Enjoying Religion

It’s delightful to find a scholarly book that puts the fun back into religion. With its coverage of different religious traditions, and many perspectives, this fascinating collection enables the reader to draw interesting broader conclusions about how and why some forms of religion find it easier to embrace joy and sensuality than others. -- Linda Woodhead, Lancaster University
Now that emotions in general are increasingly acknowledged as important for religious studies, this book pinpoints enjoyment in particular as a worthwhile flow of devotees’ pleasure and as a theoretical topic worthy of scholarly analysis. A mixture of academic disciplines combines here to cover traditional and niche-novelty forms of meaning-making events to stimulate future studies of human pleasure in ritual play. -- Douglas J. Davies, Durham University
Religion is sometimes associated with the ludic, the liminal, and the playful, but this marvelous volume explores the much-less discussed theme of enjoyment. In some very vivid chapters, the contributors take us across the world and across religions. They greatly extend our analytical vocabulary by demonstrating the numerous ways in which we need to take the enjoyment of religion much more seriously. -- Simon Coleman, University of Toronto