Home 5 Articles and Reports 5 New Exploration of Religion and the Modern World

New Exploration of Religion and the Modern World

by | Jan 13, 2019 | Articles and Reports, News

The role of religion in the modern world – and in particular, how the stories and imaginative ideas concerning society held by different faiths around the world affect the way countries interact with each other in an ever more connected world – are explored in a new book from London’s Gingko Library.

Religious Imaginations How Narratives of Faith are Shaping Today’s World is edited by James Walters, founding director of the London School of Economics’ Faith Centre which works to promote religious understanding and interfaith leadership among LSE’s global student body and in government.  It is based on a conference on the subject that the university hosted in 2017 and contributors include Mona Siddiqui, Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at the University of Edinburgh; John Casson, who was British Ambassador in Cairo from 2014 to 2018; and Kamran Bashir, who teaches Religion and History at Camosun College, Victoria, British Columbia.

Foreign rights, including Arabic, are still available in a title which is acts like a spiritual Davos, in which matters of faith are given as much weight as matters of economics.

Walters notes that ‘the religious imagination engages life and death, material and metaphysical, earthly and heavenly,’ and observes: ‘Western theories of international relations and global order have tended to overlook this significance…the modern Western-European understanding of religion [is] as an essentially private matter – personal rather than social, spiritual rather than political, supplementary rather than fundamental to everyday life’.

In a thoughtful essay drawing on his experience in Egypt, Casson says there is much that diplomats can learn from religion.  “I would like to remind those who serve as representatives of religion that we diplomats need you and the resources of faith and theology you can draw on for our wider diplomatic task….I end by appealing to religious leaders and scholars of religion to develop their political and diplomatic literacy as we diplomats develop our religious literacy.”

Other contributions look at the role of religion in environmental matters and ask what scope for dialogue exits between Jewish, Muslim and Christian ways of imagining the future.

It is a dense, thought-provoking book in which Casson concludes: ‘Without religious imaginations we will not in the end be able to sustain globalisation.’

Recent News

17Jul
Penguin Supports Winn Amid Controversy

Penguin Supports Winn Amid Controversy

Penguin said release date of On Winter Hill would be changed in order to ‘support the author’ after allegations that Raynor Winn lied in her bestselling memoir. Author Raynor Winn’s new book has been delayed because questions about her bestselling work The Salt Path have caused her and her husband “considerable distress”, her publisher has […]

17Jul
Farshore  Revives ‘Portly the Otter’

Farshore Revives ‘Portly the Otter’

HarperCollins’ children’s imprint Farshore has acquired The Adventures of Portly the Otter: Untold Tales from the Wind in the Willows by award-winning children’s author M. G. Leonard. The book of exciting spin-off stories from the much-loved classic The Wind in the Willows, written by Kenneth Grahame and illustrated by E.H. Shepard, will publish in March […]

16Jul
Firefinch to Debut in 2026 with Star Authors

Firefinch to Debut in 2026 with Star Authors

Publishing veteran Kate Parkin, who worked for Random House and was most recently MD of the adult publishing division at Bonnier Books UK, is launching a new independent publishing house, Firefinch.  It is a co-venture with her Bonnier colleague Margaret Stead who was Bonnier publisher. Among the authors who are making the jump with them […]

Related Posts

Farshore  Revives ‘Portly the Otter’

Farshore Revives ‘Portly the Otter’

HarperCollins’ children’s imprint Farshore has acquired The Adventures of Portly the Otter: Untold Tales from the Wind in the Willows by award-winning children’s author M. G. Leonard. The book of exciting spin-off stories from the much-loved classic The Wind in the...

Firefinch to Debut in 2026 with Star Authors

Firefinch to Debut in 2026 with Star Authors

Publishing veteran Kate Parkin, who worked for Random House and was most recently MD of the adult publishing division at Bonnier Books UK, is launching a new independent publishing house, Firefinch.  It is a co-venture with her Bonnier colleague Margaret Stead who was...

Al Faya: Where History Took Its First Steps on the Sands of the Desert

Al Faya: Where History Took Its First Steps on the Sands of the Desert

In a timeless moment etched into the memory of human heritage, the sun of Sharjah rose once again on the map of the world, this time through the gateway of deep history. At its recently concluded 47th session in Paris, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee officially...

Previous Next
Close
Test Caption
Test Description goes like this