The overall rate of incarceration in the United States has been on the rise since 1970s, skyrocketing during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and recently reaching unprecedented highs. Looking for innovative solutions to the crises produced by gigantic prison populations, Florida’s Department of Corrections claims to have found a partial remedy in the form of faith and character-based correctional institutions (FCBIs). While claiming to be open to all religious traditions, FCBIs are almost alwa...

The rise of entheogenic religion – that is, religions that involve the use of psychoactive drugs – has captured the attention of scholars and journalists. These studies tend to advance the interests of practitioners who advocate for the legitimacy of entheogens and of entheogenic religion more broadly. This Element breaks with these approaches as it offers a historical and critical analysis of entheogenic communities. It examines the production of entheogenic groups in the United States an...

Fresh new perspectives on the study of religion, ranging from SoulCycle to Mark TwainAmerican Examples: New Conversations about Religion, Volume Two, is the second in a series of annual anthologies produced by the American Examples workshop hosted by the Department of Religious Studies at The University of Alabama. In the latest volume from this dynamic academic project, nine scholars with diverse topics and methodologies vividly reimagine the mea...

Building on the success of Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés, this follow up volume dismantles a further 10 widespread stereotypes and clichés about religion, focusing on clichés that a new generation of students are most familiar with.Each chapter includes:- A description of a particular cliché- Discussion of where it appears in popular culture or popular media- Discussion of where it appears in scholarly literature- A historical conte...

Our culture is full of popular stereotypes about religion, both positive and negative. Many people uncritically assume that religion is intrinsically violent, or that religion makes people moral, or that it is simply "bullshit". This concise volume tackles 10 of these stereotypes, addresses why scholars of religion find them to be cliched, describes their origins, and explains the social or political work they rhetorically accomplish in the present.Cliches addressed include the fol...

Organized in chronological order of the founding of each movement, this documentary reader brings to life new religious movements from the 18th century to the present. It provides students with the tools to understand questions of race, religion, and American religious history. Movements covered include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism), the Native American Church, the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and more. The voices included come from both men an...