In this thoughtful and compelling book, leading Spanish literature scholar Noël Valis re-examines the role of Catholicism in the modern Spanish novel. While other studies of fiction and faith have focused largely on religious themes, Sacred Realism views the religious impulse as a crisis of modernity: a fundamental catalyst in the creative and moral development of Spanish narrative.

In this thoughtful and compelling book, leading Spanish literature scholar Noël Valis re-examines the role of Catholicism in the modern Spanish novel. While other studies of fiction and faith have focused largely on religious themes, Sacred Realism views the religious impulse as a crisis of modernity: a fundamental catalyst in the creative and moral development of Spanish narrative.

Religious Education and Critical Realism: Knowledge, Reality and Religious Literacy seeks to bring the enterprise of religious education in schools, colleges and universities into conversation with the philosophy of Critical Realism. This book addresses the problem, not of the substance of our primal beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality and our place in the ultimate order-of-things, but of the process through which we might attend to questions of substance in more attentive, reasonable, responsible and intelligent ways. This book unpacks the impact of modern and post-modern thought on key topics whilst also generating a new critically realistic vision. Offering an account of the relationship between Religious Education and Critical Realism, this book is essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners interested in philosophy, theology and education.

A cultural history of representations of Jesus in nineteenth-century European and American fiction and visual art

Philosophy of religion too often confines itself to a few well-worn philosophical puzzles, such as the proof of God’s existence, and overworked examples which are usually drawn from Western Christianity. This book considers religion practice and expression in a number of cultural contexts, both familiar and exotic, from sacred texts to rites of passage, from the British Israel movement to spiritism and Aztec devil-worship. The author argues that, although there are many points on which religious persons disagree and no definite way of settling these disagreements, Neoplatonic theory about the world and our place in it does at least provide the context for debate. Is religion an irrational human attempt to disguise an essentially meaningless universe? Or is irrelgion itself unreasonable and a spiritual universe the best explanation? Using a wide range of examples, The Mysteries of Religion provides an invaluable philosophical background for a discussion of such fundamental questions.