Böcker av David Chidester

David Chidester, one of the world's foremost scholars of religion, traces Christianity's growth and development from the time of Jesus to the dawn of the third millennium, revealing its rich diversity through the deeds and beliefs of heretics and saints, witches and healers, preachers and inquisitors. Chidester explores the emergence of the major streams of Christian thought and practice, distilling the cultural history of the Church and its impact on the world into this superbly readable book. Alongside this broad panorama is a richly human story that the author brilliantly encapsulates in incisive character sketches and historical vignettes.Christianity, in all its many facets, has been and continues to be one of the most influential forces in history. Chidester shows that this religion, with its roots deep in the ancient world, has always been in a constant state of evolution, affecting and affected by the religions and societies around it. At times Christianity has coexisted peacefully with other forms of belief, exchanging ideas and practices with them. At other times profound, even violent, conflict has arisen. In this book David Chidester intelligently and objectively portrays Christians in different times and places, as a minority and as the majority group, a religion both absorbing and resisting the world around it. Christianity reveals the religion as it was and is lived in the life of everyday people rather than focusing on the dry dogmas and beliefs that fill most histories. Chidester's accomplishment is to capture the complexity and grand sweep of this story in one remarkable volume that is destined to take its place as a classic of religious history.

Provides a counterhistory of the academic study of religion, an alternative to standard accounts that have failed to link the field of comparative religion with either the power relations or the historical contingencies of the imperial project.

Wild Religion is a wild ride through recent South African history from the advent of democracy in 1994 to the euphoria of the football World Cup in 2010. In the context of South Africa's political journey and religious diversity, David Chidester explores African indigenous religious heritage with a difference. As the spiritual dimension of an African Renaissance, indigenous religion has been recovered in South Africa as a national resource. Wild Religion analyzes indigenous rituals of purification on Robben Island, rituals of healing and reconciliation at the new national shrine, Freedom Park, and rituals of animal sacrifice at the World Cup. Not always in the national interest, indigenous religion also appears in the wild religious creativity of prison gangs, the global spirituality of neo-shamans, the ceremonial display of Zulu virgins, the ancient Egyptian theosophy in South Africa's Parliament, and the new traditionalism of South Africa's President Jacob Zuma. Arguing that the sacred is produced through the religious work of intensive interpretation, formal ritualization, and intense contestation, Chidester develops innovative insights for understanding the meaning and power of religion in a changing society. For anyone interested in religion, Wild Religion uncovers surprising dynamics of sacred space, violence, fundamentalism, heritage, media, sex, sovereignty, and the political economy of the sacred.

A monumental new history of Christianity from its beginnings as a persecuted cult, up to its present day international diversity. 'A model of condensation without simplification' - J.M Coetzee 'Clear and balanced. A triumph of compression... invaluable as a work of reference for students' - Karen Armstrong, Times 'A new and ambitious concept in presenting Christian history...a triumph. Never before, I suspect, has this cavalcade of thinkers been presented in a manner which so successfully combines depth, breadth, and succinctness' - Gerard Noel, Catholic Herald

Examines the emergence of the concepts of "religion"and "religions" on colonial frontiers. The book offers an analysis of the ways in which European travellers, missionaries, settlers, and government agents, as well as indigenous Africans, engaged in the comparison of alternative religious ways of life as one dimension of intercultural contact.

This guide offers detailed reviews of over 600 works that have established the importance of Christianity in South African history, society, and religious experience. It should be of interest to scholars and students of religious studies, cultural anthropology, African Studies and history.

This is a guide to three global religions that have established strong local communities in South Africa. The guide begins with a general introduction to the immigrant origins, minority status and global connections of each tradition.

Explores the religious dimensions of American popular culture in places such as: baseball, the Human Genome Project, Coca-Cola, rock 'n' roll, the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the charisma of Jim Jones, Tupperware, and the free market.

Examines the effects of a range of global forces on local forms of identity, coherence, and cohesion. With contributions from intellectuals from business, organised labour, community organisations, government structures and academics, this book is useful for those interested in the wide-ranging effects of globalisation on South Africa.

Features a prologue that considers the meaning of the tragedy for a post-Waco, post-9/11 world. This book recalls the American religious commitment to redemptive sacrifice, which for Jim Jones meant saving his followers from the evils of capitalist society.