The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Neoliberalism

The first handbook of essays that critically examine the contemporary relationship between neoliberal forces and religion across diverse traditions, cultures and geo-political contexts.

What does neoliberalism – the powerful social forces that have promoted a pro-market ethos across the globe since the mid-20th century – mean for global religion in the 21st Century? How does this change the kinds of questions we ask about faith, truth and morality?

This handbook is the first to gather interdisciplinary scholars to examine the diverse global formations of religion and neoliberalism. Scholars explore ways in which religious movements have engaged with neoliberalism, both as a focus of opposition, a source of legitimacy, and a set of inherited assumptions that have been absorbed into the everyday and institutional realities of contemporary life. Case studies include United States, UK, the Philippines, Brazil, South Africa, Israel, Turkey, Colombia, Indonesia, Russia.

The book is organized into four sections:

· Mapping the conceptual debate, which presents a multi-layered account of neoliberalism’s provenance and contemporary influence on religious phenomena
· Cultural variations, which explores the interaction between religious and neoliberal forces within a wide range of locations across the globe
· Religion within global flows and networks, which probes these kinds of interaction as they proceed across national boundaries, exploring themes such as migration, tourism and global digital media
· Counter-narratives and critique, which addresses emerging ethical questions concerning power, marginality and deprivation. This final section attends to the complicity of neoliberal religious formations in pressing moral problems that trouble our contemporary world.