PREFACE A resurgence of religion and religiosity is taking place in the contemporary world. It is manifest in the rise of new religious movements - especially fundamentalist and communal-national ones -- and new forms of action in existing churches. These developments are also reflected in the crystallization of new diasporas and their frequent self-assertion in terms of religious identities. Religion and religiosity thus gain renewed imprint on contemporary scenes, gainsaying the assumption which asserts the weakening, if not disappearance, of religion in modernity. It is in this context that a large number of new transnational networks develop and transform in communities and their participation in public spheres. In the relations between different dimensions of religion -- the cosmological-transcendental and the institutional-organizational - authority and individual orientations are reformulated. Among other expressions, new formulations of the relations of religions with the political arena lead to new societal configurations, confrontations between communities and tensions opposing religious interests and secular institutions. These developments are related to growing contestations by religious organizations and leaders of prevailing interpretations of the modern world and its loci of authority. The weight of religious entities and identities in globalization processes bring about the cristallization of new concepts of secularism and alterations of the social order. It is in this context that this book explores different developments that pertain to this world's major religions and focuses on their dialectic relation with the forms of multiculturalism which they themselves contribute, more than any other agent, to engender. It is in this perspective that the contributions to this volume discuss general questions pertaining to the realm of the sociology of religion, and propose a variety of analyses of societal and social issues relating to the present-day evolution of world religions and religious communities. They focus on the range of convergent and divergent courses of development while paying special attention to fundamentalism and sectarian milieus. Our perspective is basically comparative and we attach ourselves to the major patterns cristallizing within the twofold context of national-regional circumstances and trends of globalization. Following these analyses, we ask about the emergence and assertion of basic changes in religious approaches and modes of action that impact on the development of contemporary societies. * * * This volume stems from a series of discussions in the frame of the IIS World Congress in Budapest (June 2008), a Jerusalem workshop at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (December 2008) and individual interactions with leading scholars in the field. The editors of the book benefited from the support of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Embassy of France in Israel and the Weinberg Chair of Political Sociology of the Tel-Aviv University. We want to express our gratitude to Bob Lapidot, the Director of the International Division and Secretary for the Humanities, at the Academy, who was most instrumental in this endeavor. We want also to thank Diana Rubanenko for her language editing of the manuscript and, last but not least Lilach Bar-Ami for the picture of her beautiful painting for the cover of this book. We are also indebted to Rosanna Woensdregt and Julian Deahl at Brill, and above all to Mehdi P. Amineh, the editor of the ICSS series who has been of the greatest support. Excerpted from World Religions and Multiculturalism: A Dialectic Relation All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
