Unearthly powers : religious and political change in world history / Alan Strathern (University of Oxford)
Why was religion so important for rulers in the pre-modern world? And how did the world come to be dominated by just a handful of religious traditions, especially Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism? Drawing on sociology and anthropology, as well as a huge range of historical literature from all regio...
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Place / Publishing House: | Cambridge, New York, NY, Port Melbourne, New Delhi, Singapore : Cambridge University Press, 2019 |
Year of Publication: | 2019 |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Classification: | 15.06 - Politische Geschichte 11.01 - Systematische Religionswissenschaft: Allgemeines |
Online Access: | |
Physical Description: | Online-Resource |
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Summary: | Why was religion so important for rulers in the pre-modern world? And how did the world come to be dominated by just a handful of religious traditions, especially Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism? Drawing on sociology and anthropology, as well as a huge range of historical literature from all regions and periods of world history, Alan Strathern sets out a new way of thinking about transformations in the fundamental nature of religion and its interaction with political authority. His analysis distinguishes between two quite different forms of religiosity - immanentism, which focused on worldly assistance, and transcendentalism, which centred on salvation from the human condition - and shows how their interaction shaped the course of history. Taking examples drawn from Ancient Rome to the Incas or nineteenth-century Tahiti, a host of phenomena, including sacred kingship, millenarianism, state-church struggles, reformations, iconoclasm, and, above all, conversion are revealed in a new light |
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ISBN: | 9781108753371 |
DOI: | 10.1017/9781108753371 |
Hierarchical level: | Monograph |
Statement of Responsibility: | Alan Strathern (University of Oxford) |