New Book: Claiming Society for God

Now available from Indiana University Press:

Claiming Society for God
Religious Movements and Social Welfare in Egypt, Israel, Italy, and the United States
Nancy J. Davis and Robert V. Robinson

“Illuminating intersections of religion and public life in four different nations, this book is topical. Given that two of these nations are in the Middle East and one of them is Egypt, it is timely, even urgent.” -R. Stephen Warner, University of Illinois at Chicago

Claiming Society for God focuses on common strategies employed by religiously orthodox, “fundamentalist” movements around the world. Rather than employing terrorism, as much of post-9/11 thinking suggests, these movements use a patient, under-the-radar strategy of infiltrating and subtly transforming civil society. Nancy J. Davis and Robert V. Robinson tell the stories of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Shas in Israel, Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, and the Salvation Army in the United States. They show how these movements are building massive grassroots networks of religiously based social service agencies, hospitals, schools, and businesses to bring their own brand of faith to the center of society.

234 pp., 3 b&w illus.
cloth 978-0-253-00234-1 $70.00
paper 978-0-253-00238-9 $25.00

NANCY J. DAVIS is Lester Martin Jones Professor of Sociology at DePauw University.

ROBERT V. ROBINSON is the Class of 1964 Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Together they have published on religion and politics in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Sociology of Religion, winning recognition from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the American Sociological Association’s sections on the sociology of religion and collective behavior and social movements.

For more information, visit:
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/155715

For Instructors:
If you are interested in adopting this book for course use, please see our exam copy policy:
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/link/examcopy