrack, Professor of Religious Studies and Department Chair of Philosophy and Religion, Appalachian State University, USA *
The Body in Religion is a masterful comparative discussion of established and evolving ways of knowing the body in traditions across the globe. Accessibly bringing together religious texts and practices as well as recent scholarly analysis in a diversity of fields - from biotechnology to religion studies - it demonstrates that the body is central to the construction of identity, and that lucid understanding of global perspectives is vital today. * Karen Pechilis, NEH Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Professor of Comparative Religion, Drew University, USA *
Our bodies strive toward sensory pleasure. They enjoy ecstatic bliss. And they must endure pain and suffering. The Body in Religion opens our eyes to the imaginative ways that the world’s religions have both celebrated and disciplined such powerful bodily impulses. With masterful prose and vivid illustrations, Yudit Greenberg depicts the sheer variety of body-based religious experience. A delight to read. An invitation to rethink the very nature of religion. * Robert C. Fuller, Bradley University, Author of Spirituality in the Flesh (2008) and The Body of Faith (2013). *
Yudit Greenberg's wide-ranging and ambitious coverage of the attitudes of the major world religions to the body assumes no prior knowledge on the part of the reader, and effects a remarkable synthesis of the complex issues that shelter under this theme. Students and general readers will benefit equally from this approachable text: it throws standard secularized attitudes to bodiliness into new contention as it shows how much difference is made to such issues by religious commitment and ritual performance. * Sarah Coakley, Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge and editor of Religion and the Body (2000) *
The Body in Religion is remarkably comprehensive and clear; it thus provides the perfect entry into a complex and multifaceted subject, illuminating the interplay between religious, political, and cultural perspectives on bodily issues. Everyone will learn something from this work. The cross-cultural approach along with the questions and activities at the end of each chapter make it ideal for classroom use. * Jennifer L. Koosed, Professor of Religious Studies, Albright College, Reading, Pennsylvania *