Religion and the Public Sphere

James Walters is Director of the LSE Faith Centre, Senior Lecturer in Practice at the LSE Marshall Institute and a Senior Fellow of the LSE Institute of Public Affairs, UK. Esther Kersley is the Research Officer for Religion and the Public Sphere at the LSE, UK.

• Introduction: Reimagining Academic Understanding of Religion in the Public Sphere by James Walters. Part I: Religion in Plural Publics. Chapter 1: The Future of Faith by Charles Taylor and Craig Calhoun. Chapter 2: The Decline of Religious Freedom and the Return of Religious Influence by John Milbank. Chapter 3: Equality for Secular Belief and Minority Faiths? Reflections on the Commission on Religion in British Public Life by Tariq Modood. Part II: Religion and Public Good. Chapter 4: Religion and the Environment by Bruno Latour and Rowan Williams. Chapter 5: Religion, Security, Strategy: an Unholy Trinity? by Gwen Griffith-Dickson. Chapter 6: The Genesis of Strategy: How to Stop Killing in the Name of God by Jerry White. Afterword: Religion in the English Public Sphere by Craig Calhoun. Index.

'This volume assembles key figures in the analysis of contemporary religious dynamics to stimulate new conversations about the role of faith in modern societies. They contend that academic and public discourses are more effective at addressing global problems when they bring an analysis of religion to the fore. In an era in which the secularisation thesis has failed, where geo-political crises often intersect with religious identities, but where faith actors also play an increasing role in social welfare and reform, such a conversation is timely if not essential.' Emma Tomalin, University of Leeds, UK'Ultimately, then, Religion and the Public Sphere: New Conversations offers exactly what a speaker series should aim to offer—a series of contributions that all revolve around the same fundamental questions—namely, what is the nature of religious belief and belonging in the modern secular West and what is the role of the state in shaping or managing religious pluralism?—but to sometimes starkly divergent ends. In so doing, the volume simultaneously announces the importance and intellectual priorities of the LSE Faith Centre while advancing scholarship of secularism and religious pluralism on several fronts at once.'Eric Chalfant, Portland Community College, USA