Ebook: Religion in Times of Crisis

Religion is alive and well all over the world, especially in times of personal, political, and social crisis. Even in Europe, long regarded the most secular continent, religion has taken centre stage in how people respond to the crises associated with modernity, or how they interact with the nation-state. In this book, scholars working in and on Europe offer fresh perspectives on how religion provides answers to existential crisis, how crisis increases the salience of religious identities and cultural polarization, and how religion is contributing to changes in the modern world in Europe and beyond. Cases from Poland to Pakistan and from Ireland to Zimbabwe, among others, demonstrate the complexity and ambivalence of religion s role in the contemporary world."

Biographical note
Gladys Ganiel, Ph.D. (2005), is Assistant Professor in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation at The Irish School of Ecumenics at Belfast of Trinity College Dublin. She works across the disciplines of sociology, politics, anthropology and religious studies, specializing on the Emerging Church Movement, and on religion, conflict and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe and South Africa. She is the author of a number of books including, The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity, co-authored with Gerardo Marti, She is Vice Chair of the Sociology of Religion Research Network of the European Sociological Association and has served on the international committee of the Association for the Sociology of Religion.

Heidemarie Winkel is currently teaching at the Technical University of Dresden (Germany). From 2002 - 2011, she was assistant professor at the Universities of Erfurt and Potsdam, interrupted by a project on the intersection of Gender Codes and Religious Practice in the Arab Christian Context (2005-2007), funded by the German Research Foundation. She is the chair of the Sociology of Religion Network in the European Sociological Association. She has recently published chapters related to religion and gender in the context of the ecumenical movement and in the Arab-Islamic context.

Christophe Monnot is assistant professor of Sociology of Religions at the University of Lausanne. In 2013 he published both Croire Ensemble (Believe Together), presenting the results of the 2010 National Congregations Study in Switzerland, and La Suisse des mosques (Mosques in Switzerland) focusing on the organization of the Muslim communities in Switzerland.

Contributors are Mariecke van den Berg, David J. Bos, Marco Derks, Marco Derks, R. Ruard Ganzevoort, Miloš Jovanović, Vladimir Kmec, Marta Kołodziejska, Anne-Marie Korte, Anne-Sophie Lamine, Christophe Monnot, Alexandre Piettre, Ali Qadir, Srdjan Sremac, Joram Tarusaria, Martina Topić, and Tom Wagner.