Religion at Play
A Manifesto
by Andre Droogers
Paperback (No longer our product)
(March 2015)
ISBN: 9780718893965
5.98 x 9.02 inches
Price: $29.00
On back order
A heartfelt critique of the institutionalisation of power in modern religion, offering a vision of religious practice and belief as the playful exploration of possibilities that resists petrification into hierarchy and dogma.
Is a powerful position a guarantee that a religion will continue? Does God take sides in religious power struggles? Can God survive religious exclusivity and diversity? Is God migrating from out there to in here? Is religion sustainable in the long run? In seeking answers to these questions, this book explores the possibilities afforded by playful religion. Religion has playful origins, but this aspect is forgotten as soon as institutional power becomes self-serving insteadof subservient. Power changes the very essence of religion. Virtually all religions are distorted versions of a playful original. Institutionalization is religion’s curse, not its blessing. Apparent success hides the failure of religion to be faithful to its original intent. This book helps find the way back from bordering to inclusivity and openness.
Andre Droogers is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. His other books include Play and Power in Religion: Collected Essays (2012) and (with Anton van Harskamp) Methods for the Study of Religious Change: From Religious Studies to Worldview Studies (2014).
- By (author) Andre Droogers
"Religion at Play is a work of love, a passionate call for us to let imagination and openness guide religious experience. Visionary and movingly written, the book affirms people's capacity to thwart power and to make religious experience a vibrant element in more just world-making projects." Joao Biehl, author of Vita "In this book, a distinguished anthropologist of religion re-examines the relationship between power and play, asking whether the 'ludic' makes the human animal lucid or ludicrous? Whatever we conclude, this generous and deeply personal essay is full of wisdom." Grace Davie, author of Religion in Britain since 1945
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