Alternative Salvations ─ Engaging the Sacred and the Secular

Alternative Salvations probes concepts including 'religious', 'secular', 'spiritual', 'post-Christian', and 'post-secular', providing a series of studies which question the functionality of these broad categories.

Part one draws on contemporary salvation narratives showing how current cultural forms, social practices and secular discourses are influenced by, or are interpreted through, the lens of religious and theological accounts of salvation. Examples include twelve step recovery programs, drug culture, and public policy surrounding HIV-AIDs in Kenya. Although outside religious contexts in a traditional sense, the contributors show the ways in which they are not free from religious symbolism. Part two explores alternative accounts of salvation which are rooted in religious traditions. Established orthodoxies are confronted by contemporary critical questions, for example about gender, the status of animals, and the political dimensions of salvation.

This volume explores intersections between the social, cultural, political and theological dimensions of salvation narratives. While these narratives can drive social and religious change, they may also be questioned as tools which legitimize the marginalization of certain groups. By contributing new perspectives and unique case studies, Alternative Salvations provides a deliberate challenge to easy binaries which often underpin contemporary and traditional discourses of salvation.

Hannah Bacon is Deputy Head of Theology and Religious Studies and Senior Lecturer in Feminist and Contextual Theology at the University of Chester, UK.

Wendy Dossett is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Chester, UK.

Steve Knowles is Senior Lecturer in Religion and Popular Culture at the University of Chester, UK.