Comparative Religion Faculty Books

The goal is to record most books written or edited by Comparative Religion faculty. We will start by entering the most recent publications first and work our way back to older books. There is a WMU Authors section in Waldo Library, where most of these books can be found.

With a few exceptions, we do not have the rights to put the full text of the book online, so there will be a link to a place where you can purchase the book.

If you are a faculty member and have a book you would like to include in the WMU book list, please contact wmu-scholarworks@wmich.edu

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At Their Feet: 50 Black Muslim Elders Share Stories of Faith and Community Life

Alisa Perkins

AT THEIR FEET is a rare opportunity to both pay homage to, and learn from, one of the most unique communities to ever grace the planet: African-American Muslim Elders born in the 1930s-1950s.

To sit “at the feet” indicates an exchange between student and teacher. Sage and apprentice. Master and disciple.

Inside, you’ll learn and read stories on a variety of life experiences. You’ll read how some of our elders accepted Islam as their way of life on their own in their early teens. You’ll read about experiences traversing Jim Crow. You’ll read about family and business and building communities from the ground up.

The 50 essays within are ripe with secrets and insights that can help the current and future generations usher in new social heights.

AT THEIR FEET is a call to rediscover the powerful age-old practice of learning from elders so that we may illuminate and become the best of humankind.
California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Brian C. Wilson

In the spring of 1871, Ralph Waldo Emerson boarded a train in Concord, Massachusetts, bound for a month-and-a-half-long tour of California--an interlude that became one of the highlights of his life. On their journey across the American West, he and his companions would take in breathtaking vistas in the Rockies and along the Pacific Coast, speak with a young John Muir in the Yosemite Valley, stop off in Salt Lake City for a meeting with Brigham Young, and encounter a diversity of communities and cultures that would challenge their Yankee prejudices. Based on original research employing newly discovered documents, The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson maps the public story of this group's travels onto the private story of Emerson's final years, as aphasia set in and increasingly robbed him of his words. Engaging and compelling, this travelogue makes it clear that Emerson was still capable of wonder, surprise, and friendship, debunking the presumed darkness of his last decade.
Turjumān al-asrār : wa-dīwān sayyidinā wa-mawlānā al-ustādh al-aʻẓam wa-al-malādh al-afkham al-Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Ḥasan al-Bakrī al-Ṣiddīqī al-Shāfiʻī al-Ashʻarī sibṭ Āl al-Ḥasan /

Mustafa Mughazy and Adam Sabra

Based on a study of twelve Arabic manuscripts, The Interpreter of Secrets is a critical edition of the entire surviving corpus of the poetry of Muhammad ibn Abi al-Hasan al-Bakri (930-994/1524-1586), a leading jurist, Sufi, and literary figure in sixteenth-century Cairo. The texts of the poems are accompanied by a critical apparatus including all of the plausible variant readings and alternative versions of the poems. Al-Bakri was a major literary figure, and his Sufi poetry belongs to a tradition that draws on the work of poets such as Ibn al-Farid, Ibn al-'Arabi, al-Busiri, and 'Ali Wafa. In addition to their literary value, the poems are an important source for the study of Sufi theology and practice in Ottoman Egypt, including to such topics as the cult of the saints, the use of coffee for ritual purposes, the controversial appropriation of Ibn al-Arab's monist theology, and the establishment of sacred lineages. The editors have also included short Arabic and English introductions and an appendix that identifies the manuscript sources for each poem. This book will be of interest to students of Arabic literature, Sufism, and Ottoman intellectual history.
Muslim American City: Gender and Religion in Metro Detroit

Alisa Perkins

In 2004, the al-Islah Islamic Center in Hamtramck, Michigan, set off a contentious controversy when it requested permission to use loudspeakers to broadcast the adhān, or Islamic call to prayer. The issue gained international notoriety when media outlets from around the world flocked to the city to report on what had become a civil battle between religious tolerance and Islamophobic sentiment. The Hamtramck council voted unanimously to allow mosques to broadcast the adhān, making it one of the few US cities to officially permit it through specific legislation.

Muslim American City explores how debates over Muslim Americans’ use of both public and political space have challenged and ultimately reshaped the boundaries of urban belonging. Drawing on more than ten years of ethnographic research in Hamtramck, which boasts one of the largest concentrations of Muslim residents of any American city, Alisa Perkins shows how the Muslim American population has grown and asserted itself in public life. She explores, for example, the efforts of Muslim American women to maintain gender norms in neighborhoods, mosques, and schools, as well as Muslim Americans’ efforts to organize public responses to municipal initiatives. Her in-depth fieldwork incorporates the perspectives of both Muslims and non-Muslims, including Polish Catholics, African American Protestants, and other city residents.

Drawing particular attention to Muslim American expressions of religious and cultural identity in civil life—particularly in response to discrimination and stereotyping—Perkins questions the popular assumption that the religiosity of Muslim minorities hinders their capacity for full citizenship in secular societies. She shows how Muslims and non-Muslims have, through their negotiations over the issues over the use of space, together invested Muslim practice with new forms of social capital and challenged nationalist and secularist notions of belonging.
The Evolution Of The Critical Theory Of Religion And Society : Union, Disunion And Reunion Of The Sacred And Profane

Rudolf J. Siebert

This book describes the structure and dynamic of the 'critical theory of religion and society' (CRTS), which my friends and I have developed in Europe and America, since the end of World War II in continual discourse with the 'critical theory of society' of the Frankfurt School, from 1946-2020. The book is rooted in the often personal experience of World War II, the following restauration period, the Cold War, and the conflict between West and the Islamic Middle East, Africa and Far East.
Muslims and US Politics Today: A Defining Moment

Alisa Perkins

The twenty-first century has been a volatile period for American Muslims. Anti-Muslim hate crimes peaked after September 11, 2001, then increased again dramatically in parallel with the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump. Yet American Muslims now have unprecedented avenues of influence in US politics. Muslims and US Politics Today explores the various representations of Muslims in American political and civic life, the myriad ways American Muslims are affected by politics, and how American Muslims are engaging political life as individuals and communities. This integrative volume reaches back to presidential elections after 9/11 (Edward E. Curtis IV), further back to Iranian immigrants after the Iranian Revolution (Mohsen Mostafavi Mobasher), and back even to fundamentals of religious freedom in the United States (Kambiz GhaneaBassiri; Mucahit Bilici). Aspects of anti-Muslim politics and marginalization, as well as mobilization and activism, are covered in essays by Salah D. Hassan, Evelyn Alsultany, Juliane Hammer, Alisa Perkins, and Sally Howell. In a final section on rethinking Muslim politics, Donna Auston and Sylvia Chan-Malik dialogue on Black American Islam and Junaid Rana looks broadly to a global Muslim left. In this critically-timed volume, editor Mohammad Hassan Khalil has drawn together leading scholars to provide a deep look at the rich political history and future of American Muslims.
The World Religions In Idealistic And Materialistic Perspective : The Loss And Recovery Of The Idea

Rudolf J. Siebert

This book is concerned with the loss of the idea in modernity and its possible rediscovery in post modernity. Marx and Engels define the idealist as a man who presupposes a divine being of some kind before nature and human history: and the materialist as a man without such presupposition. For the critical theory of religion or dialectical religiology, an idealist is a man who like Anselm of Canterbury, presupposes a highest idea, which must contain being, otherwise it would not be the highest idea. An idealist is a man who presupposes this ontological proof for the existence of God. It is the thesis of this book that the German historical materialist superseded the German historical idealists too abstractly and that this resulted with Lenin in an inadequate theory and politics of religion and the later turn into red fascism and the victorious neo-liberal counter revolution in 1889, in spite of the great patriotic war and the heroic victory over European fascism. The purpose of the book is to prepare a new theory of revolution or better still provolution, which is open for progressive elements in religion or pro-ligion
John E. Fetzer and the Quest for the New Age

Brian C. Wilson

John E. Fetzer and the Quest for the New Age follows the spiritual sojourn of John E. Fetzer, a Michigan business tycoon. Born in 1901 and living most of his life in Kalamazoo, Fetzer parlayed his first radio station into extensive holdings in broadcasting and other enterprises, leading to his sole ownership of the Detroit Tigers in 1961. By the time he died in 1991, Fetzer had been listed in Forbes magazine as one of the four hundred wealthiest people in America. And yet, business success was never enough for Fetzer-his deep spiritual yearnings led him from the Christianity of his youth to a restless exploration of metaphysical religions and movements ranging from Spiritualism, Theosophy, Freemasonry, UFOology, and parapsychology, all the way to the New Age as it blossomed in the 1980s.
Future of Religion: Creator, Exodus, Son of Man and Kingdom

Rudolf Siebert
Sociology of Religion: A Critical Primer

Walter A. Jensen

Written with the aim of increasing public interest in the study of religion, this primer makes available, to both the student and layman alike, a substantial amount of practical information about the modern non-theological study of religion. Focusing on three key areas of interest -- (1) the difficulties in defining religion, (2) the secularization / desecularization debate, and (3) an overview of Prof. Rudolf J. Siebert's critical theory of religion -- the reader will easily gain a broad, but thorough, overview of the sociology of religion.
Religion in Japan: Unity and Diversity

H. Byron Earhart

This standard text explores religion in Japan as a complex tapestry of different religious strands, reflecting both the unity and diversity of Japanese culture, a theme Earhart pioneered in the first edition (1969) of this enduring, classic book--a theme he has devoted subsequent decades to refining through cutting-edge scholarship and keen observation of the evolving religious scene. Tracing the development of religious traditions from the prehistoric era through modern times, Earhart explores the vital influence of Shinto, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and folk religion. Presuming no technical or academic background, the text guides students to key Japanese religious themes, which include the proximity of humans and gods, the religious character of the family, the bond between religion and the nation, and the pervasiveness of religion in everyday life. This new edition updates the description and interpretation of the entire history of religion in Japan in light of the latest developments in the field. In the latter chapters, changes in the contemporary scene are highlighted, discussing Tokyo Disneyland, manga, and anime as "alternative reality," as well as the innovations in more "traditional" events such as wedding ceremonies and rites for the dead.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living

Brian C. Wilson

"While the tradition of purveyors of alternative or spiritualized medicine stretches back to the colonial period, few have achieved the superstar status of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his Battle Creek Sanitarium. In its hey-day, the "San" was a combination spa and Mayo Clinic. Founded in 1866 under the auspices of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and presided over by the charismatic leadership of Kellogg, it catered to many well-heeled health seekers including Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and Presidents Taft and Harding. It also supported a hospital, research facilities, a medical school, a nursing school, several health food companies, and a publishing house dedicated to producing materials on health and wellness. Rather than focusing on Kellogg as the eccentric creator of corn flakes or a megalomaniacal quack, Brian C. Wilson takes his role as a theological innovator seriously and places his religion of "Biologic Living" in an on-going tradition of sacred health and wellness. Wilson traces the development of this theology of physiology from its roots in antebellum health reform and Seventh-day Adventism to its ultimate accommodation of genetics and eugenics in the Progressive Era"--Provided by publisher.
Foxe's Book of Martyrs

John Foxe

Foxe's Book of Martyrs is one of the most influential and well-known books in history, as well as one of the top-sellers of the past, right up there with the Bible itself. Immensely popular in Foxe's own sixteenth century, its influence has been felt throughout literature. Copies of the original text (Acts and Monuments) were chained beside the Bible in churches of England, and even sailed with English pirates.

This was not a book designed to comfort, but instead to present the truth of the persecution faced by Protestant Christians in hostile environments. The inscription from the 1563 edition--now commonly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs--indicates the gravity of the task: "[In] latter and perilous days . . . the great persecutions and horrible troubles . . . [are here] gathered and collected according to true copies and writings . . . of the parties themselves that suffered." Foxe was committed to commemorating the ultimate sacrifice of those who gave their lives for the sake of their faith.

Paul L. Maier brings his exceptional mind for history to bear on Foxe's work in this new edition. While abridgement of the original 2,100 pages was necessary, Maier does include every martyr, and text was changed only where modern readers may not readily understand the original archaic wording.

John Foxe (1516-1587) was an academic and zealous student of the Scriptures, leading to his persecution as a Protestant by the Catholic rulers of his day. Beyond his work in pastoral ministry, Foxe continued to work on his martyrology until his death.
The World Religions in the Global Public Sphere: Towards Concrete Freedom and Material Democracy

Rudolf Siebert, Michael Ott, and Karen Shoup-Pilarski
Symbols of Authority in Medieval Islam : History, Religion, and Muslim Legitimacy in the Delhi Sultanate

Blain Auer

With the execution of the Abbasid caliph Al-Musta'sim in 1258, Sunni authority and legitimacy in Baghdad began to disintegrate. Amidst a global shift in Islamic authority, the recently established Delhi Sultanate became a new focal point for the development of Muslim societies. Here Blain Auer investigates the ways three historians living in India during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Minhaj Siraj Juzjani, Ziya' al-Din Barani and Shams al-Din Siraj 'Afif, narrated the religious values of Muslim sovereigns through the process of history writing. Aiding the project of empire building, these intellectuals drew up an idea of an Islamic heritage that invented and reinterpreted conceptions of a historically rooted Muslim authority. With fresh insights on the intersections between religion, politics, and historiography, this book will be indispensable for all those interested in Islamic studies, history, religion, politics, and South Asia.
The Development of Moral Consciousness Toward a Global Ethos

Rudolf Siebert

The book traces the evolution of the ethical or moral consciousness through the different world-religions, as well as through the secular modern enlightenment movements and humanisms. (From the book distributor.)
The Evolution of the Religious Consciousness Toward Alternative Futures

Rudolf Siebert

The book traces the development of the world-religions in the context of the timeline of human evolution.

Source: Bookadda.com
Toward a Radical Interpretation of the Abrahamic Religions : in Search for the Wholly Other

Rudolf Siebert

This book deals with the disharmony, which broke into the religious community through the bourgeois, Marxian, and Freudian enlightenment, as well as with the possibility of a new Post-Modern harmony. After the bourgeois enlightenment and revolution the religious community differentiated itself into three groups: 1.The simple and naive believers; 2. the so called educated or enlightened people, characterized by analytical understanding and reflection; 3. the dialectical philosophers, for whom faith and reason had been reconciled by the power of the dialectical notion: the self-particularization and self-estrangement as well as the self-singularization and self-reconciliation of the Universal. While for the dialectical philosophers harmony has returned between religious revelation and autonomous reason, this has not yet happened for the masses of the people living in modern civil society. There exists the knowledge in the public sphere, which something is missing in the secular world- the longed for, imageless, and nameless utterly Other than the horror and terror of nature and history. The comparative, dialectical religiology presented in this book constitutes the attempt, to promote, universalize, and globalize a new synthesis of the modern antithesis between the religious and the secular, through a radical naturalistic and humanistic interpretation, translation, and inversion of the sacred texts particularly of the Abrahamic religions.

(from publisher)
Mount Fuji : Icon of Japan

H. Byron Earhart

Illustrated with color and black-and-white images of the mountain and its associated religious practices, H. Byron Earhart's study utilizes his decades of fieldwork--including climbing Fuji with three pilgrimage groups--and his research into Japanese and Western sources to offer a comprehensive overview of the evolving imagery of Mount Fuji from ancient times to the present day. Included in the book is a link to his twenty-eight minute streaming video documentary of Fuji pilgrimage and practice, Fuji: Sacred Mountain of Japan.

Beginning with early reflections on the beauty and power associated with the mountain in medieval Japanese literature, Earhart examines how these qualities fostered spiritual practices such as Shugendo, which established rituals and a temple complex at the mountain as a portal to an ascetic otherworld. As a focus of worship, the mountain became a source of spiritual insight, rebirth, and prophecy through the practitioners Kakugyo and Jikigyo, whose teachings led to social movements such as Fujido (the way of Fuji) and to a variety of pilgrimage confraternities making images and replicas of the mountain for use in local rituals.

Earhart shows how the seventeenth-century commodification of Mount Fuji inspired powerful interpretive renderings of the "peerless" mountain of Japan, such as those of the nineteenth-century print masters Hiroshige and Hokusai, which were largely responsible for creating the international reputation of Mount Fuji. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, images of Fuji served as an expression of a unique and superior Japanese culture. With its distinctive shape firmly embedded in Japanese culture but its ethical, ritual, and spiritual associations made malleable over time, Mount Fuji came to symbolize ultranationalistic ambitions in the 1930s and early 1940s, peacetime democracy as early as 1946, and a host of artistic, naturalistic, and commercial causes, even the exotic and erotic, in the decades since.
Manifesto of the Critical Theory of Society and Religion: The Wholly Other, Liberation, Happiness and the Rescue of the Hopeless

Rudolf Siebert

The Manifesto develops further the Critical Theory of Religion intrinsic to the Critical Theory of Society of the Frankfurt School into a new paradigm of the Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy and Theology of Religion. Its central theme is the theodicy problem. The Manifesto approaches this theme in the framework of comparative religion and critical political theology in a narrative and discursive fashion. In search of a solution to the theodicy problem, the Manifesto explores , trends in civil society toward Alternative Future I (the Totally Administered Society), Alternative Future II (the Militarized Society), and Alternative Future III (the Reconciled Society) in the horizon of the longing for the Wholly Other as perfect justice and unconditional love. Toward that goal it relies on both the critical theory of society as developed by Max Horkheimer, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and others, and on the new political theology of Johannes B. Metz, Helmut Peukert, and Edmund Arens.
Snorri Sturluson and the Edda: The Conversion of Cultural Capital in Medieval Scandinavia

Kevin J. Wanner

Why would Snorri Sturluson (c. 1179-1241), the most powerful and rapacious Icelander of his generation, dedicate so much time and effort to producing the Edda, a text that is widely recognized as the most significant medieval source for pre-Christian Norse myth and poetics? Kevin J. Wanner brings us a new account of the interests that motivated the production of this text, and resolves the mystery of its genesis by demonstrating the intersection of Snorri's political and cultural concerns and practices.

The author argues that the Edda is best understood not as an antiquarian labour of cultural conservation, but as a present-centered effort to preserve skaldic poetry's capacity for conversion into material and symbolic benefits in exchanges between elite Icelanders and the Norwegian court. Employing Pierre Bourdieu's economic theory of practice, Wanner shows how modern sociological theory can be used to illuminate the cultural practices of the European Middle Ages. In doing so, he provides the most detailed analysis to date of how the Edda relates to Snorri's biography, while shedding light on the arenas of social interaction and competition that he negotiated.

A fascinating look at the intersections of political interest and cultural production, Snorri Sturluson and the Edda is a detailed portrait of both an important man and the society of his times.
Yankees in Michigan

Brian C. Wilson

As Brian C. Wilson describes them in this highly readable and entertaining book, Yankees -- defined by their shared culture and sense of identity -- had a number of distinctive traits and sought to impose their ideas across the state of Michigan.
After the ethnic label of "Yankee" fell out of use, the off spring of Yankees appropriated the term "Midwesterner." So fused did the identities of Yankee and Midwesterner become that understanding the larger story of America's Midwestern regional identity begins with the Yankees in Michigan.
Living Hinduisms: An Explorer's Guide

Nancy Falk

Aiming to turn inside-out models currently used for the teaching of Hinduism, Nancy Falk's new LIVING HINDUISMS aims to introduce students to this religion through an illuminating presentation of its lived practices. Recognizing an all-too-frequent disconnect that students of Hinduism feel when confronted with the actual sights and sounds of contemporary Hindu rituals, Nancy Falk brings these experiences to life through an astute and eye-opening exploration of Hinduism's diverse, yet--as she argues--unified traditions.
Comparing Religions

Thomas Athanasius Idinopulos, Brian C. Wilson, and James Constantine Hanges

Comparing Religions covers such important topics as recent theoretical approaches to comparison, case studies of comparing religions in the classroom, and the impact of postcolonialism and postmodernism on the modernist assumptions of comparitivism in the academic study of religion.
Japanese Temple Buddhism

Stephen G. Covell

There have been many studies that focus on aspects of the history of Japanese Buddhism. Until now, none have addressed important questions of organization and practice in contemporary Buddhism, questions such as how Japanese Buddhism came to be seen as a religion of funeral practices; how Buddhist institutions envision the role of the laity; and how a married clergy has affected life at temples and the image of priests. This volume is the first to address fully contemporary Buddhist life and institutions―topics often overlooked in the conflict between the rhetoric of renunciation and the practices of clerical marriage and householding that characterize much of Buddhism in today’s Japan. Informed by years of field research and his own experiences training to be a Tendai priest, Stephen Covell skillfully refutes this "corruption paradigm" while revealing the many (often contradictory) facets of contemporary institutional Buddhism, or as Covell terms it, Temple Buddhism.

Covell significantly broadens the scope of inquiry to include how Buddhism is approached by both laity and clerics when he takes into account temple families, community involvement, and the commodification of practice. He considers law and tax issues, temple strikes, and the politics of temple boards of directors to shed light on how temples are run and viewed by their inhabitants, supporters, and society in general. In doing so he uncovers the economic realities that shape ritual practices and shows how mundane factors such as taxes influence the debate over temple Buddhism’s role in contemporary Japanese society. In addition, through interviews and analyses of sectarian literature and recent scholarship on gender and Buddhism, he provides a detailed look at priests’ wives, who have become indispensable in the management of temple affairs.