Ancient and Modern Religion and Politics: Negotiating Transitive Spaces and Hybrid Identities

In Ancient and Modern Religion and Politics, John Randolph LeBlanc and Carolyn M. Jones Medine present a breathtaking transdisciplinary account of religion and politics by exploring and articulating the dynamics and transitive nature of conceptual spaces, perspectives, shifting discourses, and practices that are important to identity formation in a changing world. This rich discourse analysis is a feast on historic and contemporary ideas on religion and politics that invites the reader into a dialogue with classic philosophical, literary texts, philosophers, scholars of religion, and literary artists. In doing so it also provides perspectives on concrete themes like home/lessness, liberal nationalism, suffering, conflict, peace, culture and community. This book is highly recommended for courses on religion and politics as well as transdisciplinary studies. - Elias Kifon Bongmba, author of The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa, Rice University

This volume speaks to the interface of religion and political thought in past and contemporary cultures and society. It embarks on an interdisciplinary approach which scholars, students and and the general readers will find useful in engaging our post enlightenment world today where new meanings and interpretation are very much needed to make sense of ambiguities which cultural contacts bring. Whether one engages the questions of immigration and identity, religious revivalism and social revolution popularized by social media, the book through its focus on narratives of otherness and dislocation takes us through many ways of seeking meaning. By focusing on the common quest for meaning which underlies most of the inquiries in the humanities and social sciences, the authors provide a brilliantly written and accessible and must have text for every library. - Jacob K. Olupona, professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard Divinity School, author of The City of 201 Gods: Ile Ife in Time Space and the Imagination (2011)