Donald A. Yerxa is Professor of History Emeritus at Eastern Nazarene College, USA. He was Senior Editor of Historically Speaking and is Editor of Fides et Historia.

• IntroductionPart 1: Religion and Innovation in Pre-Columbian Societies1. Innovation, Religion and Authority at the Formative Period Andean Cult Center of Chavin de Huantar, John W. Rick (Stanford University, USA)2. Religion and Political Innovation in Ancient Mesoamerica, Arthur Joyce (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA) and Sarah Barber (University of Central Florida, USA)3. Religion and Innovation at the Emerald Acropolis: Something New under the Moon, Timothy Pauketat (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA) and Susan Alt (Indiana University, USA) Part 2: Religion and Innovation: Naturalism, Scientific Progress, Enlightenment, and Secularization4. The First Enlightenment: The Patristic Roots of Religious Freedom, Timothy Samuel Shah (Georgetown University, USA)5. Religion, Innivation, and Secular Modernity, Peter Harrison (University of Queensland, Australia)6. Religion, Scientific Naturalism, and Historical Progress, Peter Harrison (University of Queensland, Australia)7. Religion, Enlightenment, and the Paradox of Innovation, William J. Bulman (Lehigh University, USA) and Robert G. Ingram (Ohio University, USA) 8. Remembering the Reformation, 1817 and 1883: Commemorating the Past as Agent and Mirror of Social Change, Thomas Albert Howard (Gordon College, USA) 9. Secularization and Religious Innovation: A Transatlantic Comparison, David Hempton (Harvard Divinity School, USA) and Hugh McLeod (University of Birmingham, UK)10. Christian Transnationalists, Nationhood, and the Construction of Civil Society, Dana L. Robert (Boston University, USA)Part 3: Religion, Progress and Innovation in the Contemporary World11. Sin, Guilt and the Future of Progress, Wilfred M. McClay (University of Oklahoma, USA)12. Religious Innovation and Economic Empowerment in India: An Empirical Exploration, Rebecca Samuel Shah (Georgetown University, USA)13. Century of Progress? Chicago after Daniel Burnham, Philip H. Bess (University of Notre Dame, USA)14. Technologies of Imagination: Secularism, Transhumanism, and the Idiom of Progress, J. Benjamin Hurlbut (Arizona State University, USA)Afterword: Innovation and Religion, Today and Tomorrow, Adam Keiper (The New Atlantis)BibliographyIndex

The individual case studies in this edited volume add to the already rich discussion of instances where religious ideas and practices have fostered innovation in culture at large.