Laudianism was both a way of being Christian and a political ideology. This definitive account establishes the theological roots and political resonances of Laudianism, and shows how it was based on the recuperation of the theological principles and ecclesiastical and pietistic ambitions that underpinned it. Peter Lake shows how the Laudians' famous obsession with the beauty of holiness contained a plan for the reinvigoration of both the church and the state. It represented a self-conscious reaction against the long-term evils of puritanism and of the immediate political crisis of the 1620s, caused in turn by the evils of (an often puritan) popularity. The result was a coherent account of the theological, liturgical and political essence of the Church of England. On Laudianism explores how this intensely controversial movement, and the strong reactions it provoked, helped cause the English Civil War, but over the long term provided one of the visions of the national church, one that has been in contention to define 'Anglicanism' ever since.

A book on the life and writings of Giles Firmin (1613/14–1697), situating him in the intellectual milieu of late seventeenth century puritanism.

Politics of Piety is a groundbreaking analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. Saba Mahmood's compelling exposition of these practices challenges this assumption by showing how the ethical and the political are indelibly linked within the context of such movements. Not only is this book a sensitive ethnography of a critical but largely ignored dimension of the Islamic revival, it is also an unflinching critique of the secular-liberal assumptions by which some people hold such movements to account. The book addresses three central questions: How do movements of moral reform help us rethink the normative liberal account of politics? How does the adherence of women to the patriarchal norms at the core of such movements parochialize key assumptions within feminist theory about freedom, agency, authority, and the human subject? How does a consideration of debates about embodied religious rituals among Islamists and their secular critics help us understand the conceptual relationship between bodily form and political imaginaries? Politics of Piety is essential reading for anyone interested in issues at the nexus of ethics and politics, embodiment and gender, and liberalism and postcolonialism. In a substantial new preface, Mahmood addresses the controversy sparked by the original publication of her book and the scholarly discussions that have ensued.

Taking up the challenge of Saba Mahmood to feminist studies in religion, that there is a liberalist understanding of agency and a tendency to mix the feminist political project with the analytical, the authors of this anthology discuss the relations between pieties and politics, pieties and methodologies, virtuous masculinities, and symbolic gender representations. Several articles discuss highly controversial questions: Muslim piety, religion in the European Union between the Vatican and the Muslim populations, the religiously motivated abstinence policies of the US. Furthermore, there is an interesting section about religious masculinities in a historical and contemporary perspective.

In this original and controversial 2005 book, Mahmood argues that Muslim women can show independence even while assuming traditional Islamic roles.

The Puritan Ideology of Mobility: Corporatism, the Politics of Place, and the Founding of New England Towns before 1650 examines the ideology that English Puritans developed to justify migration: their migration from England to New England, migrations from one town to another within New England, and, often, their repatriation to the mother country. Puritan leaders believed firmly that nations, colonies, and towns were all “bodies politic,” that is, living and organic social bodies. However, if a social body became distempered because of scarce resources or political or religious discord, it became necessary to create a new social body from the old in order to restore balance and harmony. The new social body was articulated through the social ritual of land distribution according to Aristotelian “distributive justice.” The book will trace this process at work in the founding of Ipswich and its satellite town in Massachusetts.