Both religion and anarchism have been increasingly politically active of late. This edited volume presents twelve chapters of fresh scholarship on diverse facets of the area where they meet: religious anarchism. The book is structured along three themes: • early Christian anarchist “pioneers,” including Pelagius, Coppe, Hungarian Nazarenes, and Dutch Christian anarchists; • Christian anarchist reflections on specific topics such as Kierkegaardian indifference, Romans 13, Dalit religious practice, and resistance to race and nation; • religious anarchism in other traditions, ranging from Wu Nengzi’s Daoism and Rexroth’s Zen Buddhism to various currents of Islam, including an original Anarca-Islamic “clinic.” This unique book therefore furthers scholarship on anarchism, on millenarian and revolutionary thinkers and movements, and on religion and politics. It is also of value to members of the wider public interested in radical politics and in the political implications of religion. And of course, it is relevant to those interested in any of the specific themes and thinkers focused on within individual chapters. In short, this book presents a range of innovative perspectives on a web of topics that, while held together by the common thread of religious anarchism, also speaks to numerous broader themes which have been increasingly prominent in the twenty-first century.

Despite writing about himself extensively and repeatedly, John Milton, the archetypal Puritan author, resolutely avoids the obligatory Augustinian narrative of sinfulness, conviction of sin, reception of the Word, regeneration of the spirit, and sanctification. The doctrine of fall, grace, and regeneration, so well illustrated in Paradise Lost, has no discernible effect on Milton's overt self-representations. Exploring this anomaly in his new book, Stephen M. Fallon contends that Milton, despite his deep engagement with theology, is not a religious writer. Why, Fallon asks, does Milton write about himself so compulsively? Why does he substitute, for the otherwise universal theological script, a story of precocious and continued virtue, even, it seems, a narrative of sinlessness? What pressures does this decision to reject the standard narrative exert on his work? In Milton's Peculiar Grace, Fallon argues that Milton writes about himself to gain immortality, secure authority for his arguments, and exert control over his readers' interpretations. He traces the return of the repressed narrative of fallenness in the author's unacknowledged and displaced self-representations, which in turn account for much of the power of the late poems. Fallon's book, based on close readings of Milton's "self-constructions" in prose and poetry throughout his career, provides a new view of Milton's life and his importance for contemporary literary theory-in particular for continued questions about authorial intention.