Alternative Salvations: Engaging the Sacred and the Secular

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Description

By considering transformative ideas and experiences which are explicitly articulated or implicitly structured in languages of religion and spirituality, Alternative Salvations probes concepts including 'religious', 'secular', 'spiritual', 'post-Christian', and 'post-secular', providing a series of studies which question the functionality of these broad categories. Part one draws on contemporary salvation narratives showing how current cultural forms, social practices and secular discourses are influenced by, or are interpreted through, the lens of religious and theological accounts of salvation. Examples include twelve step recovery programs, drug culture, and public policy surrounding HIV-AIDs in Kenya. Although outside traditional religious contexts, the contributors show ways in which they are not free from religious symbolism. Part two explores alternative accounts of salvation rooted in religious traditions. Established orthodoxies are confronted by contemporary critical questions, for example about gender, the status of animals, and the political dimensions of salvation. By contributing new perspectives and unique case studies, Alternative Salvations provides a deliberate challenge to easy binaries which often underpin contemporary and traditional discourses of salvation.

Reviews

Each author provides detailed examples which ... remain comprehensive enough for readers outside each authors area of expertise ... Alternative Salvations challenges the static orthodox Christian notions of salvation, both in the past and present, through the exploration of alternative theologies and lived experiences. * Theology *
The chapters, which are relatively short but packed with content, in Alternative Salvations offer specific challenges to the black and white dogmas that so easily dominate religious thinking and belief. * Regents Reviews *
This diverse and expansive volume makes clear that constructions of salvation are far from monolithic, either within Christian contexts or beyond. 'Salvation' is shown to be an unstable yet deeply generative narrative device, communicating interactions with a range of human, animal and divine others. -- Susannah Cornwall, Department of Theology and Religion, University of Exeter, UK
More than any other recent volume, Alternative Salvations challenges and expands the concept of salvation, ultimately proposing alternative salvations as a comparative category that can both disturb hegemonic and essentialist interpretations of salvation within traditions and illumine diverse religious exempla within and beyond conventional religion. Drawing on case studies of Christian and Muslim traditions as well as secular and post-Christian contexts, the volume eruditely troubles conventional binaries between the religious and secular and will be of tremendous interest to scholars of both theology and religious studies as well as general readers. -- Aaron S. Gross, Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Diego, USA

Author Bio

Hannah Bacon is Deputy Head of Theology and Religious Studies and Senior Lecturer in Feminist and Contextual Theology at the University of Chester, UK. Wendy Dossett is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Chester, UK. Steve Knowles is Senior Lecturer in Religion and Popular Culture at the University of Chester, UK.