The Ashgate Research Companion to Contemporary Religion and Sexuality

Description

The Ashgate Research Companion to Contemporary Religion and Sexuality provides academics and students with a comprehensive and authoritative state-of-the-art review of current research in the area of sexuality and religion, broadly defined. This collection of expert essays offers an inter-disciplinary study of the important aspects of sexuality and religion, calling upon sociological, cultural, historical and theological contributions to an under-researched subject. The Companion focuses on the exploration of diverse religious faiths, spiritualities, and sexualities with contributions that embrace many contrasting approaches related to the contemporary context. By adopting a truly inter-disciplinary and multi-dimensional perspective, the Companion embraces the complexities of both sexuality and religion. Aimed primarily at a readership with specialist interest in both, The Ashgate Research Companion to Contemporary Religion and Sexuality offers an innovative and refreshing analysis of key theoretical and empirical issues in an increasingly relevant and expanding area of academic interest. The Companion comprises five main thematic sections, each with chapters ranging across a variety of crucial topics traversing various faith traditions. The principal themes are: epistemological and methodological issues; the significance of religious text; institutional religious settings; stability transformation and change; contesting hegemonic structures and discourses. Each section includes four chapters contributed by leading international experts in their respective fields and who are at the cutting-edge of current research. Collectively, they offer an inter-disciplinary and comprehensive survey of sexuality and religion. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Figures and Tables List of Contributors Introduction Part 1: Epistemological and Methodological Issues 1 To Know in the Biblical Sense? Abrahamic Religious Epistemologies of Sexuality and Gender 2 Feminist Critique of Sexuality and Religion 3 Queer Theory, Sexuality and Religion 4 Looking ‘In’ from the ‘Outside’: The Methodological Challenges of Researching Minority Ethnic Gay Men and Lesbian Women Part 2: Religious Texts 5 Reading about Sex in the Bible: Coping with Ambiguities 6 Competing Identities: Uniformity versus Diversity in the Roman Catholic Priesthood 7 Textual Queerings: Contesting Islam as Heteronormative Inheritance 8 Menstruation, Sexuality and Spirituality in Buddhism Part 3: Institutional Settings 9 Virginity in a Multidimensional Perspective: Negotiating Pre-Marital Sex in Dakar 10 Probing the Boundaries: How Religion and Sexuality are Negotiated within Islamic Educational Institutions 11 Separating Church and God: An Exploration of Gay Clergymen’s Negotiations with Institutional Church 12 Bisexuality and Christianity: Negotiating Disparate Identities in Church Life Part 4: Stability, Transformation and Change 13 Contextualising Sexuality and Religiosity in Contemporary Social Changes 14 The Queer Case of Hinduism: Religious Discourse and the Legitimacy of Non-Heterosexuality 15 Virgin Pride: Born Again Faith and Sexual Identity in the Faith-based Abstinence Movement 16 Risk and the Imagined Future: Young Adults Negotiating Religious and Sexual Identities Part 5: Contesting Hegemonic Structures and Discourses 17 Contesting Sex-Restrictive Sexual Narratives from Within: Jewish Laws of Menstrual Purity and Orthodox Sexual Anxieties 18 ‘It’s a Tefillin Date’: Alternative Narratives of Orthodox Jewish Sexuality in the Digital Age 19 Contestations, Reinscriptions: Negotiating the Worlds of Sexuality and Religion in the United States 20 Exploring Islamic Masculinities through the Qur’anic Adam Index