Publisher's Synopsis
Conversations About Religion, includes the following 5 in-depth Ideas Roadshow Conversations featuring leading experts. This collection includes a detailed preface highlighting the connections between the different books. Each book is broken into chapters with a detailed introduction and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter:
1.Rabbi With A Cause: Israel and Identity - A Conversation with David J. Goldberg (1939-2019), former Senior Rabbi Emeritus of London's Liberal Jewish Synagogue and author and columnist. This conversation is based on Goldberg's book, This Is Not The Way: Jews, Judaism and Israel, which boldly explores a number of themes that interweave religion, politics, culture and identity in a way that is relevant to all of us, regardless of our cultural background or religious orientation.
2.Religious Entrepreneurs? - A Conversation with Nile Green who holds the Ibn Khaldn Endowed Chair in World History at UCLA. Nile Green is an expert on Islamic History and religion in the world. The basis of this detailed conversation is Nile Green's book Terrains of Exchange which is not only an account of how the Christian missionary movement affected the development of Islam in the 19th and 20th centuries, but also offers a bold new paradigm for understanding the expansion of Islam in the modern world through the model of religious economy.
3.Battling Protestants - A Conversation with intellectual historian David Hollinger, UC Berkeley. This conversation examines the unique role that different strands of religion have played in 20th-century American culture, the often overlooked role of Ecumenical Protestantism in the history of the USA, secularization theory, the development of the two-party system, the role of missionaries, and more.
4.Exploring the Sikh Tradition - A Conversation with Eleanor Nesbitt who is Professor Emeritus of Education Studies at University of Warwick and a poet. After inspiring insights about the time Eleanor Nesbitt spent in India and her academic path, this conversation provides a detailed exploration of the Sikh tradition: the history, religious tenets, other people's misconceptions about it and more.
5.Religion and Culture: A Historian's Tale - A Conversation with Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary University of London. After behind-the-scenes insights into Miri Rubin's career path which led her from chemistry to working in an orthopaedic hospital to studying medieval history with a 'cultural anthropologist" persuasion to the subject of medieval Christianity, this conversation covers several books that Miri Rubin has written, including The Life and Passion of William of Norwich; Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary; Emotion and Devotion: The Meaning of Mary in Medieval Religious Cultures.
