Introducing Religion ─ Essays in Honor of Jonathan Z. Smith

The study of religion encompasses ordinary human social practice and is not limited to the extraordinary or divine. 'Introducing Religion' brings together leading international scholars in the field of religious studies to examine religion as integral to everyday social practice. The book establishes a theoretical framework for the study of religion to analyse prayer, ritual, science, morality and politics in relation to the world's major religions. It will be of interest to students of theory and method in religious studies seeking a clear introduction to the multifaceted nature of religion.

Willi Braun is Professor of Religion in the Department of History and Classics and Director of the Interdisciplinary Programme of Religious Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. He is the author of Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14 (Cambridge University Press, 1995), editor of Persuasion and Performance: Rhetoric and Reality in Early Christian Discourses (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005), and editor (with Russell T. McCutcheon) of the Guide to the Study of Religion (Cassell, 2000). Russell T. McCutcheon is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He is the author of Religion and the Domestication of Dissent (Equinox, 2005), The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric (2003), Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (2001), and Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (1997).