Divided into two volumes, The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature offers a landmark collection of writings from twenty Christian thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and analyses of their work by leading contemporary religious scholars.With selections from the works of Jacques Maritain, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Dorothy Day, Pope John Paul II, Susan B. Anthony, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King Jr., Nikolai Berdyaev, Vladimir Lossky, and others, Volume 2 illustrates the different venues, vectors, and sometimes-conflicting visions of what a Christian understanding of law, politics, and society entails. The collection includes works by popes, pastors, nuns, activists, and theologians writing from within the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christian traditions. Addressing racism, totalitarianism, sexism, and other issues, many of the figures in this volume were the victims of church censure, exile, imprisonment, assassination, and death in Nazi concentration camps. These writings amplify the long and diverse tradition of modern Christian social thought and its continuing relevance to contemporary pluralistic societies. The volume speaks to questions regarding the nature and purpose of law and authority, the limits of rule and obedience, the care and nurture of the needy and innocent, the rights and wrongs of war and violence, and the separation of church and state. The historical focus and ecumenical breadth of this collection fills an important scholarly gap and revives the role of Christian social thought in legal and political theory.The first volume of The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law Politics, and Human Nature includes essays by leading contemporary religious scholars, exploring the ideas, influences, and intellectual and cultural contexts of the figures from this volume.

This study examines the impact of Buddhism on the political process of Asian countries in recent times. The intersection between Buddhism and politics; religious authority and political power is explored through the engagement of Buddhist monks and lay activists in the process of nation-building, development, and implementation of democracy.

In this interdisciplinary inquiry, John Clifford Holt seeks to uncover how Buddhism was understood and expressed during the waning years of indigenous political power in Asia's oldest continuing Buddhist culture. Holt focusses on King Kirti Sri Rajasinha and how, despite powerful and persistent Dutch colonial threats and a deeply suspicious Kandyan Buddhist Sinhalese aristocracy, he successfully revived Sinhalese Theravada Buddhism. As Holt demonstrates, Kirti Sri succeeded in formulating his vision of an orthodox Buddhism in a number of ways: through the patronage of monastic sanha and re-establishing traditional lines of ordination, translating the Pali suttas into Sinhala, sponsoring public Buddhist religious rites, and refurbishing almost all Buddhist temples in the Kandyan culture region. The ultimate aim of Holt's study is to describe and interpret Kirti Sri's articulation of a normative Buddhist world, the essentials of which remain normative for many Buddhists in the Kandyan region of Sri Lanka today. Scholars and students will find The Religious World of Kirti Sri is an indispensable resource for the understanding of orthodox Buddhism at this important historical juncture, as well as the present day.

Nation, Constitutionalism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka offers a new perspective on contemporary debates about Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka. In this book de Silva Wijeyeratne argues forcefully that ‘Sinhalese Buddhism’ in the period prior to its engagement with the British colonial State signified a relatively unbounded (although at times boundary forming) set of practices that facilitated both the inclusion and exclusion of non-‘Buddhist’ concepts and people within a particular cosmological frame. Juxtaposing the premodern against the backdrop of colonial modernity, de Silva Wijeyeratne tells us that in contrast modern 'Sinhalese Buddhism/nationalism' is a much more reified and bounded concept, one imagined through a 19th century epistemology whose purpose was not so much inclusion, but a much more radical exclusion of non-‘Buddhist’ ideas and people. In this insightful analysis modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, then, emerges through the conjunction of discourse, power and knowledge at a distinct moment in the trajectory of the colonial State. An intrinsic feature of this modernist moment is that premodern categories (such as the cosmic order) were subject to a bureaucratic re-valuation that generated profound consequences for State-society relations and the wider constitutional/legal imaginary. This book goes onto explore how key constitutional and nation-building moments were framed within the cultural milieu of modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism – a nationalism that reveals the power of a re-valued Buddhist cosmic order to still inform the present. Given the intensification of the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist project following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, this book is of interest to scholars of nationalism, South Asian studies, the anthropology of ritual, and comparative legal history.

Containing over 200 articles from prominent scholars, The Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion examines ways in which politics and religion have combined to affect social attitudes, spark collective action and influence policy over the last two hundred years. With a focus that covers broad themes like millenarian movements and pluralism, and a scope that takes in religious and political systems throughout the world, the Encyclopedia is essential for its contemporary as well as historical coverage. Special Features: * Encompasses religions, individuals, geographical regions, institutions and events * Describes the history of relations between religion and politics * Longer articles contain brief bibliographies * Attractively designed and produced The Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion will be invaluable for any library, public and academic, which serves those interested in politics, sociology, religious studies, international affairs and history. Contents include: ^ Abortion * Algeria * Anabaptists * China * Christian Democracy * Ethnic Cleansing * Gandhi * Israel * Italy * Jesuits * Jihad * Just War * Missionaries * Moral Majority * Muslim Brethren * Temperance Movements * Unification Church * War * Zionism